Review: Aloe Vera in can

I had seen this canned aloe vera while grocery shopping, picked it up a few times to put into the shopping basket, only ended up removing it before payment. I was hesitant because I wasn't sure what to expect, would the aloe vera cubes be crunchy or soggy? If it's the latter, then my ringgit would go to waste. Finally I paid for it since there's no point in trying the guessing game. Cart it home to try. It was crunchy, much to my relief. Eating it on its own was a tad bland, so I opened up a few more cans of fruits, namely longan, lychee and pineapple stuffed rambutan. Sprinkled a few green and red cherries for colour, it was a bowlful of cold dessert for after dinner.



I was initially hesistant of dh's reaction when I served him this. It was an unfounded fear because he liked it, yohoo!! Reason for my joy was that if he didn't like it, then I would have to swallow the whole can all on my own.

Kim Gary Restaurant, Queensbay Mall

There's always a long queue for Kim Gary no matter which outlet in Penang, be it in its maiden shop at Gurney Plaza or Queensbay Mall, so that had been deterring us from paying them a visit. That is how brisk a business they are doing here, always pack and crowded.

A chance visit to the mall on Monday, we were happy to be seated immediately for dinner. Great beginning to an even greater meal. One thing for sure, I'm always confused with the numerous forms for their ordering system, so to save myself the frustration of flipping through pages and pages of different forms with different colour codes in order to indicate the item that we would like to consume, I normally would just dictate to the waiter our choice. They would be more familiar with which page for which form since they work there, no? Yes, that's the downside of having too many choices and promotions going on at any one time. Kudos for their innovative idea to come up with something new constantly, but to slap your customer with a thick black book of forms is not my cup of tea.

Whever we order, we try to vary our choices in a way that we would get one noodle and one rice, and not two noodles or two rice at that. I had the Korean noodle fried egg, ham and 2 chicken wings. It came with a side dish of kimchi as well. My set came with a drink, and I chose iced milk tea.


Our side order of baked assorted mushrooms (button mushroom, enoki mushroom and abalone mushroom) in creamy white sauce. Something nice to blend with the spicy curry in the next photo to bring down the hot index.

This was dh's choice, baked seafood curry in puff pastry, and we get a choice of either to have it with rice or bread. We choose the former. This one took 20 minutes of preparation, so be ready to wait. It was a big portion that can serve 2 pax, which we didn't know of till the food arrived. We were stuffed to the brim trying to finish this generous portion of prawns, mussel, squids and salmon swimming in the curry sauce. Worth a try, no regrets.

Total, we paid about RM25.00 for this meal because we had a birthday voucher that entitled the member to 50% discount. That means it worked out to be about RM50.00 inclusive of tax.

Kumato

At first glance, I thought these were loh-han-kuo (buddha's fruit) because of its deep brown colour. Huh, a tomato which is brown in colour, you gotta be kidding (not!). Going by the caption of "Natural, Unique Colour and Flavour", I was won over to part with RM6.25 for this box of 6 kumato. I was game to try it because it's so interesting. Ok lah, RM6.25 for an experience, worse comes to worse if the taste is not to my liking, into the juicer it goes.


This was how the exquisite 6 pieces of pricey (double ouch!!) Kumato look like, ranging from dark brown to dark green to dark red. They were firm to touch, and according to one of the google results, it ripens from inside out. There's even an official website here dedicated to it. And no, this is not genetically modified at all, on the contrary, it is 100% natural.

So far I had eaten these unusual Kumato by themselves, both slices and wedges. Love them to bits, deliciously sweet and tasty. I had finished half a box, left 3 more. Not sure if they can last me till I try them out in recipes as they are so simply irresistable every time I open the fridge door.

Looks is deceiving, and yes, I had been deceived, happy deception in fact.

Muffin Tin Meal #21 091029

I thawed a box of home-made frozen mickey shaped waffles the night before so that I can have them in the morning. To go with that, there's the container of honey on the side plus some pitted cherries as bonus. I normally like to dilute the honey with a few squeezes of lime juice or lemon juice, depending on what was available in the fridge. The slight tang was just nice to even out the otherwise too sweet honey, not to mention make it into a spreadable runny consistency for slathering onto the waffle with a bit less calories.

To the right of the mickey waffle was a whole orange and to the top of the mickey, a hot cuppa to jazz up the day!

Shopping basket again...

Wilton products started to make an appearance in Peanng these days, and what a joy it was to see them gracing the product shelves. Not that the shops just started selling them, but more like there are more choices now. Products which do not have a thick layer of dust on them due to the slow turnover.

Out of the photo below, only one was from Wilton, which was the bottle of sugar sprinkles. There were a variety of colours to choose from, but what caught my attention was BLACK. Reason being that black is a very difficult colour to obtain, what's more, to taint the sugar black would be a challenge. So far my luck of playing with black colour always result in the end product being grey.

In the middle, the small bottle contained orange and green sprinkles in the shape of pumpkin, great as halloween decor. Just in time to lay my hands on them.

The final bottle was one some flat pieces of chocolates in odd shapes. They taste nice on their own (gotta stop myself from nibbling on them after taking a piece to try), and my mind is running wild with ideas as to how to use them. Would be great to use them as pebbles or coblestones is one of those that ran across my thoughts.

At the top row are some mini cupcake liners, just to add to the stash collection. Some nice prints on them, namely floral, cupcakes and snowflakes. Who could resist them? Definitely not me, hahah...

Muffin Tin Meal #20 091028

These days I only fill 4 cavities in the muffin tin meals, trying to cut down calories, that's why.

Top row: A hot cuppa without fail.
Bottom row from left to right: Yoghurt, Char-siew pau (store bought), Kumato

Pan-fried Chicken

Remember this?

Since this post, it has been gathering dust in my spice and seasoning collection, and while I was marinating two whole chicken thighs for dinner, it was as if it was calling out to me, saying "Use me!". I decided to heed the 'invitation', so I added 1 tbsp of this Waugh's Curry Powder, half expecting a failure.

Imagine my delight when this pan-fried chicken turned out so well. It was very fragrant, so much so that I immediately made a mental note to remember to add this when marinating chicken for future bbq. Couldn't wait to see the outcome of that, I bet it would be a hit.

Excuse the charred skin, a result of using too big a piece of chicken which was not de-boned. Took me quite some time to get the inside to cook. Paired very well with potato wedges and some slices of tomato.