Feisty Zaria

Happy New Year to everyone.

Ever since we gave Zaria the barista title, she makes coffee or tea for me daily.

Yesterday after breakfast, I asked her for my cup of coffee as usual. Zaria said later. And repeated her 'later' for the next 1hr and eventually did not bother to even reply when I asked about my coffee.

I lost my patience and went downstairs, to see her lying on the sofa reading.
Me : From 9 till 10:30 I asked for my coffee, and you kept saying later, and then didn't even answer me any more! Today is my 1st day of work, you are still on holidays, and you can't even make your mom a cup of coffee? Do you have anything to say?
Zara : Sorry ma, what do you want ma? Do you want me to make a cup of coffee or tea for you?
Zaria : ....
Me : Ok. For lunch, I'm not cooking for you, and Auntie (our helper) cannot cook for you too. You go and figure out what to eat. There's lots of cereals and milk.
So I made my own coffee, and thinking Zaria will come over to apologise; but instead, she went to our helper and asked, "Auntie, do we still have mee sedap?"
o.O"

At 12pm, she boiled a pot of water herself, cut opened a pack of mee sedap, and made herself lunch!!
o.O"

While I was eating roast chicken sandwich, and fried button mushroom with Zara at the same table with her, I asked "You can have some if you say something to me."
Slurping her noodle, she said, "Even if I say sorry, I don't really mean it, so what's the point of saying it."
o.O"

That's my 8 year old alright, feisty, independent, non-complying.

Chocolate Coated Butter Biscuits for the Neighbours

My daughters wanted to distribute biscuits to the neighbours for Christmas, so I baked some heart shape butter biscuits for that purpose.

Since I have some cooking chocolate at home, I dipped half of the biscuit in melted chocolate as decoration and also stuck ice cream sticks in to a couple of them (it was difficult to stick sticks into the biscuits as they were going soft very quickly even though I'd refrigerated the dough to harden it) which the girls then called them lollipop biscuits.

♥Butter Biscuit ♥
adapted from Baking by James Peterson

You'll need :

2 3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
268g butter
1 cup castor sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk

Method :

1) Mix the flour, baking powder & salt in a bowl.
2) Cream the butter with sugar and vanilla until fluffy.
3) Beat in the egg and egg yolk.
4) Sift the flour mixture over the butter mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon until it's well combined and there's no loose flour.
5) Roll the dough between baking paper into a rectangle about 1/8 or 1/4 inch thick. Refrigerate until cold.
6) When dough is cold, cut it into desired shapes. Put the biscuit on baking paper in a tray and refrigerate.
7) Preheat oven to 325F (160C).
8) Bake biscuit for 15 to 20mins until very pale brown.
9) Let cool until set then transfer to wire rack.

To coat the biscuit with chocolate:

1) Heat a pot of water on low heat.
2) Cut desired amount of chocolate into pieces and place in a bowl.
3) Put the bowl of chocolate into the pot of simmering water, and melt the chocolate
. 4) Dip the cool biscuit (whole or partially) into the melted chocolate and leave the biscuit on wire rack or baking paper to allow the chocolate to harden before storing.
The girls help to distribute the chocolate biscuits to the kids around the neighbourhood, and kept the 'lollipop biscuits for themselves.

Johor - Kluang UK Farm 2014

Continues from here.

We spent 2 nights in Kluang. Stayed in a nice hotel, Hotel Merdeka, which has been refurbished recently. The family room is extremely spacious and the big beds very comfortable.



Of course when in Kluang, one must go to Kluang Rail Coffee to have breakfast. There are a few Kluang Rail Coffees in Kluang, all under the same company serving similar stuff, but the original one is located right at the Kluang KTM Station.

Honestly, there's really nothing great about the food or drink, but it's something you have to do when you are in Kluang.

Even after spending a full day at Kahang Organic Rice Eco Farm (KOREF) the day before, the girls wanted to go back there for a second visit; since they like farm visits so much, we decided to bring them to UK Farm, which is on the way from Kluang to Ayear Itam toll.

There are different packages for visitors in UK Farm, adults and children pay the same amount. We took 2 x RM30 package and 2 x RM45 package. Both include guided farm tour, but for RM45, a bottle of passion fruit drink, a muffin, an ice cream are given to the guest, but the main reason we chose this package was that it also included animal feeding.

UK Farm is a much bigger farm, we had to ride on a bus to tour the farm with a guide.

1st stop, goat pen. The girls get to feed the goats dried grass provided, and also bottle feed the goat milk.


The goats were quite fussy, the girls discovered that once the (bottle) teat has been sucked or licked by one goat, the others won't touched it any more.


They had a chance to cuddle a baby goat too.


Next we were brought to see goats being milked. The goats with full udders were herded to the milking station, and while being fed, they had their head locked behind bars to prevent them from escaping while being milked. Their udders and teats are sterilised before being attached to pumps goat by goat to milk them. We could see the udders shrinking once the milk has been pumped out.


We were given some goat milk produced in UK Farm to try, hmmm, no one liked it, too errr muttony? If there's such a word.

We met a group of Anqingban (安亲班）kids on a field trip at the next stop. The girls have to wait for their turn to feed the ostriches and turkeys with the feeds that were part of the RM45 farm package.




The animals at UK Farms all look pretty healthy, they must have been well taken care of.


Together with the big group of kids on field trip, we were brought to the Jakun Village next. There's only 1 Orang Asli hired to stationed there, with a couple of houses built to look like an Orang Asli's house, not really a village per say. The Orang Asli did a blow pipe trick to the cheers of the kids, and then we were free to enter the bare "show houses".

On our way to the next stop, the mushroom farm, we saw a herd of sheep in the big grass field, like the picture that attracted most on the UK Farm's website.
We probably missed the sheep herding timing, the tour guide didn't stop for us, but continued to the mushroom farm.





The mushroom farm was the last stop of our guided tour, being close to the main entrance, we were left to explore the rest of the farm on our own.

There's a big wishing tree next to the mushroom farm with a small tree house, the girls fooled around there..


while I took a rest on the hammock.


Walking back to the entrance, we saw healthy looking horses behind horse rail.
There were more horses in the shed near by. The girls, romancing the thought of riding on a horse galloping across the meadow, asked that we let them go on one.

We paid the extra, and they went on the horses, but both claimed it was so boring since the horse they rode on was led on a reign by the horse handler.


The girls were unwilling to go home after the horse ride, so we walked around more, and found not far from the main entrance, away from the horses, was a small enclosure where chickens, guinea fowls, ducks and geese roamed freely. The girls dug out their last packs of animal feed and had a swell time feeding the birds.


Zaria found her equal here, a duck glaring at her asking for seconds.


They had fun chasing after the birds too, making them all excited/scared fluttering about.


Further in the enclosure, Zaria found this little cutie at the side of the pond.


The duckling was joined by mother duck and more ducklings when Zara tried to go near it.
However, with Zaria's agility, she did manage to catch one of the ducklings with her hands. She was quite reluctant to release it after.

UK Farm over all is a very well run farm with healthy animals, their produce here is goats milk and passion fruit juice, but both are not found in Klang Valley.


Both girls had a great time here, and Zaria prefers UK Farm over Kahang Farm (KOREF) because of the animals found here, Zara likes the latter because she enjoyed the rafting so much.

Johor - Kahang Organic Rice Eco Farm (Koref) 2014

Zaria and her gymnastic club went to Singapore early December for a competition and because she's still so young, we kind of 'accompanied' her on this trip although we only saw her on competition day (oh well, we did sneak into her Hostel to check on her the 2nd day she was gone to make sure she was ok).

After the competition, we went to Kluang, as we were not willing to spend more in Singapore since the exchange rate is so high. Prior to making this trip, a couple of friends has already recommended some places to visit in Johor, the girls shortlisted Kahang Organic Rice Eco Farm 加亨有机稻米生态农场 (Koref).

Koref is about an hours drive from Kluang. Upon arriving, we had to decide what we plan to do to pay for the relevant fee.

RM10 for a day spent there, with light refreshment provided.
RM35 for a day spent there + lunch.
RM50 for a day spent there + lunch and tea snack.
RM60 for full day spent there with lunch, tea snack and dinner provided.
(Prices of farm entry can be found here)

We decided we'll go for the 2nd option.



The day we were there, there was only another family on a day visit and another group who's about to check out, it wasn't very busy, which was good for us.

Soon after we'd paid, the girls started trying their hands on rafting under the hot scorching sun!




The water is actually very shallow, the deepest end is probably just waist deep, and since the girls know how to swim, I left them rafting on their own while I stayed in the shade and walked about the farm.

Koref has farm stay too, the most luxurious ones are water chalets are built around the shallow pond with colourful wooden walking linking them.


Rooms are pretty basic, but I love the colourful deco and mural drawn on the walls of the chalets.


There are some dorms or bigger rooms for sharing as well, they are all colourfully painted.


Besides rafting, there is an obstacle course built on the pond. The girls had a go at it. Did they get wet? They did get a little wet, but didn't fall into the pond.






However, Zaria dropped her slippers into the water crossing a path, and had to go into the water to retrieve the slipper even though she could have asked for help from the guides there. Oh well, she's the sort who doesn't mind getting dirty, so it was fun for her.


Lunch was served at the time we specified during registration. It was a meal of organic rice (grown in Koref itself), organic vegetable, organic eggs etc.
Besides the dishes shown here, we also have a steam Tilapia fish from their pond. Not bad actually for the price we paid.

After lunch, we had the girls walk with us to explore the farm together. Besides water activities, there are little animals around the farm roaming about freely.

The girls chased rabbits around, carried them, fed them kangkung they harvested themselves.




They found eggs in dirt pens and saw protective hens hatching eggs.
I think this hen has been conned into hatching normal eggs as the eggs we found on the dirt pens around were all white in colour, but this particular hen was hatching brown (supermarket?) eggs.

Further away, we found 2 goats in their pens. We could pat them, feed them and got really close to them.


We got so closed to the goats, we noticed the goats' pupils were rectangle in shape instead of circle (does this apply to all goats or only the goats found here?)


Walking further away, we saw the padi fields, the tilapia pond, where the fish for our lunch came from.


The farm is not just a visitor farm, it's actually a working farms, farmers or workers were toiling in the fields.


Egrets were found around the padi fields, some even taking a plunge at the tilapia pool grabbing a fish for lunch.


Of all that's to be done and see at the farm, the girls still like the rafting the most.


By evening time, they were already experts. Even the young guides (students working during the long holidays) said they were getting really good.


I think we got our money's worth spending such a long day there.

Taiping 2014 - The Food

Continues from here.

Taiping has some really good food, this trip, we went out hunting for food so often Zaria actually asked if that was an Eating Trip or a Holiday.

♥Larut Matang Food Court/Medan Makan Larut Matang♥ (Jalan Panggung Wayang)
Although the food court has lots to offer, we really only like the deep fried radish cake and the tong shui (dessert) there.

The deep fried radish cake or lo bak kou is very different from the ones in KL. This one is plain white and deep fried. Yums.


No 40 dessert stall at the Larut Matang Food Court should not be missed.


Our favourite, the red bean soup and the peanut soup.


♥Restoran Kakak 家家茶室♥ (111, Jalan Pasar, Taiping)
The place is famous for its noodle, where you can pick your own topping like pork ball, fish ball, fish cake, stuffed tofu etc.




But what we came here for was really the Kakak Ping 家家冰; which is a drink made with Nescafe added into barley water. A smooth and creamy drink. They sold off the 1st day we arrived at 10am, so we went back the 2nd day.

♥Restoran Kong Xing 港星粤膳楼♥ (150， Jalan Satu, Pokok Assam 34000 Taiping)

Our friend's husband brought us there for dinner the 1st night we arrived. It's a proper Cantonese style air-conditioned restaurant which serves pretty refined dishes. No photos taken during dinner, but the food was really good, especially the steamed whole chicken! Zaria and I had so many pieces of chicken that night!

♥Mee Udang Mak Jah♥ (Kampung Menteri, Kuala Sepetang)

The outdoor restaurant was packed when we arrived. But seriously, I don't know what's the hype about. For RM11 per bowl, the noodle came with a generous amount of big prawns; to me, that's all. Don't like the alkaline taste of the noodle, and the starchy sauce.



♥Kuala Sepetang Curry Mee♥ (Jalan Taiping, Kuala Sepetang)

The stall is infont of the curve as you go into the town and is opened only after 3pm.

I'm a fan of curry mee, and boy, this one is goood! The soup has not much santan in it, but has a very rich prawn flavour. The prawn topping was so flavourful!


Curry Mee over the Mee Udang anytime!

♥Light House Seafood Restaurant♥ (10, Jalan Cina, 34750 Matang, Taiping)

Again no photos as we were chomping up the food so quickly. The popular dish here is the seafood porridge, and deep fried fish (Cai Yu Zhai), which were so well fried, even the bones can be eaten.

♥Simpang Fried Kuey Teow 新板华顺烟花炒粿条♥ (13, Medan Pasar, Jalan Taiping-Kuala Sepetang, 34700 Simpang. Opposite Simpang Mc Donald's)



The Chinese name of the stall 新板华顺烟花炒粿条 is translated to Simpang Fireworks Fried Kuey Teow. The uncle who fried the kuey teow is like a performer, with each plate of kuey teow he fried, he was sending sparks flying.



See the sparks flying?


We waited for about 30mins for the first place to arrive; being with friends, we didn't even feel it. The kuey teow was served on a heart shape leave, how pleasing.


It was wetter than the Penang ones but taste wise it was different too, but equally good.

♥Taiping Aulong Kaya Puff/Kaya Kok♥ (1106D Jalan Permaisuri/Lorong 4 Aulong, 34000 Taiping. Tel :05-8074136/0125635919)
No shop, just operating from their house, this Kaya Puff or Kaya Kok can be so popular in Taiping. We had our friend ordered them for us earlier (in case they ran out), and then we went to collect in the afternoon.

It was not easy to find. It's actually a single story house, with the front gate closed and latched. We only realised later that the back door opens out to a lane, where regular usually picks their kaya puff from.

The Kaya Kok/Kaya Puff were nicely (and uniquely) packed, wrapped in paper glued with starch.


We find them quite nice, especially when freshly out of the oven; it doesn't have the lard taste that we find in some kaya puffs, and the kaya is rich and fragrant.