: : Mum-Mum : : Eat-Eat : :

: : Dynasty : :

During my trip back home to Miri, I had a wonderful dinner with the Khoo Clan and my parents. We had a delicious meal at the Dynasty Restaurant at the Dynasty Hotel. I must say kudos to the chefs of this establishment. Even the chef at the Dynasty Coffee House is amazing. The way the meals are served are absolutely terrific. Not to mention that it is forever tasty. Note that although the Coffee House is halal, the Chinese restaurant is not.

When we entered the restaurant, this was the first thing that we saw. I think the left hand statue is Quan Yin @ Goddess of Mercy and the other chap is one of the Gods (prosperity? Anyone?).

Once we settled down, it was a time to prepare the chillis that acts as a condiment for the entire meal as well as having some tidbits to settle our hunger while waiting for the food to come. It was a choice of chopped chilli with garlic and sugar or just plain cut chillis. The chillis are put into a small and cute little sauce bowl. If one is having cut chillis, black soy sauce is added although some people would add black vinegar instead. For my family, we would also add in some chopped garlic into the mixture of cut chillis and soy sauce. As for the tidbits, we had some pickled cucumber (that is sweeten) and boiled peanuts. I love boiled peanuts so had to seriously control my intake that night.

This was such a tasty dish that I just had to have two of them. The tauhu is fried first and then hollowed out so that chopped mushroom and pork is added into it. It’s like a little treasure chest, no? In the middle of the dish is some stir-fried chai sim. Chai Sim is something like spinach only that it’s very crunchy.

Another interesting dish : steam fish, mushroom, carrot and ham with an eggwhite sauce poured over it. On the side, the entire dish was surrounded by boiled brussel sprouts which was covered with oil, I think. Still, it was very nice altogether and fairly easy to do. Well, it look easy to do anyways.

As my young cousins were with us, we ordered this plate of roasted chicken especially for them. The chicken is salted so needs to be eaten with some rice or veggies. The crackers on the side is made from prawn mixed with flour and later deep fried. It’s very crunchy, by the way. Roasted chicken is a favourite for kids and just about everyone loves it. If it’s done well, the skin would be extremely crispy but the inside flesh is still moist (or perhaps oily).

The star of the entire meal was the roasted pork leg. Yum yum! It’s difficult to get good roasted pork leg around here and this one was done very nicely.

The waitress then started to cut up the pork leg into smaller pieces for us to eat it. It was so soft that the cutleries just slices through it easily. Needless to say that everyone “pigged-out” on the crispy skin as well as the soft and tender meat in between. Wah! So delicious.

Dynasty Hotel is located in one of the old parts of Miri. Growing up, the restaurant used to be part of a shopping mall area which closed down some time in the 90s. Not sure what happened to the upper floors but the ground floor was converted into this restaurant, or rather, the restaurant moved from it’s old location on the 1st floor of the hotel to this Ground Floor. It’s a very popular family restaurant and one needs to have a reservation during the weekends to dine here. Chinese families like to go out and eat during the weekends and enjoy the time together as a family on a favourite pastime : EATING! Including us, that is. Well, we were a mixture of Chinese and Kelabit family members all put together but the food was definitely so tempting!

: : Relief : :

Phew! Luckily, I’m still about half a kilo down from last Friday. Not too bad but not too good either. Not losing enough though! Haven’t bought the swimsuit or goggles yet. Just didn’t have time yesterday.

But anyway, this is the sauce that I make regularly to eat with my salads. I have metamorph myself into a rabbit. I eat everything but raw carrots. It’s raw cucumbers, raw celerys, raw capsicum, raw jicama and raw lettuce. Why? Because I’m looking to increase my fibre intake. Since I cut out a lot of rice, I now need to get my fibre elsewhere. I suppose another way would be to take fibre tablets but those stuff contains apples and I can’t exactly eat any fruits at the moment. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the sauce. It’s a mixture of herbs with mayonnaise and some Dijon mustard which is absolutely fabulous with the mayonnaise. Don’t add to much unless you want the entire salad dressing to be very sour. Just a little bit will do and you’ll be fine. Also, since I cannot touch tomato sauce or chilli sauce, this is my OK-go-ahead-no-worries dressing.

I’m too obsess with my dieting.

Ah well.

: : Guilt : :

I confess.

I ate chilli crab which had sugar in it. Not to mention the butter prawn as well. Plus, I had some oyster omelette with flour in it.

ARGH!!!

Ah well. Once in a while. Cheating.

Must try again for better control. This time, it was one week before I gave into my urge for carbohydrates.

: : Dietgal to the rescue : :

And she definitely is. It’s always great to know that one is not alone having to deal with weight problems. It also helps for motivation and to strive on to achieve our targetted weight. She’s amazing, having to do it for more than 3 years. Me, I’ve just started.

Having said that, I must go and get some tights for swimming. Since I started Atkins’ and Unisense, my cellulite is showing and it’s pretty bad. Then again, I just might just go ahead anyway and just swim for the heck of it, irregardless of what people say. It’s my body and I’m doing something about it.

So, in conjuction of having lose weight (about 3-4 kilos), I’m off to buy a new swimsuit and some prescription goggles. Probably tomorrow since it’s still a public holiday.

: : Hot Seat : :

Now these shots were definitely taken during my pre-Atkins-and-Unisense Days. Why? Look at all the carbohydrates heaped onto it. Not that it wasn’t tasty, mind you. It was quite nice. Can’t wait for the day when I can eat it again. Must remember, only AFTER 12 June!

The dinner was eaten at Hot Seat with Min Yen after a stressful day at work. I just wanted to have something nice to eat at the end of a really long long long day.

Now this was a refreshing drink : ice-blended milo. Very cooling and filling at the same time. All it needs at the top was whipped cream or even a scoop of chocolate ice-cream. Hmm… better not say too much now.

I ordered the grilled fish which came with a tasty sauce made from tomato and dunno-what-else as well as some salad and mash potatoes. It was a great dish alright.

Min Yen decided to have something small and ordered some satay. It came in a mixture of chicken, beef and lamb. I love the lamb satay. So tasty. And, the peanut sauce was so delicious! Very thick, sweet and salty at the same time. Good to go with the satay as well as rice.

Ah well. All I can do right now is look at photos. Surprisingly, I don’t feel so tempted to eat these stuff anymore. Don’t know why. It’s been 11 days since I last had a full carbohydrate-filled meal. Did have a few bits of the stuff when I wasn’t suppose to but other than that, haven’t had any lately. At the rate I’m going, I’m going to become a rabbit soon.

: : Healthy Sushi : :

What is a girl to do when she is dieting and still wants to enjoy a bit of Japanese cuisine? Remove the rice out of the sushi! I can hear a few people screaming ‘SACRILEGE!’ Well, what with rice having so much starch in it and not to mention carbohydrates, I did exactly that. Also, I didn’t do it using a rice mat but never mind. It’s me eating it, and not others.

Because of one pesky mosquitoe, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning wide-eyed and alert. So, as I had to go and help out at the PERKATA Charity Sale today, I decided to make some snacks. So, cut up some ham, celery and cucumber, I made some sushi. Not so symmetrical because I cut everything into short strips. You can see the bits and pieces of vegetables sticking out on one end because after I rolled them, I cut them into half so that it sits more easily in the container and smaller so that it’s manageable bite-sized portions.

Uncle Cyril : You didn’t make any for me to try ah?

So I made somemore sushi but time using capsicum and jicama/hikama as well as beer ham and fresh salmon. Beer Ham? Well, it says that one the label. Bought a packet of it at Choice Daily Supermarket and it looks to be made in Thailand. Has an interesting sourish taste that one can taste a litty itty bitty bit. Other than that, it’s pretty good. As for the salmon, made in Klang, believe it or not. Or so it says on the packet. Still, pretty expensive at RM15 per packet. Well, this batch of sushi will be my lunch for Monday.

On another note, the PERKATA Charity Sale went very well yesterday. How much did we make? Quite a fair bit. Cannot believe that between two of us doing the body painting, we did up above 41 pictures. Phew! By the time we left the place, our backs and necks were aching from being stuck in that position for such a long time. Anyway, everyone went off pretty satisfied with their pictures on their hands and arms.