Spicy sesame cold noodle

Years ago, I went to Korea during summer, I lost my appetite due to the hot weather, feeling thirsty all the time and may able to down a gallon of cold water to cold down my body temperature.

But before I go for second litre of water I found a restaurant selling cold noodle at a corner of the famous tourist attractions, the restaurant was full of people and I could help to get into the restaurant and order a bowl for myself. That cold noodle was divine, not just the taste and texture of the noodle, also how it manage to stimulate my appetite during that crazy weather.

Since then I craved for cold noodle every sunny hot day, but it was kind of disappointment that I couldn't get cold noodle in Malaysia, so here I have my own recipe for world best home made cold noodle, which you will be able to replicate it anywhere (where you couldn't get cold noodle down the street) in the world.

This recipe is a simplified version, where I know not everyone manage to buy all the ingredients outside Asia, so here I used Lighams for the Asia tasted spicy flavour ( well, you know the taste of spicy is different from country to country and especially between Asia and Western).

Ingredients:
Carrot (cut into 3cm  thin strips)
Cucumber (cut into 3cm thin strips)
Chicken breast
Medium egg
Noodle

Dressing ingredients:
2 tbs  Sesame paste
1tbs   Light soy sauce
1tsp   Garlic paste
2tbs   Lighams chili sauce
1tsp   Sugar

Method:
1. Cut carrots and cucumber into 3cm thin strips.
2. Combine all the noodle dressing ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk all together. You can keep it chilled in the refrigerator.
3. Make a thin egg crepe by whisk together the eggs, sugar and salt. Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook on both sides. Cut into thin strips and put aside.
4. Steam the chicken to cooked, pull the chicken into strips, put aside.
5. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the noodles, separate the noodles before dropping into water. Cook according to package directions. Drain the water and rinse the noodles to remove starch. Soak the noodles into a bowl of ice water to cool. Drain completely and divide the noodles on plates/bowls.
6. Place all the toppings and pour the dressing before serving. Serve with peanut if desired.

Lingham's Spicy Italian Sausage Chickpea Soup

I used to have days craving for hot soup, especially rainy day, and this Lingham's Spicy Italian Sausage Chickpea Soup has always been my favourite, it was savoury, warm and easy to make. All you need is just a pot and all the ingredients, and there you could reproduce it effortlessly.

You could choose any type of your favourite sausage, but I would prefer Italian hot sauce where the spices in the sausage add more flavour to the soup, yet it is succulent enough after pan fried and shimmered.

Now, let's see what do we need for 2 servings of Lingham's Spicy Italian Sausage Chickpea Soup,

2 Spicy Italian Sausage
1/4 cup chickpea
1/2 onion chop into small chunk
2 sticks of celery cut into small cubes
1 carrots cut into small chunks
few cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 can tomato puree
2 tablespoons Lingham's Sriracha hot sauce

Method:
1. Heat a tablespoons of olive oil in a pot, stir fried the garlic until fragrant and remove the garlic.
2. Sauté Italian sausage in same pot over medium-high heat until cooked through, crumbling with back of spoon, about 10 minutes. Set the sausage aside.
3. At the same pot add onion, celery, carrots, stir fried for 5 minutes.
4. Add in chickpea, chicken stocks, tomato puree, sausages and Lingham's Sriracha hot sauce bring to boil and cover the pot with lids and shimmer for 20 minutes.

If you cook too much, it is good to keep for next day breakfast and served with a slice of baguette!

We've moved

Hi all, we have moved to new site --> http://clumsymel.com  

[Slimming] Carb counting to loss weight and maintain your silhouette

Few years ago, I was working as a nutritionist in one of the famous weight management company. I had been writing several types of meal plan to fit in different individual’s health conditions. Before I start designing a meal plan for them, I would need to know their dietary habit, occupation & working condition and lifestyle. All these information was crucial for a highly individualized meal plan to modify their dietary habit without compromising their personal and cultural preferences.

After years of working on meal planning, I found that most of the people have major problem in managing their meal portion size. In another word, they tend to overeating. Overeating was something that on the top of the list you really need to get rid of to keep yourself fit and silhouette. So if you’re someone like that, you could start with “Carb Counting” to control of your meal size, especially your daily carbohydrate portion size (which the major constituent of daily meal).

((Well, it remind me to again pick up Carb counting to reduce some weight for my wedding))

Atkins diet was kind of popular in the past few years, the diets promotes a high protein low carbohydrate diet. The switch of main energy source from carbohydrate to protein might lead to ketone acidosis which I refuse to introduce to any of my customer and friends. Yet the diet wasn’t suitable to be adopted and practiced for long term which might have adverse health effect. I prefer Car-counting as it could help to modify a person dietary habit to achieve a long term weight management. So I find “Carb-counting” as a perfect method for all the people who wanted to lose weight and maintain it easily (Say no to Yo-Yo weight).

This method involved some calculation, where you need to calculate the number of servings of carbohydrate you could have for a day. So let’s start with the calculation:

1.         our daily calorie (kcal) = body weight (kg) x 25(kcal/kg)
2.     Your daily calorie from Carbohydrate (kcal) = Your daily calorie (kcal) x 0.5
3.     Your daily serving of Carbohydrate = Your daily calorie from Carbohydrate (kcal)/ [15 x 4 (kcal)]

Example: 

1.      My weight is 50kg, so my daily calorie will be 1250 kcal (50 kg x 25 kcal/kg).
2.     From which, 625 kcal ( 1250kcal x 0.5 )of energy come from carbohydrate.
3.     625 kcal of carbohydrate equal to 10.4 servings (625 kcal/ (15 x 4 kcal) ) of Carbohydrate .

Now you know what is the maximum servings of carbohydrate you could have in a day, so simple spread the numbers among 3-4  (or 5) meals. I would take more carbohydrate in the morning and afternoon, so I usually plan for 4 servings for breakfast, 4 servings for lunch and 2 servings for dinner.

But how much is one servings? One servings equal to 15g of carbohydrate, and look at the picture below to find out what is the serving size of food that you eat every day.

You can play around with different kind of food with same carbohydrate serving and have fun with the food game. 

Sometimes if you crave for some sweet dessert, just find out the carbohydrates count of the food, and minus a little from breakfast and lunch for the room for dessert. Never give up the pleasure from eating, that’s could keep your mood up and enjoy the lengthy process of weight loss.

Bear in mind, start it slow, and take your time to adopt the whole method. Meanwhile you could make use of some free app or website to help you on adopting this method.

Note: This is not a quick method to lose weight, please be patient and practicing it from day to day, coupled with exercise.

[Nail art] Set the sky and the grass on my nail

As you know, I was having a very busy month that I don't have time for mani/pedicure, eyebrows trimming, facial and eyelashes curling. I looked so untidy and dull. Before I really feeling shame of my look, I managed to squeeze a day-off for all these girly treatment.

Besides from facial and massage, I really love doing mani/pedi-cure. Every time I got some new polish on, I would stare on it for a few minutes and it will bring my mood up. 

This time I have decided to try on something a little flattering (flatter for career) for this seasons. I went to OPI in One Utama, and told them I wanted a gel nail polish with a Sundae ice-cream design ( well, I mean to looks as delicious as a Sundae ice-cream). But I end up picked a light blue and imagined the sky blue decorated with marshmallow white cloud. Here's the outcome. Whenever I move my finger on the keyboard, I can feel the invisible breeze,  that lightened my tension. Somehow, a nail polish do more than beautify my nail, it makes me happy by just looking at it.

The other day, I was having a banana as breakfast on the way to work, the contrast of the color turn to be a perfect match. I was just of in love with the mismatch but perfect shade.

And of course, never forget about the bright green on my toe. It was so spring, and make all my sandals looks great. Most importantly, my skin looks fair after wear it!! :)

[Korea 2013] Wedding photo shooting in U-do (Jeju), Korea

-->

On my first trip to U-do Island, I fell in love with it already. U-do Island was another Island that won my heart with its sunshine, breezy weather, deep sea, and food.  I have always love island and sea, but I didn’t plan to stay in U-do as it was really tiny that you could finish the whole island in 3 hours time on a  ATV. But U-do Island has given me a bunch of reasons to stay back. There is so much to explore, the place, the food, the pretty hostel, and the culture. Indeed, a half-day trip would be too short to touch on each of them. It made me think that I should have cut down the days in Seoul…

One thing that I glad I did was decided to have my pre-wedding photo shooting in U-do. Being in the lush and gorgeous little island has already sent my heart all a’flutter.  Coupled with the stunning blue sea and sunshine as the perfect backdrop, the outcome was incredible!

Although yellow Canola flower had already withered when we’re there but a bed of golden paddy field has taken over. We had never expected to shoot in front of paddy field in Korea, but we did it and we just love it so much.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been wishing for something different from the commercial style pre-wedding photo. Nothing would do better than my love one capture for me, which happens to be much meaningful to us in the way that it tell our story better.

Of course the biggest limitation would be the difficulty of getting two of us in the photo, though with the use of tripod. It was kind of funny that my mate appeared in my pre-wedding photo, just once. But this is the one that tugs at my hearts string most. It reminds me of the days that we travel together; we rely on tripod to get a photo of us in front of the signature building; most of the time I am the only one in his photo. 

We also have a series of wedding photograph in Seoul, Korea, which will be shared some days later.

I am now very happy with the result and I am now can’t wait to show the pictures to my family. Ciao!! xoxo

[Dress up] Happy look for a beach walk

-->

Here I am in Jeju Island dressing like a Korean fashionista.
.

I love to be someone else when I travel, especially the local people. Of course, I fancied myself to be the pretty Korean lady, strolling the city in my shining heels and sipping coffee in a designer coffee shop. 
.

So this is how I wore in Jeju Island, on a Sunny but windy day.
.
If you have read my blog post, you will know that I brought just a total of 8 clothes for 9 days. So I had been playing around with everything I had to make my outfits different through the trip.  That day morning in Jeju island, I can't think of what to wear with what to look good for a beach walk (which i had left most of my clothes in Seoul). So I simply threw a piece of sweater over a pair of legging, add a green braided bead necklace, and I was working a happy look.

[Korea 2013] Jeju island transportation

You might have never heard it before, Jeju Island is not a ease of traveling place. Most of the traveller will just rent a car or book a ground tour to travel in Jeju Island as to save the time on taking bus/hailing taxi. But we’re budget traveller and we’re not travel in group; so the best way to us was still by bus. Let’s see how we squeeze our budget by taking buses in Jeju Island without speaking their language.

That day we took a budget flight-Eastar Jet from Gimpo airport to Jeju Island after 3 nights stay in Seoul. The night before, I was giddy over excitement to the level that caused me INSONMIA. How silly? But it was a norm to me when I going to travel from one place to another. The next day I appeared in Jeju Airport with enlarged dark circle and a small luggage rushing towards the tourist information counter to gather all the bus information and maps.

After dropping off our luggage at the hostel, we immediately take a bus (no. 601/602 – 1000won) to Jeju Local Bus Terminal. From Jeju Local Bus Terminal we would be able to catch buses connected to Jeju city’s outskirt. (We had spent most of our time on taking buses, we would suggest you to rent a car if you’re travel in a group of 3 or more.)

Click on the following link to find out the detail bus information of your specific destination:

Intercity bus information search engine:

http://bus.jeju.go.kr/internet_eng/ayMapFrame.jsp?menu=500

Local bus information search engine:

http://bus.jeju.go.kr/internet_eng/ayMapFrame.jsp?menu=410

General regional bus information:

http://bus.jeju.go.kr/internet_eng/bisb_bus/bus_020.jsp

We find it challenging to travel in Jeju Island, especially if you do not know the name of the places. You shall at least need to know the pronunciation of the places in Korea language, that will ease of asking direction or to allow the bus driver to remind you to get off as you reach your destination. Unfortunately, we know nothing about the name of the places so it was kind of adventurous as we travel in Jeju Island.

The few attractions we went in Jeju Island were:

Day 1:

(1)   The mysterious road + Love land. (Bus no.2 )

(2)   Yakcheonsa Temple (Bus no. 2 Chungmun station and take taxi to the destination)

(3)   Seonimgyo Bridge by taxi

Day 2:

(1)   U-do (bus no.4 to Seongsan ilchulbong）

(2)   Jeju Folk Village Museum （bus no.4 to 표선 Pyoseon station and change bus no.3）

Day 3:

(1) Jeju International Airport (Bus 602 – 900won)

After all, travel by bus in Jeju wasn’t that difficult, all you need is some courage and adventure spirit (plus some luck :D). We both were lucky to meet some local who willing to bring us along to the destination; we also speak Mandarin which have similar pronunciation with some Korean words. All these made our journey smooth and happy good ending. I’m loving the sweat along the way to our destination which added a filter of satisfactory to the beautiful scene.

Hope the information could help to give you better idea on how to travel on Jeju Island via Bus.

Before I end the article, would like to share with you the delicious fish cake that I had in Jeju Bus Terminal, don't forget to get one stick before you start your journey.

 

xoxo

[Korea 2013] Budget accommodation in Jeju Island – HK Jeju 2

Since I have been to Seoul one time before and spent 8 days in the city, I was happy to discover somewhere further away from Seoul. Though I could just leave the city behind but not to forget I was traveling with my mate who has never been to Seoul.

There I picked Jeju Island to spend our 3days 2 nights. We had stayed 2 nights in this budget hostel – HK Jeju II  (just to stretch the budget to allowed us to travel a few more places and try on few more local food), the nearby bus station—Dongmun Rotary station (point no. 1 on the following map),  was just a 3 minutes away. It was quite easy to reach by taking bus no. 602 from the Airport and get off at Dongmun Rotary station,  the Hostel was just 2 block away (point no. 2 on the following map). 

 

As we arrived in the hostel, the first thing that comes into our sight was the big green tree that painted on the building; it was just so obvious for you to find it. It was locational convenient, surrounded by shopping street and a numbers of local restaurants were just a few steps away.  You will appreciate it with your sore feet, especially after walking all the day long, you don’t want to travel a bit more for good food but save it up for the bed. But you will not be disappointed with the food serve in the restaurant down the street, as it was just so real local taste that tempted our taste buds. 

 Grilled black pork was really famous in Jeju Island, you could never bear to miss it.

Because I prefer double-bed-room to twin-bed-room, so I put a note to make sure I will get a double-bed in my room and it turn out to be a spacious double-bed-room. Though the bed was a bit hard but it was clean and comforts enough to give you a good night sleep. 

The double room that I booked has its own bathroom, so it cost slightly more. I would rather to pay more for privacy and convenience. Surprisingly the bathroom has a bathtub (it was abnormal for a hostel to have bathtub in the room), which was such a gift to us to relieve our tiredness.

 HK Jeju II provides free breakfast every morning 8am-10am in the lower ground floor common area.  White toast, brown toast, blueberry jam, butter, tea and coffee will be lined up on the counter in the kitchen at 8am sharp. You may just help yourself to the breakfast but don’t forget to clean up and wash the used dish. Also, do remember to wake up a little early if you wanted to have more choice. 

 

Information of the Hostel:

Website: http://www.hkjeju.com/jeju2/

Double room rate: /Night (including  tax)

Breakfast: Toast, Jam, butter, tea & Coffee

Facilities: Towel (face), Hair dryer, bathtub, Air-cond. (without controller).

Note: Some others traveller has commented that the hostel staff would be able to provide transportation info, but it was quite disappointed that they advised us to take a cab to all the places that we wanted to go. I do agree it would be cost effective & time-saving to rent a car/cab, if we were traveling in group of 4 or more. But sadly we were just 2 in a group. It would be good if you do some research on the transportation and ask for a bus schedule from the tourist information counter in the Airport before you start you journey.

[Dress up] Go denim this summer

How was your weekend? I have finally decided to start writing on my traveling outfits in Korea.

I wasn't a denim lover, but I was recently introduced to this never-aging pieces of apparel and happened to be one of the easiest piece to match with any elements. (That's make it the reason I brought it along to Korea so to save the space of my luggage.)

During the day 1 in Korea, I paired it with a white, round collar blouse and a pair of legging which looks perfect for traveling. Combined with a black belt and leather boots to fine tune the overall to the chic vintage, and you will just can't wait to start the adventure.

I love the outfit, it was just so comfortable for a long walk!!