Small Reunion With Big Feast......

We had our reunion dinner in Penang on Chinese New Year's eve. As there were only five of us, a whole table of nine dishes is really too much to digest. But we really enjoy looking at the 'hock chiew' dishes bought over from my hometown of Sitiawan. A whole course of nine dishes including the dessert cost only rm 288.



The cold dishes with a variety of food.............


The sweet and sour pork from the cold dish.......


The 'Kan Kuong' or hock chiew lobak ....very nice.


Crispy deepfry meat fillings wrapped in popiah skin .......


Deepfried beancurd or tofu............


Steamed Chicken meat seasoned with chinese herbs and rice wine wrapped in foil.....


These cute little meat and prawn dumplings looks like money bags...


The onion chicken with the head still intact............


The 'too ka' or pork leg braised with mushroom....


The slit pau eaten with the pork leg......


The hock chiew fishball soup.....the gigantic fishball has mince meat as fillings inside the balls.


Sharkfin soup................

The expensive and delicious bowl of 'Hoo Piow' or sweet and sour fishbladder.........

Sweet and sour prawns.............

The 'lam peh woot' meaning 'wet pork ribs' in hock chiew....very tasty if nicely cook. The ribs are really soft and tender with the spicy taste of chilli sauce and salty taste of salted mustard green with the sweetness of the tender cubed yam.

Lastly the sweet dessert of glutinous rice with yam fillings top with black raisins and some nutty coarse groundnuts. The above is the frozen version which I took from the fridge which is still waiting to be finish up. It has to be steamed before serving. Some like it and some hate it. I love it but cannot eat too much of the sticky glutinous rice without getting some indigestion.

Xin Nian Kuai Le.......

I would like to wish all my readers here ...

A Very Happy And Prosperous New Year.

May this year of the OX brings you and your love ones PEACE, HAPPINESS, GOOD HEALTH, LAUGHTER & SUCCESS IN LIFE.....

Missing My CNY Cookies........

Every year I will bake some of my favorite cookies for Chinese New Year. But this year I make none due to a number of reasons. Firstly, my health fails me due to a comeback of my arthritis (RA) attack rendering me weak with a swollen knee and painful joints. My recent change of medication is also giving me some heart stopping moments. To add to the sufferings my ungrateful maid pack her bags and ran away with her Indonesian boyfriend on Christmas eve leaving me in a jumble with household chores to slave over and a cancelled housemoving planned earlier to a later date.

I am just back from my visit to my rheumatologist in KL. A steroid jab and syringing out nearly 50 ml of fluid in my knee joint brought some relief. Hopefully my swelling and pain will not come back or else I will have to face a bleak CNY. I bought some cookies back from my hometown but my boys rant it is not as good as my homemake ones. So everybody is missing my cookies yeah? I miss baking them too. Here is looking back at the cookies I baked last year....

Pineapple tart rolls......recipes here

Peanut cookies...................

Almond London white chocolate............

Almond London dark chocolate.......recipes here.

Check For Missing Items In Your Order.....

The salad served without the hardboiled egg and muffin.

These days I do come across very bad customer service in most popular fast food joint. The reasons being these restaurants employ mostly foreigners which are not well trained in the preparation of food besides their poor command of English and poor attitude towards problem solving. Just cannot blame them as they are not highly educated and lowly paid for their overstress kind of work plus the lack of training.

Recently, passing by a fastfood joint near a supermarket, son and I decided to have some light snacks. I order a sandwich and son H a set of salad that comes with a muffin and a hardboiled egg. When the salad arrived son discovered that the said egg as stated in menu is missing. Call the waiter. He went to the kitchen to check and after sometime he is not convince that the salad comes with a hardboil egg. Okay, we ask him to bring the menu, show him that there is actually egg with the big pic in the menu. He went into the kitchen again. See them discussing among themselves. What's the problem this time ? He came back after few minutes and told us there is no egg in the kitchen.( WHAT? no egg? then go and buy in the big supermarket opposite..doesn't take you a minute to get one though..I said to myself ) Then he ask us whether they can replace the egg with a small plate of fruit salad. We have to agree then. So comes the fruit salad. But where is the muffin which is also missing. So we call the waiter again and ask for our muffin. He gave me another blank look making me want to smack him on the head and wanting to blurt out .."Don't tell me that famous KRogers that comes everything with a muffin is out of muffin?" Seeing my unhappy look he went into the kitchen again. This time I am not going to ask him for the menu but I call another smarter looking waitress and ask for the Manager! The nice guy but timid manager listen attentively to our problem and he quickly apologise and ask what choice of muffin do we order to which we told him the waiter did not even ask! He apologise again and said he will give us the salad for FREE and he brought us 2 muffins of different flavors and told us we will get our hardboil egg in 5 mins with no extra charge plus a 20% discount on our overall orders....That's kind enough for the bad service.

Our free muffins half an hour later........


Our free of charge hardboil egg 35 mins later........

My chicken sandwich got 20 % discount as well as all these items below...


Muffin submarine got very little muffins pieces to justify its name......

My hot caramel............

The management should know for such bad services their business will surely fail badly. Training your staff well before putting them out to work is of utmost importance as we do expect good service if not excellent for the 10 percent service charge we put into their pockets.

A Taste of Thai in Prontip.........

Last week I took niece Lena and her Hongkie friend Vivian, to this restaurant which serves Thai food. I like to come here often as the food here is good and not too expensive. Besides there is ample parking space unlike from its old place at Burma road. Presently they also offer buffet lunches at affordable price that I have yet to try. We order rice with some dishes for our lunch as it was quite late.

Seafood Tom Yam.......no comment as I did not try this as its too acidic for my weak stomach.


Green curry chicken......my favorite dish as it is not too spicy.

Kangkung in sambal belacan....if you like it hot and spicy, this is the dish for you.

Very delicious prawn cake....deepfry til very crispy with many bites of tasty prawns. In fact I find prawncake taste better than the fishcake here as the latter is too salty.

Lemongrass chicken.....crispy on the outside and tasty on the inside with the slight flavor of pungent lemongrass. The empty plate in just minutes do justice to this dish.

Oops! forgot to ask my camera girl to take a pic of whats inside this Thai omelete as was busy eating away. Inside was a mixture of chicken pieces and mixed vegetables cooked in spicy, sweet and sour thai sauce. Very nice too.

They serve many dishes besides these as well as thai desserts but our stomach can only hold so much minus the dessert.

Prontip Thai Restaurant

2 Lebuhraya Peel (Yesterday Club),

10350 Penang,

Tel: 604-228 2234

Opens: Daily from 12.00pm - 3.00pm,

6.00pm - 10.00pm.

Malaysia.