White Pepper Live Alaskan King Crab @ Long Beach Seafood Restaurant

Prior to dinner at Long Beach last week, my impression of the restaurant was mediocre at best. A household name that's been in existence since I was a kid, yes; but somehow we were never enticed to dine there.

A meal there last week turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Every dish was very much to our liking.

The star of the show was the Classic White Pepper Live Alaskan King Crab. 

It came with a hefty price tag but it was worth every penny. The crab was incredibly fresh. In fact, we were told that the crab arrived in Singapore only a few hours before our meal. Sauce was perfect and all flavours were in perfect harmony. There was just enough white pepper, which did not overpower the sweetness of the crab.

A must try!

Now, time to attempt to replicate the sauce at home. 😜

Greenery at Home

Headed over to Sinflora over the weekend and bought some plants for the home.

Snake plant aka mother-in-law's tongue

Nerve plant aka Fittonia

 Please don't die on us! 🤣

Review | KiKi Young Vinegar Noodles 小醋面

If you haven't heard by now, KiKi is the latest brand of instant noodles to sell out in Asian cities like Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. When it first launched in Singapore, the entire batch of 2,000 packets was sold out within 6 days despite costing twice or even thrice the price of Korean instant noodles. 

Lately I had the opportunity to try the Young Vinegar flavour, thanks to a friend who kindly shared her stash of noodles with us.

Verdict: I liked it, in particular the texture of the noodles. It was soft and springy - similar to la mian - and was markedly different from your usual Maggis. It definitely looked and tasted more expensive than the regular ramen noodles. The portion - nett weight of 90g according to the packaging - was decent for a small eater like me. The vinegar wasn't overpowering and flavour was light on the whole, which was the way I liked it. I imagine that it'll pair very well with some minced meat or roast pork!

4 out of 5 stars from me!

Guo Da Li ceremony: 12 版帖

His aunt bought the item below for our Guo Da Li ceremony and it immediately caught our attention, mainly due to its size.

Both of us have never heard of this before and we had to google to find out its use. Turns out that it's called the十二版帖 (there are 12 sections, hence the name). In the olden days, the groom would present it to the bride's parents to invite them to attend the wedding banquet. It comes with certain standard phrases and all one has to do is to fill in details such as the names of the groom's and bride's parents, banquet venue and date and so on. An invitation like this besides the regular invites given out to friends is needed as the usual invites already contain the parents' names - the logic is that parents therefore can't 'invite themselves' to the wedding based on those.

I believe this custom of handing out the 十二版帖 is becoming uncommon these days as couples choose to simplify their wedding and traditions get lost with the passage of time. We, however, are glad that we've had the opportunity to be exposed to such an interesting tradition.

I followed this link to fill in the details - I hope I did it correctly! 😉😃

Upcycling | DIY Plastic Bag Holder

Lately I've been trying to cut down waste in my life. I'm normally not into crafts but I thought this is an opportune time for me to do some simple DIY stuff since I'm moving into our home these few months and there are plenty of stuff that we need to buy.

Plastic bags. 

We bring recyclable bags to the stores as much as we can but sometimes we forget. And the amount of plastic bags in the house can sometimes go out of control. *Hangs head in shame.* 

My mum has been using the IKEA Variera plastic bag dispenser for years and it's been doing its job. Now that I'm shifting, I could of course take the easy way out and get another one, but I decided to recycle materials that are lurking in my parents' place instead. Saves me some pennies and the earth.

I started with this can of Lay's chips.

Cleaned the inside of the can and decorated it. Now you can use wrapping paper but I decided to make it cuter, and used some scrap paper lying around that would otherwise never have seen the light of day.

Finally, I used an exacto knife to cut an opening where the mouth is.

How cute is this?!! Major love. 😍

Kimdo BBQ, City Square

If you are on a day trip to JB and just want to stay around the checkpoint, be sure to check out this stall selling grilled food at City Square. Flanked by various stalls selling a variety of snacks ranging to local kuehs to crepes, this stall can be easily missed amidst the busy action along the narrow stretch leading into the main shopping area. In fact, we only started patronising this stall recently despite having been to City Square on countless occasions.

We loved their chicken wing, smoked duck, lady's finger and homemade chilli sauce. The chilli sauce was wickedly spicy, but we couldn't stop ourselves from dipping into it anyway as its sour tinge really whetted our appetite and went perfectly with the BBQ meat.

Our only grouse was the tight eat-in area, but the food, in our opinion, is definitely worth a try. 

Our meal of 7 skewers and a drink came up to RM 26.

And if BBQ skewers are not your thing, you can consider having some roast duck nearby too!

Travel | Hotel Once Bangkok

Throwback to our Bangkok trip early this month. 

We were there for four days, during which we stayed at Hotel Once - a quaint boutique hotel with a charming interior.

This is one of the rare few hotels that I have come across by far that looks as captivating as the pictures on its website.

Plenty of greenery adorn the entrance and reception area, which immediately relaxes one's weary soul.

The room itself was spacious, and it came with a bathtub and a rainshower head. What I loved most about the room was the round window at the far end, which instantly ratchets up the hipster factor by a few notches. It was the perfect spot to take OOTDs!

Another interesting concept of the hotel is their Time Capsule Lounge. How it works is that you can drop postcards into the boxes like the ones in the picture below, and the hotel supposedly will mail the postcards out on the respective dates. Which means that you can write a postcard to your future self - how cool is that! I thought that it is a really clever marketing technique.

My postcard.

The downside of the hotel is the not-too-convenient location (the hotel is located along the Chao Phraya River and one has to take a river taxi to the nearest BTS station - Saphan Taksin) and the poor sound system. They also seemed quite short-handed, for one of the nights there was a wedding reception and the hotel issued a note to say that room service would not be available.

Overall, it was quite a pleasant stay for us.