Colour: Hot Chocolate

I love colour, especially when they are assigned scrumptious-sounding names!

You know when you're buying lipstick or lipgloss and you have a look at the name of the colour behind the tube. It's always something interesting like berrylicious, luscious candy or mocha mist. The name itself gives an added appeal to what would generally be called dark pink, pink or brown.

Earlier tonight, hubby dearest asked me to go with him to Auto-Bavaria's 'Supper' event. Yup, he's a bmw guy. Me, I'm not really a car person. To me a car takes you from point A to point B. Yes, some cars are nicer to drive than others, but generally I don't really study the finer details of any one car. However, I have noticed that my knowledge of cars has vastly improved after being married to a car-enthusiast! I can actually tell a real M3 from an M3-wannabe, lol. This is from someone who didn't even know what an M3 was in the first place!

Anyway, we went, had a look at some beemers, had some 'supper', then we went over next door to look at the mini coopers. The first mini we saw was your typical bright red mini with white stripes. Definitely cute & bright, but I see a lot of these on the road so it was nothing new. Then we went out on their outer terrace and I saw it. It was a gorgeous Brown mini with black stripes. Now brown is probably one of my favourite colours. It's very warm and earthly, and goes so well when partnered with other colours! So I went closer to the car to inspect the colour. It was a deep chocolate brown with a sort-of pearlized shimmer to it. And when I saw the interior, I was like double-wow... it was brown leather with cream detailing. Be still my beating heart! This was soooooo my dream colour car!

We sat in the car. It was like being engulfed in a lovely chocolate cocoon with a dollop of cream on the side. And it came with 'mood lights' too! There were 4 colours: pink, purple, orange & blue. Unfortunately, the area was too brightly lit for me to enjoy the full effect of the mood lights, but I can certainly imagine how cool the ambience of the interior would be driving this car at night :)

When I asked the sales guy what the colour of the car was, he said Hot Chocolate. And I sighed contentedly at how delicious it sounded. It made me feel like taking out my cheque book and saying I'll have this please, thank you very much! The only thing that stopped me from doing that was probably the fact that I didn't have my cheque book on me, and oh yes, ahem, the hefty RM220,000 price tag.

Sweetie, if you're reading this, feel free to surprise me on our anniversary with this 'little' gift. Afterall, didn't you see, it totally matched my handbag!! lol

xo.

Sate Ria is back!

After 22 years of dormancy, the Sate Ria brand has been revived.

I saw the Sate Ria sign on a two-storey building in Section 9, Shah Alam about a week ago and told my family about it. Yesterday night my mom had a craving for satay, so the two of us with both kids in tow decided to check it out.

After ordering our food, the CEO came over to have a chat with us. They had just finished a 'doa selamat' there earlier. Apparently this is their 'central kitchen' and they will be opening their first 'outlet' in Ampang sometime next month, where Tun Mahathir will officially re-launch the brand. They used to have Sate Ria outlets in London, LA and several other cities. Now they plan to open their first two international outlets in Jeddah and Xi'an.

Then the satay arrived at our table. It was pretty good, though the satay was just slightly salty. One of the most important things to enjoying satay is the kuah kacang (peanut sauce), and I rank my mom and my hubby as the two main kuah kacang connoisseurs in the family. They can just continuously eat nasi impit with good kuah kacang, especially during raya season! My mom gave her thumbs-up... but hubby said that the kuah was still slightly lacking. However, please note that mom ate at the restaurant while everything was nice and hot, while hubby had the take-away version at home an hour later. Personally I thought it was good :)

I also like their innovative kuah kacang 'bowl'. It has a handle, and at first glance just looks like a small gravy boat. But then the CEO pointed out to us that the end is not a regular spout. It has a small kink to place the satay stick in, so you can push the satay meat to the end of the stick easily as you are eating! I thought that was pretty cool :)

As the CEO mentioned, they are in the early stages and are still fine tuning their menu before the official relaunch. Hopefully Sate Ria will get it right this time around and be here to stay. Best of Luck to them!!

xo.

p/s I've just realised that my last 3 postings have been about food, lol.

Snickers Shake anyone?

A friend of mine has recently opened 4 food stalls at Bangsar Selera (the old Jolly Green, just next to Bangsar Village II). The stalls are called Shake Shack, Tasty, Selera Rantau & Baba Bones.

I was there yesterday night with some friends and the food was really good! They serve authentic Nasi Dagang & Nasi Kerabu, Sum Sum Tulang and Char Kuey Teow to name a few. I had the Kuey Teow sans beanspouts (yes, I'm one of those!) while my friends tried the Nasi Dagang. Both were delicious!

My dessert was the Snickers Shake from their Shake Shack. They make it with milk rather than ice-cream and it turns out really well. Not overly sweet & not too thick, it's just right! I also had a sip of my friend's Banana Shake and that was good too! Now I have to go back to try the rest of their shakes. Check out their Shakes Menu below.

They are also open during lunch time (though menu is slightly different) and apparently they also have a 'drive-thru' service, lol. For more info check out their facebook group, 'Lot 8-11, Bangsar Selera, Bangsar Telawi'.

Btw, they are currently having their mid-month blues promo (tomorrow, 21st May, is the last day!). The password is "give chance laaa, it's the middle of the month!" and you'll receive a 10% discount off your food bill!

Bon appetit...

xo.

Pecan Pie

I love pecan pie!

Well my whole family loves pecan pie, but my dad and I LOVE pecan pie :)

I've never found anyone or anyplace that makes good pecan pie in Malaysia. A good pecan pie has a moist filling (with no added raisins and no added flavouring like toffee or chocolate!), a not-too-thick crust and crunchy pecans on top. When I was younger we found our source of delicious pecan pie from Marks & Spencer in UK. It was called "American Pecan Pie" found in the frozen desserts section and everytime we went to London we would come back with at least 10 boxes of delicious pie.

This lasted a few years but later, much to our dismay, Marks & Spencer phased out their original pecan pie and introduced their toffee pecan pie. The toffee was too sweet and couldn't compare to the original :(

Over the past few years, I've found some pecan pie in KL. Victoria Station, Jakes & Alexis to name a few... but nope, none of them were good.

On my last trip to London, I found pecan pie in Selfridges... it was labeled 'Toffee Pecan Pie" so I didn't get my hopes up. I bought a box, took it home, had everyone try it and it was GOOD! Have no idea why they called it 'toffee' as it tasted like original 'maple syrupy' pecan pie and no sign of toffee anywhere. Before we left London, I only managed to get 2 more boxes. This was because they only stocked a few pies each week. It's made fresh and lasts up to a week only.

So when my parents were in London recently I asked them to bring a box or two home. No such luck. They managed to get a box when they arrived, and couldn't get anymore after. So my mom, knowing that I would be extremely disappointed, decided to buy pecans in London and promised me that she would bake me a pecan pie. Hmm, again I didn't get my hopes up as my mom has never baked a pecan pie before. She bakes the most yummy cupcakes you've ever tasted and her signature marble cakes are absolutely delicious, but she's never made pie!

So she gets all the ingredients from the supermarket, and attempts to bake my pecan pie early yesterday morning. So this was how it looked before it was baked.

As my mom began aligning her pecans on top, my 2 year old decided to 'help' place the pecans and my mom's pecan design became a wee bit haphazard! So, here I am, looking at the pre-baked pie and still not convinced it would turn out right...

But after it baked for an hour, I saw the finished pie, and my 'hmm' changed into a 'maybe'. My mom said that the pie had to cool for an hour or two before we could eat it so we let it stand and I went to my room to work. A while later, my dad stopped by room. He had a big smile on his face and said "she did it!"... and I was like "huh? she did what?"... apparently he had taken a bite of the pie on the sly... and yes, it was GREAT! I should never have doubted my mom's ability to bake it right :) Now we can have delicious pecan pie whenever we want!! Yum!

xo.

Mother's Day

Well, Chelsea lost. I've more or less come to terms with that. I still believe we were cheated of a penalty by the referee, but that's football for you.

Today I spent the whole day with my mom! She came back 2 days ago after "honeymooning" with my dad for the past 3 weeks :) So we had a belated 'Mother's Day' doing what girls do best... shop! I had an invitation to a fashion show at Tang's Pavillion in the morning so we started our girls-day-out over a plate of dainty finger food and watching lanky models strut their stuff. Then, armed with discount cards & cash vouchers from our goody bags, we started our shopping spree! A few shopping bags later, who am I kidding, MANY shopping bags later we squeezed in a lovely gossip catch up session over coffee (plus my mom needed a caffeine boost as she was still partially on London time).

By this time we were already in Bangsar, as I had a client meeting at my shop in the evening. I wrapped up around 8.30pm, and told my hubby that we were heading home shortly. Of course at that time little did I know that on the way to the car we had to stop by yet another shoe store... 3 shoe boxes later, and another 'quick' stop to the supermarket we were finally on our way home! My 'shortly' turned out to be 2 hours later, *sorry sweetie!*

So now my credit cards are all maxed out, my feet are killing me, but it was a great day out - just me and my mom :)

xo.

I am at the dining room table at home, had to bring back some work with me. Currently putting a client's wedding invitation order together, to be delivered tomorrow. This was not meant to be done last minute, but my client urgently needed her cards at the 11th hour so we are working overtime to make sure she gets it on time :)

Had to run to KLCC earlier today to pick up a book I had on hold at Kinokuniya, one that I am looking forward to reading. Its about vampires lol. What can I say, I got bitten by the Twilight bug, no pun intended hehe. Anyways, managed to grab dinner for two with hubby dearest at Madam Kwan and made it home on time to get Imran started on his homework. I must say... his attention span is getting better by the day :)

And for you football fans out there, don't forget the Chelsea match tonight. I hope Terry, Lampard and Co. do their thing and kick some Barca ass!!

xo.

If there are any working mothers out there, you would find this to be normal that I am blogging at around 3am in the morning. My time during the day is so jam packed with a multitude of things to do. Today for example, my sister complained of major head and stomach pains(she was discharged from the hospital yesterday from food poisoning and vertigo) but was obviously still very sick so I had to drop everything and take her back to the hospital. While waiting for her blood test results to come back, I had to be on the phone with my designer finalising some designs, all while trying to ok all this over pdf files on my blackberry. It didn't go without my sister giving me some jelingan maut saying how I was the most obnoxious person in the room yapping away on my phone while people around me were obviously in some sort of pain or another. But all this is normal for me as I try to run a company, household full of animated family members; my hubby, my two boys, mom, dad, sister, our driver, our maid and oh not forgetting her husband too. Yes, we actually have a maid and hubby duo, which make our lives that much more interesting and fun and filled with a lotta love. And this isn't even including my brother, who will be joining us very soon come summer holidays when he returns from London. Some days I don't even remember if I've had any sleep the night before, others very satisfying when I know I've made a lovely couple happy with their orders, be it a wedding invitation or a child's birthday party, or even just a small do with their lady friends. And this certainly doesn't go as smoothly without my team at the the Emma K studio :)

I started this blog because I wanted to have a platform to share with you the things I don't necessarily get to do with you(friends and acquaintances) on a one on one meet merely because we are all so busy with our personal schedules. And we can even count our blessings if we actually get to meet once every couple of months!

So I hope to be sharing with you all kinds of thoughts and ideas and I hope that we can all use this blog as a way for all to express ideas and creativity with one another. From someone who deals with pantone colors on an almost daily basis, I can't think of a better way to be sharing some of my favorite ideas and things I see from my day to day as well as travels with all of you. And I certainly hope that it can act as a platform for me to be inspired by your ideas and creativity as well :)

Oooops, it is 3.30am now. Way past my bedtime. A quote from one of my favorite movies, Anne of Green Gables(though I love the book series even better).. "Tomorrow is a brand new day, with no mistakes in it".

Good night xo.