Brunch & Photoshoot @ The Bee, Publika

This is going to be a half-food review, half-pre-wedding photoshoot post.

Us posing in front of The Bee's very cool entrance. 

If you remember, I've mentioned earlier that our bridal house limited the places we wanted to go for our photoshoot, so we decided to have a simple casual shoot with our amateur photographer -Ducum Tan. I knew from the beginning that I wanted it to be at a cafe, somewhere with a vintage or old school atmosphere. So after some research, I decided that it should be The Bee at Publika because it has not only the feel I have, but also the vibrant colours, interior design and furniture. Plus, they are very photography-friendly, unlike some other F&B outlets who will chase you away when you want to do any photography session. So to The Bee, thanks so much!!! :D
Anyway, as a courtesy, I thought it should only be fair if I blog about their food too.
So here's what we ordered for brunch the other day...

Deardo's Chili Prawn Pasta.

My Cajun Chicken Wrap.

Ducum's Vege Pesto Penne. 

We basically ordered dishes from the Gourment Lunch Special which cost RM20 and Bargain Lunch Special at RM15, both come with drink. You can add on another RM5 to get a nice cup of coffee as well! The Chili Prawn Pasta that Deardo had is superb! The aglio olio style pasta was very nicely done and the prawns were surprisingly fresh but because they used chili padi, so it's not for those who can't take spicy! :p The Cajun Chicken Wrap was pretty nice too, with the spices taste pretty heavy and delicious. My only complain may be the too-simple side salad. Ducum's Vege Pesto Penne was the least favourite of ours as it was a bit too oily. 

Yummy Nachos to share. 

The Nachos Plate (RM16) is a must especially for a big group of friends/family to snack on. Very crispy, with generous amount of cheese over the top of the nachose and very very nice dip of salsa and guacamole! Definitely to die for!
Unfortunately, the coffee was just average, but I guess that's not their main thing anyway. :)
Everything, with the service charge and government tax, the bill come up to RM93.95. Still pretty reasonable if you ask me. Only difference is that we had the set lunch so prices will be slightly different if you go at night, I guess! But the cafe/bistro is very well known for the quality music they bring in at night for the live shows! So really should check that out one day too! :)

The Bee
36B, Level G2,
Publika Solaris Dutamas,
Jalan Dutamas 1,
50480 Kuala Lumpur
03-6201 8577

The photoshoot was urm... A bit too casual, I think. Mostly because both Ducum and I couldn't control Deardo Wong when he refused to pose properly for us. Damn now he sounds like a small kid, isn't it? But in a way, that makes the photos a little more natural too because in real life we do act like that!!! Both out of control, should I say? LOL!
So here's just a little sneak peek...

Really, just us being us! :p

Nice? Another nice work of my talented sister, Ducum Tan! :D

I Cherish...

So I celebrated my birthday yesterday, the last one with the '2' as the first digit in fact.

While I had a peaceful and simple, but meaningful and touching birthday, I would be lying if I tell you it was a worry-free birthday. The past few months have been pretty tough, although I won't say it's like life-threatening or anything like that lar.

Me in my new 'birthday suit' from Doublewoot on my birthday! :)

The department is going through a restructuring and changes to my job scopes have been made and I need to pick up new stuff real fast, while finishing some old shit as soon as possible too. Fuh... Very messy! Worst timing too as I'm preparing for the big day which has so many things to worry about: guests invitation list, RSVPs, purchasing of stuff, etc... Financially, Deardo and I are quite stuck because of the wedding, so that makes things really worst... Ahhhh... Sometimes it makes us wonder, do we really need a wedding? Really? Really?
But as the normally positive one among Deardo and myself, I told myself damn it, there must be things that are better in life to cherish rather than clinging to all these negative vibes, right? 

Our lovely students forced to sing birthday song to Lea and I, who are the September babies! 

So, as I celebrated my birthday, I must always remember how lucky I already am!!!

Having Deardo Wong by my side as my soul mate, pampering and loving me, even though at times he can be very difficult to deal with.

My birthday gifts from Deardo: A full-body massage session which was torturing yet satisfying and a Barbie doll of my choice just because he feels bad for me as I've never own any Barbie in my entire life. :p He has another gift for me which is still on its way! Talk about spoiling the fiance! 

Having caring and cute parent and other family members who despite their busy schedule, managed to remember my birthday and sent in wishes and presents from all corners of the country.

3e surprised me with the very yummy Turkish Delight cake! 

Having awesome colleagues who despite my straight-forwardness, chose to be my friends, treating me with wonderful gifts, meals and well wishes, plus never failed to help me out whenever I need them. :)

We went to Manhattan Fish Market for my birthday lunch and to our surprise, we have free soft drink tower and 3 freaking desserts for free just because it was my birthday!!! :D

Having lovely friends who might not be in touch with me all the time but never failed to send me birthday wishes on FB or SMS from all corners of the world.

Thinking of all these already put a smile on my face! 
So really, life wouldn't be life if it isn't challenging. So just keep calm and deal with it!!!
And oh yea, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!! :D

Jobs

Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad

Director: Joshua Michael Stern
Synopsis: A biographical film based on the life of the famous Steve Jobs, who was the one person who made hell lot of changes in people's life today.
The Thumb-Up(s): Undeniably Ashton Kutcher and his make-up artist managed to make him looked really like the late Steve Jobs, especially when he was older. Ashton also imitated his walk very well! I also like how they sort of shows the real side of Steve Jobs, without making him looking or sounding too perfect. Also, all the efforts of gathering all the old school computers and stuff from decades ago!
The Thumb-Down(s): While we understand that this is based on a true story, the entire film sounded a little too boring and slow; there were no climax, and lack of depth and sophistication in the characters, especially Steve Job's character itself. 
Verdict: If you are a techy person, or a huge fan of Steve Jobs, you shouldn't miss this one. But if you ask me, the movie and Ashton Kutcher's performance fell far off from what a lot of people have been expecting from it/him. 
2 out of 5

Homemade Portuguese Egg Tarts

My first sweet pastry attempt peeps!

Well, undeniably, Portuguese Egg Tart is one of my favourite pastries and I'm not really a fan of sweet pastries! So when I first saw Hayley making her own Portuguese Egg Tart I got excited cos it really doesn't look very difficult to make!
I made my egg tarts following the recipe in her blog and this blog, only difference is I used brown sugar instead of white sugar because that's the only type of sugar I have at home! Anyway, here we go...

What you need: 
120g UHT whipping cream
120g sugar
4 egg yolks
2 tbsp of cornflour
520g full-fat fresh milk
Few drips of vanilla extract
Puff Pastry (I bought these and I used up about four sheets of the pastry)

What to do:
1) In a medium size cooking pot, pour in the cream.

2) Add in the sugar.

3) Now, the egg yolks.

4) Then the cornflour for thickening purpose.

5) Finally, pour in the milk.

6) With a mixer, mix the ingredients up well.

7) Then put the pot over a medium-low fire and cook while stirring.

8) Turn off the fire when the mixture is thick enough to coat the pot thinly. 

9) Remove the pot and put it in water bath. Add in the vanilla extract.

10) Stir well and let it cool.

11) I then moved on to lay the pastry onto my muffin trays.

12) Preheat the oven to 220c (Hayley's recipe said 250c but it really burnt my egg tarts so I guess it depends on your oven too), then pour in the mixture into your pastry shells. 

13) Bake the egg tarts for 30-35 minutes.

14) Lay the egg tarts on wire rack till cool, then you can enjoy your egg tarts right away with some tea or coffee! :)

First batch, fresh from the oven!!!

The mixture really made ngam ngam 18 egg tarts, which was enough to keep for the next few days. Keep in the fridge without a lid on (make sure your fridge doesn't have any weird smell) and heat up with oven or toaster oven again whenever you wanna eat them.
Although my first batch of egg tarts were quite burnt on the pastry (the egg mixture is supposed to be slightly burnt, that is like the uniqueness of Portuguese egg tarts), the second batch turned out to be just fine after I turn the heat lower.

Second batch!

Just like the Portuguese egg tarts you ate before, they were crispy on the pastry and creamy on the inside! Very nice and it feels really warm to be eating egg tarts from your very own kitchen! I brought some to work and my colleagues enjoyed them too so I think it should be fair to say that it was a success!

Ooooh... Salivating yet? 

Will definitely make this again especially when there are guests coming to our house! :)

Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells!

Time for a little wedding update that is long overdue yaw!
This time around I would like to give you guys a sneak peek to our wedding theme and our choice of theme colours. :)

Choosing Our Wedding Theme
I know, right from the beginning that our wedding would not be those romantic and lovey dovey kinda occasion, simply because while Deardo and I love each other like crazy, we are not so much into the whole corny kinda stuff, publicly, at least. So we wanted to make it fun, you know like a party more than a wedding. It is after all, already going to be a boring Chinese-styled wedding, so we wanted to do something different, food aside, at least.
It was pretty easy to pick a theme - movie theme, simply because both of us love movies, like we literally grew up watching movies, and yours truly was minoring in film back in university! We have very extreme tastes sometimes though, but that just going to mean that this isn't a romance movie theme wedding! It's going to be just MOVIES!
So I googled it up and found out we are absolutely not the first couple to have a movie themed wedding. Some ang mohs really went all out having their wedding held at a cinema! Fuuuh... Can't beat that man!

Blogger Andrea from Singapore probably has the closest ideas to ours. 

Kyle and Nicole had their wedding held in a cinema! 

Anyway, I'm clear that with our limited budget, I'm definitely not going to try to beat these people. So without being going overboard, these are some of the stuff you can expect from our wedding: movie poster, movie-titled-table numbers, snacks for movies, loads and loads of movie soundtracks playing whole night long. Of course, we have some that are secrets for the time being because you know, it won't be fun anymore if you know everything, right? :p

Choosing Our Wedding/Movie Title
Since we are very sure that we want a movie poster at the reception area, we had to think of a name. Some titles I found online were too common, e.g. Mr. & Mrs something, Our Wedding, Our Big Day, The Wedding, etc. Some were pretty cool e.g. The Search is Over, Stuck on You, etc.

Josh and Rachel's cool wedding poster/invites is by far, one of my top favourites! 

After some discussions, Deardo and I went with Cloudy with a Chance of Wedding Bells. Clearly, we were being bias. LOL! Well, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was the first movie we watched together so I guess that explained a lot! And plus, I actually think it's quite a cute title for a wedding! :)

Our Invites
A lot of the artworks are not done yet at the moment. My designer, Ducum Tan is a very busy person so yea there is a little delay but I think we can make it on time, fingers crossed!!!
Anyway, some of you may have received them, but here you go, our very cool (at least we think so) wedding invites!!!

Our movie-theme wedding invites! Woot~~~!!!

Ducum gave me two designs and because I can't decide between the two of them, we went with both so some of you may get the classier one, some of you may get the rugged and fun one. Well I don't know about you but most of the people actually love the cards, so kudos to my very talented sister! *clap clap clap~~~*

As for our relatives, we also have a little card to remind them to come earlier for the tea ceremony!

The card which comes just slightly bigger than a business card. 

So if you are one of my relatives like Uncle Ah Hin here, these are what you can expect from us! :)

 Design aside, yours truly did all the copy-writing so if you love them too, thank you!!! :D

Choosing the Theme Colours

This is probably the only part of the entire wedding that I will stay as traditional as possible. I mean, there is no way I am making my wedding a black wedding because the superstitious side of me just can't take that, let alone our parents or even relatives. I've also been to a church wedding with yellow and orange colours as their theme and I'm sorry to say this but the church suddenly looked more like a Chinese temple and their bridal car looks like they are ready for a Wesak Day parade! LOL! 

This is absolutely breath-taking! But nah, we are not going so extreme! :p

So we stay really safe and went for purple and pink (you probably figured that out in our invites). I think purple and pink are romantic yet not as common as white for wedding. And I think the most important part is that it is much convenient! You see, it is so easy to find purple and pink decor and flower arrangements; easier for our guests (relatives in particular) to find clothes in purple and pink and of course for myself to choose the colours for my gowns! :)

There we go, slightly more than a month to go people! Surprisingly, after we have settled the invite list, I am not as stress anymore. Of course, there are still more to come so I know the stress will come as the date draws closer and closer! So good luck to us! :p 

The Internship

Cast: Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Rose Byrne, etc
Director: Shawn Levy
Synopsis: Billy and Nick, two very good and experienced salesmen find themselves in deep shit as their boss decided to close his company down. By accident, they got an internship at Google, hoping to fight with the youngsters to get a job at the globally known company, with little knowledge in terms of technology.
The Thumb-Up(s): The storyline, although very common and predictable, has a very good message behind it, which I think is very nice and important especially to youngsters nowadays (sorry, aunty talk now). It is also a comedy without the lame jokes that you will simply enjoy watching, especially if you are a techy person. I also love how there is a diversity of races, characters and personalities in each of the very roles in the movie. Very heart-warming kinda movie, at least to me personally! :)
The Thumb-Down(s): Hmmm... Perhaps it looks too much like a hard-selling commercial for Google? And not much of acting can be said?
Verdict: Very predictable story yet a movie that you and your kids could learn a lot from.
3.5 out of 5

Breakie with a Twist @ Milk and Butter, Jalan Telawi, Bangsar

About a few weeks ago I met up with my graphic designer a.k.a. Ducum Tan a.k.a my sister to collect my very important wedding invitation cards. As a reward, I told her to choose something that she would like to eat and she said Western breakfast!

So we went to Telawi, hunting for a right place to eat. We walked past Antipodean but I gave that a miss because it was too crowded and I wanted to try something new. So I saw Milk and Butter just opposite and thought hey this one not much people, let's go!

My stack of invites! Woot~!!! 

Surprisingly, their breakfast menu itself is quite impressive! Whole long list with some different dishes that you can rarely find elsewhere! So Ducum and I made our picks...

Lazy Day Breakfast, RM23.

Lamb Breakfast, RM24.

My Lazy Day Breakfast was really unique, I must say. The tomato paste or whatever you call it on the slice of yummy bread is something to-die-for and I love the fact that my meal comes with fresh vegetables! :) The only downside was the fact that if the breakfast said comes with sunny-side-up, you cannot change to any other types of eggs or they will charge you a bomb! Mine for example, they wanted to charge me RM5 for scrambled eggs!!! So no flexibility on the eggs... LOL, why does that sound a bit wrong? Ducum's Lamb Breakfast was also another cool option, especially for those lamb lovers! Yummy yet simply marinated lamb patties and sausages with beef bacon, although very high in Cholesterol, was definitely satisfying!

Ice Latte, RM10.

Ice Peach Tea, RM9.

Unfortunately, I find their Latte very plain but Ducum's Ice Peach Tea was quite special, like she said, that was the first time she saw someone adding real peach in the ice peach tea! LOL!

Time for a little late breakie babey~! 

Deardo came to join us about 40 minutes later after parking his car (yeah, Telawi is a shithole man) and had a Prawn Aglio Olio (RM22) which he didn't quite like so we didn't bother taking photo of it also.
Everything, including the service charge and government tax, the bill comes up to RM102.10, which is still reasonable. If only their coffee are better but you know there are still couples of cafes for you to go have your drink after breakfast so it really doesn't matter that much. Maybe you should just skip ordering coffees here. It is indeed a cafe that offers some unique choices of dishes and I can't wait to go back again for their breakfast but CAR PARK IS THE ISSUE NOW!!!! GRRRHHH...

Milk and Butter
25G, Jalan Telawi 2,
Bangsar Baru,
59100 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2201 9869