About 9 months back, one of my post had the title Lunch at Sri Ananda Bhavan (SAB), Bangsar.

After 9 months, most of my colleagues (myself included) are not planning to go back to this place. Food quality has dropped. The price of your food goes up and down each day… Worse than KLSE. For the same thing, they can charge you rm1-rm2 more! And if you think maybe they are reflecting the daily prices of vegetables, how to explain this incident that happened 2 months back when a few friends of mine came over for lunch.

One guy ordered a naan set. Another guy came late, saw what first guy was eating and said he wanted the same set. Receipt issued… Second guy looked at first guy’s receipt. Hey, second guy is being charged more! He calls the waiter and complains. Waiter takes the receipt and corrects it. Now he pays less than the first guy! Hah!

So, where do we go for lunch these days? Well, there’s Quick Bites Cafe a few shops away from SAB. There’s also HSBC & Gaja. Plus, we’re more adventurous these days and would sometimes have our lunch at Bangsar. It’s not that far and quite convenient since we can park near HSBC (the restaurant and not the bank) and just walk across.

Fruit juice, vegetables and mien sien (some spell it as misua).

Fruit juice, mixed vegetables and mien sien

Yeah, lately, I’m feeling a bit tired and tied up — not much time to update my site. So I thought I’d just post a few photos.

But you have to admit, it looks very tasty, right?

Home-cooked food…

A bit lazy to blog, so thought I’d just share more photos of food I prepared the last few weeks…

I think it’s instant noodles… Or maybe it’s yee-mein. Can’t remember…

Mango with nata de coco

Pasta!

Cold salad pasta and top left is a bowl of sambal

Stir the cold salad pasta and… out comes the hidden mangoes

The last photo don’t do justice to the dish — cold salad pasta with mango. Mrs Tai had just gotten a new phone (Sony Ericsson C510) and we were still trying out the features on the camera phone.

Cooked this a few weeks back. It’s what I would call an -all-in-one soup. I just dump everything I can find in the kitchen (OK, its not really everything per-se, but you know what I mean).

You’re probably thinking… What? It does not look like a typical Adrian dish… It does not have the usual ‘characteristics’. It’s too ‘lifeless’ and bland!
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Pizza Hut has got this 3 pizza for rm33. A fairly good deal since it works out to about rm11 per pizza. The other meals, which costs about rm25, gets me just one pizza, some bread sticks and canned drinks.

But three pizzas for the two of us?!? Yeah, so that means it’s our breakfast, lunch and dinner for at least 2 days…

We always wish we have more than 24 hours in a day. I know both Mrs Tai and I do… Both of us have to work. And at Gabriel’s age, he needs a lot of time and attention (but we’re very happy to be able to spend time with him). So a lot of things don’t get done — cleaning, cooking, gardening, the Ikea cabinets… OK, Ikea cabinet can be attributed to my laziness.

We used to just pack our dinner but we know its not very healthy… So, we try to arrange our schedule and take charge of certain tasks. When it comes to dinner, I would do the cooking. And while I’m preparing dinner, Mrs Tai would wash Gabriel and prepare him for bed. After dinner, Mrs Tai would do the washing while I watch over Gabriel — in case he gets up, etc…

We try to have a simple dinner so it does not take too long to prepare. But we also want it to be ‘wholesome’. This is what we had yesterday & today…

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I’m suddenly craving for the vegetarian steamboat we had just last weekend.

Can you guess what soup base we had?

Though the restaurant provided very little green (only one small plate) and a lot of mock meat stuffs instead, it was still quite good. The mock meat were’s really shaped that much like meat, so its ok. Anyway, I recall being told by someone that the restaurant make most of their own ‘mock meat’.

So, what soup base did we order?

Porridge and herbal soup base

This is also the restaurant that served this…

The place is called Great Nature Enterprise and is located at 194D & E, Jalan Sungai Putus, Off Jln Batu Belah, 41050 Klang. Phone number is +60 3 33446107. Yes, its the same place serving the very tasty curry noodles.

When I have some ‘free’ time, I like to cook. I find cooking to be a way to relax and it actually stimulates creativity… For me anyway. I guess this is because I like to cook up dishes based on what we can find in our house. I know Dean also shares this same way of cooking. When we cook, there isn’t an ingredient list. We also like to experiment with different styles, etc…

This can be fun because you never really know what you’re going to eat… Actually, this is quite true since I don’t really know what vegetable is going to get delivered to me. I’m also lucky that Mrs Tai is not very fussy about food… But she loves my cooking.

Anyway, just to share some of the ingredients used for my dishes (taken over two separate occasions)…

Mrs Tai and I felt quite bad about eating these very cute baby carrots

The two photos are the ‘before’ and ‘in between’ shots of a dish I was preparing…

Can you guess how the two (vegetables and the pot of something) turned out…?
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Since our office moved to the new location at Bangsar, I’ve been frequenting this Indian banana leaf rice place called Sri Ananda Bhavan.

Food is good. Price is reasonable (note: reasonable not cheap). This week, I’m trying to make it a “5-days of Indian rice” achievement… Shouldn’t be too difficult since I love Indian banana leaf rice, though at this place, I’m not really taking the banana leaf… I’ve been taking their Biryani instead…

Yummy…

If you wanna try it out, the place is located here:

It’s instant miso soup… How wrong can I get?

We had bought some instant miso soup mix a few weeks back. So, last weekend, I thought I’d try it out. This is the result…

I have to say… It’s not bad!

From wikipedia:
Miso is a traditional Japanese seasoning produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt and the fungus kōjikin, the most typical miso being made with soy. The result is a thick paste used for sauces and spreads, pickling vegetables or meats, and mixing with dashi soup stock to serve as miso soup called Misoshiru, a Japanese culinary staple. High in protein and rich in vitamins and minerals, miso played an important nutritional role in feudal Japan. Miso is still very widely used in Japan, both in traditional and modern cooking, and has been gaining world-wide interest. Miso is typically salty, but its flavor and aroma depend on various factors in the ingredients and fermentation process. Different varieties of miso have been described as salty, sweet, earthy, fruity, and savory, and there is an extremely wide variety of miso available.