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in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos, Recipes

Career Girl Cooking Series: Choco-Cherry Almond Cookies

Career Girl Cooking Series, Baking, Cookies, Cherry, Cherry Season, Cherries Malaysia, Cherries Kuala Lumpur, Cherry Recipe, Chocolate, Almonds, Easy Cookie Recipe, Dessert, Domestic Diva, Domestication, Diplomat's Wife, Cookie, #Foodporn, Food

Yet another super easy recipe coming your way just in time for cherry season, my loves!

Baking is therapeutic. It is also a great way to impress people around you with your ‘domestic diva’ skills and make them think you’re like the best diplomat’s wife ever when in fact, you’ve only exerted a wee bit of effort. Haha! I do admit to them later on that baking is easy-peasy. You just have to get yourself into the kitchen, drop the fear that you might blow up your whole building, and dive right in. It takes a lot of time but it’s definitely fun and worth it. 😉

I haven’t been baking for quite a while since my husband and I have been so busy. I was actually looking for an excuse to bake something just so I can make some desserts and disrupt his dieting. 😛

Career Girl Cooking Series, Baking, Cookies, Cherry, Cherry Season, Cherries Malaysia, Cherries Kuala Lumpur, Cherry Recipe, Chocolate, Almonds, Easy Cookie Recipe, Dessert, Domestic Diva, Domestication, Diplomat's Wife, Cookie, #Foodporn, Food

It’s currently cherry season so that’s a wonderful excuse to bake something sweet and fruity. 😉 I was also recently given a pack of Northwest Cherries to try. Been eating them fresh and adding them to shakes. Naturally, the next step would actually be baking with them. I decided to try a recipe I found on the internet for plain cookies then adding my choice of toppings.

Here’s the recipe! Enjoy! 😉

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in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos

Career Girl Cooking Series: ‘Malaysianised’ Pasta Dishes!

San Remo, San Remo Pasta, Pasta Dish, Malaysian Food, Malaysian Dish, Malaysian Pasta, Malaysian Noodle Dish, Hari Raya, Recipes, Cooking, Diplomat's Wife

This weekend, our Muslim brothers and sisters will be celebrating Eid al-Fitr (Hari Raya) or the end of the Ramadan season. It’s going to be a huge celebration among families here in Malaysia. Being ‘that’ kind of foreigner who tries to immerse herself in different cultures to the point of either looking silly or too eager, I found myself quite excited for this year’s Hari Raya.

Last year – only a few weeks after our arrival here in KL – we were invited to a couple of open house celebrations which were the cause of major weight gain for us. Food in Malaysia is just too good and hard to pass up so I’ve been working out to get ready for this year’s celebrations! 😉 (But really, eating more should not be your motivation in working out! Don’t be like me! Haha!)

(Read more about the Career Girl Cooking Series here: Career Girl Cooking Series – Ham, Bacon, and Mushroom Alfredo)

I even found myself thinking as to what should I be cooking for Alvin and I this long weekend. I think it’s a great excuse for me to get myself back in the kitchen and enhance my cooking skills. 😉 While I am not confident that I can make Nasi Lemak from scratch yet, I can truly say that I can impress my husband by making pasta – my field of expertise. But for Raya, I shall be Malaysianizing (is that a word?) my usual pasta dishes!

Thanks to San Remo for teaching me some new recipes btw. They invited me to an event a while back where there was a cooking demo and some tips on how to make pasta that’s perfect for the Asian tastebuds. We even had a cooking challenge wherein the people who attended the event were divided into groups and were tasked to create their own, Asian pasta dish. That was a lot of fun!

https://instagram.com/p/2pnjZTCqeq/

I will be sharing with you two recipes! One that was shown to us during the event and another which is in the cook book they gave us and have already tried myself a couple of weeks back. They are super easy and they take very little time to prepare!

San Remo Angel Hair Pasta in Curry Gravy

San Remo, San Remo Pasta, Pasta Dish, Malaysian Food, Malaysian Dish, Malaysian Pasta, Malaysian Noodle Dish, Hari Raya, Recipes, Cooking, Diplomat's Wife

Ingredients:

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in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos, Recipes

Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Cheesy Bacon Potato Boats

Recipe, Potatoes, Comfort Food, Cheesy Bacon Potato Boats, Cheese, Bacon, Baked, Foodie, Food Porn, Diplomat's Wife, Easy Recipe, Quick Meals

A cooking event I attended earlier today reminded me that I haven’t been posting much about my cooking. So I decided to just share with you guys this quickie post on one of my favourite types of comfort food. Almost effortless to make and so yummy!

(RELATED POST: Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Ham, Bacon, and Mushroom Alfredo)

But be warned! This is very fattening! So try not to eat everything on your own. Sharing is caring after all! 😉

I made this for my husband back when we first got our electric oven. So yes, this post should have gone up months and months ago but it ended up in the bowels of my file folders. 😛 Some of the photos even got lost that’s why I only have two to share. Here I go again, justifying the lateness of this post. Sorry. 🙁

(RELATED POST: Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Baked Chicken Pesto Pockets)

I actually saw this recipe while watching a cooking show back when I was in college. I think this is a really easy dish to make and can even be served to your guests if you plan to entertain at home. So, without further ado, (and so I can go to bed since I have a long day tomorrow) here’s the recipe which I’ve continuously modified through the years:

Ingredients:

  • 2 large potatoes
  • 2 tbs butter
  • A dash of salt
  • 2 cloves of garlic, diced (or if you have garlic powder, use 2 tsp)
  • 1 tbs sour cream / creme fraiche
  • 1/4 C parmesan cheese
  • 1 C Irish cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 C milk
  • 1/4 tsp pepper (for the mixture, not for rubbing the skin prior to baking)
  • 4 strips of streaky bacon, diced into bits and fried to a crisp

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Quick recipe, Pesto, Chicken, Baked, Parmesan, Low-Carb, Healthy
in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos, Recipes

Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Baked Chicken Pesto Pockets

Here’s a quick, easy, and well-loved recipe in this household. It’s actually the dish that finally convinced my mom that yes – baby girl can cook. 😉

It’s great for when you’re having guests or family over. Or when you’re trying to cut some of the carbs in your diet without sacrificing the taste that comes with an actual, filling (and yummy!) meal.

It’s healthy, low-carb, and a great way to get some greens into your system if you’re not much of a veggie eater (like hubby and I).

Related Post: Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Ham, Bacon, and Mushroom Alfredo

Quick recipe, Pesto, Chicken, Baked, Parmesan, Low-Carb, Healthy

I always use a mortar and pestle to crush my garlic. I like them in really small pieces. When my OCD is really acting up, I even use a food processor. Hee. 😀

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in Diplomatic Incidents, Expat Life, Hacks, How-Tos, KL Home, KL Tips, Kuala Lumpur

Having The In-Laws Over (8 Tips on How to Survive Their Visit)

I’m back!

My in-laws have just left for the airport along with the husband’s aunt and uncle. Hugs were exchanged and reminders were made. A truckload of unsolicited yet welcome advice (and they were actually good to keep in mind) for a lasting marriage were given. There were a teeny bit of tears (though I won’t say who cried *wink,wink*) and “please come back soons”.

The past two weeks we had them over were fun (we got to show them around KL and Singapore) but very tiring nonetheless. So here I am, just a couple of hours after they left, sitting on our couch and munching on M&Ms. I refuse to move from this spot and I am just listening to the sound of my breathing. Everything is so quiet and now, I can relax. Wow. It feels totes foreign. Our home was filled with people for the past two weeks and now it’s back to normal.

Don’t get me wrong. I love having visitors and I love my in-laws. My husband’s family members have been nothing but nice to me. But you know how it is when you have visitors – it’s stressful. Even for my husband and they’re HIS actual parents and blood relatives. I guess it comes with the Filipino trait of being hospitable. We go out of our way to be very welcoming. Put it this way – you see those tourism slogans of other Asian countries who say that they’re also hospitable? Quadruple their hospitality and that’s the only time you’ll know that you’re getting treated the Filipino way. Have you ever heard of people letting visitors sleep in their bedroom while they camp out in the living room? No, Sorry. Alvin and I are not that hardcore. But a lot of Filipinos do that to make sure their guests are comfortable. And we don’t just do this for our families, we do it for friends and even acquaintances. So when we say we’re having guests over, I just know I’m gonna need at least a week to recuperate from all the traveling and tour guiding I’ve been doing.

While I’m lucky to have in-laws that are nice to me (my mother-in-law, a person I expected to make my life hell after seeing all those rom-coms is actually very motherly to me), I must admit that I was very anxious before their arrival and I’m sure most other married women there would agree. Whether your in-laws are loveable like mine or monsters from hell, it will always make you anxious to know that they’re coming. It’s like having VIPs as visitors.

I think my anxiety came from the urge to prove that I’m taking good care of their son and our home, despite us living alone abroad. They know I didn’t grow up like most Filipina women do. I grew up trained to be a career woman and not a homemaker. So I guess I wanted to put all their worries to rest and give the impression that  “I got this.”

And I’m glad to say that I did it. Successfully, of course. I actually feel proud about this achievement and I’m pretty sure that Alvin’s parents left Malaysia loving me even more. I’m quite sure I left a good impression on his aunt and uncle too whom I met for the first time when they arrived here for their short vacation.

So here’s a random (and honest) list of just a couple of things I learned from this visit which I hope will help any anxious newlywed out there who’s having in-laws over for the first time:

1. Clean the house

A disorderly house means one thing to in-laws: You’re not taking care of your home well enough. If you have a day job, you might get away with the house not being close to perfect. Like having a scarf laid down on a console table or leaving the remote controls in the dining table. But make no mistake about it: The pressure is greater for the stay-at-home wife.

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in Diplomatic Incidents, How-Tos, Recipes

Food: Career Girl Cooking Series – Ham, Bacon, and Mushroom Alfredo

First things first – a disclaimer.

I’m a career girl through and through. Went to college, worked long hours, partied hard, and lived on take out and my grandmother’s cooking for 25 years.

To be honest, I’m really not that much of a cook. Though I always knew that if I do try it, I will do great in it – and I did, if I may say so myself. On the rare occasions that I was found in the kitchen, I’ve been told that my dishes were actually pretty good. And no, my guinea pigs weren’t paid or threatened to say such things. I promise. 😉

Now that I’m married, I’ve been trying to cook more often but my husband and I love eating out. We love restaurants and hate doing the dishes (though SOMETIMES it can be therapeutic). So I cook at least once or twice a week as a way of being sweet to the husband. After all, the best way to a man’s heart is through his tummy and showing him you can handle stuff on your own. 😉

Western comfort food is my specialty and I recently got into baking while trying to learn how to cook Filipino food. Yes, it’s kind of a shame not knowing how to cook Filipino food when you’re married to a Filipino diplomat. It seems my Danish side is stronger, food wise.  But the good news is I was able to make some adobo recently and it was also good. My husband ate a lot after all. 😉 I’ll put up posts on that later on so that you can try it too.

I often tell my friends that cooking is easy. I read a lot of recipes and just like in most things you learn in school, once you know the basics, you can actually try and be adventurous, adding a little bit of this and that or deviating from the instructions to make a certain recipe your own.

A lot of career girls these days disregard cooking and other skills attributed to a domesticated woman and just end up focusing on their work all the time (guilty of this for the past couple of years) but the thing is, once you try it, it can be addicting and a great stress reliever. Cooking gives me a weird high and when people love what I make it just doubles up.

So, I decided to start Career Girl Cooking Series. A series of posts containing recipes of dishes or baked goodies I recently made with the promise that they will always be quick and easy cos we’re all busy girls after all.

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