Good Luck, Nafis!!

Nafis is a supporter of Liverpool. This pix was taken in Nov 2005 when we made a brief stop-over in Liverpool on our way to and from Dublin. More blogs about the visit here.

Tomorrow our forth child, Nafis, will be sitting for his PMR exam that will last until Friday. We visited him on Friday and yesterday evening. Aina, Nukman, the Melaka cousins, K Nuni all sent him good luck cards :-)
He also received many good luck wishes from others too. Well, what else can I say? My best wishes for him :-)

The Ccolek Meeting

I wrote here on the planned meetingh at the Ccolek place.

Hence, after a few phone calls and countless sms-es, we eventually met up last Friday night at the said place. I went with DH (Dearest hubby), daughters (Nuni and Aina) and MIL(ma-in-law).

It was really nice to be able to meet up CNI, Mat Yee (I used to call him plain Shukri, but I've been hearing the guys calling him Mat Yee once too many, so now I call him Mat Yee too), Nasri Chik and Nasruddin. I managed to call Zamri Dabong but when I left (DH, MIL, daughters and I left much earlier) he was no where to be seen. My apologies go to Sakiam for forgetting to confirm the meet with him.

As for the place, my family think it is over-rated. Between my family and the guys we had squids, crab, fish (ikan kembong), jemput and chicken too - all fried in batter. The batter was tasteless (not a tinge of salt or whatever in in) and the sauce aka ccolek was not worth shouting about :-(

On the way home, all 5 of us kept on wondering how the outlet manages to have patrons coming in the dozens.....

Pix of the guys taken by me, using Nuni's camera.

Chocolate Snow Drops

Chocolate snow drops ready for storage in my tupperware :-)
The teaspoon is there for comparison of size only..

This is our favourite recipe every time Raya comes. I got it from one of the Australian Family Circle magazines (May 27th, 1983 issue - thanks to Arfi for the info on the exact issue <- updated on 7th Aug 2009), in the early 1980s (while I was still a student there). These little cookies are so simple to make and yet never fail to please those who have tried, except those who just don't like chocolate flavoured food or don't like cookies!!

I promised somebody to put up the recipe here, so here are the ingredients:

125g butter
3 tablespoon icing sugar
2/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
i cup chopped almond
extra icing sugar for coating

So, what do we do with them?

Method:
Cream (beat) butter with sugar until creamy. Mix well the flour and cocoa powder together (shift them together if you wish).Then add chopped almond and the flour+cocoa into the creamy mix. Stir until they are all well-mixed. REFRIGERATE the soft dough until it is firm enough to handle (sometimes I make the dough during the day, and leave it in the fridge. I'd only continue at night - no problemo!) .

When the dough is firm enough to handle, roll them into small balls (the size of a marble, or say, abt 1.5cm in diameter). Arrange them in a greased baking tin. Bake in moderate oven for about 15-20 mins.

When they are cooked, take the baking thin out, wait for it to cool a bit, then remove the cookies (that are now of the shape of little domes) onto a rack to cool them.
Makes between 40-50 cookies, depending on the size of the balls.

Before you put the cookies away to store, roll them in icing sugar, to have the dusty white coating!! Hence the name chocolate snow drops!!! They are suitable for vegetarians and vegans too!!


Hint: Since this recipe requires a lot of chopped almond, do not buy them in the small packets at the supermarket. Instead, go to a bakery supplier shop to buy in bulk. Last year it costs RM28 per kg, as compared to almost RM45 per kg if you were to buy from the little packets (put together)!!

Now, anyone wants to order?? LOL!!!!

Latest on CNI

Time really flies in Ramadhan! Yes, that's how I feel. Before I know it, it'd been two weeks since my last blog entry. It';s not that the weeks have passed eventless - far from that, actually!! It's just that with the fasting month, I just get tired very easily - and I bet I am not alone ;-)

It's nice to know from CNI that his application to be transfered back to Kota Bharu (his hometown, and mine too) was approved. Right now CNI is back in KB but he's still on medical leave (MC). Today's sms from him told me that our good friend, Prof Jefri is seeing him and has since advised him (CNI) to do an angiogram :-(
The weight gain has put some toll to his heart :-(

I am going back to Kota Bharu for the weekend on 27 Sept, and I hope to be able to meet up CNI with a few other friends who reside in KB. Since now is the fasting month, we might meet up over "colek" either on Friday night or Saturday night :-)

My neighbour, En Johar passed away today -it was a shock since he had not suffered from any illness, except for normal fever and diarrhea for the pass few days. En Johar was a pensioner. He left behind his wife, 5 children and about a dozen grand-children. My condolences to his family.

Our Prayers Are For You, Che Ngah!!

Kamil, me , CNI (pix taken by Zuhdi)

Che Ngah Ismail (or CNI, as I prefer to call him), is an old friend from my secondary school days. Then, he was a popular guy because he was a soccer player (striker!) and the team was always in the state finals!!

Now CNI works in a government department in down town KL. We had planned to meet him for lunch for many moons now, but only today we managed to do so. Being a busy senior guy, he's hardly in the office. His work includes going round the country for various tasks - interviews, seminars, workshops, to name some..

Recently CNI was diagnosed with a brain tumor :-(
He's been getting treatment and check-ups at the USM Hospital in Kubang Kerian, Kelantan. The latest was yesterday. It was nice to know that another fellow friend, Prof Jeffri Malin, who's a senior neuro-surgeon there, managed to see CNI. We were informed by CNI that the main operation will be on 15th Nov, but prior to that, he will have to go through a few minor ones too :-(
As for the main surgery, we really hope it will be Jeffri himself heading the operation!!

Ever since he was diagnosed, he's been on steroids, and the effect is he's put on 12kg in the past one month or so!!

For today's lunch meet, I went to KL with Zuhdi and Nury (who brought along her daughter who had just finished her UPSR exam) in Zuhdi's car. Kamil joined a bit later, and much later, Dr Norzuhaimi joined us. We had to leave earlier, and left Kamil and Dr Zuhaimi with CNI.

CNI is very strong-willed and appeared high-spirited. I really salute him for that!!

The irony of the meet was that all of us who turned up today are either from Shah Alam or Klang, and despite us visiting him, he was the one who footed the bill!!
Thank you, CNI for the lunch!!

A few friends who wished they could join us, but were held up at work sent their salams to CNI. And, one thing for sure, CNI will have our prayers for him!!

Here are some pix that I managed to take (click on any of the pix to get a bigger image):

Kamil, CNI, Zuhdi

Nury and I (taken by Zuhdi)

CNI and Zuhdi

Arriving a bit later, Kamil must have been very hungry!! He ordered "anything fast", hence the chicken rice!

Zuhaimi, arriving much later, and while waiting for his chicken rice, was shown the MRI scan pix that CNI keeps in his phone.

I took a few more pix but without the flash - I wanted the lighting to be more natural, but then, these guys couldn't sit still, hence all of them are blur!!

First Piece of News from Ayi..

For friends who are still not familiar, Ayi is our no.3 child who left for Hamilton(Toronto) last Saturday.

We received a few sms-es from him while he was in the journey, but the sms-es stopped since yesterday morning (we thought he would have enough credit after he topped up RM60, and later Nuni helped to top up RM45). By then we only knew that he had registered at his residential college. We suspected that this happened either because he ran out of his credit (of his prepaid mobile digi number) or his mobile phone ran out battery (we checked earlier that the charger is not usable over there, where the voltage is different from the voltage in Malaysia). Knowing that Ayi has many other acquaintances to respond to, my guess was that the former was the reason (I found out later how true that was).

Anyway, it was a relief this morning when I received his first e-mail to our family's e-group. It sounded that he's doing fine over there :-)
He specifically mentioned about the university campus (he found it quite nice) and is fascinated with the fast Internet connection!!

See You Next Year, Ayi!!

This morning we went to KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) to send our third child, Ayi, off. Ayi is going to Mc Master University, Toronto for a 4-year study in Mechanical Engineering.

His flight schedule goes like this:
KLIA->Stockholm -> Newark (New York) -> Toronto
with an overnight in Newark.

Some pix for the album:

Wth his two sisters and grandma

This one was taken just before he passed the airport security check


Ayi walking towards the Immigration Checkpoint

The Final goodbye - trying to catch a glimse of Ayi while he went throug the autogate (Where's Ayi?? Can't see him in the pix )

As we were leaving for the cr park, MIL and I couldn't resist posing with the huge bouquet of FRESH flowers!!

More pix here.