JAZZHOLIC

ay_link November 26th, 2007

*Hands down to Brian McKnight… one of my fave “In-Black” artist of all time <3
.. boy, oh boy… what a killer lyrics! =) *mesmerized*

The Rest Of My Life

It’s 3 in the morning
I can’t be dreaming
I’ m wide awake
watching you sleeping
and I realize
there’s no place
that I’d rather be

I reach out to touch you
my heart starts to race
at the touch of your skin
there ain’t no mistake and I’m lost in your eyes
I see all that i need to see
I’m feeling new things everytime that I hold you
I’m telling you things
I would never have told you

[hook:]
I’m feeling my feet coming off of the ground
I wasn’t looking
But look what I found
I wasn’t so sure at the start
Now I wanna be there wherever you are
and I can’t deny
How you got me feeling inside

[chorus:]
If you think this is
as good as it gets
I swear you haven’t seen nothing yet
I promise you I’m
gonna love you
the rest of my life
My life

You turned to kiss me
you know I can’t fight it
the taste of your lips
I get so excited
I’m losing my mind
The way that it’s supposed to be
mmmmmmm
Everything that we do
Is a thing worth repeating
I only think of you
When my heart is beating

[hook:]
I’m feeling my feet coming off of the ground
I wasn’t looking
But look what I found
I wasn’t so sure at the start
Now I wanna be there wherever you are
and I can’t deny
How you got me feeling inside

[chorus:]
If you think this is as good as it gets
I swear you haven’t seen nothing yet
I promise you I’m
gonna love you
the rest of my life

[bridge:]
You cannot show me the way
But I didnt know what I wanted
Thank you for savin’ my life

I wasn’t so sure at the start
Now I wanna be there wherever you are
and I can’t deny
How you got me feeling inside

[chorus:]
If you think this is as good as it gets
I swear you haven’t seen nothing yet
I promise you I’m
gonna love you
the rest of my life
My life

It’s 3 in the morning
I can’t be dreaming
I’ m wide awake
watching you sleeping
and I realize
there’s no place
that I’d rather be

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ay_link November 25th, 2007

I’ve been wanting to watch this movie since months ago, and last night, finally found the time to watch it.

Results?
Highly Satisfied!
Watched it twice already and I’m SO ready to buy the DVD to add to my chick-flick/romantic comedy collection ;]

NO RESERVATIONS
Starring: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson and others
Official Website

Summary: *warning: may contains LOTS of spoilers hehehe*

Chef Kate (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has been living her ordinary life as a successful chef at this trendy Manhattan eatery, 22 Breechler. Her daily routine starts at 4:30am in the morning, going to fish market and ends around midnight after her kitchen is all cleaned up and closed. Yes, she runs her own kitchen where her boss, Paula (Patricia Clarkson) tells her to see a shrink because she seems to be so uptight and tense (despite having some other ‘issues’ everytime a customer criticizes her foods). To Kate, her kitchen is her life, until one day, a tragedy happened and she has to take care of her niece, Zoe.

I like the pace of the storyline, the romantic side, Kate’s gorgeous typical Manhattan apartment, the restaurant, her kitchen at home, and also, Aaron Eckhart *mmm, dimples! =) kekeke*
Catherine Zeta-Jones is a wonderful actress, and so does Abigail Breslin (the girl who played Zoe). Her voice is so cute and sweet. There are some touching scenes and great memorable ones in this movie.
Highly recommended for those chick-flick lovers out there that love a story like this.

Well, for me, I especially enjoy it too because it involves cooking. Looove movies/dramas that show more about cooks or cooking or baking, and stuffs. And watching this, kinda reminds me of Ratatouille hehe!
This movie shows the daily life of a chef who runs her own kitchen in a fancy restaurant like this one.
Kate gets a certain amount of pressure everyday where she has to serve 40 dishes daily with the help of her kitchen staff. And it’s quite interesting to see how her habits carried on outside her work, when she’s alone in her own kitchen at home or preparing a plate for friends (in this case, her shrink and her niece - gosh, she arranges those fishsticks beautifully like jenga! haha…) So neat and complete with decorations, neatly sliced lime and french fries. Sadly, Zoe prefers to eat regular kids’ foods like spagetti made by Nick (Aaron Eckhart)

Overall: LOVE IT! such a “comfy” movie with a sweet romantic ending =)
I have lots of favorite scenes in this movie such as the cooking-pizza-for-lunch by Nick and Zoe, where they both prepare such a cute Safari settings as their dinner setting. Lovely!
I would definitely add this movie to my own collection soon!
Will watch it again tonight before bed. Haha.

Tags: Movies

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ay_link November 24th, 2007

Nope, didn’t wake up early this morning just to hunt items on ridiculously bargain sale, LOL.
This Black Friday - the day when all shoppers go nuts without having to explain themselves why (and others understand them completely), has never been such a ‘lucky’ day for me. And this year, even though I did check the ads thoroughly, I only aimed for two things: Western Digital MyBook External Hard Drive at the price of 90 bucks (which CompUSA and BestBuy online are both SOLD OUT *blah*), and iPod Classic (possibly in white, which I haven’t seen them around anymore. Are they becoming like a collectible item or something? Are all the 6th generation of iPod Classic sold out, coz I can’t find them ANYwhere).
Anyhoo. I only bought one item @ Target - The Holiday DVD (luv chickflick hee hee) and the price is so good, $3.98 haha… so proud of myself LOL

Well, well. So for the remaining of my Black Friday, we went to Little Tokyo (us, girls. cousin and her mom, and my mom.), it’s daughers&moms day today hehehe.
Went shopping at this Japanese mall/plaza; bought little goodies from this lil store that sell items for like a buck fifty (gosh I love this store), then we went to 2nd street, the usual place, then ate dinner around 4:30′ish at T.O.T — highly recommended especially if you have been looking for a great authentic, little donburi place like this one. (yes, I’ve been wanting it since last year haha what a dream comes true!)
T.O.T (stands for Teishokuya of Tokyo) has variety selection of donburi (rice bowl) and the four of us went in without much hesitation even though its rating shows a “C” (never take this kind of rating to heart too much coz one thing I can tell you, T.O.T ain’t a “C”! Foods are awesome.)

We ordered plenty to feed the four of us kekeke…
- Tempura Bowl Combo (fried veggie tempura no rice, served with salad, Japanese vegetable rice, which looks like a fried rice with slices of shiitake mushrooms and a bowl of udon)
- Chicken Nanban Bowl Combo (crispy chicken cutlets on rice, poured with donburi sauce and eggs plus homemade tartar mayonaisse sauce on top, along with miso soup and salad)
- Spicy Fried Tofu Bowl (fried Japanese tofu with spicy sauce on rice, served with miso soup and salad)
- Fried Scallop Bowl (fried scallops poured with donburi sauce with eggs on rice, served with miso soup and salad)

Gosh I love donburi! Haha.

Well, since I didn’t take picture using my own camera, gotta wait for dear cousin to upload them tomorrow. Hee. I’ll post some pictures tomorrow, but meanwhile, here’s a taste of their rice bowl menu.
Can’t wait to go back there again! Haha.

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ay_link November 23rd, 2007

For starter, TGIST! (Thank God It’s Still Thursday), hehe!
Well, as the calendar says, today is da turkey day, happy gobble-gobble day, Happy Thanksgiving.
A day of full celebration and this year, the family is celebrating it also with fried turkey and sushi included in tonight’s menu :D

The day when every business is closed including department stores, restaurants and even T-mobile toll-free customer service let their employees to take a day off to be with their families (I happened to have the need to call them this afternoon to check on my “Easy-pay” payment option which I don’t think they do a good job on it. Gotta call them again tomorrow to check what’s going on)

On tonight’s Thanksgiving Dinner Menu, we had:
- Turkey (fried; 12 lbs)
- Stuffing (my favorite Thanksgiving meal; made from a mixture of shiitake mushroom, rosemary, celery added into a batter of whisked eggs with cream. Oven for about 1 hr, and after that, it’ll look just like a casserole. Love it! I really can eat stuffing any day lol.)
- Mashed potato (errr.. not my favorite, but I guess I just love rice and noodle more to satisfy my carbs hehe.)
- Smashed sweet potato (yummy~)
- Garden Salad (with two types of dressing - the traditional Indonesian dressing called “Rujak Penganten” and the usual Thousand Islands dressing)
- Sweet corn
- Cranberry sauce (I actually ate it this year haha. Been skipping it a lot from the past-something years) - this time we used both raspberry and cranberry as the base, along with green apple (small cubes), walnuts, orange-marmalade, sliced oranges. Add some sugar to taste, and also orange liquor (which happened to have an expiration date 12/27. Phew!)
- Dinner rolls (King’s Hawaiian sweet rolls)
- Sushi (lots and lots of them. Compliment of our very own Chef Chris from San Diego hehe… yeah he made it himself, thank you very much.  Very deliz~)
- Pudding (vanilla-chocolate pudding, the traditional Indonesian milk pudding with its own ’sauce’, we call it ‘fla’ made from milk, sugar and corn starch)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I’m thankful to have this blog… a great place to brag around more about foods~ LOL!

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ay_link November 19th, 2007

A traditional Javanese cake, Kue Lumpur (”Lumpur” is mud, in Indonesian; and “Kue” is cake) is easy to make and such a great accompaniment to tea time and/or snack time.

Kue Lumpur/Javanese Mud Cake

Ingredients:
500g potatoes (boiled then mashed)
225g of sugar
7 egg yolks (2 white yolks only)
1 cups of coconut juice
1 cup of milk (for low-cholesterol, use more milk than coconut juice)
300g all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract/powder
150 g melted margarine
1 pandan leaf

Optional topping:
Raisins, Young coconut flesh (scraped out in this slivers, julienned), Cheddar cheese (thin sliced), Jackfruits

How-to:

Coat the kue lumpur pan with margarine/butter
*If you don’t have the pan above, you can use this kind of pan: Ableskiver pan

Step 1: (Preparing the potato mix)
Put the potatoes into a large pot, bring to a boil over medium-high heat or steamed with potato skin attached. Cook until potatoes are tender.
Put the potatoes through a ricer or food mill into a bowl.
Mix together with a spoon and add the milk & coconut juice.
Set aside

Step 2: (Batter mix)
In a large mixture bowl, whisk eggs, sugar and vanilla powder until the batter thickens
Add mashed potato mix (Step 1) into the batter then whisk add all-purpose flour one spoonful at a time. Make sure to lower the mixer speed when adding the flour.
Lastly, add the melted margarine and pour the batter into the pan (stove top baking method)
Halfway cooked, sprinkle each with your choice toppings.

Makes about 2 1/2 dozens

Note:
Pandan extract can be used also to make a greenish batter, instead of the usual yellowish kue lumpur. And if you prefer to use it, young coconut flesh cuts go really well with this.

Happy cookin’! =)

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