Quick Satay

After watching some Indonesian cooking shows on youtube, I suddenly have the urge to devour some juicy satay. Beside, I really need to consume the satay sauce stored in my kitchen cupboard before it goes off.

So, these are what I've got to cook my satay:
- 200gr chicken thigh fillet
- 200gr beef chuck steak
- half red onion
- one onion
- salt
- 3 table spoon kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
- 2 table spoon oil
- sliced cucumbers
- skewers
- ready-to-use peanut sauce/satay dressing (see below for suggestion)


What to do next is:
* Soak skewers with water for about an hour (preventing them to burn while grilling)
* Meanwhile, dice chicken & beef and then, marinate them with chopped onions, kecap manis, oil and salt for an hour
* An hour later, insert the meat onto the skewers (fun stuff!!!)

* Heat your grilling pan and place raw satay into the pan
* Grill until it's cooked

* It's done!! Enjoy them with sliced cucumbers and peanut sauce

Recommended satay sauce:
* I bought this block of peanut sauce (mychoice) from an Indonesian grocery store in Campsie as recommended by a friend. What you need to do next, is to mix it with boiling water
 * If you can't find any, just browse some in Coles or Woolies, they should have ready bottle of peanut sauce (Masterfood Satay Sauce?)

Happy trying people!!

Awesome Violin Concerto

I wrote this in my draft ages ago. So here it is:

Erm, I have some inspiration to try giving some commentary on a classical piece by Tchaikovsky. I hope this post won't be a boring topic. I will try my best to make it very interesting haha...

So, here it is: Violin Concerto in D Major opus 35 by P.I. Tchaikovsky, my favorite violin concerto of all time.

I have been trying to capture Tchaikovsky's feeling in this piece since ages. I knew that Tchaikovsky wrote this composition to describe his marriage. After listening to this piece for like maybe hundred times or more I guess, I still couldn't capture Tchaikovsky's love inside the piece. That made me curious and wanted to listen to more and more. Instead of love, what I could feel is unstable state, pathetique phase and some kind of bursting emotion.

As a result of my curiousity, I tried to do some research about Tchaikovsky and this piece particularly. Soon, I found out that he was a homosexual and married to a woman. He felt trapped in his marriage. That's the reason he wrote this epic piece. This concerto is written in 3 movements. My favorite movement is the 3rd movement. I love it when the piece reaches its peak.

This piece has been played by many world famous violinists. My favorite violinist's interpretation of this piece Maxim Vengerov (My all time fav violinist). I listened to almost all violinists' interpretation such as Gil Shaham, Joshua Bell and Itzhak Perlman but so far, I think Maxim interprets the piece the best. Joshua Bell has a good musical interpretation as well, but the notes and slurs being played not as smooth as Maxim.

So yeahh,I am really looking forward to watch this concerto live some days!!

vanessaloh.com

Yup, Vanessa has just had her own domain name now! In this new blog, I am merging most of my blog posts since 2008 when I was still an innnocent uni student (still innocent now btw). Feel free to flip through my old (kinda childish) posts for fun sake!

For future posts, I will be mainly posting about food review (like usual), photography, classical music (piano & violin mostly) and occasional random posts.

Hope you all enjoy! :)

toothbrush

Not sure if you have noticed this before. Take a look at toothbrushes at your family toilet and you may notice that there are two types of toothbrush  :-P

The first type, is the in-the-line-toothbrush, in which the brush is perfectly in line no matter how many times peeps brush their teeth.

and...the other type, is the out-of-the-line-toothbrush, in which even the peep only use that toothbrush once, the brush just basically goes in every directions.

Confused?

See below pic and hopefully u know what I meant :D

So which toothbrush are you? :)

:) :) :)

Receiving this epic packets from my best bud, "Tempe" few weeks ago.


As always, never given up on making me gaining weight! :-P Thx for the lovely snacks and cute messages for the past two weeks!!! make my day more interesting :) <3

OZ VS Indo

Hmm since I've been living in Syd for few years now, let me compare my lifestyle between OZ and Indo :-P

*Clothes
Here in Australia, noone cares what you are wearing. You can literally walk in the street dressing up like a hippie, barbie, etc... as long as you put some clothes on, you are good :-P So yeah I have been living in tongs as my day-to-day footwear :-P Things are different in Indo. Peeps are more self conscious about what they wear. Most peeps are dressed up as if they are going to a party or something with all those matching bags and shoes, accessories here and there and oh, not forgetting a bit of curl in the hair :-P Also, beware! they scan you from top to toe as well. So yeah, I seriously look disgrace with my tongs, shorts and tees there. But meh, can't be bothered to dress up like that.lol.

*Transport
In Indo, I have been lucky enough to get peeps driving and picking me up here and there. Hence, never really experienced public transport except last year, when I did my intern :-P Unlike here, I've been living of buses to work and I walk..a lot :-D

*Food
Yeah nothing much here I reckon, noone cooks for me sadly lol..It's not too bad but sometimes when ur like super tired from work, it would be awesome to have food ready at home :-P Back in Indo, plenty of food always ready to be eaten obviously :-D

*Peeps
Hmm in terms of the weirdness, noone can beat the peeps here. Seriously, weird people everywhere, from drunk peeps chatting you up to a lady stealing my potato right from my plate!!

*Phone
It is a fact that indo peeps are blackberry freak. Everyone has one. Even my 9 years old sister. Wth man :-P Australia is more towards iphone freak :-D and if you spotted peeps here with blackberry, more probably they are Indo..kidding :-D it's true though. :-P

*Shower
Most peeps here shower once a day. Unlike in Indo, since little, been taught in school that one needs to shower twice a day at least :-P

k..k.. I started to get super random. Time to sleep!!! 6 house inspections to go tomorrow!! yay..wishmeluck :-P Have a great weekend everyone!! and yeah I have enabled comment on my blog due to request from my one and only loyal reader (you-know-who) :-P

Lent

Lent is just around the corner. For those who are not familiar with lent, lent is a period where catholic is required to give up something they really like..until easter..The purpose of this is so called to tame our "flesh" and spend our time doing something more "holy" like helping peeps, praying, reading bible, etc.

As usual!!, just started to ponder on what to fast this year. What I have always done in the past is to fast from the internet. Hmmm..Not totally though as I still need to check my emails and msn to communicate with peeps. So, I'm just off from browsing useless stuff like facebook and stuff like that.

For this year, I feel like fasting something different but still not sure..Some options:
*Meat
This will be really hard.I'm a big meat eater! hahah..but still, I guess internet will still be harder as I think I can survive with fish or other kind of seafood as substitute. Maybe I should be a vegetarian for the whole lent which means..I think I will..die.. :-P

*Dessert
Which means no eggtarts, easyway, chatime, crepes, chocolate....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

*Tea
I have no idea since when but I am currently addicted with tea. One cup before work, two more cups at work and sometimes one cup after work.Kinda need it to survive the day I reckon..lol

Hmmmm I have no idea whatelse since I don't smoke, drink and stuff like that. Well, I guess most probably I will still go with the internet again as I find it as the most challenging fast eva haha. Yeah, will delete my facebook & twitter apps from my iphone next Wednesday to remark the beginning of lent period!!!

Cya Peeps!