Fav Sites: Zabihah.com (the global guide of halal food)

“Your guide to the Best HALAL restaurants, market and products.”

As the header proclaim, this site indeed very helpful for Muslim travelers. Updated frequently, with many helpful contributors alongside, the aim is to provide readers with a wide range of global information regarding halal places and food. Find out where to eat and shop halal stuffs across the globe. Navigation is easy and user – friendly. A recommended site for a Muslim to surf up as you pack your bags for better traveling experience.

Fav Sites: lovely Japenese recipe sites - Cute bento!

There was a time where I was totally crazy about bento (even now actually). So I went surfing under the keywords “cute bento” and “bento recipe” and found a number of sites. A number of them below are the ones I love most, some recipes are reproducible with some creativity at hands (and luck and good taste buds…). Till now I often pack my own lunch whenever I have the time but then it’s a matter of wanting or not to do so as bento preparation only takes 30 minutes time. Unless laziness prevail or the ingredients unavailable, I always prefer making my own bento.

Kitchen Cow

http://www.kitchencow.com/

This is another lovely bento site that provides step – by step bento recipes with colourful accompanying pictures. Typical of bento recipes, they are all simple and easy to make. Some creativity needed though to replace the non – halal ingredients with something else.

My Lunch Can Beat Up Your Lunch

http://www.c4vct.com/kym/bento/index.htm

Simple interface but that’s not the point. This site offers huge numbers of simple bento recipes. Most ingredients are easily found locally if you look hard enough or shop at high – profile supermarket.

Just Bento

http://www.justbento.com/

Kawaii!!! I simply love the onigiri section where the steps of making your own onigiri and ingredients are displayed in the most delightful manner. The webmater also took the trouble to explain about most of the Japanese ingredients. Altogether an enjoyable site for a Japanese o’bento site.

Cooking Cute

http://www.cookingcute.com/

As the site name implies, this is one heck of cooking cute site! I’d go on and on “Kawaii!!” and drool over the pictures as I surfed. The ingredients too are easily found. Love the interface!

Fav Sites: lovely Western recipe sites

That's My Home

http://www.thatsmyhome.com/

I find the title and web address very cute, aside from the simple interface. As the address implies, here there are many homey Western recipes for you to try out, though the ingredients may stump you and some are non - halal. But I like browsing this kind of site and fantasize cooking all the recipes. It has wide range of recipes, from desserts to Italian.

Allrecipes.com

http://allrecipes.com/

This is another site that I like to browse through whenever I’m free or bored. Nice preparation pictures accompany each recipe. There is a vegetable stock recipe for those interested.

Simply Recipe!

http://www.elise.com/recipes/

I like this one for the simplicity of the Western recipes provided and the delightful pictures of the food and preparation accompanying it. Most of the ingredients can be found locally in Malaysia high – profile super market (Cold Storage, the large Tesco, Giant, Carefour etc). For Sabahan, you can look for the ingredients in the Citymall Giant.

In a Vegetarian Kitchen with Nava Atlas

http://vegkitchen.com/

Hmm, I’m not very familiar with the name but seems like the site owner has a few cooking books in the pocket so I suppose the recipes should be good. The site even has recipes for grills. This is a Western vegetarian site by the way. I sometimes eat vegetarian so this site is another of my favourite stops.

Masak - masak Melayu ~ Stir – fried okra with anchovies @ Bendi dengan ikan bilis

A friend of mine taught me this dish so allow me to recall a quirky part during the first time she demonstrated this recipe to me. We were in Sikuati at that time, preparing dinner. Due to the lack of proper utensils, she improvised the lesung @ stone pounder with a mineral water bottle filled full and used it to pound and grind the anchovies and onions to produce a more or less of the desired result. Next, to replace wok, we simply used rice – cooker. And lived, nothing exploded. (Of course, we were using Panasonic that time, so don’t try this unless you are very, very confident that your rice cooker can take it. I’m not liable for what happen to your rice cooker.)

Nyonya food: Rasa Nyonya

Status: Serve no pork (serves alcohol)

Venue/landmark: Along Sri Melati and Yong fruit shop.

Time open – close: they have specific open hours for lunch and dinner. Will check this out ASAP.

Basic RM per meal: RM 50+ (2 pax, rice, 2 dishes unless it’s fish, 1 vege, Chinese tea/plain water, tax)

Nice ambience, comfortable settings, fantastic “nyonya” and some Western cuisine. You would just love it here.

As I’ve stated above, the fish price varies in accordance to weight/100 g and fish, then the cooking. Their steamed fish is amazing, and they have other seafood too. Aside from these, I like most of their tofu dish (I’m a tofu freak), the chicken curry and rendang, and the fruit juices.