To My Sis Who Loves Making Bento

I found this adorable bento making blog and immediately I said to myself: "Oh...I must tell my sister all about it..."

So dear sis, hope you get more inspiration in bento making from Pikko's Advanture in Bento Making. She has other Bento websites on her blog too.

Quick Fix Meals For The "Lazy"s or "Busy"s

Recently, I have been so tied up at work. It has become a routine for me to go to work around 6.30am and return home only after 7.00pm. By the time I got home and taken my shower, I will be too tired to prepare and cook a meal, furthermore the cleaning up after that. So I ended up finding quick easy ways to prepare something which is simple, very minimum cleaning and yet delicious.

Here are some of the dishes I have done:

First Dish: Pizza (my all time favorite)



In this particular one I did, I used:

1. Off-the-shelf Lebanese Bread (for a thin and crispy crust)
2. Tomato pasta sauce (tastier than normal tomato ketchup)
3. Ready cooked roast chicken
4. Avocado
5. Mushrooms
6. Onion
7. Cheese (mix of mozerella, cheddar and parmesan cheese)

I had everthing precut into small pieces, kept in containers and stored away in the fridge. Do this when you are free on the weekends. Then on those busy nights, all you have to do is spread the tomato sauce over the bread, lay all the stuffs on it and put it in the oven.

There, that's it. Super quick and easy. The only thing you need to wash is your baking tray. How good is that ? Well, you can always substitute the ingredients to your own liking. You can even use normal bread as the base. Toast the slices of bread and you have yourself a pizza base.


Second Dish: Scramble Egg



This is not the normal scramble egg. This is something I created and I just love it so much. All you need are:

1. Eggs (I usually use 2)
2. Bacon (diced)
3. Mushroom (diced)
4. Cheese (one slice of cheddar cheese)

First fry the bacon and mushroom in a pan until they are about cooked. Then break in two eggs. Put in the cheese and scramble everything. Make sure the heat is at low or medium cause you dont want your eggs to be too cooked. The best scramble egg is to have it slightly soggy and mashy. Then season it with some cracked pepper and chives. You do not have to add any salt to it as the bacon is already salty.


Third Dish: Bacon Wrapped Scallop



I did this once and it was fantastic. I got this recepie from Chocolate Shavings. It was a great recipe. All you need are bacon and scallops. I am not writing the recipe here as you can read it on its original blog.

There are more dishes actually, but I do not have any good photos of them yet. Probably next time when I prepare them again, I will take good photos of them and post it as Part II.

From A Clean Freak To Another Clean Freak

Referring to my sister's blog, I am writting this in hope to help her handle the "clean freak" situation of her son.

Hmm... where should I start ? Being a clean freak myself, I know it is difficult on others around us who are not as clean-freaky as we are. That is the reason why I do not like having housemates cause I know I can be a pain-in-the-a** when comes to living together.

But it is not a bad thing being a clean freak. As long as your level of freakiness is acceptable (like me...hehe...). But if you have reached Jack Nickolson's level in 'As Good As It Gets', then I would say that you seriously, seriously need to get a life...

Ok now... back to my mission. A little advice for the little clean freak:

Now imagine our human body is a big piece of land/country. Every country will have their own troups of army, to protect their country from enemies and harm. So does our body, we have little troups of army in our body, they are called, "the immune system".

If we are constantly clean, our body will have no chance to be exposed to the dirty and nasty things, like germs and bacteria. Because of this, our little army will not know how our enemy looks like. They will have no idea how the enemy behave and will not know how to tackle the enemy because they never got a chance to study them.

So when an extremely clean person actually ate something dirty or got themselves infected by bacteria, they will become really sick compared to those who are not as clean as them. Reason being, their little troups of army just had a sudden attack by unknown enemy to them. The army are not prepared to fight back as they have no clue how the enemy works.

But for those who occasionally come into contact with germs and bacteria, because their little troups of army were exposed to the enemy from time to time, they have plenty of time to study the enemy and get themselves ready to fight back when the enemy launches big attack. That is why people with stronger immune system are less likely to fall sick.

So you see, being clean is good. Being extremely clean can actually make you weaker. But being dirty is asking for trouble. At the end of the day, it all comes down to balance...

Now hopefully this will help my little clean freak nephew to understand :)

Good luck sis...