These are not good for our children and most of the times, I do feel guilt ridden if I have to resort to that.

So, I am always cracking my brain to find ways to prepare meals without taking up too much time. Quick dinner recipes can easily be found on the internet and that’s where I usually head to before cooking.

The recipes for quick dinners available are not only easy to prepare, the meals are low in calories and loaded with nutrition. Well, you may need to look around but once you find a good site, bookmark it and go back often.

I am looking at a simple salad made of tomatoes, shrimps and corn kernels. I have never thought of serving salad with this combination but the recipe really convinces me that it will work.

The tangy tomatoes will lend a refreshing taste to the shrimps while the corn kernels will provide more bite. With all the flavours from shrimps and corn, all we need is drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper.

The other good idea for preparing quick meals for children is to make one pot meal. Children hate the fuss of having an elaborate dinner. If you give them less choices, they will have less things to complaint.

One pot meal can be a balanced meal if we include all the various types of vegetables with meats to provide a tasty, quick meal.

So, do that a look at the various options available for quick dinner recipes. It will saves us tonnes of precious time, produces great tasting meals and most important of all, healthy and balanced meals for our family.

Since I am on detox mode, I thought of changing my eating habits. Less meat, less fats, more natural foods and not so much processed foods.

However, I admit I am not a healthy eating person and hence, I am totally ignorant of what to cook and eat. Incidentally, I was asked to do a paid review of Not Just Apples healthy foods blog.

But guess what? I like what I found. I would recommend you to have a look at Not Just Apples because the blog is maintained with much care and love. You can sense the homeliness of the foods and how much the owner had done to share her food tips, recipe, ideas and more.

I didn’t know that a few simple, healthy ingredients can be put together to make a lovely salad or snacks. I ended up with lots of ideas on healthy eating.

Her photos of the foods are so lovely and I just love how she assembled all the foods and cutleries on nice table top to take the photos. It is the little touches that captured my interest because you can feel how much care and thoughts are put into those photos.

So, bookmark the blog if you are into healthy eating too. Healthy and yet, tasty, of course.

Since it looks so unique, I ordered one. The lady told me it is call ‘tai long pau’ which is the opposite of siu long pau hor? Tai long means big dragon and pau means dumpling.

The rows of many varieties of steamed Chinese dumplings.

So, this is what is inside the dumpling. It is a layer of the normal pau dough covering something like a lor mai kai.

The top of the pau can be torn off at the top, revealing the char siew inside.

And that’s nen nen pau for you.

I went to this newly opened restaurant call Vintage Bulgarian. I love the cosy multi-level restaurant with large slab of stones on the wall. It is just so homely with the chequered table cloth and all. However, the place was a bit packed and I was sitting one level below the kitchen and toilet. The above is the view I get. Being there, it means two things. Some smoker one level above actually put his hand with cigarette out, resting on the rail. The ashes dropped on my hubby’s head because he was sitting below. This spoilt the man of the house mood already. Then, one of the waitress tripped and dropped some plates as she was going into the kitchen. If that’s not distracting enough, the Bulgarian owner almost tripped too. Bad idea to have the kitchen door opened to stair case, huh?

Hubby ordered the pork on skewers. The meat is rather tough and over burnt.

I asked them for a pork dish with the most fats. They recommended pork ribs to me. Again, it is too tough and over grilled. However, what I think they should improve is their presentation. With the meaty pork ribs, they should at least serve some sourish salad. Instead, what they put on the plate, without any arrangements are boiled carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, potato and a bunch of alfafa without any dressing. Therefore, the plate of pork (both hubby and mine) are totally dry with no sauces and nothing to balance out the taste.

My two older sons had the set meal. The main dish is the chicken spindle and it is a little bit like chicken cordon bleu, only much bigger, much tougher and much boring-er.

The set meal consist of an appetiser, the main meal and dessert. The appetiser is a dish call kuypolo or something like that. The price of the dish is RM10. I would not recommend it because it is three pieces of toasted french loaf and a dip that is sourish and leaves a strong onion smell in your breath. The description was roasted eggplant and peppers dip. The eggplant seeds and the strong onion flavour is a bit turn off. Again, the presentation of the appetiser has much to improve because they slapped on three pieces of toast and a simple bowl of greenish stuff on a plate.

I guess I must have watched too much AFC food channel and I have become such a critic! However, it will be good for the Bulgarian owner to relook into their food presentation because it looks like their kitchen is concerned in churning out foods without caring for how it looks.

So, after the main meal, I was hoping the dessert will pacify me to write a much nicer review. However, the bavlava turned out to be a very, very rubbery pastry with overly sweet honey and nothing much to remember.

Meanwhile, my other son complained so much about the crepe. It is two pieces of rubbery and tough crepe with dribble of chocolate. Totally, unimpressive and tasteless. They joked about the crepe which I won’t dare to repeat what they said.

So, yeah, not a place I would recommend. As we were walking out after finishing our dinner, I smelled a very strong stench of fish from the diners outside. Lucky we didn’t order the fish and chips which is part of the set meal.

It is a pity that a nice establishment like this did not work harder to produce tastier morsels. Oh ya, I saw one dish in the appetiser section which sounds interesting. It consists of chicken liver, chicken gizzards and venison tripe. However, it costs RM25, so forget it. I am not going to spend RM25 to eat chicken innards, you know?

The total bill for our dinner is RM135.

With the amount of information available on the internet, it is easy to dig out information I need. Port Wine originates from Portugal. And according to this site, port wine need not be that expensive as what my friend boasted. Port wine found on this site costs around the region of $100 and less only. However, there are those with vintage years like 1960s that costs more than $300.

I hope someone gives me a bottle of port wine as Christmas present because I am really interested to have a sip of it. According to sources, the wine is very ‘grapey’ and many of the wines were described as fruity with hints of chocolate, cinnamon and etc. That sounds like the kind of flavours I loved.

Port Wine is perfect as gifts

The site selling port wine gave some food pairing suggestions and I noted that port wine goes well with fruits and nuts. Meanwhile, white port goes with Sushi, Clam Chowder, Fish Cakes, Smoked Salmon, Spicy Prawns, Duck/Chicken Liver Pate, Cheese Biscuits or Canape with an assortment of any seafood. Now, that is really something I must try at least once.

Maybe I should just go get myself a bottle of port wine and celebrate, whatever the occasion is.