Shepherd's Pie - "the family all-time favourite"

The GGC gathering on Saturday brunch was at my humble abode while I thrilled my friends with my simple cooking skills .... my family all-time favourite shepherd's pie with a touch of Asian taste. It is a complete meal by itself always enjoyed by the whole family and now I hoped that my friends had enjoyed this very special dish as well....
The ingredients shown on the first picture is good for 4 hearty eaters:=

Ingredients are
5 big potatoes (boiled and mashed, add butter n a pinch of salt)
5 big onions & 5 red chillies (diced)
500 gms meat (pork, chicken, beef or mutton)
(left over meat can also be used)

Method
1. Boiled meat till slightly cooked. Keep stock for cooking later. Dice cooked meat (or left over meat).
2. Fry onions in heated oil till fragrance, add chillies and fry till you can smell the chillies.
3. Add diced meat and fry till slightly brown, add pepper, salt and L&P sauce to taste.
4. Add the stock, stew till meat is tender and until mixture is dry.
5. Dish into a pyrex dish. Top with mashed potates and smooth over.
6. Brush with 2 egg yolks.
7. Bake in oven(normal temperature) till the top of pie is golden brown. Serve hot.

"Nasi Lemak" Bonanza

Do you believe that we were at it again? ~~ this time around its lunch in a cool place built above the sea, its mud more like it probably because of low tide. Its no big deal because we enjoyed our meal tremendously......

Doesn't this looks delicious!!

And the company is even better. The Golden Girls strike again; doing the things they do best ~~ eating, chatting, laughing and improving on picture taking. This time around the pictures are more natural.

See, everyone is looking happy and smiling!!

We even met our beautiful friend, "Soo Mei" and I hate to think that someone is about to come along and pick her for their next meal....its a sad sad world :)

Look how beautiful she is on a close up picture, beat the Golden Girls flat!

Our next outing is already on the drawing board and this time around we are going to have new recruits and we can't wait to meet again in a few days time......

Golden Girls Club

We are hooked! We did it again! We got together for brunch and had our laughing bouts one more time. The only negative side of this gathering for me is the eating; we have to be careful not to let that get out of hand; otherwise its all fun, fun and fun.

We unanimously agreed to form the Golden Girls Club and the positions of President=LO, Vice President=SK, Honorary Secretary=MT and Honorary Treasurer-AL have been filled. We even discussed on the next activity. How serious can we be?

Being golden girls we are a bit disorganized and distracted and although it has been discussed no date was fixed for the next event. No fear, we will touch on this during our morning walks.

Our main activities are eating, chatting and laughing but we have other activities like massage, yoga, breathing exercises, trying out clothes and card games thrown in.......all the fun things we can think of.

Hey girls.... we need more fun pictures.....

Nutrient Contents of Milk

We all know that milk is the primary source of nutrition for newborn mammals before their stomachs are strong enough to digest other foods. We also know that mother's milk is the best milk but do you know what you are drinking everyday especially adults who have lost their rights to mother's milk.... and you seek alternatives?

Here are some facts you might want to know:-

Nutrients contents of 1 cup = 8 fluid ounces of Milk

	Whole Milk	Reduced Fat	Low Fat	Non Fat (Skim)
Calories	150	120	100	80
Fat (g)	8.15	4.69	2.38	0.61
Saturated Fat (g)	5.07	2.92	1.48	0.40
Calcium (mg)	291.34	296.70	312.87	316.30
Magnesium (mg)	32.79	33.36	35.16	35.55
Phosphorus (mg)	227.90	232.04	244.76	254.80
Potassium (mg)	369.66	376.74	397.15	418.22
Selenium (mcg)	4.88	5.37	5.64	5.39
Vitamin C (mg)	2.29	2.32	2.45	2.47
Folate (mcg)	12.20	12.44	12.99	13.23
Vitamin A (IU)	307.44	500.20	499.80	499.80

Extracted from National Dairy Council (NDC), Illinois, USA

You may want to take note that milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastrointestinal tract. Cancer cells feed on mucus... info from John Hopkins Hospital.

"Eureka!! Eureka!!"

I could still remember very clearly the "Eureka" story I heard years ago like as if I heard of it yesterday.

It was about this great Greek scholar named Archimedes who was requested by King Hiero II, the ruler of Syracuse to ascertain that his crown of solid gold was indeed fully solid gold and not alloy, with a mixture of silver, without destroying the beautiful crown.

At first Archimedes was perplexed as to how to fulfill the King's request.... Then one day while he was at the public bath, he noticed how the water level of the tub rose when he got in and went back down again when he got out. Instantly it dawned on him how to resolve the King's problem.

He was so excited that he ran home naked through the street of Syracuse shouting "Eureka!! Eureka!!" which in Greek means "I have found it".

This discovery is now the infamous "Archimedes' Principle".

Archimedes, born and bred in Syracuse, Sicily (287-212 BC) is considered one of the greatest inventors and mathematicians. He helped invent weapons and methods, like employing mirrors to set enemy ships ablaze, to defend Syracuse during the Romans' attack. After a 2-year siege where the Roman entered the city, Archimedes was killed in the battle that followed. His other famous inventions were the lever, the compound pulley and Archimedes' screw.

I am sharing this story to honour this great intelligent man who very much deserved to be remembered!

The Golden Girls

Its time for us girls to go out, this time at night, to "paint the town red".......

We plot and plan; find and create excuses just to go out and have a good time. So we picked the nearest birthday and said we will celebrate in style. And since one of us is turning 55, it is indeed a good excuse to plan a whole nighter.

Our normal activities concentrated only on long breakfast hours after our morning walk and lots and lots of chit chatting and laughs and our outings only until after lunch, never on a night out. Most of us haven't a clue where to go and what to do and since in our midst there is one "party animal"=MT, we leave it to her to plan the night.

The dinner venue was decided and table booked a month ahead, and I stress over how we are going to behave and whether wearing what we wear everyday is appropriate. As time drew nearer to the date, I suddenly felt unsure and wished I had committed to a lunch instead of a dinner. For a moment it fully dawned on me that I am so out of touch and there is one for sure; LO who admitted that she felt the same...

But lo and behold, the night turned out to be a great success and we had so much fun just chatting over coffee. We talked and laughed till we cried, took pictures of each other trying very hard to look like 18s...... blaming the camera, the camera operator and anything else except ourselves for the bad look.....

We all can't wait for the next reason to go out ~~ at night ~~ girls you agree with me right? Chance for you all to get back at me.... comments... comments... lol

Brainwaves....

I have always been intrigued by theories and principles. I marveled at the founders and inventors of olden days where technology is so backward and yet there were so many breakthroughs.....

Like how Archimedes could prove that a body plunged in a fluid becomes lighter by an amount equal in weight to the amount of fluid it displaces and how Newton by sitting under an apple tree can determine gravity ... etc etc. These people must have gone through some brainwaves of their time.

In fact the simple stories of Archimedes screaming "Eureka" and Newton watching apple falling towards earth have stuck with me since my younger days might have some indication of how we can tell interesting stories to allow learning to be fun and memorable.

I hope this will trigger some contributions from any person who stumbles upon this blog so we can share whatever knowledge for learning purposes.