My Life On The Move – Current Location: Houston

It’s Thanksgiving weekend in the US. Thanksgiving falls on the last Thursday in November and Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving where most stores would have their biggest sales ever. So you are right, it’s just sales everywhere but the twist is, stores open their doors very early. The earlier you buy, the bigger the discount. So yes, you have to sacrifice on sleep if you want good bargains.

My friends and I have not experienced shopping on Black Friday and since everyone is here in Houston this year, we thought we would give it a try. Our target location is the Houston Premium Outlet and Black Friday here starts at midnight!

Our plan on Thursday is to have a nap in the afternoon, not meet for dinner so that we do not have a drop of alcohol. We met at Julie’s apartment and left around 11 pm. We were at the mall’s entrance by 11.45pm but it took us 30 minutes to park.

The place with the most crowd was Coach - long line to get into the store as they are only allowing a small number of people in at a time. We skipped Coach since none of us wanted to buy bags there.

Our first stop, Calvin Klein. We grabed as many things as we like, tried them on over what we were wearing so that we skip the line at the fitting room. Once done, pass all purchases to 1 person so that we can get a move on quickly and hit the next shop. Things here are so cheap!!! It’s 30% or 50% off outlet price and if you spend more than $150, you get an additional 20% off! I only manage to get a top and a scarf.

After CK, we split cos everyone wanted to see different things. I went to Le Crueset as I wanted to get some cookware. There were no one in there so I took my own sweet time having a look around. I bought a 11.75″ cast iron skillet and a 5.5qt round French oven. The special at this store is all purchases by 6am will get an additional 30% off. Retail price of skillet if $160 but I only paid $78.40 and the oven originally cost $295 and I only paid $128!!! Saved Adam almost $250 so that means more shopping!!!

Nike shop was my next destination. Bought a pair of trainers and some tops for Adam for cheap. I also bought Adam a fleece and some tops at Columbia. We were walking around until 4am and decided we gotta go home and sleep. I got home at 5.10am and slept around 6am.

After 4 hours of sleep, Julie and I decided to go back to the mall again. Julie wanted to exchange some stuff for a different size. We went and of course we bought even more stuff. One CK dress, some Gap and Roxy later we were ready to leave. No, not home… we went to a shoe store near where we live.

It was such a long day. We were just knackered but we had an enjoyable Black Friday. Will I do this again? Definitely!

I have tried many beef rendang recipes to find the perfect one for us and I finally found it! After 6 tries, I finally found THE recipe!!! I even found a recipe to make sambal ikan bilis!!!! WOOHOO!

You will understand my desperation if you do not have access to yummy Malaysian food

This is what I made over the weekend (and very proud of it) and all thanks to this blog.

Nasi lemak with sambal ikan bilis and beef rendang.

Nasi Lemak

2 cups of Jasmine rice
3 screwpine leaves (tied into a knot)
Salt to taste
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup water

Just like making steamed rice, rinse your rice and drain.

Add the coconut milk, water, a pinch of salt, and screwpine leaves

Cook rice how you would normally do it.

Sambal Ikan Bilis

1/2 red onion – sliced
1 cup ikan bilis (cleaned – head and guts removed)
1 clove garlic
4 shallots
10 dried chillies – deseeded
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 tablespoon tamarind paste
1 cup warm water

Rinse ikan bilis and drain the water, do not soak them!

Fry the ikan bilis until they turn light brown and set aside.

Grind shallots, garlic, and dried chilies in a food processor.

Soak the tamarind pulp in warm water for 15 minutes. Squeeze the tamarind to extract more flavor, remove pulp and seeds, set aside the tamarind juice.

Heat oil in a pan and fry the spice paste until fragrant.

Add onions.

Add ikan bilis, mix well.

Add tamarind juice, salt, and sugar.

Simmer on low heat until the gravy thickens.

Beef Rendang

1 1/2 pound boneless beef chuck (beef for stewing, cut into cubes)
5 tablespoons cooking oil
1 cinnamon stick
3 cloves
3 star anise
3 cardamom pods
1 lemongrass (cut into 4-inch length and pounded)
1 cup thick coconut milk
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons tamarind pulp
6 kaffir lime leaves (very finely sliced)
6 tablespoons kerisik (toasted coconut)
1 tablespoon sugar/palm sugar or to taste
Salt to taste

Spice Paste:

5 shallots
1 inch galangal
3 lemongrass (white part only)
5 cloves garlic
1 inch ginger
10-12 dried chilies (soaked in warm water and seeded)

Grind the Spice Paste ingredients in a food processor.

Soak the tamarind pulp in warm water for 15 minutes. Squeeze the tamarind to extract more flavor, remove pulp and seeds, set aside the tamarind juice.

Heat the oil in a pot, add the spice paste, cinnamon, cloves, star anise, and cardamom and stir-fry them until fragrant.

Add beef and the pounded lemongrass and stir for 1 minute.

Add coconut milk, tamarind juice and simmer on medium theat, stirring frequently until the meat is almost cooked.

Add kaffir lime leaves, kerisik , sugar/palm sugar, stirring to blend well with the meat.

Lower the heat to low, cover the lid and simmer for 1 1/2 – 2 hours or until the meat is really tender and the gravy has dried up.

Add salt to taste. If not sweet enough, add more sugar to taste.

Oh my! I have not blogged for more than a month! Many things happened… where should I start? I’ll try to fill everyone into my life as best as I can.

For a start, Adam and I are doing well in Houston and we renewed our U.S visa in Canada recently. We need to leave the country, get the visa done and come back with a new stamp in our passports. We picked Canada because the U.S embassy in Mexico is not accepting any applications for now. I will write about Canada in another entry – I promise!

Last week, we saw Coldplay in concert!!! They are such great performers, we had a great evening listening and watching them.

The stage.

It’s the Viva la Vida tour but they sang songs from their previous album as well.

They are so good and Chris Martin is so good looking!

I will highly recommend people to go seeColdplay if they are heading to a town near you!