Malaysia Day 1 & 2: Food and more food

*Okay, a little bit of backtracking in my posts. It took awhile to narrow down the photos and I'll hopefully post up the rest of the trip pictures soon!*

@ Todak Waterfront

First couple days in Malaysia were filled with seeing all the family, shopping, getting some beauty treatments, and of course, eating! I don't want this post to be too wordy (since I have lots more to come) so I'll let the pictures do the talking!

Mom and grandpa

Snacks at Wisma Merderka (local shopping center)

kuey - type of rice cakes, these are all sweet

durian cream puffs

Back at Fong Ip Cafe

Deuces with my grandpa =)

Everyone got their nails done!  

 

Day 2

Favorite drinks @ Fong Ip Café lemon hamoi kichai bing

Dinner at Damai Point

3 layer tea

Rojak - fruit & veggie salad dish

Bah Kut Teh -"meat, bone, tea" pork and herbal tea soup

Tuaran Mee - Tuaran is a town that is known for this style of stir-fried noodles

Squid and ong choy/kang kung (Chinese water spinach)

Braised pork hog

Family dinner

Adult group picture

@ Tanjung Aru Beach

All the yummy fruits and snacks!

At a local bar with my cousins

 

So much beer!

Stay tuned for more! 

Nate's Wings & Waffles: Restaurant Review

 

 

For those of us who grew up in the Seattle area and paid attention to Metro League basketball during the early 2000s, you may have heard of a local, rising, basketball star from Rainier Beach High School (I still remember being 13 and seeing a high school game of his in 2002) going on to do big things at the University of Washington. Then you may have heard this local Seattle star becoming a star in the NBA, winning the 2006 All-Star weekend, Sprite Rising Stars Slam Dunk Contest (and winning the title 2 more times after). Now a player for the Denver Nuggets, Nate Robinson still holds pride in Seattle and just recently opened up a restaurant, not even a mile away from his old high school, in the Rainier Beach South Seattle area.

The restaurant is Nate's Wings & Waffles, serving chicken strips, chicken wings, sandwiches, waffles, and different side dishes. The restaurant is nice cozy place with Robinson's paraphernalia, if you will, decorating the walls. I had been late to the game hearing about the grand opening since I was in Asia at the time, but I figured it would be better to go when the press around it died down. Finally, about a few weeks ago, I was able to go check out this place for myself!

 

My Meal (syrup and butter not on waffle)

 

Syrup and waffle poured on the waffle

 

I went with a friend and we decided to order food to go in case the place was too crowded. In the previous weeks, I had been seeing many people's status updates and Instagram posts about how busy the place is so I wanted to avoid waiting in lines and waiting for seats. When we did end up going there (around 5:30pm on a Tuesday night), the place was almost empty. We didn't have to wait at all and got lucky it wasn't crowded! As we were in line, we were quickly handed a menu to look over and the ladies there were really friendly and helpful. The food came out fast and we did not have to wait (most likely because we were one of the first people in line--more people came in after us).

 

I was hungry so I ordered a lot. I had the half pound of chicken strips (non spicy), the bacon waffle and the mac and cheese. I ordered the chipotle honey sauce to go with the chicken strips and it was such a nice change from the honey mustard I typically get at most other restaurants. The chicken strips had a little spicy kick (not a lot) and was seasoned well.

I loved the bacon waffle! I smothered that thing with their house made honey rosemary butter and syrup. My waffle had nice bits of bacon in it, not the dinky bacon bits type. I've heard others complain saying their bits were small, but mines was just right. I'd take the chicken strips and dunk pieces into the syrup, add bite of the bacon waffle and BAM, flavor haven

The side of mac & cheese was a good portion too and had lots of cheese in it. My only gripe is that when I brought it home to eat, it was maybe only lukewarm in temperature, but nothing a little microwave action can't fix. After I nuked it for around 20 seconds or so, the cheese in the macaroni was nice a gooey and it was perfect.

 

The place is great for locals and people who support Seattle athletes and sports in general. Even if you're not a sports fan and you're looking for some good homestyle food and flavors, this is a definite must. And side-note, you may also get a glimpse of a local athletes that support Nate and his restaurant (I had a friend see UW basketball Coach Romar) and maybe even see Nate Robinson himself! There definitely isn't a place up here like the ever-so-popular Rosco's Chicken & Waffles based in California so having a place like this close to home is a nice treat. I definitely will be back to this place. I have my eye on trying their chicken waffle sliders and kale salad!

 

Readers, have you ever had the popular sweet & savory chicken and waffle combo? What are your favorite places for this type of home cooking? Let me know!

Nature Box Subscription-October 2014 Review

After I received my sample Nature Box, I could NOT wait a whole month to try some other ones, so, I went ahead and ordered the full sized one a week after!

 

You get to mix and match up to 5 snacks on your account and for this month I decided on four sweet ones: watermelon fruit chews, strawberry crispy chews, tart apple mango crispy chews, and carrot strawberry fruit chews, and one savory one: guacamole bites.

 

Here's a look at the savory one first.

These were corn snacks (think Fritos) with a guacamole salted spice mix on it. I liked these initially, but I couldn't eat too many at once. They became wayyyy to salty. A few pieces for a quick salty fix is nice, but any more and you will be chugging down a glass of water. It did have a nice guacamole taste to it, but the saltiness turns me off from it. Definitely wouldn't try this again for myself. If you don't mind salty snacks and like corn chip products, I would say give it a try.

 

Next up I have these four sweet fruit snacks.

On the left is the Strawberry Crispy Chew. I love this one and it is really different than any other fruit snack I've ever tried, mainly because it has puffed rice crisps in them! The strawberry fruit snack is a really nice texture that isn't too chewy or too soft and the strawberry flavor isn't artificial.

Next one I have are the Carrot Strawberry Fruit Chews. I like that this one comes in individual snack packages so you can take a pouch with you on the go instead of the entire thing. I like the texture on these and I could really taste the sweetness of the carrot juice with the strawberry--it was a surprisingly nice combo! They were definitely more of a harder chewy texture. I would definitely pick both of them again in the future.

 

 

  The last two were also fruit snack type items. The one on the left were Watermelon Fruit Chews. I wish these had a bit more of a watermelon flavor to them since it was very subtle, but I did enjoy these. They were more of a soft chew and would be good for younger kids. I don't know if I would necessarily pick these up again for myself.

The next is another crispy fruit chew, but this time they were the Tart Apple Mango Crispy Chew. Though I wasn't too adventurous in these options, this one tasted even better than the strawberry ones, in my opinion. There is definitely a tartness to it and the mango flavor is nice and bold (I personally love it) and you don't really taste the apple parts which I don't mind. I mean the strawberry one also had apple in it too as an ingredient and you couldn't taste apple in it at all. Again, the rice puffs throughout were a nice texture mix added and I would pick this one over and over.

 

That's my October review of my Nature Box!

If you guys want to try out Nature Box, use the code share10off for $10 off your first box!

 

Readers, have you tried Nature Box or a similar service before? What are your favorite type of healthy snacks? Let me know!

 

 

 

  

Baked Potato and Butter flavored Noodle Snack: Review

 

 

Today I have a quick little snack post I wanted to share. I bought this while I was in Hong Kong since a) I just love Japanese snacks, b) This brand is ridiculously hard to find in the US, and c) Hellooo, can you say kawaii packaging?! (Kawaii = cute)

I don't read Japanese at all, but from the picture and flavor of this noodle snack, it is safe to assume it is a baked potato butter flavored one (if anyone can directly translate this, that would be awesome!) Also, these are the same noodle snacks from the brand Baby Star (that's just what I've always known it as but I'm not sure if that's the real brand or not!)

Back of Package

 

 

 

I found these noodles in a local 7-11 in Mong Kok, and seriously, there are 7-11s everywhereeee in Hong Kong and a lot of the Japanese snacks are fairly inexpensive (compared to the US) so this bag of noodle chips were about $1.50 which is a really good score for me!

 

Baby Star does all sorts of noodle snacks and in different sizes, and as you can see from the pictures above, this one is thicker with 3 strips on noodles together. The powdery stuff you see is for the flavoring, and when Japanese snacks to anything 'butter' flavor, I am all over it! This one tasted extra delicious and I could really get a sense of a baked potato loaded with extra butter. I will say there was also some sweetness to it in a sweet corn/potage sense, but since I can't read the labeling, that might have been the case!

 

If you live in a country where you can buy Baby Star snacks on the regular (lucky for you!), then see if you can find this flavor!

 

Readers, have you ever tried Baby Star noodle snacks? If you haven't, would you want to try it? What are some of you favorite snacks out there? Let me know!



 

 

Nature Box: Sample Box

I wanted to come on here to quickly talk about my first Nature Box purchase (sort of) that has been blowing up recently.

I decided to use YouTuber Hollyannaeree's link to jump on the Nature Box bandwagon.

There were two options: $10 off your first Nature Box purchase or a sample box with 4 samples sizes and one surprise full sized items (you just had to pay for shipping $1.97).

 

I decided to go with the sample box.

 

Nature Box is known for bringing healthier snack options to their customers with their promise show above.

 

Sample size products include: Garden tomato crunchies, coconut cashews, sea salt sun-crunch, and cinnamon swirl kettle kernels.

My surprise full size snack were the Sea salt pop pops

Now a closer look at the snacks.

The garden tomato crunchies are tomato flavored almonds. The almonds are halved and coated in a tomato flavored spice rub. It isn't overly salty and there is a nice, somewhat smoky, tomato flavor. The almonds themselves are, as the name suggests, nice and crunchy.

Next up are the coconut cashews. These were probably my favorite out of all the sample size snacks and remind me of a similar snack Costco had before. The cashews are covered in a sweet vanilla/coconut flavored coating with actual dried coconut bits on them. The cashews inside are nice and creamy and the flavor combination is really nice and I finished these so quick.

The next one is the sea salt sun-crunch, a sunflower and sesame seeded cracker round and probably my least favorite. I found it to be sort of bland flavor wise and a bit too salty. I didn't care for texture in these either. I didn't finish these and just left them on the counter to see if anyone else would snack on it.

My second favorite out of this bunch were the cinnamon swirl kettle kernels. These are basically like corn nuts but way healthier and a sweet version. These weren't greasy or overly coated in sugar. There was a good light coating of cinnamon and sugar over these corn kernels. I definitely finished these up!

Last thing in my box were the full size snack: sea salt pop pops. These were so bomb! Oh em gjeeze. Now, I love half popped popcorn and these were the perfect texture and perfectly half popped. The simple sea salt flavor brought out the natural popcorn flavor and I found myself munching on these all day. 

If you guys want to try out Nature Box, use the code share10off for $10 off your first box!

 

 

Readers, have you tried Nature Box? What are you favorite snacks? Let me know in the comments below!