Instant Noodle with Ingredients from Neighbourhood Mini Mart

I was staying on my own during weekdays. Normally, kopitiam was my choice for meals. Last Wednesday (public holiday), I felt that I needed more fresh vegetables in my diet. So after my breakfast (very late breakfast, hahaha, almost 10am) at kopitiam, I went to the Econsave to buy vegetables, I was lazy to go supermarket, if possible, I settled all my grocery shopping at the place near me. There are multiple mini marts near my place, but Econsave was the place with the most vegetables, other than Kedai Aceh. But I felt that sometimes Kedai Aceh was not that cheap.

Anyway, I bought tomatoes, eggplant and cucumber. I was worry at first whether I could finish it or not. Well, I finished all within 2 days with 2 dinners. When I as younger, after STPM, I worked temporarily in Econsave Supermarket (the big one, not the mini one) as cashier, on weekdays, around 6pm (after work for many people), there'll be a lot of people buying vegetables in very small quantity, example, 2 onions, 1 garlic, 1 bunch of green onion, 1 bunch of kangkung, etc. The total bill would be less than RM5. I think sometimes less than RM2. It was the time where one could get a huge big bunch of kangkung for RM1. Now the quantity is way smaller. 

Normally I didn't buy all this vegetables, the most I would buy fruits. So I have no idea the price in Econsave is cheap or not. Nowadays, fruits are not cheap anymore. Last weekend, since my nephew stayed with us over the weekend, I bought a packet of grapes, one small packet of cherries, one packet of frozen blueberries and 20 oranges (this is for praying), and the total cost was around RM65. I am grateful that these mini marts in Malaysia carried the fresh vegetables and fruits. I think (my opinion only) that Malaysia don't really have food desert, only problem is the affordability. I am not sure whether one could buy fresh vegetables using mykasih now or not, but 2025 cannot for sure.

Cucumber (timun hijau)

tomato

eggplant (terung pendek)

So for my dinner on Wednesday night, I had instant noodle with tomato, cucumber and eggplant. I bought Cintan Mi Springy Kenyal. I think it is new packaging, long time no buy Cintan.  

Cintan Mi (new packaging)

ingredients list

Like I said before, I don't really cook. So, I don't even have bowls to clean the vegetables, so I just utilized my cooking pot. And the only salt I have was in a small bottle, I think I bought that like 4 or 5 years ago. Well, salt won't expire, I sprayed a healthy amount of salt into the water for cleaning. 

cleaning in my one and only pot

salt from 4 or 5 years ago

After cleaned, I peeled the cucumber and eggplants and cut it into chunks. I didn't cut into thin slices, I felt that it's troublesome. For tomato, I just cut into 6 portions. The eggplant oxidized really fast, I think less than a minute, the eggplant started to change from white to yellowish already.

rubbing cucumber head and body (to remove bitter taste - the white thingy is responsible for the bitterness)

the eggplant oxidized fast

peeled and sliced

Then, I just put the instant noodle on the bottom part of the pot, then poured all the vegetables on top of the noodle, add water until slightly above the noodle, I plan to let the steam cooked the vegetables, well it works. Surprisingly, the eggplant tasted better than I thought. Actually I don't really like eggplant, but it tasted fine just by steaming and submersed in instant noodle powder soup.

simple 1 pot meal

On Thursday night, I intended to finish up all the ingredients, but I felt that I needed some protein, so I went to the 99 Speedmart to get tofu, however, I couldn't find white tofu, so instead I got frozen sotong. Well, this was the first time I bought frozen sotong. When I opened it, it smelled fishy. Anyway, I only used up like 4 rings. The rest still in my refrigerator. 

frozen sotong

frozen sotong

So for my Thursday dinner, I had Mamee Chef Tomyam flavour instant noodle. I put 4 rings of sotong on the bottom of the pot (I never defrosted it), then instant noodle on 2nd bottom layer, then all the vegetables on top. For this round, I didn't peel the eggplant, just cut into chunks. Add water until slightly above the noodle and boiled it. Another meal!

another 1 pot meal

Wednesday Dinner cost not including miscellaneous items

item	price (RM)
Cintan Mi 1 packet	0.95
Tomato	0.70
Cucumber	1.00
Eggplant	1.40
1 orange	2.00
total	6.05

For Thursday dinner, it is higher a bit.

item	price (RM)
Mamee Chef Tomyam 1 packet	1.75
Tomato	1.30
Cucumber	0.95
Eggplant	1.30
1 orange	2.00
Sotong	0.80
total	8.10

Well, I know instant noodle is not the healthiest meal around, but at least I compensated with vegetables!

Sweet Potato Planting

Around a year ago, a relative gave my mom many small sweet potatoes, it was given by her farmer neighbour due to it's irregular shape and small, it's not good looking enough for sale. Since the quantity was too big, it was distributed among family members. We cooked most of it, but some are too small, peeling the skin was too tedious, so I buried it in a pot. and after around five or six months, I harvested four small sweet potatoes. 

During harvesting, a small piece was chopped off, so I buried it back to the pot. And I have seen so many videos that sweet potatoes can be propagated from stem and leaves. So I took additional 2 cuttings from the plants and planted it. 

Last week, on first week of June, I "harvested" it again. Ok, this was all for experiment and fun. So, I just make sure I watered the plants, no additional efforts were being done. And I would pluck the leaves when It grew too much. I read somewhere that too many leaves could take the nutrients meant for the tubers.

sweet potato plant

Well, there were too many weeds. So I cleared it first.

cleared the weeds

After that, I pulled the plants. Surprisingly, two out of three plants didn't have any tuber. The one that grew from a chunk of tuber didn't have any sweet potato. 

the plant grew from sweet potato chunk

The one and only sweet potato I got was small and around the length of my finger. Hahaha. 

sweet potato tuber

sweet potato around the length of my finger

The harvest is very small, so I buried the tuber back and planted another two cuttings (one with leaves on it, another was the one with a chunk of sweet potato).

new planting

After around two weeks (13th June 2026), I went back to observe the growth. The one with chunk of sweet potatoes already grew new leaves. But the sweet potato haven't sprout yet. Will update in another six months i think, provided it is still alive then. 

after around 2 weeks

Have fun gardening!

Chic Cafe Klang • Botanic

On the Hari Raya Haji holiday on 27th May, I went out for dinner with a dear friend. We stayed near to each other, but we didn't go out together as often. We were busy. Since we both did not have any activity on that night, we decided to have dinner together. We planned to have dinner in Botanic Klang. There are a lot of restaurants in Botanic. 

We decided to go to Chic Cafe, after all it's the first one that came out from google search. Initially I thought that it's a western style cafe that served pasta, steaks, some local favourites, etc. We only realized it's a Japanese style cafe when we reached there. There are so many restaurants nearby that area, there's even a lok lok restaurant next to it. On the corner lot, there's a bak kut teh shop that was full of customers although it's not even 6pm. Very lively area. 

When we entered the cafe, the waiter told us that we can have free rice or noodle top-ups. LOL. Before we ordered, we saw what other tables were eating, and the portion is not that small. So we ordered a rice set (丼)  for sharing. Apart from carbohydrate, of course we needed some protein, we also got the karaage chicken (fried chicken). And a pot of peach + pear + apple fruit tea. 

rice set

The cutlery and dishes in the shop are so cute. Even the sauce that came with the fried chicken was served with a duck shaped dish. Since we were sharing the rice set, we ordered a six piece karaage chicken set. Kind of regret, I over estimated myself. Although the food was good, we had to rest for a while to finish all. We should just order the three piece chicken set. There're variety of sauces, but if we got the multi sauces set, it's more money spent, so we just ordered with one type of sauce. Well, the fried chicken is good enough without needing the sauce though. 

karaage chicken with sauce (the duck shaped dish is cute!)

The fruit tea pot was good too. The combination of peach, apple and pear was good. It's nice after eating a big bowl of rice and fried chickens. Hahaha!

peach tea + apple + pear pot

Me and my friend stayed for around 2 hours. The business was so good on that day, we saw that there are customers queuing outside, so we left. It's a good 2 hour get together with great food.