I had been curious about how The Yue Fantasy Mooncake “Box” from The Westin Kuala Lumpur works. I heard that it was also a light, a bluetooth speaker and I wondered whether the mooncake fit in the box as well? If so, how many mooncakes?

So, to my delight, I was able to find out when I won the Mooncake Giveaway organized by Kuali.com. One of the requirements was to state what we would like to see more of from Kuali .

Below is my long-winded answer. I just wrote what was on my mind. I am very happy that Kuali decided to choose my entry as one of the winning entries.

On Kuali, to be honest, I haven’t been on the site for sometime although I used to frequent it for recipe ideas. I was going to suggest videos but when I clicked through I saw so many amazing videos already posted. This will definitely make me return to visit!

What I would like to see more on Kuali as a busy mom are COOKING THEMES for example

– Hacks and tricks (Quickie Recipe) Ideas for busy moms including one pot meals or other recipe ideas where you can cook and then leave to warm while you do your school runs etc. We not only need recipes, we need the whole idea of how to cook and keep food warm for different family members eating at different times while we run around being personal drivers to the said family members) or menu ideas for moms who have to cook in the morning, go to work and come home to prepare a quick home-cooked meal.

– Party recipes and layouts ideas (my party animal sister will LOVE this one). How to cook and plan and display for a party of 2-3 or 20-30 etc.

– Malaysian Festival Recipes (you already have Chinese New Year and Christmas etc but wouldn’t it be nice to put them all together? As Malaysians we should appreciate and try the various recipes from different cultures and not only our own)

– Kitchen Cooking Appliances Recipe Ideas and tips (ie recipes based on cooking with different kitchen cooking appliances like Air Fryers, Bread makers, Steamers, Pressure Cooker Recipe ideas and so forth). I just got a Pressure cooker and I have no idea what to cook with it except soups and stews and I am so worried it will explode or something, I could certainly do with some help from Kuali in this area)

– Menu planning – what to cook when you have to cook 7 days a week, twice a day and run out of ideas. Maybe even menu planning for a whole week or a whole month. That would help us a lot.

Instead of just recipes, I would like to see more tips like the above.

Thank you Kuali for organizing and asking for our ideas.

Enough of my long winded comment, now let’s talk about mooncakes. This year, The Westin KL has 8 choices of mooncakes including
Black Sesame Single Yolk, Pandan Mung Bean Single Yolk, Superb Mixed Nuts Baked Mooncakes, Low Sugar White Lotus Paste Baked Mooncakes, Cranberry Green Tea Mooncake, Purple Sweet Potato Mooncake and Taro Sensation Mooncake.

The mooncake mold is very beautiful too. My absolute favorite is the Cranberry Green Tea Mooncake. Not only does it taste really unique, it looks very pretty too, with green bamboo design.

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As for the mooncake “box” well, it is just a marvelous very well thought of design. Every detail has been carefully thought about including how to fit the mooncakes into the box right up to how to open up the box with ease. It’s quite complicated to describe, so here’s a video to show you how the Yue Fantasy hides secret treasures within and it is by itself a treasure too!

The Westin KL is one of the winners of The Star Mooncake Awards 2019! A well-deserved win seeing how much thought has been put into its design.

Dora and the Explorer brings back a lot of childhood memories of our kids to us. They watched Dora episodes, read Dora storybooks, played Dora games. The little one would wake up extra early during the weekends, knock on the door and requested to play the Dora Game on TV. At the time, there were no mobile phones or fanciful apps so we relied on the good old tv and tapes for the games.

Winning Dora merchandise was therefore something very happy for us. The Dora movie merchandise we won include a World Scratch Map (you scratch off the parts of the world you have visited to reveal the colourful map beneath.

Quite often you will receive a poster as part of the movie merchandise you win in a giveaway. The Scratch Map is one of the best posters we have ever received!

There’s also a light up yoyo toy and a beautiful compass and the Dora backpack too.

I love this set, not only because it has very nice items but also because of the memories it brings. I end this post with the lyrics of the map song from Dora and the explorer.

If there is a place you got to go
I am the one you need to know
I’m the Map!
I’m the Map!
I’m the Map!

If there is a place you got to get
I can get you there I bet
I’m the Map!
I’m the Map!
I’m the Map! (repeat till end of song)

Are we buying mooncakes or mooncake packaging? We’re definitely paying for packaging prizes as sellers get more and more innovative with their packages to outdo one another. This is especially so with hotel mooncakes. Some restaurant mooncakes have joined in the packaging war. However, you can still get the standard square tin boxes. Anyway, the best way to check out the best mooncake boxes is to go to a mooncake fair. There’s lots of mooncake to taste too. To me, they all taste the same. My taste buds just aren’t that discerning.

Let’s have a look at what’s available this year. We’re only looking at packaging in this post. The mooncake flavours and prices are not covered.

KL Hilton has teamed up with bag designers with Christy Ng and Khoon Hooi designer bags for their mooncake boxes 2019.

Next, Concorde Hotel has two variations that look quite different. One is a lighted globe and the other is a jewelry box in pastel colours. Interesting isn’t it?

Shangri-La Hotel has a red box with gold flower design for its mooncakes 2019.

I got so distracted by the beautiful display counter for Intercontinental Hotel Mooncakes 2019 that I only got half of the mooncake package. You can see it at the edge of the picture. It looks rather like a bag too.

Intercontinental Hotel also has a variation for the little ones that come with a bumble bee bag and cute cartoon shaped mooncakes.

The Westin has a something they call the Yue Fantasy which can be lighted up as well with palm tree design and do I see a rabbit there? Yes, I think I do. “Yue” is the pinyin for the Chinese word Moon.

This round blue mooncake box with a colourful cover is from Dragon-i restaurant. They have another red squarish package but I did not manage to take a picture of that because I was too busy buying their durian mooncake to double up as a birthday “cake” for my brother. The durian mooncake cost RM36 for a set of two.

Sheraton Petaling Jaya has shiny and sparkly chests for their mooncake boxes. There are a few designs to choose from.

Finally, here’s packaging suitable for kids and collectors of Hello Kitty and Doraemon from Good Chen, which is in the confectionery business.

What’s mooncake festival without lanterns? And so I conclude this post with some lanterns for the children. Lanterns these days don’t even look like lanterns anymore. Have a look and see what you think?

What do you think of the mooncake boxes for 2019?

Since this was a long weekend, we decided to get together to celebrate my brother’s birthday which is in early September. We went to Palsaik Korean BBQ as I had won a RM50 voucher from their opening promo at Mid Valley Megamall.

The above picture shows the entrance to the restaurant. I was wondering about the number 8 and then a search on the About page of Palsaik Korean BBQ Facebook page states that “sa:k] is the Korean word for pork belly. As such Palsaik Samgyupsal means eight coloured pork belly. ”

Since it was our first time there, we decided to order common dishes like the bibimbap, the korean pancake and a set meal for 2-4 pax. This was more than enough food for the 5 of us. Below are a few pages from the menu so you have an idea of the prices of the meals.

Here is the actual meal. The actual did not disappoint. It was good. Basically you can choose from a set and then, select the soup. The set comes with pork marinated with different ingredients and salads and salad leaves for wrapping the freshly grilled pork. Then you are supposed to feed each other with the wrapped salad leave and pork just like the way you watch them do in the Korean dramas. I’m only kidding about the feed each other part but they always seem to do that all the time, it got stuck on my mind.

The bibimbap had a sweet sour taste and is appetizing.

The Korean pancake was nicely crisp on the outside.

The pork belly came in 8 different marinates, ginseng, wine, pine, garlic, herbs, curry, miso paste and hot. They are grilled just right and the chef was smart enough to cart each type into 5 pieces and arrange them according to the different marinates so that everyone has a chance to try one of each.

There’s a lot of meat but also a lot of salads so no problem.

You can choose from seafood soybean, clear clam soup or kimchi soup. We decided on clear clam soup. The soup was not overpowering in taste. It was light.

Grilling was perfectly done.

After the meal, we had 2 durian mooncakes while the restaurant played a happy birthday song in Korean for my brother. A very delicious and satisfying meal. Burp!