Big Bad Wolf Books Sale 2012, Part 2

We visited the Big Bad Wolf books sale again today and look at all the books that we got! 33 books and 2 baking tins for just over RM300. This included 14 cookbooks, 7 fiction, 1 on digital photography, and 11 activity/sticker books for the kids :) You can read about my first visit here.

Parking was a breeze today, and the place was quite quiet when we arrived but it filled up by 1pm. Not all payment queues were open so there was a little wait. But I am happy with my purchases. This time I brought along a luggage bag which makes it much easier to browse and move the book around. Wanted to complete my James Patterson collection but there are only a couple of titles available, all of which I have already. Ended up buying lots of Michael Connelly ones. 

I haven't really looked through the cookbooks in detail yet, but I like the "How to Eat In" cookbook by Adam Byatt (RM20), there are still a few copies left when I got mine. "Salt to Taste" is also interesting, and my brother wants to learn how to make pasta from this book. "Starting with Ingredients: Baking" (RM35) is a big book, as you can see, so it will take me a while to go through it all... hopefully I can  learn some basics. Another one which I like is the "101 seasonal treats" which is only RM6 with simple, everyday recipes I will definitely try.

Kids were very happy with their activity books, they are mostly priced between RM3-RM5, except for the "ni hao Kai Lan" ones.

You have read about my first visit to The Big Bad Wolf books sale here.


The Big Bad Wolf Sale will run until 23 December, 9am to 9pm daily at Malaysia International Exhibition & Convention Centre (MIECC), located next to Mines in Seri Kembangan.

Parking: RM2 per entry (weekday), RM3 per entry (weekend and PH)

GPS Coordinates: 3.029612, 101.718289

Recipe: Cucumber Buttermilk Soup With Dill (Martha Stewart)

Depending on how many courses and how many people you have to cook for on Christmas Day, preparing the food can be a daunting task. I already have my menu planned - as always, we will be splitting 5-6 courses throughout the day to make it an easier task for me. Usually for lunch, we would serve a soup course. I have a recipe here for cucumber buttermilk soup which only takes 10 minutes to prepare and does not require any cooking at all. And since it is served cold, it will work very well in our hot Malaysian climate.

Christmas Idea #3

Cucumber buttermilk soup with dill

I read somewhere that English cucumbers are much more flavorful, but since I can only get a few types here, I settled for the Japanese cucumber. All you need to do is blend the cucumber with buttermilk. You can either use store-bought buttermilk or make your own using full cream milk and lemon juice (it only takes 5 minutes). The buttermilk gives the soup its creamy texture, but I also added 2 extra tablespoons of yogurt to make it even creamier. Add some diced/sliced cucumber on top for texture. I also topped it with some fresh dill (from our herb garden) since dill and cucumber goes very well together.

This is a light and refreshing soup, and easy to make. You can serve this with some small bites. Christmas lunch sorted... no stress! You can even make this a day in advance and refridgerate it.

Cucumber buttermilk soup
Recipe adapted from Martha Stewart
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
2 Japanese cucumber, peeled, halved, and seeded, plus thin cucumber rounds, for serving
2 cup buttermilk
Coarse salt and ground pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil, for serving
2 tbsp yogurt (optional)
Dill, to garnish

1. To make buttermilk using milk, simply place 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice in a measuring jug, then pour milk until the 1 cup mark. Leave for 5 minutes for the milk to curdle. Alternatively, you can also whisk whipping cream with an electric whisk until it separates into buttermilk and butter (which you can reserve for other uses).

2. Roughly chop 1 1/2 cucumbers. Dice remaining cucumber and also slice a few pieces of cucumber rounds for garnishing.

3. Place roughly chopped cucumber in a blender with buttermilk and blend until smooth, for about 1 minute. Season with salt and pepper.

4. Divide soup among four bowls and stir in diced cucumber. To serve, top with cucumber rounds, a drizzle of oil, and more pepper, if desired.

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I am submitting this to the "Cook Like Martha Stewart" bloghop which I am co-hosting with Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Jocelyn of Riceball Eats. To join, simply cook or bake any recipe from any Martha Stewart websites or cookbooks and blog hop with us for the whole month of December 2012.

Your post must be a current post i.e. posted in December 2012 - please do not link older posts.Please mention Cook like a Star in your post and link back to Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids, Jocelyn of Riceball Eats and Baby Sumo of Eat your heart out.

You can get the HTML code here: get the InLinkz code (Click on the link, copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML mode when you paste in the code)

Happy cooking! Do check out the other bloggers recipe below: