6 Fun Facts about Chocolate & Candy!

Dinasou.com wants you to  have fun! When you suck on a piece of chocolate or candy, don't you feel some sort of happiness spreading throughout your body. As it turns out, chocolate contains a substance that imitates the feeling of falling in love! Read below to find out.

1) Daniel Peter and Henri Nestle created milk chocolate in 1875. 

2) A one-ounce pice of milk chocolate and a cup pf decaffeinated coffee contain the same amount of caffeine.

3) The ancient Aztecs believed that chocolate was an aphrodisiac. Chocolate contains phenyl ethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is said to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love.

4) Same candies, such as gum drops, gummy bears, candy canes, lollipops, licorice twist and sour balls are free of fat and cholesterol, making them a healthier treat than many people realize.

5) The Snickers candy bar, which Frank and Ethel Mars of the US introduced in 1929, was named after the family horse.

6) The US produce more chocolate than any other country in the world, but the Swiss consume the most, followed closely by the United Kingdom.

Taken from: candyhistory.net

At Dinasou.com, we sell Snickers at 10.8% off (Before: RM3.70, Now: RM3.30). There's a discount of 8% for a three-piece packet of Ferrero Rocher (Before: RM5.00, Now: RM4.60). A stick of Kopiko can save you 20% (Before: RM2.00, Now: RM1.60). A packet of Torrone Barley Mint is sold at a discount of 15.4% (Before: RM2.60, Now: RM2.20). We aim our best to let you Shop, Earn & Save!

What Wikipedia can't tell you about alcohol

1) Do you know that the cafeteria of many high schools in Europe give out alcoholic drinks to teenagers and that itself is pretty much a common scenario. Even most McDonalds throughout Europe put alcoholic beverages on their menu. On the contrary, the strictest laws on teenage drinking in Western civilization can be found in the US.

2) You need approximately 600 grapes on hand to make a bottle of wine.

3) There are an estimated 49 million bubbles in a bottle of Champagne.

4) An interesting fact about alcohol is that you can find minerals in alcohol. What's more interesting is that all minerals essential to human life can be found in alcohol. How many? 13.

5) Have you heard of the phrase "Mind your P's and Q's"? Have you always wondered what the P & Q stand for? Well, according to one theory, alcohol is served in pints and quarts at pubs in England. Well, Wikipedia will tell you that in the 17th century, bartenders would ask patrons to mind their pints and quarts and would watch their alcohol consumption on how much pints and quarts they have drunk. What Wikipedia doesn't tell you that another reason why the patrons were asked to be mindful of their pints and quarts was that if they imbibed too much, they would become unruly. Anyway, this is just one theory on what P's and Q's stand for. Wikipedia has several others, but you can look that up yourself, right?

6) How about the word 'honeymoon'? Do you know that it has its origin in an alcoholic drink called mead? Back in ancient Babylon, it was customary for the soon-to-be son-in-law to receive a month's supply of mead from his soon-to-be father-in-law. Hence, the term 'honey month' came to be, and gradually it became honeymoon.

7) Have you watched Vikings on the History Channel? Well, they were a pretty mean lot, weren't they? Do you know how they celebrated their victories? They took the skulls of their defeated enemies and fill those with their favourite alcoholic drinks, from which they toasted and drunk to their victories. Pretty gruesome, huh?

8) You've watched Sex & The City, haven't you? Well, if you haven't, it can only mean two things: You're a straight guy who doesn't like such shows, or you're an idiot. Of course you're not an idiot, we're just having fun with you. After all, this is all about alcohol, and alcohol is supposed to be fun, right? ;) ... Anyways, the girls in Sex & The City enjoy a cocktail called Manhattan. Can you guess the inventor of this cocktail. You wouldn't believe it, but it's Winston Churchill's mother! Of all people ... In case you're wondering what Manhattan comprises of, it's made with whiskey and sweet vermouth.

9) You've heard of Ferdinand Magellan, right? If you haven't, then sadly you're not into history. Magellan, who famously circumnavigated the world, loved his Sherry so much that he spent more money stockpiling the drink than he did with ammunition. If you decided to look up Magellan on Wikipedia, you will find that Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 during the Battle of Mactan. One would have wondered what if he had spent all his money on ammunition instead of Sherry. He could have lived to tell the tale and the course of history would have changed. Just think about it.

10) For the last and final fact, the production of alcohol has been traced back at least 12,000 years. Wikipedia seems to back this up, by stating that between 10,000 BC and  5,000 BC, which is roughly the period of the late Stone age, people discovered jugs made during that period which led them to believe that intentionally fermented beverages existed at least as early as the Neolithic period.

All facts taken from flask.com

At Dinasou.com, we have our own selection of alcoholic beverages, which you can check out here.

Going Vegetarian? Check out your choices!

Dinasou.com doesn't just want you to EARN, SHOP & SAVE. We also want you to have the best varieties of goods sold at our online store. Do you know that we sell vegetarian frozen foods? Sure, we have a link on our website that takes you straight away to our vegetarian frozen food selection, but have you actually had a look through? Anyway, it's just a reminder for our members that we sell a VARIETY of goods. For now, just check out our vegetarian frozen food selection here.

But vegetarian frozen food is not the only choice for you vegetarians out there. Dinasou.com also sells rice, grains and other dry products suitable for vegetarians. Below are a few examples. For more, click here.

Of course, these are not the only dry goods that Dinasou.com sells. For vegetarians who love to cook, you of course will want staple ingredients like onions to use as part of your dish. Erm, vegetarians do eat onions, right? Check out spices and other cooking ingredients here.

Then there's tofu. Of course, not all vegetarians like to be stereotyped as tofu-only people, right? But, tofu is rich in protein, among others. Vegetarians go for soy products to gain this essential nutrient. Here are some examples of tofu products sold at Dinasou.com. For more, just search for 'tofu' on our website. Happy eating!

Cream Crackers: A Story

Once a upon a time, in an online supermart called Dinasou.com, there was a packet of cream crackers named Julie's, or simply Julie. Julie was unlike other cream crackers, like Shoon Fatt, Hup Seng and Jacob, simply because Julie was a girl and the other cream crackers were boys. Julie felt sad because she was ostracized over her gender, but she held up her head high and maintained her spirits while looking at customers scanning Dinasou.com's webpage to buy grocery items.

One day, a customer called Jane was deciding on which cream cracker to buy. She looked at the four cream crackers staring right back at her from the computer screen. Shoon Fatt Cream Crackers Special was priced at RM10.20, which was a saving of 3.8% from RM10.60. Jane also noted that Shoon Fatt weighed at 800g. She then looked at Julie, which was a saving of 8%, from RM5.00 to RM4.60. But Jane saw that Julie weighed only at 295g, so in her head she figured which was more value for money. Jane scrolled further down the variety of Dinasou.com's biscuit selection and saw Hup Seng Ping Pong Cream Crackers and Jacob's Cream Crackers, which were both a saving of 8.3%, from RM4.80 to RM4.40. Hup Seng weighed at 428g, while Jacob weighed at 300g. Based on all the information, Jane finally decided to purchase Hup Seng and put him in her cart. As Jane was doing so, Hup Seng smirked at all the others, especially at Julie, and said, "See, I'm the popular choice, and I will always be the popular choice."

Shoon Fatt and Jacob just shook their heads and simply brushed off that indignant remark, but Julie took it to her heart. She started sobbing and wondered why no one wanted to buy her. She felt like jumping off the screen into oblivion, but of course she was stuck there. 

Just when Julie felt there was no hope for her at all, another customer named Derek, who was this good-looking hunk and loved anything in orange, clicked on the page where all the biscuits were. Derek was an indecisive buyer, and he took a long time deciding which biscuit he wanted to buy. He knew he wanted a packet of biscuits, but he just didn't know which one he wanted. Just then, he saw Julie and looked over her attractive packaging. Derek, who didn't know any better, clicked on Julie and put her in his cart. And it was just because she was wearing orange. 

Moral of the story: Women will always be judged based on their looks, not how much value they can give. But at least Julie has a happy ending.

The End. 

How 'bout a Cracker? It's a biscuit, only different ...

It's amazing what you can find on Wikipedia. We at Dinasou.com have actually perused the entry on 'crackers' and found that they are not exactly the same as biscuits. For one, a cracker is a baked food typically made from flour and they have holes in them, called "docking" holes, which are made to stop overly large air pockets from forming in the cracker while baking. They are normally made from salted flour.

Have a look at our own selection of crackers below, which are only just some of the crackers you can find at Dinasou.com.

Hup Seng Cream Crackers
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Julie's Cheese Crackers
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Munchy's Vege Crackers
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Julie's Sugar Crackers
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6 Fun Facts About Biscuits!

Ah, what can we tell you about biscuits, other than that they taste good and make snacking a necessary pastime (Joke!). But, there are fun facts that we can share with you about biscuits.

Fun Fact #1

The word 'biscuit' has Latin origins, which is 'bis cotus'. The Latin meaning is "twice baked/cooked".

Fun Fact #2

The original spelling of the word biscuit is 'bisket', according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Fun Fact #3

It's been established in a scientific manner that the best way to dunk a biscuit is the horizontal way, according to one Dr Len Fisher of Bristol University.

Fun Fact #4

A chef in Roman times by the name of Apicius invented the earliest biscuit recipe, which was eaten with honey and pepper.

Fun Fact #5

If you dunk your biscuit in coffee or tea, the flavour you get is more than 10 times greater than if you eat your biscuit without dunking them in such drinks. 

Fun Fact #6

If you want to keep your biscuits fresh for longer, put a slice of bread in the biscuit tin. 

We have a variety of biscuits for you to try out some of these fun facts. Enjoy!

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Brand Street: Make Rojak with MCM Rojak Sauce ... Easy Peasy!

The Malaysian Rojak

Ask anyone in Malaysia if they don't know rojak, and chances are you'd be scoff at. Everyone in Malaysia knows what rojak is, and the different types of rojak. There's the rojak buah, the Mamak rojak and the Penang rojak. To simplify things, here's one recipe we found on the Internet. But to make things even simpler, instead of making the rojak sauce from scratch, we can use MCM Rojak Sauce, which is sold on Brand Street. 

Ingredients:

1) Fritters

    - 300ml water

    - 1 large (Grade A) egg

    - 80gm tapioca flour

    - 80gm rice flour

    - 1 tablespoon of fennel seeds

    - salt to taste

    - oil for deep frying

2) Sambal

    - 6 red chilies, sliced

    - 3-4 bird's eye chilies

    - 20gm belacan, roasted and crushed

3) Sauce

    We'll save you the bother of making the rojak sauce from scratch by introducing MCM Rojak Sauce, a brand of Kum Thin Food Industries Sdn Bhd. How much do you need? As much as it takes to mix the rojak well.

MCM Rojak Sauce

4) Basic Rojak    
    - 200gm yambean (sengkuang), cut into wedges

    - 200gm cucumber, cut into wedges

    - 200gm pineapple, cut into wedges

    - 200gm green mango, cut into wedges

Below are optional ingredients to add to the rojak:

    - guava (jambu batu), cut into wedges

    - rose apples (jambu air), cut into wedges

    - amberella (kedondong), cut into wedges

    - water spinach (kangkung), cut into lengths and scalded

    - beansprouts, scalded

    - hard beancurd (taukwa), cubed

    - Chinese cruller (yutiao, yau char kwai or chakoi)

    - soaked dried cuttlefish, scalded and sliced

    - deep fried fish skin

    - wild ginger flower (bunga kantan), split and sliced finely

5) Toppings

    - 150gm peanuts, roasted and crushed

    - 60gm white sesame seeds, toasted

To prepare fritters:

Combine the flours, egg and water in a mixing bowl. Before adding salt and fennel seeds, make sure the mixture is mixed well and then strained.

Using a wok, heat enough oil for deep frying over medium heat. When the oil is hot enough, but not so much that smoke is rising from it, scoop up a small size mixed batter and let it slide down the sides of the wok. The batter will fan out as it hits the hot oil to form a fritter. Repeat this until all the batter is turning to fritters in the hot oil.

Fry them until they are golden brown on both sides. Scoop up the fritters from the hot oil with a metal strainer and make sure that you hold the strainer over the hot oil until the last drop of oil falls. To further dtrain the oil from the fritters, put them into a paper towel and leave to cool before putting them in an airtight container until needed.

To prepare sambal:

Pound the chilies and the belacan together to a fine paste.

To prepare the rojak:

Take a mixing bowl and toss the cut fruits and vegetables together with the rojak sauce. Make sure that the rojak sauce is mixed well together with the fruits and vegetables. Then add the optional ingredients, if you like, and mix them well. Then add the crunchy ingredients such as the Chinese cruller and fritters. You can break the fritters into pieces before adding them into the rojak mix. Finally, sprinkle crushed peanuts and and sesame seeds generously before serving.

Voila! You have made your very own rojak. This particular recipe is a combination of the fruit rojak and the Penang rojak, but you have a choice of adding all the optional ingredients, or choosing only some of them such as the Chinese cruller and guava, but not the bean sprouts, deep fried fish skin and wild ginger flower. The choice is up to you as our aim is to make the simplest rojak as possible. Bon appetit!

Brand Street: Foldable bikes ... Trendy or just a fad?

At Dinasou.com, we sell a line of foldable bicycles under the brands Oyama and Comp. They are sold by a local distributor called YTX. Prices range from RM788 to RM1738. YTX also sells a range of accessories to accompany such bicycles, ranging from hiking bags, helmets and gloves to water bottles and bicycle pumps.

Now, you must wonder, why are we talking about foldable bicycles. Well, just look at the question we posed: Are foldable bikes a trend, or a fad? To answer this question may not seem as easy as it seems. For one, why does one need a bicycle that can be folded. And the only answer to that question is that a foldable bike allows the cyclist to carry it around when not needed. In other words, it's PORTABLE.

In Kuala Lumpur, there's the Car Free Morning on the first and third Sunday of every month that starts from 7.00am to 9.00am. Many activities are planned, including cycling. So, if you had an option of taking a normal bicycle or a foldable one into your car and on to one of the designated parking spots in KL for the Car Free Morning event, which do you think would fit your Perodua Myvi, for example? Plus, you can take your foldable bike on the train, so you don't have to worry about parking at all.

So, going back to the question of whether foldable bikes are a trend or just a fad, it should be a trend, simply because it's practical to carry a bike that is foldable and lighter, than lugging a normal bike, don't you think so?

Ladies, you can make your own face mask ... 7 Best Foods!

For all the ladies out there, we bet there isn't a single one who does not care about the condition of her skin, especially her face. Our face reflects our outer beauty, though of course inner beauty is also important and shines through in the form of a confident smile, for example. But, it's safe to say that most, if not all of us, care deeply about how we look like to others, men and women notwithstanding. So, a lot of us will look for all sorts of solutions to have perfect-looking facial skin. This includes trips to the beauty spa and shopping for the latest skin care products that promise us we will look beautiful and ageless. But, do you know that the solution to perfect skin can be found in your home, specifically in the kitchen? That's right, gals. Here are the 7 Best Foods to make your own face mask:

1. Avocado

    Take a ripe avocado and cut it in half. Use the half avocado by mixing it with a teaspoon of olive oil. Apply the paste to your face and let it sit for 15 minutes before rinsing it off. Your face should feel firmer, softer and more radiant. Avocados are rich in vitamin A and anti-oxidants, therefore it's good for your skin.

2. Oatmeal

    We don't think it crosses your mind that something you normally have for your breakfast can be used as a facial mask. Put some oats in a food processor and grind them up. Add warm milk or water. Apply generously to your face and rinse off after about 10 minutes. Oats are good for dry and irritated skin as it acts as an anti-inflammatory. It also acts as a natural and gentle exfoliant. 

3. Yogurt

    Take that tub of plain yogurt out of fridge and apply generously to your face. Wait for 10 – 15 minutes before rinsing it off. Yogurt is high in zinc and lactic acid, so it's good to tighten pores, treat acne and lessen discoloration, in addition to cleansing and moisturizing your face. 

4. Olive Oil

    If you recall, you can mix olive oil with avocado to make a good face mask. But, you ought to know that olive oil on its own is also beneficial as a facial oil. It also works as an eye make-up remover, moisturizer and hair conditioner. Olive oil can also be used to treat sunburns. 

5. Strawberries

    Strawberries are delicious, especially the ripe and sweet ones. They're also good as a facial mask. For brighter, tighter and and super soft skin, mash up some strawberries and lather the mix on your face. The benefits: cleanses your skin and treats acne, even pigmentation. 

6. Honey

    Honey is a natural food with so much goodness. In a previous post, we talked about how we can use honey to lose weight. Here we'll talk about how it can be used as a facial mask. On its own, honey acts as a moisturizing and anti-bacterial face mask. If you suffer from acne, take a little honey and apply it to the affected area. Honey also heals burns and cuts. 

7. Bananas

    Mash up a ripe banana. After applying it to your face, wait 10 – 20 minutes before rinsing it off. Bananas are rich in vitamins A & E, so using it on your face will leave it feeling soft, smooth and nourished. 

At Dinasou.com, we offer you a line of face masks under the Korean brand Mediheal, which is sold on Brand Street. 

Mediheal Hot Sale Items.

White Day Promo: 2 Sets of Foldable Bikes for RM1314 & RM3399

1607 Eco-Park Comp foldable bicyles
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White Day is specifically celebrated in Japan on 14 March. You can say that it's another version of Valentine's Day, which is celebrated exactly a month before. In other parts of the world, men and women exchange gifts, and go out on a special date that involves dinner, for example, to celebrate Valentine's Day. But in Japan, Valentine's Day is when the women would give a special gift to the men in celebration of their love etc. White Day is the opposite of that, where it's the men who would give the women a special gift. This tradition goes way back to 1978, when Japan's National Confectionery Industry Association decided that there should be a day when the men would have to "repay" the special gift given to them by the women. This White Day tradition has also spread to South Korea, Taiwan and China.

What sort of special gifts are we thinking of when it comes to the Japanese when celebrating Valentine's Day, or White Day for that matter? Normally, it's chocolate from the women, and also chocolate from the men. But now, men can also give non-edible gifts that have a sentimental value, jewellery for example.

In commemoration of White Day, Dinasou.com has extended its two foldable bicycles promotion. Now you and your loved one can enjoy riding two very convenient foldable bicyles together at a discounted price. RM1314 for two 1607 Eco-Park Comp bicycles, which at a normal price cost RM1798, and RM3399 for two Oyama Dazzle M500 bicycles, which at a normal price cost RM3798. The numbers 1314 & 3399 have special meaning in Chinese, which is "Forever & Ever" when translated to English.

Oyama Dazzle M500 foldable bicycles
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