Many hard working executives have adjusted to long periods of home confinement in the time of an unprecedented global viral pandemic, and like the adaptable multi-tasking warriors that we are, we have adapted to working from home and making the best of our circumstances.
For many, working from home comes with individual and unique challenges, mostly revolving around juggling professional commitments with thinking of fitting in some time to eat or preparing quick yet nutritious meals at home.
For some, there are kids (much as we love them) running around while Mum or Dad is trying to video-conference; for others, having golden oldie parents living with us presents its own challenges when it comes to nutritious yet fuss-free meal prep.
And for the single executive chasing the career dream, it’s a common lament that “I just don’t have time to cook a full, proper meal.” So, you order online. There are only so many days you can eat instant noodles, right, and your favourite mamak place is shut.
Maybe food delivery is burning a hole in your wallet, and maybe, you worry about the food safety part of the meal you just ordered.
We hear you, and we totally get it.
With your home now becoming your home office, you want quick and easy solutions to meal prep in between video-conferencing and conference calls.
Fortunately, it’s super-easy to upgrade your personal space, especially your kitchen, to help you with your own new normal.
Levelling up your home cooking game is as easy as first picking the right tool to work with. That’s the most important starting point -- having the appliance that best answers your needs.
Live Better at Home
We want convenience, we don’t want to spend too much on products with unnecessary features, yet we also want to make the best meals for ourselves and our loved ones, right? After all, we are spending a lot of time at home with our favourite people.
Harvey Norman has been the trusted go-to retailer and provider of solutions for many Malaysian homeowners and consumers since 2003, as the retailer understands what you need for your sanctuary, for greater comfort, ease and to live better.
It has the widest range of solutions for cooking and home appliances -- whether you need an easy-to-use pressure cooker to prepare Mum’s favourite and traditional beef stew while you stew over the latest presentation due tomorrow, or whether you need a guilt-free meal for yourself made quickly and safely with the steamer, Harvey Norman has you covered, and trust us, these wonderful products are not as painful on the wallet as you might anticipate.
Let’s get started with these time-saving and life-benefitting appliances from Harvey Norman and cooking tips.
1. Big families, big meals and big solutions
When you’re married with kids and your parents or in-laws are living with you, you want to prepare a meal that will make everyone happy but doesn’t require three hours of prep. This is where the Tefal Home Chef Smart Pro Multi-Cooker is your new best friend, as it’s so versatile whether you want to pop in the ingredients for Mum’s favourite beef or chicken stew and leave it to cook, or you want to prep another dish that requires a different temperature, because this multi-cooker comes with adjustable temperature, pressure and time settings to make it easy to use. So whether you need high pressure to soften the beef, or less time to cook the fish and vegetables, the Tefal Home Chef Smart Pro Multi-Cooker helps you feed the big fam-bam in a jiffy.
2. The heat is on, the guilt is off
Your kids love your fried nuggets and you love your grilled chicken but you worry about your waistline or the kids’ health when you add the cooking oil, butter or margarine. This is where an air fryer helps, as you can fry, bake, grill, roast and reheat with minimal to no cooking oil or fats involved, giving you healthy cooked food with less guilt. The Philips Air Fryer is your go-to choice, and the best part is how it is versatile in letting you cook different ways, whether it’s frying, grilling or roasting.
3. Well-done, bro
The men in our lives love to sizzle and grill, right? Of course. Have you seen these big boys when they’re presented with a barbecue or a griller? In the time of staying home, you can still have your steak and eat it, too, with this Tefal Optigrill that comes with the special added feature of an indicator to tell you whether your burger patty or tomahawk is rare or well-done. Equipped with six cooking programmes to handle everything from sausages and fish to beef and bacon, the Tefal Optigrill will certainly satisfy the caveman at home when he feels like calling his bro over for a juicy meal and a couple of ice-cold drinks.
4. Power up, smooth operators
Morning and weekend smoothies, perfect juices to cleanse your system when life is hectic -- just as you have a workout buddy, you need a good blender as your kitchen buddy. The Tefal Hi-Speed Vacuum Blender is the perfect choice as it has patented Nutri-Keep technology that preserves the nutrients in your ingredients as you whizz and blend to make that perfect smoothie with more homogenous results (less layers). Not only does this minimise oxidation, but the blender also accommodates both hot and cold recipes as well having a smart jar detection touch screen that lets you customise your prep. Power up your days with better smoothies.
5. Wake me up before I go-go
No more early-morning long queues, crack-of-dawn coffee runs or being disappointed that the coffee didn’t quite turn out just the way you like it. Being at home doesn’t mean you have to give up good coffee. With the Breville Barista Pro Coffee Machine and its intuitive interface, you just press a few buttons and you can have your coffee just the way you like it before you take the day head-on. Its LCD display shows you the bean grinding and extraction progress, and thanks to the single touch grinder control, you get dose control, which brings the exact amount of coffee on demand with maximum flavour. Coffee? Check. Let’s get on with world domination.
6. Warm and tasty, nice and easy
Whether you’re an undergraduate studying away from home, or you’ve just bought your first home or it just feels like there aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done, a microwave is an essential in many households. This time-saving device gets the job done quickly when you want to warm up the food without losing any of the taste, and the Samsung MWO microwave oven is equipped to do just that. There is no over-cooking with this wonderful microwave oven, so if you’re studying late into the night, juggling deadlines or closing deals, you want to have this in your home to help you prep food that retains the texture and flavour of freshly-cooked food. Did we mention the Power Defrost feature that lets you defrost frozen foods quickly? That will come in handy after Grandma or Mum has stocked your freezer for the entire week with numerous containers of her home-cooked magic.
7. Hot air in the ‘hood? We got you covered
While many of us stir, splash, shake and mash all the wonderful ingredients while cooking, our neighbours’ noses are tickled by the aromas wafting out of our kitchen, so as we try to be good neighbours, we could consider using the Brandt combo hood-hob-oven cooker that takes care of the hot air from your cooking and swiftly gets rid of it right there at the source (so it doesn’t waft all over the neighbourhood and the fabric in your home!).
Plus, this Brandt cooker combo features an oil collection system which means -- less cleaning up. Bonus. And if nice and easy slow cooking is what you need, this Brandt cooker hob has two different gas burners with electronic ignition that can accommodate small pans too.
And we must mention the oven’s cavernous 73-litre capacity, which means baking or roasting big meals for that upcoming friends and extended family gathering is no problem.
So whether you want to gently clarify butter for that macaroon recipe, do a sizzling stir-fried crisp veggie dish or roast the chicken with the potatoes -- all at the same time -- this is the combo cooker for you. It will look like two cooks were in the kitchen making all this happen, when in fact, it was all you and the Brandt combo cooker.
These products not only help you live better, but they also come with Harvey Norman’s Shop with Confidence guarantee where if you find the same product at a different retailer for a lower price, Harvey Norman will match the lower price and top up 10% of the price difference within 10 days of your purchase.
The stores’ product experts are in-house, on standby and ready to talk to you should you need to know more about these wonderful home products before deciding which to purchase. This means no matter how unique your needs, there is certain to be a solution for you with the help of the product experts at Harvey Norman.
What’s more, Harvey Norman’s Product Care gives the buyer additional protection on all parts, labour and call-out fees for an unlimited number of repairs. Sounds like a good deal? Visit a Harvey Norman store near you or go to www.harveynorman.com.my today.
