OUR ATRINA JOURNEY

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Denise turns 30 - A Pictorial

The last one among my group of buddies to turn 30 :)
Was supposed to be flying kite and having our picnic but due to bad weather, back to my home again.





Saturday, November 27, 2010

Balloon

Remember the craving for balloons? Well the other day it happened again so mama thick-skinnedly walked up to the sales assistant to request for one. She was super elated and hysterical upon receiving it. No pics or videos for that. Happened too fast but I can assure you it was super hilarious! But once the craving died down here's what she did...

The girl who grins

This is her way of pre-redeeming herself when I place her inside the highchair for she knows she's gonna give mama problem during feeding time. And mama's buying it :)

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Recent cooks

Not much of cooking for the week. As usual dinner time was only me and Bean.

Bought a rice mould from Daiso and decided to try make my own onigiri. I do not have short grain rice so I added more water to the rice when cooking. Filling is crabsitck mayo and pounded black sesame stirred with the rice. Quite nice actually :)



Second experiment I used pork floss. Quite nice too.



Perhaps when Bean is bigger I can make this for her :)



Lemon wings. Got the recipe from Wokking Mum. If you do not look at the blackish part in the serving bowl it's actually quite nice. That was caused by the sauce being dried up during baking. I finished my share and these were re-baked for K when he was back from work. His supper actually.



Set dinner for 1. Hahaha dinner alone again so I tried to cheer myself up by making up fancy names. Blanched veggies, grilled prawns and steamed egg custard. Yums :)



Close-up of the prawns. The garlic was kind of raw so I didn't eat that.



Made this when my bro was over for dinner. Baked chicken leg, prawns and root veggies. I am the root veggies expert by now. Forever those same few types and no leafy greens for long time. By the way baked pumpkin is super nice and since my princess hates pumpkin I buy and cook for myself.



Food for the little girl:

Angel's hair with soup and ingredients placed separately. Ya she prefers to eat this way. Most times she can finish 1 big bowl of the pasta.



Steamed egg custard with pumpkin puree. I had to try something interesting to make her eat pumpkin. Have to steam pumpkin and mash then beat together with the egg and steam again. Extra work but totally worth it cuz she loves it so much.



Mashed potato with steamed fish mixed together. Her least favourite is mashed potato but my favourite cuz easiest to make. She got problem swallowing it.



This is the chicken stock I cook for her for noodle soup days. The excess stock will be kept to cook porridge for the next day. 1 pot of stock is good for 4 meals. Can even use the stock for egg custard. Yep these few weeks she has her own stock cuz mama did not cook soup for dinner. For reference, these are the ingredients: 2 chicken bones, 1 cob of corn (Malaysian), 1 baby carrot, some 玉竹片, 1 scallop to 1-1.2litres of water. Some salt to be added when almost ready.



Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Beanster Family outing Nov 2010 - Part 2

* Warning: Text and pic heavy post. Bedok-Orchard-Bedok long journey la... *

How nice to have 2 PH in a month right? Yes so it's another outing for the family :)
Supposed to go on the Flyer with the in-laws but due to bad weather we decided to postpone it till later. K got the 1 for 1 from eating too much Mac Donald's hence the initiative to go Flyer.

The family went to Suntec. Been soooo long since we went there. I missed this place quite a bit. Miss the times we used to loiter around during lunch time and not forgetting the nursing room I never miss to go every single day.

Upon reaching, something bad happened. Some kid holding BALLOON walked pass us. That is such a dangerous thing and we didn't know it before... till that moment. We had a screaming little girl yearning for that balloon. We don't normally succumb to her every request and hence we just walked on. Who knows the little girl refuse to move! She just sat down on the ground of the shopping centre. Very embarassing right? Like the parents never teach her well. Ok nevermind we continue to walk, hoping that she will soon follow. Haha fat hope she just continued to sit there. This is something we realised of late - when she can't get her way, she would simply sit at whichever spot it happened. Or rather did not happen. No choice Daddy had to carry her in order to stop this drama. Yep no more pram for family outings.















Suay or not? Keep walking, keep seeing more kids with BALLOONS!




















"There!!!"















"There too!!!"















Ok finally after some time she forgot about it. Thank god kids have a short memory span. But the other problem is she walks anywhere she likes, not following the parents. For example, loitering at door of carpet shop pretending to shop for real carpets...




















Found the playground S took Adelle but it was very very crowded. Ok she didn't enjoy it much anyway. Wasted our time to walk all the way there.















Her enthusiasm is only that much...



XY with Mama. Don't know what kind of expression. Mama was holding some snacks to get her attention but she rather pull her hairclip off.















More window shopping after dinner...
First stop is to inspect the doors of the closed bank. Somehow she loves doing the "slanted head" action very often these days. Don't know where she learn it from. We have never done such actions.




















Sigh, not even 1.5years old and already 发结婚梦.




















Another instance she refused to go and sat on the ground. I seriously can't remember what was going on. Perhaps K can recall? Ok suddenly recalled. She wanted to go into Kalm's where all the "bear bears" are inside but we didn't let her go so she did her signature move.















After more drama along the way,we reached the diaper change room and after more more drama, finally made it out of the area. It feels so happy and jolly shopping near Christmas time. All the Christmas songs and deco just makes one happy eventhough not celebrating this festival.

Badly taken pic but still post for the sake of Mr Gingerbread Man.















Ah, bet most of us did not notice how many kiddy rides Suntec has right? After that night, K and I totally aware there are LOTS there. Every few steps we meet 1. Somehow by default kids just love kiddy rides and balloons, ball ball. See how happy my little girl was when we put her on 1. But there was a short queue so we had to move on. Another drama of course but we managed to find 1 a few steps away. That one no queue for it. I don't know why there was a queue for this since the characters seems quite ugly to me.




















It's a Yellow School Bus. In US, all the school buses are yellow. A little girl came by to "share".




















Lone ranger again.




















Actually we didn't insert any coin for the ride cuz the seats were too high for her. She has to stand all the while. Sit down, her legs will be hanging in the air. And she really prefers to be inside stationary. I tried a few times inserting a coin previously, she goes all shocked and didn't dare to move. Didn't enjoy it.















Very unwilling to leave and her dad said insert a coin and let her play for a while. This is the same guy who once told me he would never let his kids play "this kind of things".



Surprisingly she kind of loves the ride. At least she responded. Good. Never waste mama's $1.



See the artistic shot mama took after play. It's not ugly. It's artistic. Mama's nose is so radiant it shone (not oily!). The kid looks trapped. The daddy looks forced. Not because he saw the face with the radiant nose pls.



Final destination for the night. Eat ice cream! Found an ice cream shop in a secluded corner. We have come to love secluded places now. No need to feel shy when Miss Screamer does her things. Scream all she wants and no one will look at us. Plastic spoon to entertain her for time being.



This was before we discovered the highchair.



Moved to an even more secluded table after the highchair realisation. She is very happy. Must be anticipating something good on the way. Even a 1 year old knows ice cream is good stuff haha.



And so our order arrived. This is the silliest waffle presentation I've ever seen - Waffle (full of holes at the sides indicating not enough amount poured into the waffle maker) cut into 4 pcs, stacked and ice cream placed separately from them. No fork/knife. Only 2 long ice cream spoons given. It is perfectly understandable if this was charged at hawker centre price but it wasn't. Dumb right? So difficult to eat. Anyway it meant nothing to XY. She was happy just looking at the plate :)



She literally snatched the spoon each time her daddy refilled it. No problem to self-feed at all. No dripping too! Looks like besides donut and bread-like texture food which she can self-feed with fork, she can also self-feed ice cream now.



It was evident that the day's activities left her drained. Fell asleep while on the way back. Usually she awakes when daddy carries her off the carseat but she must be over exhausted this day.



Really exhausted man!



Mama was early to judge. Within few minutes she suddenly sprung to life again and how we wished she could have slept till morning. *Chomping the cordless phone*



Her latest activity - rolling about on the sofa.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Recent cooks

A week of baking/grilling. A week of happiness cuz not as oily as compared to pan-frying.
Hello oven, welcome back :)

Grilled chicken with root veggies. I used Wokking Mum's recipe of Hoisin sauce wings to make this. K was very impressed with the chicken. His exact words "Got improvement, not bad" but I don't tell him what was in the marinate. Hoisin sauce (which I thought never going to finish), grated garlic and ginger. It's that simple. Except the veggies weren't cooked enough. Still very "crunchy". Too crunchy. So I'm going to attempt this dish again the following week to make it better.



Baked rice. Ok I could be a little too obsessed once I got it right (just like the ikan bilis 3 times in a week). I had half a can of mushroom soup left in my fridge along with cheese, pineapples. My bro came visiting close to lunch time so I thought I might make this to impress him and also because he loves cheese.



A slight variation from previous made. Besides pineapple and mushrooms, shredded chickena and cherry tomatoes were added. My dear bro certainly enjoyed it :)



Um... I promise 3 times is my max when I am obsessed. Actually I promised K to have baked rice for dinner but since I made it for an impromptu lunch for my bro so I bought other ingredients for dinner. Seafood theme with tomato based sauce for dinner. Seafood meaning imitation crab sticks and prawns. I spread the prawns only on half the dish cuz XY will be having the same food as us for dinner.



The outcome. Very failure. I think that was because I did not cook the rice with mixed herbs and olive oil spread (my butter substitute). Plain rice is terrible. By the time K ate his portion, worse. Re-baked failure rice...



Don't feel like buying packed lunch downstairs so I rummaged the fridge and came up with this baked potato thingy. A layer of sliced potato, sour cream, chicken chunks, another layer of potato and cheese and off to bake in the oven. Tastes good.



Threadfin in tomato sauce. This was the dish I tried to make specially for XY a week ago but she didn't like it so I took a little to taste and it was really yummy so it was strange why she didn't like it. Cooking threadfin in tomato sauce really cleared my "fear" of this fish which I used to think is very fishy. So I decided to do it expand my dinner menu by making this a family dish. See I bought a big piece of threadfin from the market? Ended up eat with XY since K not able to make it back for dinner again. XY loves it so much and kept pointing to it. Strange right she didn't like it before.



Dinner was complete with my favourite cauliflower soup. Easy to prepare and it's my ultimate comfort food. I only had to put some rice into the soup to feed her (sans the black pepper of course). So that was 1 of those good days I don't have to cook our meals separately. Mama and daughter can eat the same food for dinner.



P/S: I was having my own dinner after XY was done with hers and she kept running back to me pointing for more fish. Mama is happy and will be making it often for her.

Cheater pizza - Hawaiian. Got this inspiration from noobcook (who isn't noob at all!). Pita bread was used as base of pizza. Gosh it worked so well that I think no one should buy frozen ready-made pizza bases anymore.



Portion was just nice for 1 pax although I overdo the toppings. Next try will be using tortilla wraps as base. Even thinner base.



Ok this looks really hideous. I had half a slice of bread and half boiled egg left so I decided to do an experiment (eventhough very full from the Hawaiian pizza above). Spread some wasabi mayo on the bread, topped with ham and half boiled egg. Baked with cheese. Experimenting if wasabi mayo with such toppings can be nice or not. And I think I'm such a genius. Yes, the combination is very nice. Maybe next round I will do that to impress K. Very hard to get a genuine "nice" or "好吃" from him ok.



Lastly, a sample of my little girl's meal. Porridge was served in the chawanmushi cup to look more enticing but it didn't work with her. She KNOWS porridge IS porridge no matter served in whatever fancy tableware. Anyway I now found a special statement to make her open her mouth willingly. Hope it will work in the days to come...