Eat-with-your-family Day

According to my dear husband, it was supposed to be Eat-with-your-family Day on Thurs, 27/05 and the office will have an early release at 5pm. I was out during the day (shopping with my Beanie) and rushed home at about 5pm. Thought my hubby will be back soon but waited and waited... He reached home at almost 7pm. Chey what early release?? He said he had a case to do so had to finish then can go home.

Anyway to fulfill the "theme" of the day, I die die cooked up a simple meal with the help of my good friend: CP wanton. *LOL*

Shrimp wanton 粿条汤 for him.



















Mine with cherry tomatoes.



















Notice the new bowls? Yes, I specially bought them for noodle soup times :)

As an added bonus for my dear husband, I attempted to make red bean soup. I have to stop him from buying it from the stall downstairs. Homemade red bean soup is sooooo cheap and easy to do. What an ugly pic I took...

Dinner last night

Anyone watches the cooking competition show hosted by Mark Lee 我要当食神? I try to watch it every week. Either the 8pm one or the repeat at 1230am. The contestants come up with a simple dish they create on their own according to the ingredient of the week. Very interesting show and I always try to copy 1 or 2 recipes. The super easy ones la. So this week's ingredient was: chicken wings. 1 of the ingredients I use most often in my cooking cuz it was the easiest to get and my silly husband likes it very much. 1 of the contestants used 当归(I think I got the characters wrong) and I decided to use it for my dish too.

My 当归 mid-joint wings. Quite nice but should have steamed it about 5-10min longer.



















Proud of my new creation :)
























The veggie dish (stir-fired cabbage) was not worth a mention. Same boring kind of veggie dish as always...

Ending my post of a "unisex" pic of my little Darling.
She loves crawling into the study room and stand here to disturb the box. I don't know what's inside the box. Can my dear husband pls enlighten me?

Monday dinner

I should start a series called Monday dinners since I cook dinner almost every Monday.

Bought dried abalone slices from 福华 and made an impromptu decision to cook this soup. I'm not sure is it called ABC soup. I used 2 slices dried abalone slices, 3 pcs dried scallops, 2 medium potatoes, 1 medium carrot and 2 chicken drumsticks for about 2litres water. Gosh the soup is very flavourful and don't even have to add salt to taste. Tastes exactly like mum-cooked. I even scooped 1 small bowl for XY and reserved 1 big bowl for her porridge base for the following day. She loves the soup so much (just like me!) and her porridge for today smells so good. Should I make it my signature soup then? * Dilemma cuz my chicken white fungus soup also very yummy * What what? Who said I thick skin? Soup is easy to make what.

My ABC soup. Potato obviously overcooked but still nice anyway.


















Cabbage stew. Ingredients are the same heroes present in my famous cabbage rice. Why do I say famous? Cuz I cooked cabbage rice 2 times in 2 weeks. Haha. The heroes are long cabbage, pork belly (bought from market stall, cooked) and dried shrimps. Itchy hands me added mushroom slices for the stew and made it taste a bit strange. Wonder is it the problem of the mushrooms not very tasty or this dish tastes better without it.


















Above portion was mine cuz not very hungry at that moment.

Colourful biscuits

Did I mention how much I love my weekly trip to the market at Sengkang Square? I seem to have a new discovery every time I'm there. 1st visit I realised they are opened till late (7pm still opened). 2nd visit I realised the seafood is super cheap compared to Cold Storage. Offhand I remember the large prawns selling at $9/kg. Less than half price of what CS is selling. I usually buy about $7 or $8 worth of red snapper / red grouper and some minced pork (about $4) which is enough to last about 10 days for XY's porridge. The real reason why I go to the market is to buy fish and Indonesian pork for XY's porridge. The advantage of buying fish from market is that you can choose the slice you want and request for the seller to cut into small slices for you. Also, you can't get Indonesian pork from supermarket. They only have Australian. Yesterday's visit, as usual I pass by the provision shop opposite the vegetable stall and I noticed they sell biscuits in tins, just like any other provision shop. But what got me to stop in my steps were the kind of biscuits I used to eat when I was young, at least 20yrs ago. A small round pce of biscuit with scalloped edges topped with a coloured sugared icing. Couldn't help it and went ahead and bought $1 worth of it. It tastes exactly the same as I remembered it to be :)

I finished those within minutes!

My little XY

Just a quick pic update. Still as cheeky as ever :)

Beanster family outing May 2010

How I miss the days (before having XY) that we could go out any time of the day without having to do much preparations... These days we have lots of stuff to do before going out. I mean ME of course! We usually wait till XY wakes up from her pm nap, bath/change her and out we go. I personally don't like her to miss her pm nap (she might have difficulty sleeping in her pram) cuz she could get cranky early in the evening and that is no good for us. So the preparation starts about 2hrs before we are ready to go. I cook her porridge and transfer it to our good old trusty Thermos container. Porridge is still piping hot when served. The purpose of going down to town was to show K my dream C bag. Ok he doesn't really appreciate it a lot but I'm quite sure he could see the difference between lambskin and caviar (calf leather). As usual, K commented that black does not suit me. That's fine cuz I wasn't about to go for black either. Can you guys believe it? Beige medium flap in caviar gold hardware was actually sold out! It retails at a good whopping SGD4330 for god's sake and I'm not about to buy the bag locally. Buying a promotion plane ticket to Paris and staying a night at a budget hotel would probably be cheaper than buying it locally. Can see how overpriced it is in SG?? Anyway I asked the SA when would the stocks come in (I'm seriously itching for it) and they had no idea. If I wanna, I could put my name on the waitlist which I've read on some forums they don't call you back unless you put a big deposit for it. So I questioned the SA how sure it would be that I leave my name on the waitlist I could get the bag. She said they were quite a few names already and they weren't sure how many pcs arriving nor when. So putting my name on the list does not mean I could get it on the next shipment? She challenged me by saying that is a regular item, not limited, so it's not so bad blah blah. Yeah since it's a regular item how could it go out of stock and how can they not know when is the next shipment arriving and how many pcs? Crap! Somehow I suspect she's keeping something from me and the price increment could be somewhere soon. Read on cozycot the price increment in EU is next month. Could be 10%. Scary!

Um.. ok back to the happy family thingy before I go too far again. It was sheer bad luck for us. On the way out, K was like dreaming or something and went the long way (again!) and we spent some extra petrol travelling some extra distance which made us arrive even later and we left home at almost 530pm. Reached Orchard, cannot find parking lot. The one at International Building raised the fee by more than 2 times. Nevermind that. Go in can't find a single lot. Realised their machine faulty, full still allow entry. Wasted time to get the right person-in-charge and spend time find other parking place. Gosh why is it soooo hard to get a lot? When we finally done, it was time for dinner. I wanted to go to the food court at ION. Was a good thing we did cuz XY kind of cranky and made a lot of noise. Kept shouting and yelling for don't know what reason. If this happened at a packed restaurant, we would have been asked to leave. I'm sure.

XY seated in a silly Rubbermaid highchair which was so low it was hard to feed her from where I was sitting.


















Me having the MOST delicious 海鲜汤 ever served in a food court. They even have 粿条 which I initially thought I could offer some to XY after she finished her porridge but then I realised the soup is seafood so she shouldn't have any.

Pls! A whole scallop. I bet this is the only stall in SG that does it. The whole thing is so yummy and it's only $4.80!!!

Ran out of cloth bibs and brought along a disposable one which even has this velcro thingy exactly like those cloth types. I'm impressed. The little one machiam like looking for her long-lost Dad.

Can't remember what she was doing. Pretending to cough or puke or something...

Little XY was very interested in the family seated next to us. Also very interested what the 姐姐 was having.

XY: "姐姐 your 油条 looks very delicious, could I have some pls? My Mummy is very evil. She cooks my meals without any seasoning and oil. My food is so bland :(."

XY: "Mummy, you are still the best. The 姐姐 doesn't understand what I'm talking, unlike you."

Suddenly at about 9pm this girl fussed a little and I popped her her favourite soother. She fell asleep in the pram. Woohoo!

What a rare sight that I immediately had to snap a pic of it. We were back at the carpark and preparing to head home then.

Upon reaching home, she suddenly sprung to life. Anything that is within her reach is not spared.

Mama's day out

Once a week, I drop XY off with my dad on a weekday afternoon and I go off to have a bit of "ME" time. My "ME" time does not last very long, usually about 3-4hours and I'm back to my old self. I can't say how glad I am for this time of the week. Well, this week I went for my supposedly-monthly session of pedicure (I don't cut my own toe nails). Not trying to act tai-tai here but that's like my only form of indulgence and I watch a DVD movie every time I go there so it's like 1 stone kill 2 birds kind of activity. Not forgetting the massage chair (albeit quite rundown by now) the nail place has. I love going to this nail place cuz of 2 things: my manicurist, Germaine who does the most thorough job and always remembers my regular nail colour (that could be not a so good thing cuz sometimes I point to a certain colour and she would remind me I have already used it before. I could point to several colours and she telling me the same thing till I decide ok a repeat colour is fine!) and my regular drink and the cozy environment which can be a little too dark at times and you can't see very clearly the nail polish colour till you leave the place but it's ok for me cuz I'm not particular about my nail colour. I just need to neaten my toenails and have my feet scrubbed. Nail colour does not matter that much to me. 1 more good thing is that the manicurists here don't make small talk nor pester you to top up for anything extra. They leave you in peace to watch movie or take a small nap. I really love this nail place except for the aging massage chairs. Feedback quite a few times to Germaine and she always replied "They are expensive to change". Well, give me a "normal" chair in good condition than a rundown massage chair anytime.

Anyway, after my pedi I popped into a hair salon downstairs and changed my hairstyle totally. I only wanted to shorten it but the stylist kept asking if I wanted a bob. Ok, fine. I'm very 随便 these days with low expectations and have totally stopped pointing to hairstyle magazines for haircut. The cut was really short. Much shorter than I expected. The hairstylist asked if I was afraid, she could do it "less obvious". Heck, since is already like that then go all way out. I told her just cut anything she wants I don't mind. I was quite pleased with my new hair. May go back in a few weeks' time to trim to keep it.

Ended my "ME" time by going down to the #32 place to collect my watch. A hefty $220 for overhaul and change of battery but the watch sure shone and looks good as new :)

My new hairstyle... quite flat by then. Pics taken at the end of the day.













































With my little Darling...

The girl who takes everything she can get hold of

Poor little girl. Mummy pushed all the stuff inwards so that she can't reach till she grows taller or arms grow longer.

Great, her Dad left his wallet and that pack of ciggies too near the brim of the coffee table for her to reach.

My not-so-lonely lunch

This morning before hubby went to work, he told me he could come back during lunch time after he was done at customer's site and asked if I was going to cook lunch. So what I did was ransack my whole fridge, yes I could make a simple meal for both of us :)

Mid joint wings with cabbage stew. Does not look appetising but it was really yummy. Best of all it's a no brainer, no skill required lunch :)

Bean Bean, the sick girl

Poor little Bean so exhausted she fell asleep in the pram on the way home after seeing doctor. We didn't carry her out for fear of waking her up. Put her in our room with fan blowing her. She slept for almost 1 hour.

Dinner on Monday night

Mama Jo still managed to make dinner despite having a sick child at home :)
Thanks to hubby who stayed home on childcare leave, I had the chance to go to market buy my stuff.

Dinner was a simple one. No choice Bean Bean very cranky and grouchy these few days...

Chicken white fungus soup. It was so nice (again) that I decided to make this my signature soup :)) Funny thing, Mum used to cook this too but I didn't appreciate it till now...


















Long bean omelette on rice

After bath activity

Bean enjoys doing this after EVERY bath time. And only after bath time. She won't do it other times no matter how you lure her.

AJ's attempt in prawn noodles

So the story goes...

- Reached home at close to 5pm.
- Still cannot decide what to do with the thawed pork ribs and prawns.
- Made a decision at 5pm to cook prawn noodles.
- Parboil pork ribs and boil in 1200ml water.
- Add some 玉竹 to boil together.
- Remove head from prawns and stir-fry with whole garlic cloves till fragrant.
- Add into the pot to boil together.
- Buy noodles, fishcake and kangkong from Fairprice.
- Soup ready after 2hrs.
- Lay all ingredients in bowl and serve.


















Mine.

Hubby's. With pork ribs.

Xiang Ying trapped at home

Where's Daddy? Out for smoke break.
Where's Mummy? Outside snapping pics of XY :)

Little Beanie first time lunch out with Mummy

As the title suggests, she's having her lunch out. Home-cooked rice porridge in a hot Thermos container that is :)

We were on the way to Central to meet Auntie Den and this little girl is hungry. Her usual lunch time is about 12-1230pm.


















Came across this newly opened organic shop which not only sells organic products but also serves healthy meals so we decided to have our lunch there.

Shop name is "Real Food and Beverage".

Nice menu























Little Darling sitting quietly while Mummy checks out the place.

Gave us a cozy feeling upon entering.


















Denise had mushroom noodles. She said it was good.


















Mine fried brown rice. Very nice. Much exceeded my expectations. I could never make a fried rice this yummy and neither does it taste like the typical zi char taste. Only thing is that it was a bit oily.


















Dumpling soup to share. Soup was a tad too saltish but we loved the dumplings. Pls note this place does not serve complimentary iced water and everything served on the menu are meatless.


















Beanie very interested in Auntie Den's lanyard. Nothing unusual...


















Yeah! Finally a full length pic with my gal :)























We had the whole table to ourselves. How cool is that! Love that "privacy". The seats on the upper level were kinda cramp.

This Auntie likes to take self-shots with Beanie.


















Organic grocery section but I think their variety is very small. Think their main focus is on food. For wider selection of organic food, I prefer Four Seasons at City Square.

The girl finally navigates in the walker

Bath time new scene

Continuation...

Auntie Jo's first Mama's day

We didn't have a big celebration. Just went out for a meal. Our family of 3 :)

It was Mama's day and Mama got to choose what to eat. We went to Tampopo at Liang Court. Been ages since we went there and the newly revamped place is nice. The last time we were there, big part of the mall still under revamp.

Spider roll. Super nice. But very expensive. To me la...

Keith's dinner. I don't know why they place the rice at the other end? Mrs Peter would have failed this presentation without second thoughts. *LOL* Tasted very nice though. Prefer this to Tonkichi which I find very 腻. * If you look carefully can see XY's porridge container on the opposite. I was feeding her. *

My mini chicken shabu shabu with ramen. Very nice. Whoever thought of pairing lettuce with this is a genius. But by the time I was done feeding XY, the flame already half gone so I requested to re-light the hotpot.

Half eaten...

Lettuce...

My little Princess with her multiple funny expressions.

As usual pulling her Dad's hair. Or maybe he enjoys her pulling his hair :)

Classic one...


















Run out of words to describe... judge for yourself.

Finally my turn to take pic with my Darling. Yeah we all have to shift to that seat cuz of the baby highchair. * Note the stalk of carnation given by the restaurant. *


















She was super interested in the carnation.

Not that I wanna show of my armpit but that flower was the thing that could lure her to look towards the camera and she kept snatching it from me!


















See, no flower not interested at all.

Test night shot mode with my camera. I think it was very good. For my skills I mean.

Vertical view.

On the way back on NEL. I love this one :))

Other random shots...

My Darling doing her favourite *clap clap*



Thanks to hubby for a nice family day out :)