OUR ATRINA JOURNEY

Monday, March 28, 2011

Bean goes to the supermarket

Fairprice Compassvale branch, be afraid. Be very afraid!

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Little Tikes at Parkway Parade

I wanted to rent this toy car but it was closed for the day. K said "Huh still need to pay $3 an hour" initially. After seeing how much his darling girl enjoyed it, he said "Hey let's buy 1 for her to play at home". Me: "No, our place has no space for that kind of thing".

XY and her new bf

Playing sand at ECP hehehe

A day in the East

The final weekend before MJ starts work. We had a little picnic at ECP with the Mamas :) Yeah I always enjoy meeting up with this group of friends. Bean was having a strawberry at Mac's before we managed to find everyone.
*Ding ding ding* The only kid who did not have a change of clothing went for sand play. Hello, Clarice said not going to let Alden play water/sand so I happily don't pack anything. Ended up all had extra set of clothing except Bean. Haha nonetheless we let her go at the expense of having sandy carseat... Ok it wasn't that bad at all. She enjoyed it very much and it wasn't that messy to clean up at all. The kids at play. Little Ranen was with Mama on the picnic mat.
Our picnic mat scene. No peace when Bean came over. She tried to touch and "disturb" everything in sight.
A priceless pic - Bean's parents acting as if they were childless while Goh, as if she has a daughter, besides her 2 sons (cutie Ranen on her left).
Bean's new bf, Ryan. Wahaha Goh says she "approves". Wait, Bean's dad did not approve ok.
Yep she started out by playing on her own.

2 videos in the next post. Blogger doesn't let me copy the link here.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Recent cooks

Eversince I got confirmed for my new job, 1 of the concerns is the meals for the family. I know I don't cook as often as I should be doing these days but when I'm back to working fulltime it will definitely be impossible to cook at all. Dinner delivery might be 1 of the options eventhough the food may have turned cold but it sure saves the hassle of making another trip downstairs to pack food. Gosh somehow now (as I'm typing this) I'm having cold feet. Do I really want to go back to work? Terrible...

I got the job offer on a Fri and I actually did something that I don't think I have done before - Cook dinner on Sunday!! Must treasure the opportunity to have homecooked meals as much as possible. Poor Bean Bean will be eating a lot of MSG very very soon...



A new dish - Garlic mayo cod fish. Taken off Wokking Mum's blog. Simple and delicious dish. I even used the tail part as recommended by WM. Everyone loves it. Sorry I didn't bother to serve it nicely. Just serv together with the baking paper. *Did I mention that WM is my friend on FB? Very nice and humble lady. I like her.*



The fish is baked and it's still very moist inside.



Seafood XO fried rice.
My bro was very very impressed with the dinner that night. *beams*



Pumpkin rice. I think I did a nice job. Bean even ate almost her whole portion despite being sick. But the next time I cooked it she simply refused to eat it. She's getting very naughty these days.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Sick Bean goes to Prive

*Cough cough cough*

Below medicine all belong to my Bean Bean :(
Cough mixture from PD clinic which doesn't seem very effective so I went out to buy TCM cough powder for her. It smelled quite funny but she is able to drink it. Bad thing is, this morning she kept running about while I was giving her the medication and that led to coughing, which in turn led to her puking out the just swallowed medication AND her breakfast cereal/milk. Wa quite heartbreaking cause I was so happy she finally ate a big bowl but ended up with nothing.



Yeah the plan for today was to have brunch at Prive. I have only been there once with Jeanne (2yrs back!!) and wanted to bring my old man there to "have a look". Have to la. He hasn't been out much you know.

See Miss Bean doing a cheeky look to her daddy.



It was very challenging to keep her seated. Make it impossible! She was running around all the time and best, self-challenge to climb stairs by herself to level 2 (TCC). Stressed man. The more I want to catch her the more she ran away from me. Only K can take it. He entertained her while I was sat there with nothing to do. I have no iphone/ipad to play ok.

Finally after like 20min at least we used some props to lure her back to the table. Props as in the children's utensils provided.



Don't want to sit highchair!!!!!!



Finally a pic with mama.



Food is here. Anyhow take pics. No time for what nice angle.
K's cod fillet burger. Costs as much as a Wagyu burger.



XY's pancake (kid's portion) which she never even swallowed 1 bite. I thought she would be happy to self feed using the fork but she just held on to the fork instead of putting inside her mouth. I tried to take over to feed her but she just kept spitting it out without even biting. We finally gave up. We tested the pancake. It was really gooood. I love it so much that I would honestly order it again if we had the chance to go back.


And my open face BBQ chicken sandwich. Not very nice. Very super salty.



The little girl who preferred to sit on a chair instead of babychair. Her lunch consisted of 3 pcs of fries, few bites of K's cod fish and 1 strawberry (from the pancake). So poor thing eat so little.



Another one with Mama. Bad pic though.



We went to the opposite where there's a big free space. XY loves free spaces so that she can roam about haha.

1 beautiful pic of mama and daughter don't you agree?
(Discount the arms pls)




Um... a disturbing shot. That's what she loves to do these days :P



Erm she tried to do some kind of demo here.
Like trying to jump into the sea... Yes, she put 2 legs into the railings and sat there. I was too slow for that.



Ok she found a buoy just in case....



The kind of things she enjoys doing most.



Doesn't look sick at all right?



10min after all the action, she was soundly asleep in the car. Snoring.

Day out with mummy - Counting down edition

One of the day outs with Mama... sob sob.... Mama is going back to work very very soon. Sad but we all have to face the cruel fact that we can't survive solely based on single income. Still, thank you very much K for fulfilling my dream for the past 13 months. No regrets. Tiring yes, but every single day is filled with joy and satisfaction. No amount of money is able to give me that kind of satisfaction :D

XY with Mama at Mama's favourite hangout. Just the 2 of us spending time together is all we need.



Doesn't she look chubby in this pic? Well pictures are deceiving. I also have some pics look "slim" one.



Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Beanster Family Outing March 2011



There she was... enjoying her frozen yogurt from Sour Sally - a new franchise from Indonesia.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A day at NEX



This is the way she behaves... her usual behaviour.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Recent cooks

Woo!! Can't believe it. I've not blogged for the past 3 weeks!! I'm so obsessed with TPF these days hahaha. Go figure out what that means :)

That was 1 of those days I couldn't think of what to cook and had limited resources, yet lazy to go buy ingredients. So we (XY and I) had tomato soup - using canned tomato puree, celery and fresh cut corn. Yes I chopped corn from the cob. For carbs and protein, I spread avocado egg mayo on baguette. XY ate almost the whole portion of the baguette! Sorry I'm still quite anal about the "balanced diet" thing when it comes to food for the little one. Myself and hubby eats all sorts of rubbish and crap though...



Yet again another meatless meal. Have not been doing the Saturday marketing for weeks, hence no fish and market-bought chicken. Macaroni in tomato soup with cheese/mushroom omelette as a side.



Baked chicken leg for XY's dinner. Surprise surprise! I rarely use the "bake" function on my oven and when I used it that day, it gave very good results. The skin was sooo crispy and the meat was tender and juicy given that I only marinated it for a mere 20 or 30min. Can't blame her for gulping up her dinner too fast that night hahaha.



When I can't think of anything else to cook and have limited time, I always do my 菜花庚. I'm not sure friends from my same era knows about this lady 方太? She's a Hongkonger who does cook shows on TV in the late 80s or early 90s. This is 1 of the dishes she did. My late mum used to cook it very often and it becomes kind of like our "family dish" cum comfort food. I did not ask mum how to cook it but I self-experiment till I got it. Wasn't difficult at all. Honestly some days I cook this for lunch, XY and I will have plain rice with this. No side dish needed. Veggies and meat all in 1 bowl. XY loves it too.



Another try at tea eggs. This time round they were too salty though much flavourful then previous round. I wonder is it because of the new salt I'm using or too much dark soya sauce. *I'm loving this new brand of salt I'm using currently. Got it from Daiso. I think it's better than the organic sea salt I used previously and also better than Pan Salt which I just finished.*



鲁肉饭with茶叶蛋. *Love*



The extra broccoli was turned into a stir-fry the following day. Can't remember much about this dish but only rem HWK said not nice. Ya it turned cold and yellow by the time he reached home.



炒三丝 - my new creation. Found this 百页豆腐 in the supermarket which is quite a rare find (to me) and decided to buy it eventhough I wasn't sure what to do with it at that moment. 1 day later, I decide it could be stir-fried with julienned carrot and leftover luncheon meat in my fridge. K loves it. He says "It's nice" voluntarily. That wasn't a family dish cuz of the luncheon meat so I could add in my Korean chilli paste :)



Does this look like 炸酱面? It's actually my new creation of 冬菇肉碎面. I thought it was a nice try. If you are thinking it's strange, why have 2 福州鱼丸 there, well just to clear stock from the fridge :) *While typing, I actually thought this is 炸酱面 haha.*



My new favourite stock - Ikan bilis soya bean stock. Can have noodle soup or dump some yong tau foo and veggies inside can eat with rice too. Hooray HWK very impressed by this ok.



Large amount of ikan bilis and soya bean for a small portion of stock. That's how to make it tasty :)



多日不见的两菜一汤. Been ages since I did that. Very very lazy these days. All my favourite food. Did I mention long bean omelette is my favourite egg dish? I fry some chopped garlic before adding the chopped long beans. Tastes much better, as mentioned previously, this was adapted from noobcook's recipe. Baked chicken leg (XY's portion) as per previous cooking method but the results wasn't quite the same. Teamed with pork rib ABC soup, that made a complete dinner.



Korean seafood pancake. Besides imitation crabsticks, I also added sliced Chuka (if I remember correctly its name). It made the pancake more chewy, a bit like sotong texture. K and I don't like sotong so I used this as a substitute. Huge compliment from K "This is so nice, no need rice actually" and when I told him the pancake mix is finished, he said "Where can get it, you go buy more".



Avocado milkshake. I had it consecutive for a few days. Nice but too overwhelming. Won't be buying anymore avocado for a few weeks at least. There isn't any skills or secret to doing this. Just put half a fruit, 150ml fresh milk (Daisy or HL for the vanilla taste), 2 teaspoons honey and a few ice cubes, blend it well and there you get a nice glass of avocado milkshake. HWK refused to even have a taste of it! Well... his loss. Even XY kinda likes it but I didn't dare to give her too much as there is honey added.


*On a sidenote: I brought 1 glass for my nice Jap neighbour the 1st night I made it and she feedback to me it was soooo nice she and her hubby were "fighting" for it. Made me kind of embarassed for bringing only 1 glass for them to share.*