A Dinner For The Chan Kar

When my parents were here last weekend, my mil cooked up a storm to serve her chan kar. These are the dishes that she cooked:


Clockwise from top : Stir-fried hairy gourd with ear fungus and pork slices, mixed veggie with fresh mushrooms, stir-fried stinky bean (petai) with shrimps and pork slices, steamed woo sow kai (bearded chicken), special sauce for the steamed chicken (fried garlic, chillies, oyster sauce, a little soy sauce and freshly chopped basil leaves), stewed Hakka pork with wood fungus and dried oyster, Ipoh yim kook kai (salt baked chicken) and a pot of healthy Japanese kelp soup with lean pork.


Macro shot of the stewed Hakka pork with wood fungus and oyster. iLike it! Everyone in the family loves this dish. This is an authentic Hakka dish made by a Hakka. Everyone in our family is Hakka but I speak very little Hakka though.


Macro shot of the stir-fried stinky beans...


... and the antidote for the stinky beans - steamed brinjals with soy sauce, garlic oil and toasted sesame seeds. People believe that if you eat brinjals together with petai, the brinjals will negate the bad odor of the petai. You think it's true? I think not that true coz my breath was still stinky after eating the stinky beans... and I hate the aftermath in all the loos in the morning the following day, eeeeeks!! I hate it even more when I have to wash my gals' bump and flush the toilet after their poopie biz! I have to hold my breath to do the chore LOL!

Shopping At Mid Valley And Gardens

We brought the gals to Mid Valley and Gardens on Friday. First we had a very scrumptious lunch at our favorite Taiwanese Restaurant, Fong Lye located at Gardens. After lunch, I bought Baby a pair of new shoes and Alycia her first pair of white rubber shoes (for Primary 1 next year) whilst my mil shopped for some kitchen ware at Pavillion at Gardens. Then we spent our time snapping pix of the gals admiring the X'mas decor at Gardens before we headed to MPH to shop for books. Daddy said there is a RM800 rebate from Income Tax for purchase of books, so he spent close to RM500 on books!

Baby was really fascinated with the X'mas trees decor. It was her very first experience with X'mas trees decor at a shopping mall. Last year around this time, our time with her was spent in and out of hospitals :(

Alycia spending a light moment with Baby.

Bumps And Bruises All Over

Who? Rascal #3 of course and all her falls from chairs, couch and the bed are not deterring her a wee bit from climbing and diving. She's still as samseng, agile and boisterous as ever. She doesn't seem to get tired too. She sleeps as late as 11pm and wakes up as early as 6ish am almost everyday, doesn't nap for long during the day and is bursting with energy. She had just done several rounds of forward rolls on the bed just a moment ago when I was in the bathroom. At one point, she was just an inch away from rolling down onto the hard floor. I could only watch in horror from the bathroom and screeeeeam like a mad woman and then threaten her by yelling "I AM GOING TO CAAAANE YOOOOOOU!" repeatedly before she stopped briefly and then continued to roll and dive from the bed to the mattress on the floor nonchalantly.


Yesterday while my maid and I were helping my little vain pot choose her dress in the bedroom, this cili padi was weaving in and out under us and before we knew it, there was a loud bang and she bumped her forehead on the wall. There was a blue-black bruise on the forehead instantly and moments later, a 'bungalow' appeared.



I quickly took out an ice cube from the freezer and wrapped it with a hanky and applied it on her forehead. But this rascal snatched the hanky away and put it into her mouth and sucked on the ice!
This cili padi, she is really 'hmm keng sei' (fearless), just like rascal #2.

Another Barney Lover

What's it with the old purple dinosaur with a husky voice of an old man that almost every kid love eh? Alycia and Sherilyn love watching Barney and now Baby is hooked on it too. Almost every kid whom I know of loves Barney too. I wonder why. I asked Alycia why she loves Barney and she told me that's because Barney always makes all the kids in the show happy!

Baby is watching Barney here and hugging a BJ bolster that Daddy bought for Sherilyn 3 years ago.


The only way I can make Baby sit still while I spoon-feed her formula milk three times a day is to turn on the idiot box and put Barney or Hi-5 on. Baby's favorite character in Barney is Baby Bop. Each time I ask her "what do you want to watch Baby?", she will answer me "Bop, Bop!"


I hope Baby will not turn into a TV-addict just like her 2 jie jies when she grows up.

Lip Smacking, Bone Licking Fried Fish

What can really light up Alycia and Sherilyn's face is when they see a plate piled up with fried fish on the dining table. Alycia used to love eating chicken and pork when she was younger but lately, she has fallen out of love with the bird and hog. Instead, she loves fish now, especially fried fish or steamed cod fish, salmon or seabass fish. When there's fried fish for dinner, there will surely be shouts of "hooray and yummy" from my 2 brats. They've got expensive taste too, prefering to eat only expensive steamed fish... but of course, they don't get to eat salmon, cod fish and seabass everyweek. Daddy and mummy will go pokai lidat!

Here's how Alycia prefers to eat her fish - WYSIWYG, that is the whole fish, complete with the bones. And she can debone the fish pretty neatly too, eating only the meat.
With her fingers, she dug out every bit of meat from the fish bones....



... and licked the plate used to place the fish clean too, so clean that I don't even need to wash it haha!

Red Wine Infused Cranberries And Walnut Rye Bread

My mil baked 3 loafs of red wine infused cranberries and walnut rye bread last week. It was one of the tastiest breads I had tasted. But the process of baking the bread is rather tedious and long. The day before, she made the first batch of dough and let it prove/ferment in the fridge for 17 hours. The following day, which was 17 hours later, she made another batch of dough and mixed it to the first batch and let them prove for another 45 minutes before putting the dough into the oven for baking. She also boiled the cranberries in a pot of red wine on a stove before adding the cranberries into the dough.

The final dough fermenting....

The delish bread, fresh from the oven. The aroma of hot bread fresh from the oven can really make your tummy rumble!



Bursting with red wine infused cranberries and walnuts. It's so tasty that we don't even have to put any jam or bread spread on the bread. Yesterday, she baked carrot bread with sunflower seeds. I hope she will bake this cranberry-walnut bread again this week!

Driving Me Dizzy

This little rascal is driving me dizzy each day with her never-ending daredevil stunts, climbing, jumping, rummaging through our drawers and closets and touching things that she ain't supposed to. Here she is caught in action:


First she pushed 2 stools to the dining table chair, then climbed up the yellow chair, from the yellow chair, crossed over to the green stool and from the green stool, climbed up the dining table chair. She found this so fun and challenging, like an obstacle course in an adventure camp.



She then sat on the dining table chair and flipped through my newspapers, as if she knew how to read them!





From the dining table chair, she proceeded to the next obstacle and she got hit on the hand for meddling with mummy's keyboard. One time, she pushed the shut down button on my computer and shut down my computer, with my data all unsaved.

Minutes later, she climbed up the couch and gave me another heart-stirring moment when she did multiple forward rolls. From the couch, she climbed down and wanted to do forward rolls on the cold hard floor!! I whacked her bump and she ran to the bedroom, climbed up the bed and did more forward rolls - from the bed rolling down to the mattress on the floor. Yesterday, she did several rounds of diving from the bed onto the mattress on the floor. She went on and on and didn't want to take her afternoon nap. I was so burnt out standing guard behind her that I went to my bed and fell asleep first... with her standing on my pillow and her itchy hands meddling with the clocks on our bead headboard. She finally dozed off at 6ish pm, phew....

Pumpkin Bread With Scrambled Eggs For Lunch

Baby has been having the sniffles and she still has quite a bit of phlegm. All these have been dampening her appetite. Lost for ideas again, I really didn't know what to cook for her. So I whipped up something really easy and simple for her the other day. I gave her a small slice of organic pumpkin bread with sunflower seeds slathered with some Philadephia cream cheese and avocado. Also made some scrambled eggs with butter and fresh milk. I cut everything into small bits and sprinkled some rice bubbles onto the concoction as Baby loves rice bubbles. Rice bubbles are puffed rice, so it's quite wholesome right? Vitamins and iron enriched rice somemore, hehe... I thought she would spit them all out again but I was wrong, she so loved them, phew....






She spoon-fed herself and licked her bowl clean, YAY to mummy and Baby!

Cakes And Breads Everyday

This week, here's what my mil baked :

2 loafs of organic Japanes pumpkin bread with sunflower seeds (I had forgotten to snap pix of the bread)...

Banana muffins....




A batch of crunchy butter almond flakes cookies....

.... which were polished off within 3 days.

And 2 days ago, she baked 3 loafs of rye bread with red wine infused cranberries and lots of walnuts. I shall pix of the bread in my next post.

On top of these, hubs' aunt baked these lemon-poppy seeds cuppies and carrot-walnut cuppies, all with reduced sugar and gave them to us.


Next week, she's going to bake strawberry swiss roll and a new type of bread. Oh gosh, there is NO way, absolutely NO way I can shed off the stubborn 2kg. I tell ya, my jelly belly is getting wobblier by the day!

Stickers Craze

Baby is following the foot steps of both her jie jies' bad habits. She's already a boisterous samseng like them, now she even likes the things that they like - stickers. It's ok that she likes stickers but sticking them all over her body and face, now that irritates me coz eventually, the stickers will go to the bin. Such a waste of money right?



Alycia sharing her precious stickers collection with her beloved Baby.

Something that can keep Baby still on her potty while she does her poopie biz.

Totally Diaper-Free Now

Finally, the long awaited day arrived 3 days ago when Sherilyn went diaper-free at night, at 4 years 9 months old. I know it's a tad late for her as I have been too lazy to wake up at night to bring her to the loo to pee. I just let nature take its course and I knew that she will be ready on her own. Actually, she has been resisting wearing a diaper at night quite some time back but after a few pee accidents, I didn't want to take the risk ... so I forced her to wear a diaper to sleep at night. And actually I wasn't ready yet to let her go diaperless at night so soon but my maid and I had forgotten to put on the diaper for her 3 nights ago. But the following morning she woke up and happily announced "mummy, I didn't shee shee in my diaper!" That one successful night turned into another, then another and yesterday was the 3rd night she was diaper-free. I am so happy coz this means hubs can save the money to buy diapers for Baby!


See how samseng and unlady-like this rascal is here!

Banana Buckwheat Pancake

I made the gals buckwheat pancake again. This time it's with bananas since I had some very ripe bananas at home. Overly ripe bananas would taste really sweet and fragrant when used to bake cakes or pancakes.

I added 3 eggs, 2 huge scoops of Aly and Sher's Dutch Lady 456 milk powder, a 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla essence and a pinch of salt to the batter.


The banana pancake was really scrumptious. Even I liked it. But it looked like chapati / tosei though!


When Alycia came back from school, she couldn't wait to taste the pancake. I told her to keep her dirty hands off the pancake and here's what she did :

Old Helper vs Current Helper

My current helper only cleans the air-conditioner filter once a month or only when being reminded by me. I really have no idea why she can never finish her chores at home, even with me, my mil and hubs helping out. Sometimes we engage helpers outside to clean the windows and fans. Our previous helper cleans the air-conditioner filters every week without being told. I think if we have a furnace at home, she can even clean the furnace filters without any problem and without being told. She cooked very well, managed the kids fairly well and was polite. She was by far our best helper but too bad she didn’t want to continue working for us. I heard she’s now working in Singapore. I am happy for her as she is really a good domestic helper.

Scared Or Not?

Rascal #3 now spends her days climbing up chairs, couch, table tops, beds and hiding inside our sliding wardrobe. Nothing will deter her, even after hitting her with a cane!

The other day, while climbing up the dining table chair, she fell and hit her forehead. Of course she bawled but moments later, she seemed to have forgotten what had happened and started climbing again. When my mil saw her climbing the dining table chair again, she tried to frighten her by turning the chair backwards until it touched the floor... with Baby on it. Boy, was she scared and she lay there frozen muahahahaha!



We all asked her "scared or not?" .... and she said "yesh" LOL!

Baked fish With Butter And Mixed Herbs

Ever since I have finally figured out how to operate our new digital oven, my mil and I have been using it to the max. The oven had been left idle for exactly a year and now we are making up for the under utilization. She bakes breads and cakes several times in a week and I bake fish several times in a week, haha!

Here's the fish that I baked yesterday:

Fish with McCormick mixed herbs, some sea salt, chopped garlic and butter, wrapped up in aluminium foil. This is before baking.



This is how it looks like 10 minutes later in the oven. The fish was very juicy and tasty. It's really easy and convenient to cook fish this way. Very minimal washing too as the fish is baked in an aluminium foil.

The next oven baked menu on my list is baked chicken, which is something that I've never tried before on my own.

Payment From Google AdSense

I got my third payment from Google AdSense recently - USD119.61!



After currency conversion, I received RM400++. Though this amount is nothing to shout about, I am still happy coz I didn't have to do much to get this money. I must thank you, my readers for clicking on my Google ads. Please do continue to click on my Google ads hor, you know, the ones on the right side of my side bar and at the end of my blog post. Thank you SO much!!

Used Playpen For Sale

Anyone looking for a used playpen? I have one at home. I bought it for Baby in December last year, so the playpen is around 11 months old now and it still looks new. I thought I could cage Baby up in this playpen until she's at least 2 years old but since last month, she's been climbing out from it like a tiger cub.

This Sweet Cherry playpen was bought at around RM300 and I'm willing to let it go at RM100 (mattress not included). If you are interested, please drop me an email at shireenyong@gmail.com and I will let you have my house address to come and pick up the playpen. Cash on delivery k!







Comes with 2 mozzie nets and a side pocket.

Do let your friends know about this sale too! Thanks, thanks!

Like Father Like Daughter

Monkey see, monkey do....


But baby monkey is smarter - she lay the floor with cushions too :D

Simple And Yummy Lunch For The Kids

Daddy had bought a lot of buns and bread again from our favorite bakery. I had wanted to rehead the frozen bolognaise meat sauce and boil some spaghetti for the kids but mil suggested to finish off the buns first since there were too many. So the kids had buns with bolognaise meat sauce and for dessert, mah mah's home baked egg sponge cake (kai tan koa).


The bolognaise meat sauce.




Butter buns sandwiched with bolognaise meat sauce and home baked egg sponge cake.

Disney Face Mask

My mil bought a few packs of Disney face (made by Kimberly-Clark) mask from Hong Kong recently. They cost HKD15 for a pack of three masks for kids. They look really cute but kind of expensive. How to have the heart to throw it away after a single use?

A Cut On Her Lip

You know why I hardly ever leave Baby with my maid when I need to bathe or do my business? That's because each time I leave Baby with that lady, something shocking is bound to happen. First she gave Baby a pencil, which Baby eventually ate the pencil lead. Then yesterday, I thought I could just leave Baby with her for 5 minutes while I quickly go and relieve myself on the throne. Lo and behold, half way through my business, I heard Baby waaaaaailing painfully outside. Without even finishing what I had to finish, I quickly washed myself up and dashed out, clad in my towel. Baby had climbed up the couch, fell and hit her lips on the shape sorter toy. There was BLOOD and a cut on her lower lip!

That hopeless fler is always like that. I can never ever trust her with anything. I could only guess that she was too absorbed in watching Barney on TV that she did not even realized Baby had climbed up the couch, aargh!!! She always gets very consumed watching TV when she spoon-feeds Baby milk. If she doesn't watch TV, she will doze off while feeding her, sometimes with Baby on her lap.

After applying a piece of ice on Baby's cut lip, I brought her in with me into the bathroom. And there was mayhem in the bathroom again. That's what I get when I pay close to RM1k a month (salary + agency fee + her expenses + miscellaneous fees). Really fuming mad!



Baby's cut lower lip. Now, that part of her lip is bruised and swollen.

Sinful Indulgence

These have been my latest sinful indulgence:

Royce chocolate wafers which my mil bought from Japan. With Royce, anyone would get hooked on their chocolate.




See's toffee-ettes made in USA which my mil brought back from Hong Kong. This almond coated toffee is just too addictive! But after popping 2 or 3 into my mouth, the guilt is just too corrosive!! I really wish my guilt could corrode away the calories too hahahahahahah!


Munchy's oat krunch with organic hazelnuts. This is a new product from Munchy's. The other flavor is oat with chocolate chips, also very delish and addictive.
With so much sweet temptation at home, there's no way I am going to shed off the stubborn last 2kg gained after Baby C. Even with half an hour of 4km run each day, my weight ain't budging a wee bit, especially my wobbly belly. I guess I have to work a little harder and increase the intensity and duration of my jogging session because I am still not keen to rely on even the best diet pill just yet.

Cute Pau

Hubs bought a pack of these cute cute pau in the shape of animals from the pasar malam the other day:



The paus have kaya and lotus paste fillings. iDont really like the taste, they tasted a tad wierd but Alycia is crazy over them. Alycia does get attracted to food prepared in cute shapes after all... and not only Sherilyn as I'd thought earlier.

She Likes It This Way

That's how Alycia likes to eat her mango - WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get!) - flesh on the seed, uncut. I like it this way too. The syiok feeling you get when you sink your teeth into the soft, sweet flesh with juice splattering out, nice, iLike it! But can be really messy with juice dripping everywhere and the fiber of the mango lodged between the teeth, hah!

Mayhem In The Bathroom

As Baby is getting more and more active these days and now cannot remain in her playpen (not even for a minute for she will climb out in a matter of seconds), I have to bring her along everywhere I go, including to the bathroom every day - twice a day *wipe sweat from forehead*

I tell you, there's mayhem with her in the bathroom. She will touch everything she sees except her toys. So while I am seated on the throne or having my shower, I let her sit on a small stool or bring in some toys for her (which she will only play with them briefly). I also let her wear a pair of slippers so that she will not slip and fall.



Here she is trying to wash the bathroom with the broom. She thinks this is so fun and does that all the time!

See, she is really sticking on to me like a big hungry leech. I can barely breathe! Quickly grow up Baby. And oh yes, she loves to use the hanky that I wipe her mouth and teeth to scrub the bathroom floor too, eeeeekkssss!

Itsy Bitsy Spider Climbing Up The Wall

Baby does not seem to be bothered by spiders. Maybe that's because she loves the song 'Itsy Bitsy Spider Climbing Up The Wall' and loves watching this nursery rhyme played on TV. When she sees a spider, instead of screaming "eeeeeks" and running for her dear life, she will giggle, as if she saw something really funny and will attempt to catch the spider!

And the funny part is she is quite terrified of bubbles! I don't know why but when she sees the bubbles and suds on my bath loofah, she will shriek!

Here, Baby had just pooped on her potty and I was about to shower her when I saw a spider climbing up the wall.


I showed her and she giggled with excitement, then reached out her hand and wanted to touch spidey!
Doesn't my sweetie-pie cute in her red bikini? Cute hor?