A Cat Who's Always Hangry

After her spay surgery a few months ago, Haru has turned into an even more hangry cat.  To begin with, she's got a very good appetite even before the surgery but after the procedure, she could even eat double the amount of what she used to eat.  I guess it's because of the empty space left in her abdomen cavity after both her ovaries and uterus were removed surgically, leaving more room for her intestines to expand. Logical explanation? 

A cat her age usually eats twice a day but Haru needs 4 feeds a day:

Morning - a packet of 85gm or 100gm fish + water

Mid morning - a packet of 70gm fish or two tablespoons of grain-free Urban Wolf Adventures kibbles (made from seafood, fruits and vegetables) + water

Tea time - two tablespoons of grain-free Urban Wolf Adventures kibbles + water 

Supper - a packet of 100gm fish + water

She also gets one or two mini treats in between these 4 meals, which is her catnip biscuits (no more than 6 pieces a day as it contains wheat/grains, something which her stomach doesn't tolerate well).  Sometimes we give her a pinch or two of our pau and bread and share our hard-boiled eggs with her.

With so many meals a day, Haru is still hangry.  Whenever she smells chicken, pork or fish from the kitchen or dining table, she'll hunt for the source of the aroma until she finds it.  Many times she jumped onto the dining table to steal our food the second we turned around and walked away!  She's always stalking us!

The next time we bring Haru to the vet, I have to ask our vet if it's normal for a spayed cat to be this hungry or if she she worms in her tummy!

Caught in action seconds after she jumped up the dining table to snatch our dinner. And guess what was in her mouth? Bitter gourd omelette! This hangry fella swallowed some bitter gourd! 😂.  She even stole our onion omelette and burnt fatty char siu once. And she threw up the same night after gobbling down a big piece of burnt fatty char siu that the mil threw into the thrash can.

A Guide to Finding Your Dream Prom Dress

Prom night along with graduation mark the end of high school and the start of a new chapter of a student’s life. A culmination of four years of learning, camaraderie, and school spirit for the senior class, prom night is often the last time the entire class is all together before graduation. That is why choosing the dream prom dress is so important as the girl dreams of looking her absolute best on this very special night.

 

As the prom night is such an important event in a teenager’s life, finding the perfect prom dress involves so much time and effort. Get started early and follow this guide to find the best dress for the party of the year!

1. Plan In Advance

Plan four to six weeks (or even earlier) ahead of your prom night. You may need alterations on a dress or suit and ordering it in advance gives you ample time for any alterations done. Decide if you’d like to purchase the gown online, from a boutique, bridal shop or have it tailor-made. The best is to find a shop that sells cheap prom dresses and suits to help your parents safe some money.

2. Do Your Research

Take cues from what you saw in magazines, red carpet, catwalk and what you are seeing in the stores now to find some of the most sought-after styles of the season.

3. Plan Your Budget

What can really crush your feelings is trying on a beautiful dress only to find out that the price is no where near your budget.  Therefore, before you begin to look, let the sales assistant know your budget and if you’re doing your shopping online, filter the results so you can only see the dresses you can afford. One place to get affordable prom dresses is Customizeone, an online store that carries a neat range of gowns and suits.

4. Choose a Dress Style That Suits Your Face and Body Shape

Finding out what your face and body shapes are will help you to match these to the ideal dress, one that flatters and accentuates all of your good features, hiding anything you might consider a flaw.  For example, if you’re a plus size, choose A-line dresses made of sturdier fabrics such as cotton, rayon and polyester rather than flowy, clingy options like satin and silk.  If you have a round face, choose a dress with a deep V-neck to create the impression of a sharper face shape.

5.  Decide The Style That You Want

Once you have done your research and decided the style that you want, narrow down the search to save time. It could be a halter neck A-line floor length gown, short prom dress or mermaid prom dress.

6.  Find Out the School Dress Code

Many schools have instituted dress codes for prom dresses and men’s prom suits. Strapless styles, mini dresses, plunging necklines or other sexy details may not be permitted. Additionally, the school may institute a theme for prom night and request that students’ outfits reflect the theme. Be sure that you take cognizance of the school dress code and guidelines before you start shopping.

Now that you have the tips to find your perfect prom dress, it’s time to get started. Remember to look for a great fit that suits your body and face shape, a beautiful color that plays up your best features, a dress with embellishments if you want that extra special quality, and remember to go for a dress that you feel your best in! 

Happy shopping and happy prom night!

 

Seafood Tomato Soup

Our teenage chef whipped up a huge pot of tomato seafood soup a few days ago. When she discovered that the punnet of tomatoes in the fridge had turned bad, she substituted the tomatoes with a whole bottle of tomato puree for the soup base. 

What inspired Sherilyn to cook this soup was the seafood tomato soup that she ordered on her birthday at Red Kettle last week.  

Seafood tomato soup whipped up by chef S.  It's composed of tomato puree, herbs and spices, a whole Garoupa fish head, salmon, squid rings, loads of chopped onions and carrots, and a can of abalone.  It's my kind of soup - so delish and so rich.  I can have this every day, to go with toasted sourdough slices, baguette, or just on its own as a keto meal.

The pot of soup was so huge that we had it for 3 days. Yesterday was the 3rd day that we had it for lunch.  Our chef also made a quick pan-toast double mozzarella cheese sandwich to go with the soup.

Seafood tomato soup from Red Kettle, our family's favorite fusion restaurant. We celebrated Sherilyn's 17th birthday at this restaurant last week (16th February).

Easy-Peasy Few-Ingredient Snacks Made By Cass

Lately, Cass is into whipping up healthy snacks for breakfast.  With only about 10-20 minutes available in between online classes in the morning, she Googles simple recipes for a healthy breakfast.   

We have another finicky eater at home now who prefers to whip up her own food vs. outside food!

Cass is also into 16-hour Intermittent Fasting and this is not my idea. I really don't know who influenced her to be on a 16-hour IF.  I've been on a 12-hour IF for years but she beats me to it with a 16-hour IF.  She even does it on school-going days despite me protesting. We had a major heated argument over her not eating in school and she's still not eating in school 😥😥.  She says she doesn't feel hungry at all while in school as she only sits at her desk the entire time in school.  Due to Covid SOPs and restrictions, physical education and CoCo activities are halted.  CoCo activities will resume in March but will be conducted online.

Her first meal of the day after 16 hours of fast is very heavy. She has food from the previous day's dinner followed by a fruit smoothie or yogurt, both of which she adds a handful of frozen walnuts. Then she has fruits and if she still feels hungry, she has a bowl of granola or whips up microwave mug cakes.  

Cass loves pancakes and crepes. Lately, she's been making them and has a big stack of them for brunch. 

Cass made a very healthy and absolutely delish 'ice cream' for dessert after brunch today. It's composed of skinny and sugar-free yoghurt, frozen bananas, and frozen raw walnuts, all blitzed in the blender.  It's so delish I think she can sell it. 
She uses different ingredients every day but skinny yoghurt is used as the base.   Some of the ingredients used are mangoes, strawberries, apples, kale, baby spinach, and whatever she can find in the fridge. 

This 'cookie' is made from organic oats, blended into powder, mixed with honey, walnuts, Lakanto keto sugar, a splash of milk and a few drops of vanilla essence. All the ingredients are blitzed in the blender and baked in the toaster for 15-20 minutes.  It's crispy and my kind of healthy cookie!

Haru Our Smart Kitty

Haru is just like a loyal guard dog. She guards the Roborock while it does its job around the house. Whenever the robot tries to eat up our indoor slippers, Haru will push the robot away with her paws to safe the slippers.  She's getting better at it by the day.  Today when the robot was about to go near my kitchen slippers, Haru sat on my slippers and pushed the robot away with her paw 😂.  She's such a smart guard cat!!

Haru's got a bottomless pit too. She can eat non-stop and the only time she'll stop eating is when she's too full and throws up 😹

Sitting next to Cass and waiting for her sister to give her whatever's in the bowl. Her favorites are pau, bread, eggs and cakes.

Chinese New Year 2022 ¬ Day 6

We wanted to eat something that's not Chinese after almost a week of having CNY dishes twice a day.  So we went to Money's Corner Food Court in Brickfields where there's a good choice of delicious hawkers fare ranging from Indian to Vietnamese, Western to popular street food, such as Char Koay Teow, Chee Cheong Fun, pork noodles and more.

Peter's pork noodles is one of the best pork noodles in KL.  Generous with pork and pork lard, the bowl of noodles in rich pork soup is a must-have at Money's Corner for fans of pork.

Our other favorite at this food court - Moorthy's Mathai Nasi Briyani with a good choice of delicious Indian dishes for you to pick. 

Our third favorite - beef pho and Viet food. This stall is run by a former chef of a popular Vietnamese restaurant at Mid Valley Megamall.  He and his wife are Vietnamese.

In the evening, a lion dance performance was held at the pool side of our condo.  Some rich neighbors hired the lion dance troupe to perform a spectacular dance on stilts.

Poor Haru was super duper terrified of the banging and thumping of the drums and cymbals. She hid behind my computer desk for hours and refused to come out even after the thunderous sounds of the drums stopped when the show ended.

Two days later on Pai Ti Kong day (Hokkien New Year), our scaredy cat was again scared shit of the thunderous sounds of fire works which lasted for almost an hour.  We had already put her back into her cage but she was so terrified of the blasting sounds that she squeezed herself out of the tiny gap under her cage!!  Sherilyn had to cuddle her tightly for the entire hour from 12 - 1am and slept on the couch that night to accompany her manja meow!

Chinese New Year 2022 Photos

Our talented in-house teenage chef S whipped up Phoon Choi on Lichun day (4th day of CNY). 

Her Phoon Choi was superb - the broth was a stunning combination of flavours coming from the abalone, mushrooms and homemade chicken stock.  The mushrooms were beautifully glossy with a luxurious mouthfeel, the fish maw was smooth, silky and without a tinge of fishy smell and all other dishes from the stuffed dried oysters with fish paste to the abalone and tofu pok were very flavorful and a delight to our taste buds. The only flaw was the prawns as we ran out of big un-shelled prawns in the freezer - we had cooked them on CNY Eve, thus had to make do with small peeled prawns.

Phoon Choi is quite a cinch to cook - dishes like braised mushrooms and stuffed dried oysters can be cooked in advance and assembled on the day of serving.

The broth is one of the most important component in the dish as it can either make or break the entire dish.  Our chef S whipped up a winner broth where all the other components in the platter soaked up the toothsome soul satisfying liquid.  The broth gives the entire dish more depth of flavor.

Camwhoring after lunch on the 2nd day of CNY.

Chef S with her meow.

Our spoilt meow.

Higher Cost Of Living

This is my grocery cart today.  As you can see, all the items in the cart are healthy stuff, they are our necessities.  

Skinny low fat and sugar-free yoghurt, fresh milk, grated coconut, 2 heads of broccoli, 2 Marmalade papayas, a packet of sweet potatoes, roast almonds, Ohkuraen Japanese matcha (my favorite brand of matcha), and a pack of MTEX KN95 face mask in my favorite color (pink).

Damage from this grocery trip is RM118!  If I added organic vegetables, eggs, and meat, the bill will run up to at least RM160.  And if I threw in toilet papers and other toiletries, the bill will breach RM200.  And had I chosen a costlier brand of milk and taken Greek yoghurt or imported yoghurt instead, the bill will cost even more.  The China broccolis are on promotion at RM3 for a head and are not even organic. Had I opted for organic broccoli or Australian broccoli, it would cost double or even triple the price.  Had I shopped like how I used to, today's shopping trip would have cost at least RM250.

It's so costly to eat healthily as an investment for better immunity and health. With the prices of everything going up this year, I have to stretch my money even more and the only way is to cut down on organic produce, cut down on luxuries like ice-creams and snacks, and choose cheaper brands.

Am I the only one feeling the pinch from the inflation?

Chinese New Year 2022

This year is the second year we have had a low-key Chinese New Year in KL.  The last time we celebrated CNY in Ipoh was in 2020. I've not seen my parents and older brother (and his family) from Singapore for 2 years, except for video calls and photos via Whatsapp.  I really miss all the fun times we had in KL and Ipoh before Covid lashed out across the world.  Our girls and their Singaporean cousins have definitely lost touch with one another. The next time they meet each other (most likely in 2023), they'll probably feel like strangers again.  The twinnies may have even forgotten us becoz they were only 2 years old the last time they met us.  😓

This year, all our meals have been within the six of us only.  No house visiting and no gathering.  Hubby's cousin who stays in our hood has been flagged as close contact and couldn't come to our house to celebrate. We packed food for him and dropped it off to him at his car in our condo lobby.

CNY Eve lunch - roast chicken gifted by hubby's friend who owns a chicken farm.

CNY Eve dinner - simple CNY dishes and a Yee Sang.

Dishes and lotus root soup packed in takeaway containers for hubby's cousin.

'Jai' on the first day of CNY and red bean tong sui packed for hubby's cousin.

I'd like to wish all my Chinese readers a very prosperous Chinese New Year. I hope that the year of the Tiger will bring everyone roaring success, wealth, good health, and happiness.