RMCO Day 106 ~ Wednesday, 23 Sept 2020 (Random Updates)

I'm back at churning out fruit smoothies for the girls again after a hiatus of more than half a year.  Cass has been suffering from constipation for the past week, a side effect from the strong antibiotics administered to her intravenously and orally when she was admitted to the hospital for UTI three weeks ago.  Initially she suffered from diarrhea, then I gave her probiotics and the diarrhea stopped but in came the constipation. This is the reason why I would never allow myself or the girls to be given oral antibiotics unless absolutely necessary in a do or die situation.

Dragon fruit, banana and apple smoothie with a few shakes of organic lemon juice.

The constipation was so bad that nothing seemed to work to jump start her defenseless lazy bowel. Not even enema. She was bloated and had no appetite.  Strangely, she craved for instant oats with fresh milk, a comfort food that my mum would feed me with whenever I was sick when I was a girl.   I also encouraged her to eat my skinny sugar-free yoghurt, which she surprisingly liked though it was sour.   After several meals of organic oats with milk, smoothie, yoghurt and tummy massages (using peppermint essential oil), she finally made the dump, yay!!

There was a little drama surrounding the organic oats when I was about to prep some for Cass' lunch when she returned from school yesterday.   When I opened a packet of organic oats that I bought yesterday morning from the pharmacy, a weevil crawled out and gave me a scare!  The weevil, the size of a baby butterfly fluttered its wings and was about to fly away when I quickly yelled out to Cass to help me scoop it back into the packet of oats.  Some of the oats had a layer of glue-like web and I think it must be the excrement from the weevil and its family.  Imagine the weevil survived months inside the packet of oats all the way from New Zealand.  Ewwwwww!!  This made me convinced that the oats are genuinely organic as pests can survive in it for months. This is not the first time I find weevils in organic oats, rice and noodles.   Later I brought the packet of oats back to the pharmacy for an exchange and the owner recommended a premium brand of oats to me, which costs double the price!  On top of paying an additional RM5 for the price difference, I had to pay RM1.50 for car park again, just to get the packet of oats exchanged.  😕. 

My packet of Signature Premium organic instant oats, steel cut from oat groats. I guess this should be free from pests as the oats have been steamed.  The oats taste better than regular oats as they are roasted and have a distinct earthy aroma.  

And if Cass is willing to eat oats regularly, I don't mind getting a premium brand with better quality.  Oats are incredibly nutritious and chock-full of health benefits. 

Our lunch at Seoul Korea again on Sunday - our all-time favorite and something that we will never get bored of.

Haze Holiday (Wednesday, 18 Sept 2019)

Sherilyn received a Whatsapp message from her school teachers at around 9:45 a.m. yesterday informing her that school's out for a day caused by the worsening haze. Like most school kids, she was overjoyed!  So was I!  School holiday = NO school run and NO mad rush cooking dinner!  She quickly removed her school uniform and donned on her outing clothes and to Mid Valley we went for retail therapy 😎

Again, I gave her the liberty to pick a restaurant of her choice for lunch and she chose Japanese.



The API breached the 200 level yesterday. It's worse today with a reading of over 300 at some areas in KL. We could smell strong acrid smog inside our house and outside was choking!



Cass and Alycia's schools were the remaining few schools in the Klang Valley that were still open yesterday.  We spent the whole day checking the Education Ministry's website and on the API reading to see if KL's API reading has breached 200 (API of 200 would mean closure of school). Finally we received notice from the respective ministries that all schools in the Klang Valley will be closed for 2 days (Thursday and Friday). Someone was too happy 😏

Sherilyn spent the entire evening practising the pieces on her guitar for a librarians' farewell party to be held this Saturday. Check out the hazy skies.




Dinner was grilled cajun, black pepper and turmeric chicken wings and ribs (organic Pineapple chicken), mash of carrots + sweet potatoes + cauliflower, cherry tomatoes and sweet corns.



For more information on organic Pineapple chicken, have a read here.

Sherilyn also made a healthy crispy vegetarian pizza using her homemade tortilla and homemade pesto, Camembert cheese, onions, cherry tomatoes, walnut and almonds.




Healthiest mash ever composed of sweet potatoes, organic cauliflower and carrots, seasoned with organic grass fed butter, salt, black pepper and fresh milk.   Dump everything into a mixing bowl and blend with a hand blender.  You can also blitz it in a blender.  With a hand blender, cleaning up is slightly easier.


Do give this no-guilt mash a try. It's healthy, wholesome, lower in carbs, full of fiber and vitamins and pretty easy to whip up!

Organic Food Products

Eating organic doesn't come cheap and I'm only a partial organitarian. Out of the 8 items in the above shopping cart, only 5 items are organic and the total bill already exceeded RM100!  The organic items are cherry tomatoes, raw honey, cucumbers, soy sauce and snacks (baby snacks!).

The Organix baby snacks are really yummy and crispy but expensive!  They are made from non-GMO corn with no added salt and sugar, with a sprinkle of onion powder, tomato powder, sunflower oil, apple powder and Vitamin B1.  At about RM4.50 a packet (one pack contains only 4 small packets), they make great snacks for the girls' recess.

If I were to go 100% organic, our grocery bills will triple the amount each month!

Are you a 100%, partial or occasional organitarian?

Organic Dinner - 13 July 2017

Tonight's dinner is 90% organic.  If I could afford it, I would want my meals to be 100% organic.

On the menu tonight is pork chop, baked beans with onion omelette, blanch vegetables, onion sauce to go with the pork chop, tomatoes and sliced kyuri.

Organic items on the plate are:
Pork chop from Berkcious free range Berkshire black pigs
Baked beans are organic from Bionova which I got from Green Wellness online shop
Tomatoes - certified organic
Eggs - not organic but are antibiotics-free and growth hormones-free
Vegetables - not organic but are free from pesticides
Soy sauce used to marinate the pork chop are organic
Tomato sauce for the onion sauce is certified organic, which I got from Green Wellness as well.
Brown sugar used to season the onion sauce is organic

Non-organic items are kyuri, onions and cooking oil.



The Berkcious free range black pig pork chop is SO tender and juicy. The girls and I love them.  I used 1 pack of free range black pig pork chop and another pack is non-organic pork chop from the Berkcious range and is also free from antibiotics and growth hormones.

Verdict: the free range black pig tastes way better in that the meat is more tender and juicier.





Even the basil leaves used as decor is organically grown in a pot in my little balcony.  I bought organic soil for my plants.


Organic baked beans from Bionova...




Berkcious free-range Berkshire ribeye from black pig ...


For RM32.08, there were only 5 thin pieces of pork slices, which is definitely not enough for my 3 piranhas! Next time, I have to get 2 packs.

Cobs Organic Popcorn

Cobs organic popcorn is by far the best (healthy yet tasty) ever popcorn we have ever tasted.  We still like Garrette's popcorn, but we find their range too sweet (and pricey too) and doubt that they use organic corn.  We still buy Garrette's popcorn occasionally on cheat days.

I chanced upon Cobs organic popcorn while browsing at the organic food section at Jaya Grocer. Cob's organic popcorn has this irresistible combo of organic raw cane sugar and and sea salt on sun-ripened organic corn with just the right proportions of sweetness and saltiness. The popcorn is:

Gluten free
Cholesterol free
100% organic
GM (genetically modified)-free ingredients
Kosher certified


I am definitely going back for more! It's a healthy snack that our girls and I can snack on sans the guilt.

Shanshui Free-Range Chicken

About two weeks ago, I found someone who lives at my neighborhood who arranges Group Buy on Facebook for naturally raised free-range chickens. The chickens are bred in a farm in the outskirts of Selangor. They are slaughtered at pre-dawn and delivered at 6am to this lady.  I was so excited!  As you know, I am a total health freak. Each time I buy regular chickens to cook, I limit my girls' intake of the meat. I am sure by now you know what goes into our chicken feed these days -- antibiotics to prevent diseases and growth hormones to accelerate the chickens' growth to meet high demand. I have recently posted an article on how bacteria becomes resistant and one of the causes is livestock fed with antibiotics.

This retired lady who is organizing the Group Buy was very helpful. She sent the 2 freshly slaughtered Shanshui free-range chickens to me in the morning and only charges me RM5 for handling fees. The chickens were cut into 16 pieces each and vacuumed packed.  I can also have the chicken tailored cut.




I had the chicken steamed with sea salt, red dates, wolfberries, ginger wine and a few slices of tong kwai.




It was so yummy! The meat is firm and juicy.  The girls and I polished off the entire plate of chicken that evening. I still have another Shanshui chicken in the freezer and I am planning to cook rice-cooker chicken rice next week. This time will save some for the King of the house (he is a chicken lover too) to sample :D

Organic Food

I am a sucker for organic produce and food stuff. Some of my toiletries and skin care products are organic too.   Most of the vegetables that I buy are organically or naturally grown without the use of pesticides.

Every Saturday, I will stock up my organic stuff from my favorite organic shop.

Below is the loot from the organic shop last Saturday...

Brown rice crackers, miso sesame dressing, natural bean sauce with toona sinensis and Job's Tears.  The sauces are used to season noodles, fried rice and dishes.  Job's Tears is to be boiled with barley every other day. It is good for cleansing of the bladder and kidneys.








The rice crackers are very crispy, not too sweet and fresh. Cass eats them for breakfast and sometimes brings them to school for recess.




Original dark soy sauce with no preservatives, no coloring and no flavoring.

Wat Tarn Yee Mee (Yee Mee In Egg Gravy)

Dinner a few evenings ago was 'wat tarn yee mee' and 'wat tarn meehoon' (Cantonese style / Kong Foo Chow)

I am a lover of vermicelli / meehoon. While the girls had sweet potato yee mee, I had meehoon.

The girls had the sweet potato yee mee from Lohas  straight from the packet, with hot egg gravy poured onto the noodles.  The sheer crispiness from the yee mee interweaved with the hot egg gravy make this noodle dish very interesting.





I can never get sick of  eating meehoon. I love it cooked in any style. It's my all-time comfort food, though it's a high GI food. To slow down the spike in insulin, I always eat meehoon together with protein like meat and eggs.




My egg gravy composed of Berkcious minced pork, squids, organic miso, naturally fermented bean paste with toona sinensis, organic shoyu, pepper, lots of chopped garlic, fresh portobello mushrooms, free-range chicken eggs and organic Chinese cabbage.

Berkcious pork is free from growth hormones and antibiotics.




My bowl of sweet potato yee mee is 90% organic.  Even the scallions are organic :)




My 8-year old bookworm enjoying her yee mee and all soaked up in her book on David Copperfield, borrowed from her school library.

Lohas Natural Pumpkin And Sweet Potato Yee Mee

It looks like the 2 sisters here are snacking on Mamee.

Nah, I never buy Mamee. The girls often receive them from class parties.




This pumpkin yee mee from Lohas tastes very much like Mamee. In fact, it tastes even better than Mamee, minus the MSG, preservatives, flavoring and food additives.  I bought it from an organic shop. It's SO crispy and fresh!!  A packet costs RM6.90.






Lohas is a local company that distributes organic and natural food stuff.  I love their range of healthy products.

Besides eating the pumpkin yee mee as it is, straight from the packet, I also whipped it into a meal for dinner. Our 3 girls are big fans of yee mee but I always have qualms buying the ones sold outside, especially on the oil used to deep fry the yee mee.  Imagine what ingredients go into a packet of  6 pieces of yee mee that only costs RM3.50 a packet.




Tastes just like the ones sold outside, my fish ball and fried minced pork yee mee is way healthier.  I used organic veggie, Aussie carrots, organic tomatoes, organic scallions and Ikan Parang fishballs from Pulau Ketam. Soup base is anchovies with garlic and onions.





The girls loved my yee mee!

I cooked extra fried minced pork, enough for whipping up another fresh dish for lunch the next day.




Lunch the next day was blanched vermicell with lots of chopped scallions and leftover minced pork. Vermicelli was lightly darkened with organic shoyu and seasoned with sesame seed oil and pepper. You can also use organic thick black bean sauce and organic blackstrap molasses to replace regular dark soy sauce, which has chemicals that are carcinogenic.








I bought another packet of yee mee from the organic shop the following week and this time, I chose sweet potato yee mee.

Below - yee mee straight from the packet with  leftover braised pork ribs with sweet potato that I cooked for dinner the previous evening.  I popped the braised pork ribs into the microwave oven and minutes later, the 3 of us had a yummy and healthy lunch on a busy school-going weekday!