RMCO Day 49 ~ Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Hubs Whatsapped me pictures of a Collie and a Border Collie yesterday! It's something that is totally not him.  When he sent videos of the super adorable Border Collie pups to me, Cass and I thought that he'd like to bring a puppy back to us!  He knows that Cass and I love dogs. And I've told him umpteen times that when the girls have all graduated from Uni, I will get a dog as I would have lots of free time by then😂 

We. Were. Hopeful!  But I knew that it would never happen as  1) someone would FREAK OUT;  2) a Border Collie will grow into a huge dog and staying in a condo, there's no way we can keep a huge dog with lots of fur 😓

Months ago, there were Border Collie pups for sale at the pet shop that Cass and I used to visit after piano class on Saturdays. Those cuties came with a whopping RM8,000 price tag each!!  The pet shop recently succumbed to the MCO /pandemic and closed down 😓

For almost an hour, Cass was begging her dad and grandma to allow her to keep a dog in the house. But I knew that it's not going to happen. Last year she begged me to allow her have a pet hamster or gerbil but having rodents in the house is a big NO!  🙅

Much as I love dogs, having one is just like having another child. I loved all my pet dogs like they were my children and I cried loads when they died. At the moment, I have no time for a pet or another child. I can't imagine myself waking up in the middle of the night to feed the pup or to clean up shit and pee the entire day. NO WAY!  So we had let go of this golden opportunity to have a pedigree pup, offered to us by hubby's friend for FREE. When the time is ripe, I am sure that another pup will come into our lives again.

Kimbap (Korean sushi rolls) and Kimchi balls made by Sherilyn on Sunday evening and Monday evening respectively, for her brunch in school. She made some for Cass too.

Express Homecooked Dinner - 18 May 2015

Mondays are hectic for me. Besides having to make 6 trips (to and fro) to fetch Miss Sociable from her activities, I  have to dish out an express dinner so that the girls can eat by 5:45pm.  Sherilyn has hip hop dance class at 7pm.

Some of the items off my Express Dinner menu are braised chicken drumsticks or wings, spaghetti or pasta and sandwiches. These are easy and fast to whip up and can be quickly finished off too.  No fuss, no sweat, sustaining, wholesome and yummy at the same time!





Pan-fried chicken fillet with fried eggs, organic raw alfalfa sprouts, cucumber slices, organic cherry tomatoes, blueberries and cheese on super crispy sprouted wheat toasts.

Chicken fillet is marinated with garlic powder, sesame seed oil, garlic salt, pepper, soy sauce, ground coriander seeds and palm sugar.






The girls loved this crispy sandwich and were pretty generous with their praises for me, even from the most persnickety and hardest to pleased one! :)


Cost of this meal is around RM30.   I even have extra chicken to prepare another round of sandwiches for Cass and me for lunch tomorrow :)


Tip of the day from HFM: to buy  cheap chicken fillet, chicken drumsticks and wings, boneless chicken thighs for chicken chop, chicken innards or just about any part of the chicken, shop at NSK @ Jalan Kuchai Lama.

NSK sells an abundance and wide array of meat ranging from fish to seafood, chicken, pork and beef at very affordable prices (way cheaper than some wet markets and definitely cheaper than most of the regular supermarkets). You can select any part of the chicken or pork that you wish for whatever dishes that you plan to cook. Best of all, the meat are all nicely packed and labelled  for you, with date and all, so this saves you the trouble and time of having to pack and label your meat when you get back home.   And I love it that the place is air-conditioned and is so much more comfortable than buying meat from stinky and  wet markets :)

How often do you give your kids money to buy food from the canteen?

When tiredness and laziness get the better of me, there will be no lunch boxes for Alycia and Sherilyn. I will give them RM2 each to buy food from the canteen during recess. 

Alycia and Sherilyn are not simple girls who would accept  anything that is packed into their lunch boxes.  Due to time constraint, I can only prepare simple snacks like bread with strawberry jam, marmalade jam,  kaya, nutella or peanut butter chocolate jam.  These are the only jams that Alycia and Sherilyn have approved and they would not accept any other types of jams.  Sherilyn loves seaweed slices with her bread too.

Besides bread with jam, biscuits and cookies go into their lunch box.  Occasionally, edamame beans make a place in their lunch box, but that will depend on their mood. Alycia does not want edamame beans as she says she does not have enough time to eat them, duh! 

I have other easy to prepare snacks in my mind, which I used to give them when they were in pre-school. They are cut fresh fruits, bananas,  steamed sweet corn kernels, steamed sweet potato and hard-boiled eggs but the 2 fussy pots say that they do not have enough time to finish these kind of snacks. Hard-boiled eggs are messy and dry, that's what they said.

I know they would be delighted to have nuggets, sausages, SPAM meat and fries but in my house, these are forbidden food.

So, this means that besides bread with jam on Mondays, biscuits or cookies on Tuesdays, buns on Thursdays, Wednesdays and Fridays would be canteen food day. Sometimes when they tell me that they are sick of bread, bun and biscuits, they get money to buy canteen food for 3-4 times in a week. This makes all of us happier! :)

How often do you give your kids money to buy food from the canteen? And how much?

Seaweed sandwiches

We had several loafs of freshly baked homemade wholemeal bread and the girls had sandwiches for lunch.  While the adults had pan fried Hormel spam meat (something that we eat like once or twice a year only) with eggs and cucumbers, the kids had something else.  Cass was the easiest to please - just give her 2 half-boiled free range chicken eggs and she can wallop 2 slices of bread.  Sherilyn was pretty easy to please too but she wanted something different that day. She rummaged through the drawer and fished out a packet of shredded flavored seaweed, which is her latest craze.

This is what she prepared herself -- shredded crispy seaweed with slices of cucumbers on 2 slices of buttered wholemeal bread!  I also gave her a cup of yoghurt drink with chia seeds for the extra nutrients.

Snacks box

This is Sherilyn's snacks box for recess today, consisting of 3 slices of Gardenia white bread and a packet of seaweed to go with the bread. Seaweed sandwich is her latest craze and she can chomp down 3 slices within 15 minutes!  When it comes to sandwiches, this bread lover can have it 3 times a day! Serving sandwiches as a meal is a fuss-free, muss-free, win-win situation for rascal #2 and #3 and me. They are both pretty easy-going and not very selective. It is the oldest rascal who is the hardest to please for she is the fussiest of the lot with a very pernickety taste bud!

An Open Sandwich For Sherilyn

I have not had the time to prepare interesting dishes for the girls ever since the helper left us about 3 weeks ago. More so for the past one week until now as I want to spend more time to do revision with Alycia who is sitting for her exam this week. When the girls' aunt and cousin from Hong Kong were here last week, revision was put aside for bonding. Now that they have left, it's time to bring the books out and I only had a few hours on Saturday and Sunday to do some quick revision with Alycia.

Several days ago, I prepared this open sandwich for Sherilyn, which took me only several minutes. It's an open sandwich with homemade bread, crunchy meat floss that the MIL bought from Taiwan and mild mayo for kids.

What made Sherilyn beaming with joy was her name written on the bread with mayo.


Sherilyn's lunch : crunchy meat floss mayo open sandwich, organic cherry tomatoes, pink grapefruit yoghurt and fresh coconut water.







Double mayo with her name on the bread - first on the bread, then on the crunchy meat floss, which is Sherilyn's favorite.