My Morning Ritual: Nourishing the Day with Healthy, Colorful Beverages

Mornings are sacred to me, and not just because they mark the start of a new day. I genuinely look forward to my morning ritual of sipping on a healthy, comforting beverage while taking my daily supplements. There’s something deeply satisfying about fueling my body with nourishing ingredients first thing in the morning—it sets the tone for a mindful, health-focused day ahead.

One of my all-time favorite morning drinks is made with Chinese almond powder. I’ve always loved its unique sweet, and slightly pungent taste. It reminds me of traditional Chinese desserts, but without the guilt. I use the unsweetened version, of course, and I mix it with ground flaxseeds and unsweetened cocoa powder. This has been my staple mid-morning drink for quite a while.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting and expanding my morning beverage blend to include black sesame powder and dehydrated purple sweet potato powder. Both powders are completely natural, unsweetened, and free from additives. The black sesame powder brings a deep, nutty richness, while the purple sweet potato powder adds not only a gorgeous violet hue but also a gentle, earthy sweetness that pairs beautifully with the almond base.

My favorite combo now is a mix of Chinese almond powder, ground flaxseeds, black sesame powder, and purple sweet potato powder. It’s a wholesome, antioxidant-packed drink that’s both tasty and beautiful to look at. The vibrant purple color from the sweet potato powder makes it feel like a treat, and the flavor is delicate yet satisfying.

Interestingly, Sherilyn uses the same purple sweet potato powder to make a syrup for her cafe-style matcha drinks. It’s always fun to see how we all find different ways to enjoy the same ingredients!

I feel that having this variety of healthy morning beverages not only keeps my taste buds excited but also helps me stay on track with my health goals. Every ingredient I choose is carefully selected for its health benefits, and there's a quiet joy in knowing I’m doing something good for my body—even before the day has really begun.

So, what’s your favorite morning drink (besides coffee and tea)? 

My wholesome almond + purple sweet potato beverage. Love the vibrant violet hue! This brand of almond powder that I bought from Lazada is one of the most aromatic, and it's sugar-free.

100% purple sweet potato powder, also purchased from Lazada.

The almond powder (RM25) only lasted 2 weeks. It's pretty expensive for a 200gm tub.

A Colorful, Mostly Veggie Dinner — Nourishing, Light & Easy on the Tummy

When it comes to mealtimes, I’ve learned that nothing makes me feel better than a plate full of fresh, colorful vegetables. Over the years, my eating habits have naturally shifted toward a mostly plant-based style — with lots of veggies, fruits, nuts, and plain yogurt — though I still enjoy my fair share of pork, chicken, and fish for balance.

I’m especially grateful that my three girls share the same love for veggies, especially raw ones. This has made healthy eating at home so much easier, and I always feel happy seeing them enjoy a plate of greens without fuss.

Tonight’s 'dinner' (eaten at 1pm) was another colorful and satisfying bowl:

🥒 Raw sliced cucumbers
🍅 Raw sliced tomatoes
🌶️ Radish kimchi (for that perfect spicy, tangy kick! And it's homemade by Sherilyn)
🥬 Blanched celery and snow peas
🍢 4 sticks of chicken satay

It was simple, nourishing, and absolutely delicious! I love meals like this — mostly vegetables with just a small portion of meat (less than one-third of the plate). It’s easy on digestion and leaves me feeling light, energized, and good about what I’ve put into my body.

As for breakfast and lunch (breakfast eaten at 630 am and lunch at 9 am), it was my usual lineup of wholesome favorites:

☕ Decaf coffee with fresh milk
🍊 One orange & a juicy ruby red kiwi
🍋 A glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice
🥣 A warm almond milk drink with dehydrated purple sweet potato powder and ground flax seed
🥚 One half-boiled egg
🍞 Two slices of sprouted wheat bread
— One topped with black sesame paste, and the other paired with savory chicken serunding (Malay-style meat floss).

And later this afternoon, when Cass returns from school, I’ll have my light ‘supper’ at around 4pm — just some blanched Siew Pak Choy and a handful of homemade granola with nuts. Sherilyn made the granola  a few days ago.  Simple, healthy, and filling enough to keep me going till the day winds down.

My last meal of the day on most days is no later than 5pm.

I’ve come to appreciate how this way of eating — colorful, balanced, and mostly plant-based — has not only helped with digestion but also lifts my mood and energy. Food really is medicine when we eat mindfully.

So tell me, what’s on your plate today? Are you a veggie-lover too, or do you prefer a more protein-heavy meal? I’d love to hear your favorites! 🌱🥗

My light 'dinner' at 1pm today - 4 sticks of chicken satay, sliced cucumber, tomatoes, blanched celery + snow peas, and homemade radish kimchi.  

Our lunch and dinner yesterday - chicken satay, beef satay, fried meehoon, kuih, and other dishes from hubby's kitchen.

My Favorite Healthy Dessert: Chia Seed Pudding

One of my go-to healthy desserts is chia seed pudding, which I enjoy every other day. It’s a simple, delicious, and nutritious way to satisfy my sweet tooth. My favorite version is made with coconut milk and palm sugar. With 3 to 4 tablespoons of soaked chia seeds, I mix in a squirt of trim coconut milk and drizzle it with Gula Melaka (palm sugar) syrup. On other days, I switch things up by adding soaked chia seeds to a bowl of skinny yogurt, which is sugar- and additive-free with a squirt of palm sugar syrup. For a creamier texture, I sometimes add a spoonful or two of Greek yogurt to the bowl of skinny yogurt. On days when I am too busy to enjoy my chia seed dessert, I will quickly stir in two tablespoons of soaked chia seeds into my morning beverage of organic almond milk with flax seeds meal.

Why Chia Seeds Are So Healthy

Chia seeds are a true superfood, packed with nutrients despite their tiny size. They are an excellent source of fiber, which helps prevent constipation by promoting regular bowel movements. The fiber also aids digestion and keeps you feeling full for longer, making chia seeds great for weight management. Additionally, chia seeds are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which support heart health, and they contain important minerals like calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus, essential for bone health. Plus, they’re a good source of plant-based protein.

This simple chia seed pudding is tasty and provides a powerful health boost, keeping my digestion smooth and my body energized. Whether paired with coconut milk or yogurt or added to my healthy beverage, chia seeds make a versatile and satisfying dessert!

Simple chia seeds pudding - soaked chia seeds with trim coconut milk and Gula Melaka syrup. Mix everything up and enjoy it chilled. This tastes like sago pudding with coconut milk and Gula Melaka syrup.

Saturday, 15 June 2024

It will be a long, late night for Cass and hubby today.  Cass has a figure skating rehearsal at the skating rink from 10pm to 12 midnight. Fortunately hubby is free tonight to do the chauffeuring, otherwise, I'll be waiting at the freezing skating rink until midnight. 

Cass has been eating clean and healthy lately. These is what her meals look like these days:

Salad with kimchi, Korean marinated pork, half an avocado, broccoli, cauliflower, and scrambled eggs with cheese. After her main meal, she ate a slice of air-fried sprouted wheat bread, low-fat yogurt with granola, an apple, an orange, and a few slices of papaya. 
 I also air-fried a slice of quiche, which was given to us by Alycia's bosses at the cafe that she works part-time at. When Alycia's bosses heard that she injured her hand, they passed some goodies from the cafe to her.

Steamed marinated spicy chicken chop, an ear of whole corn (I sliced out the kernels from the cob), sauteed assorted vegetables (from her dad's kitchen), steamed sweet potato, and sweet cherry tomatoes. I love the colors on her bowl, and so does Cass. I'm glad my years of training her to eat vegetables have paid off well.

After Alycia's terrible mishap in the kitchen last week, resulting in shards of broken glass cutting her finger badly, we now have a phobia of using glassware. I've since switched to using stainless steel bowls and containers.  Moreover, our microwave oven died on us yesterday, so we have no choice but to reheat our food using stainless steel dinnerware in the wok 😁

My Simple And Healthy Breakfast

If only my girls could eat such simple food for breakfast or even lunch, life would be so much easier for me and for them, and healthier too!

Chicken porridge before going to the hospital with Sherilyn.  The chicken meat used to cook the porridge was leftover Ipoh salt-baked chicken for dinner.  Luckily I ate this bowl of porridge that was enough to fill my tummy up the whole day as there weren't many good choices of restaurants and cafes at SJMC. We were stuck at the hospital for 6 hours.

Mashed purple sweet potato with Lurpak Light butter.  I love this butter as it's healthier and less salty and made with only a few ingredients - butter, water, rapeseed oil, lactic acid culture, and salt.

Egg and purple sweet potato boiled in the same pot.  This was what I ate for brunch before I started cooking lunch for the girls.

Colorful Meals

Maria has not been consistently coming to work for us lately.  From thrice a week to twice a week to  once a week to only once in 10 days now.  Her excuses were headache, feeling dizzy, stomachache and other excuses. I wonder if she's telling the truth or she has jobs from other houses where she's paid higher wages.  I know that she's now working as part-time maid in other households vs. only working for us in the pre-pandemic years.

I really think that she has to be forthright with me. If she really wants higher wages, she has to ask me and not keeps giving me endless empty promises of coming to work only to tell me at the eleventh hour that she's not coming.  I think it's not acceptable and very unfair to me to have to wait for her till 5pm, only to be told that she's not coming. 

For the record, I have increased her wages twice over the past 12 months. I think she wants even higher wages. 

During the pandemic years when we were worried of having her work for us due to how rapidly Covid was spreading, Maria begged me to allow her to work for us, asked for a pay cut, as long as she could work for us.  I gave her full wages and took her in.  

Because of Maria's unreliability, meals dished out at home are now pretty simple. And we get takeout and food delivery several times a week. Sometimes we have food from hubby's kitchen.

I cooked this meatless vegetables soup, using dashi and vegetable stock from Melaleuca.  I added onions, garlic, a whole head of cabbage, carrot, tomato, seaweed, and shimeji mushrooms.  It's naturally sweet and Cass loved it. 

My lunch with Cass on Sunday at La Juiceria, my favorite cafe, just the both of us.  The hubs, Alycia and mil were in Ipoh for Qing Ming. Sherilyn was at the Sunway Uni Open Day and Education Fair at Mid Valley Megamall.  

Bangkok Salad for me. Loved this so much that for once, I licked the platter clean.

Torched salmon poke bowl for Cass. Very yummeh too.

Free 1 Mini Bowl (beef) of my choice for takeaway.  It's a freebie for new members. I'd dined at La Juiceria only once a couple of months ago. There's another freebie waiting for me, which is a birthday gift and is a cup of smoothie. We'll be back to La Juiceria again soon to try other healthy meals and to claim my free smoothie 😁

Cass' Simple And Healthy Meals

Cass loves cooking and baking but she only does these to feed herself.  Unlike Sherilyn who will spend hours cooking and baking for everyone, Cass won't spend more than half an hour prepping her meals.  She only has the time to cook or do simple baking on Mondays and Saturdays when classes are held online. She'll prep her meals in between classes and quickly eats them while attending classes 😆. 

Most of her meals are befitting health freaks. She loves to include loads of veggies, carrots, pumpkins, and mushrooms in her meals.  Desserts are usually oat and yogurt-based or frozen smoothies.  She freezes her favorite fruits and then uses the Blendtec to blitz the frozen fruits with store-bought frozen berries and frozen walnuts.

Cass cooked this healthy veggie and shrooms rice for the first time last week where she dumped pumpkin, carrots, and oyster mushrooms into the rice cooker.  The rice turned out very sweet and flavorful. Even I liked it, though I don't eat rice.

Yesterday she cooked her healthy one-pot veggie rice again. This time she doubled up all the veggies and included a tomato. Then she placed a marinated boneless chicken thigh on a steaming dish on top of the rice cooker. Everything was cooked in under an hour and tasted yummeh!  This time she flavored the rice with freshly ground black pepper and garlic (from a grinder).
The marinated chicken thigh is meant for grilling or pan-frying but steaming tasted just as delish.  I recently replenished our stock of antibiotic-and-hormone-free seaweed chicken thighs from Beacon Mart (under Beacon Hospital and they have an outlet in our hood).  The marinated chicken thighs are available in several flavors and our favorites are the Nyonya, Green Curry, and Indonesia flavors.

Cass' version of healthy Bibimbap is assembled using her one-pot rice cooker veggie rice, added kimchi, poached egg, steamed sweet corns, blanched broccoli, chicken thigh, and a teaspoon of gochujang sauce.

Dessert is this baked organic oats loaf. She mixed oats with an egg, bananas, milk, and walnut and baked it for about half an hour.  It's served with melted butter and Gula Melaka syrup.  

If only everyone in the house could eat like Cass, cooking will then be easy peasy. All I have to do is chop up all the veggies and dump everything into the rice cooker.  But there are really finicky eaters at home who won't eat such healthy meals, making my life so much more complicated and expensive! 

Kiiro's Shirataki Konjac Noodles

 

I've always wanted to try konjac noodles as part of my low-carb diet. I was told that konjac noodles are not as palatable as regular noodles. After all, konjac noodles are made from the same substance as konnyaku jelly. Some people call it konnyaku noodles, Shirataki or jelly noodles.  

When Cass saw konjac noodles with curry seasoning at our neighborhood supermarket, she wanted to try a pack. Priced at RM9.90 a pack, I thought that there were a few servings inside the pack but it turned out that there's only a single serving and it's only enough for Cass alone. She's not one who would gladly share her food but she reluctantly shared some with me anyway coz I paid for it!

Cass has accidentally or rather too excitedly added a tad more water than the instructions and the soup turned out watered down and bland. So I added a teaspoon of S&B curry powder to spice things up.  She also added half a head of broccoli, some 'fu pei', tofu fishballs and an egg to her pot of lunch.

Just a forkful - this was how much Cass was willing to share the Konjac noodles with me 😐

And the verdict:

Cass liked it and doesn't mind me buying it again. 

I find that the noodles have a raw and green tang, as if I'm eating jellyfish or seaweed-flavored jelly.  However, I wouldn't mind buying it again simply because the noodles are keto-friendly. 

Taste-wise, konjac noodles vs. regular instant noodles > instant noodles win hands down. But the downside is instant noodles are super high in carbs and have little to zero nutritional value.

What Is Konjac Noodles

Konjac, Shirataki or Miracle Noodles are a unique food that’s very filling yet low in calories. These noodles are high in glucomannan, a type of fiber that has impressive health benefits. In fact, glucomannan has been shown to cause weight loss in numerous studies.

Konjac grows in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. It contains very few digestible carbs — but most of its carbs come from glucomannan fiber.

Konjac noodles are composed mainly of water. In fact, they are about 97% water and 3% glucomannan fiber. They’re also very low in calories and contain no digestible carbs.

For the sake of a flatter tummy and better blood sugar, what's not to love about Konjac noodles?  Cooking konjac noodles in a flavorful broth like curry or miso makes slurping these waterfall noodles more enjoyable. 

Throw in some meat of your choice, eggs, veggies, kimchi, or whatever your fancy and you'll get a complete meal that's nutritious.

Konjac root. These are used to make Konjac noodles.

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!

Fun Ways To Eat Purple Sweet Potatoes

Our Sunday snack theme yesterday was purple sweet potato. As there was some leftover steamed purple sweet potatoes in the fridge, Cass decided to whip up a fun snack with it.  

Cass mashed 1 sweet potato with half an avocado and seasoned it with pepper and lemon juice. 

It didn't look appetizing initially, as you can see from the photo 😁

After lemon juice was squeezed into the sweet potato mash, the color turned into a vibrant maroon / dark pink hue. Such pretty colors on the snack spread, which is all-natural. 

The purple sweet potato + avo mash tasted so delish on plain crackers! I can have this healthy snack every day!

This is what Sherilyn made - a purple sweet potato latte! She blended two sweet potatoes and then added milkshake (just fresh milk given a thorough shake to make it creamy and foamy), ice cubes, and coffee into the mixture.  What a refreshing and unique twist to latte!  

Back To School & College ~ Delish Homecooked Snacks For School Lunch Box

This week will be Alycia and Sherilyn's turns to be back in campus and school respectively. Their school and college are adopting a hybrid learning mode. 

As usual, our finicky teenage chef started to prep snacks for her school lunch box.  She made Tamagoyaki seaweed rolls yesterday for today's lunch box. Today she made Okonomiyaki (Japanese Cabbage Pancakes) for her lunch box tomorrow.  Last Friday she made a huge batch of Napa cabbage kimchi as she uses kimchi quite a bit for her quick meals, from kimchi fried rice to kimchi noodles, kimchi stew or just kimchi to go with plain Japanese rice.  

Sherilyn's got so many ideas on what to cook and bake.  Good thing, right? Yeah yeah yeah. We're all very happy whenever she springs up with a new recipe and something yummy to tease our taste buds BUT I hate cleaning up after her!  She helps to clean up too but as with most teenagers, it's slipshod work and I always have to mop the floors and wipe the counter tops again after she's done with cooking and cleaning 😫

Tamagoyaki seaweed rolls.  This requires quite a bit of skill but our chef S effortlessly whips this up using a special rectangular Tamagoyaki pan that the mil bought from Japan.  

No brainer for chef S.  Tamagoyaki in a variety of flavors is her specialty.

Okonomiyaki with cabbage and shimeji mushrooms for her lunch box tomorrow; breakfast for Cass tomorrow.

Crispy curly kale chips air-fried in the Airbot yesterday.  The chips are super crispy!  Seasoned with just olive oil and salt, the chips are air-fried for 7 minutes and makes a great healthy snack.

Adding More Greens Into My Diet

Ever since my blood work came back with a bad cholesterol reading of 6.5, I am now even more resolute to cut out red meat from my diet.  As I have genetic high cholesterol aka Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (FH for short), it will be quite impossible for my cholesterol level to go down even with a strict diet.  It went down to a reading of 4.9 when I drank 2-3 packets of Izumio hydrogen water daily - that was about 4 years ago.  But Izumio is too costly and I now only drink it when I feel under the weather.  

I now try to include more raw veggies in my diet.  I used to eat quite a bit of raw veggies and sprouts but the darn pandemic and prolonged home quarantine threw my healthy regimen out of the window.   The prolonged lockdown almost threw my sanity out of my my head too.

My yearly blood test  is in January or February each year. But because of the lockdown and my fear of knowing the truth,  I delayed going to my doctor's office until recently (late September).  

Good news is my blood sugar is still good at a reading of 5.0.  I thought that it would protest and go up too as I had not been eating as clean as I should have been throughout the lockdown.  

Bad news is my cholesterol reading has gone up from 6.4 (last year) to 6.5.  And the little good news amid the bad is that my HDL (good cholesterol) went up and my total cholesterol/HDL ratio is only 2.8 (< 5.0).  It must be my diet that's high in nuts and fish oil.

My doctor is not pressing me to go on Statin, albeit he did say that I could try taking Lipitor.  But I'm not taking Statin just yet. I have my reasons.   I may also want to consult our family friend who's a cardiologist at SJMC to seek his advice. He's currently out of country.  

So hopefully by adding more veggies and rawsome goodness into my diet and eating lesser red meat, my cholesterol reading will go down.  I know it's going to be hard with a mutated gene, but eating more veggies will also benefit other aspects of my health.

I love Hakka Lui Cha (Thunder Tea Rice). After all, I'm a Hakka girl.  I've been ordering my Lui Cha from this Hakka seller on Facebook as she makes pretty good Lui Cha.   I like to add on raw broccoli and alfalfa sprouts and cashews to my Lui Cha sans any rice. And it's really filling.

I use the Lui Cha paste as dipping for raw bell pepper slices.  

A bottle of lui cha paste (RM26 with peanut and RM36 with cashews) can last me for almost a month. I freeze them in silicon ice-cube molds and pop one cube into hot water to drink as a healthy veggie tea or simply pop one frozen Lui Cha cube into my mouth and enjoy it as an ice-popsicle.

Time To Resume Healthy Eating

I have a confession.  I haven't really lived up to my blog moniker of being a health freak mommy.  For the past 1.5 years that we've been in and out of lockdowns (MCO, RMCO, CMCO, FMCO, EMCO),  I have not been eating as healthily as I should have been.  Our country has the most types of lockdown in the world and yet the Covid numbers are rising scarily every day 🙄.  Today's tally is 13,215 😭.

Unhealthy snacks and foods gave me the comfort that I needed throughout the lockdown. Being cooped up in an apartment 24/7 for 1.5 years with 3 teenage girls and a mil is something that no educated and working woman in the 21st century looks forward to. Thankfully hubs is in the essential service and gets to work at his central kitchen.  So that's one less person to be copped up with 24/7!.    

Besides running outdoors, the other thing that I have been doing throughout the lockdown to get my dose of Serotonin is snack on junk food. My favorite snacks are muruku, satay fish, brownie chips (albeit this is considered 'healthy' as it's made from supposedly healthy ingredients), emping chips and tapioca chips.  My kind of go-to snacks are not as gravely sinful as the typically labelled bad junk food like potato chips, candies and ice-creams but they are still processed snacks with sodium and sugar. After 1.5 years, I realized that I've had enough of unhealthy snacks. I told myself that I have to start eating clean and healthy again for myself. I have a fibroid growing again and I have Familial Hypercholesterolaemia (genetically inherited high cholesterol) and if I continue snacking on junk food, I'm slowly digging a grave for myself.

I have been avoiding getting a cholesterol blood works done this year and I can only brave myself to go to the clinic after I'm done with several months of eating clean to clear all the junk from my system.  And yes, I have to clear all the negative and pent-up emotions in my system too as these are also partly to be blamed for the fibroid to grow again. 

So here I go shopping again for healthy foods -- raw organic sprouts / microgreens, organic bell peppers and organic salads. And not forgetting the sweet potatoes, walnuts, almonds and other nuts.  I also sip on fresh lemon juice and premium matcha throughout the day.

My healthy lunch of pesticide-free greens (baby spinach, baby kale, red and green chard) with avocado, a hard boiled egg, almonds, cashews and pecans drizzled with sesame dressing and a splash of apple cider vinegar.  

I love the range of pesticide-free salads from The Greenery.  Their veggies are grown in fully enclosed greenhouses without the use of fumigation and pesticides.

We've been having sourdough breads pretty frequently lately as hubby's aunt who stays 2 floors below ours is still perfecting her sourdough bread baking. Thus we're the fortunate beneficiaries of her range of sourdough breads, sourdough pancakes and sourdough herb biscuits.

The mil treated us to Aussie avocados. She shared a box of avocados with a relative purchased at wholesale price @ RM4.70 each 

One of my healthy brunches this week -- raw red bell pepper with mashed avo + hard boiled egg.

Healthy Breakfast

After a UTI attack about a month ago and a recent bout of torturous constipation that lasted almost a week, Cass' taste buds seemed to have evolved. Her love for oats resurfaced  and she's eating a lot more fruits now.  Her sudden crave for oats is so intense that she's now eating oats twice a day - breakfast before going to school and lunch. Sometimes she has oats thrice a day - breakfast, lunch and dinner! And she only likes oats with fresh milk.  This morning she added a large Korean Fuji apple and pineapple into her oats. She prepped the breakfast herself at 9 a.m. and enjoyed her breakfast with a good book before attending BM tuition at 11 a.m..  We had Char Siew rice for lunch and after lunch, she chomped down another large Fuji apple 🍎.  When we came home at 5:30 p.m. after piano lesson, she chomped down a big plate of papaya. 

My health freak eating habits have definitely rubbed off on Cass. While she had oats, I had skinny sugar-free yoghurt with melon seeds, peanuts, pistachios and homemade coconut sugar kaya (75% sugar reduced).

RMCO Day 22 ~ Wednesday, 1 July 2020

Our beloved part-time helper of 8 years, Maria, finally returned to our home to work after more than 3 months! But her return ain't without any stumbling blocks.  Long story short, I am just so thankful to God that we can have her back working for us, though not everyday like she used to.

As part of our condo Management's SOP (which is in accordance with the Government's SOP), foreign workers must be legal and must have a clean bill of health with a Covid-19 swab test done before they can be hired or enter a premises. Thus, I had to bring Maria to the hospital to get the swab test done last week. As Covid-19 cases have gone down to almost zero now, fewer people are doing the test.   Thus, the cost of the test has gone down from almost RM700 to RM350 to RM320.  The result was out the following day.  It was nerve-wracking for me waiting for the test result.






Our dinner tonight:

Radish + carrot + mushroom + pork bone soup, braised Japanese pumpkin with dried shrimps, fried chicken spring rolls, steamed brinjal with fried garlic, sesame seeds and soy sauce and blanched lady's fingers.

And tea-time dessert of mung been sweet soup with stinky grass and sweet potatoes.


So delish and nutritious.  This Hong Kong sweet soup concoction is well known to expel heat and toxins from the body.

Organic stinky grass plant from the pot at our condo balcony.