Vegetarian Thai Fried Rice

This is the latest rage in our family - vegetarian Thai fried rice, a new recipe of which my mil had just picked up. Everyone likes it so much that she's been cooking this every other day. The great flavor and aroma come from the different types of leaves used.

The ingredients used are:
White rice + red rice or brown rice
Lemon grass, julienned
Ginger flower, julienned
Shallots
Leaves of lime or limau kasturi (fatt foong kum yip), julienned
Assortment of vegetables which you are free to use - sweet corn kernel, red, yellow, green bell pepper, julienned kai lan, chopped french beans, etc.

This is a very healthy dish and even I (who normally don't touch rice) heart it!

Homecooked Dishes

Two of the dishes that my mil whipped up last week:

Brinjal stuffed with homemade fish paste. She made the fish paste herself.


"loh jue keok" (braised pig's trotters) and hard boiled eggs. I don't eat the pig's trotters but love the eggs, the lean meat and the sauce.

Next, I will post pix of her vegetarian Thai fried rice, so stay tuned....

Rushing Me Crazy

These days, Alycia's driver has been picking her up 10 minutes earlier in the morning. Me, I am the busiest in the morning. I try to reply emails, update my blogs and update my online store in the morning. I only have less than 10 minutes to prepare myself before bringing Alycia down to the lobby to wait for the driver. This morning, as usual Alycia was pestering me to hurry up again. This girl can be really pesistant and can really breathe down my neck in the most irritating way. As I was dressing up, she crept into my room and whispered "hurry up mummy, hurry up, faster, faster, don't be late again, Aunty J will scold me, blah, blah, blah, ...." and brought my clothes to me. As I was rushing off, I almost forgot to wear my bra muahahahahah!! And I did forget something. I had forgotten to bring my towel with me this morning and had to wipe away my sweat using my t-shirt after jogging. No matter how early I wake up every morning, there is still so much to do and my work never seems to get completed and my girl and hubby are forever rushing me to HURRY UP, haiz..... I am really tempted to submit my resignation letter to the big boss at home and submit my application letter for another job UWAWAWAWAWA......

Heart Warming Moments

Moments like these are priceless:

When the girls enjoy each other's company, when they laugh, giggle, make fun and tickle each other......



When they hug each other....


And when Alycia runs to Baby's resuce to comfort her each time I scold or punish Baby. Though burning with anger, the sight of Alycia defying my order not to 'sayang' her baby sister and running to her, giving her a big bear hug and giving her a kiss on the cheek douses off the fire in my heart.

Do hop over to my online store, Old And New Stuff For Sale to check out my new collection of chic ladies clothings and kids' clothes. I've brought in some kids' clothes and more will be coming soon, all sold at very reasonable prices :)

Here are just a few samples:

Wholemeal Flour Instant Noodles

This is Baby's first bowl of instant noodles with my mil's homemade fish balls, eggs and veggie, minus the seasoning. I seasoned her bowl of noodles with sesame seed oil and Bragg's liquid amino acid.

Baby's 2 jie jies are crazy over instant noodles but I hardly ever cook instant noodles for them. Even if I buy instant noodles for the kids, I only buy those that are supposedly MSG-free and noodles that are made from wholemeal flour, spinach or soy bean flour. You can check out Cintan's MSG-free instant noodles. They are made from wholemeal flour or soy bean flour.

Fruits Galore For Breakfast

I bought over RM60 worth of fruits from the night market last night. They include our favorite jackfruit, pineapple, papayas, mangoes, duku langsat, oranges, kiwi fruits and red dragon fruits. This morning, the girls had local fruits for breakfast - jackfruit, mangoes and duku langsat.






Alycia enjoying her local fruits delight while reading the newspapers!

Did I tell you that Baby is not a fan of fruits and the few fruits that she would eat are durians, mangoes, oranges (would only eat if it's really sweet and juicy) and red dragon fruits? Give her papaya, she would feign vomitting again *slap forehead*

Sunnies Crazed Girl

Here's another sunglasses craze little girl. This Baby really loves her sunglasses, even as a baby. I remember that her sunnies brought a ray of sunshine to her when she was in the hospital after her surgeries last year.

And her daddy always gives in to her request and had to date bought her 3 sunnies!

Sleep Deprieved

Ever since Alycia started attending primary school this year, she has been really sleep-deprieved. She goes to bed at 9pm (sometimes at 8:30pm) everynight and has to wake up latest by 6am the next day. Though she naps for 1-2 hours every afternoon, this girl is still not getting enough shut eye. She is one fler who needs lots of sleep, even as a baby. But not for Sherilyn, who is perpetually bursting with energy and doesn't fall sleepy easily.


Alycia was waiting for her mah mah to bring her out one Saturday evening and she dozed off on the chairs, with her hair still wet, after her shower. The outing was of course cancelled!

Easy-To-Fix Lunch

Whenever my mil bakes bread, my kids will have bread for lunch the next day. My mil bakes bread about twice in a week.

Here is Sherilyn's lunch - homemade marmalade jam bread (the bread is made with a bottle of marmalade jam) with mackeral fish on half a slice. The other half slice of bread is spread with her favorite kaya and topped with a slice of cheese.




Baby also ate half a slice of marmalade bread with cream cheese, a cup of chawan mushi (Japanese steamed egg) and soup of the day. Yup, she's a big fan of sunnies and refused to remove the sunnies when she ate her lunch *shake head*

Alycia's Science Experiment

This is one of Alycia first few Science experiments for Primary 1 kids in school. It was mine too exactly 30 years ago! I still remember very clearly seeing the bean start growing a white spot and then I saw the white spot sprouted into a stem and then leaves. Pretty exciting. I'm sure she will love Science but learning it in Mandarin? Freaks me out to the max as I know none of the terms in Mandarin, yikes!

Doughnut Craze

Hubby is a hardcore doughnut fan-see. Each time we pass a Big Apple or JCo doughnut stall, no matter how long the queue may be, he will join in the bee line craze by queueing up just to get half a dozen of those colorful, fanciful doughnuts. And he never finishes them. One third of what he buys always end up with our helper, who is the lucky beneficiary of those doughnuts.

Here, Sherilyn is digging into a doughnut heavily coated with thick dark chocolate, eeeeksss!! I HATE washing up and cleaning up the aftermath.



Me? I don't like these fanciful doughnuts laden with sugar, cream and coloring. I still prefer the good old plain traditional doughnuts sprinkled with fine castor sugar which I will only eat once in a blue moon. I still prefer those doughnuts sold by the ting ting roti man on a tricycle. It only cost 10 sen each back then. I used to love those doughnuts about 3 decades ago and I wonder if these rare breed are still around now.

Pork-Tofu Sheet-Dried Oyster Porridge

My mil cooked a pot of pork-foo choke-dried oysters porridge in a clay pot for lunch the other day. It was really delicious. Even for someone like me and Baby who dislike porridge found the porridge very tasty.

The pork that my mil used was called 'por jai yoke' (little ball meat) or 'loh see jai yoke'(baby rat meat) coz it's roundish in shape and very tender. This porridge is also suitable for toddlers.

PCOS Disorder

During the height of my PCOS disorder, I had a drawer filled with women vitamins and herbs to regulate my hormones / menses. Sadly, none of them proved effective and I had to go through the painful and invasive method of correcting the disorder. I went through an ovarian drilling procedure, where the doctor ‘drilled holes’ on both my ovaries with laser. That only provided relief for a short period. I believe I still have PCOS as I have not been getting my menses for 2 years now! They say that when you are still lactating, you will not get your menses but most of my friends who are still nursing their toddlers have already gotten their menses. I must pay a visit to my Ob&Gyn one day to have an ultrasound scan of my inner parts to see what’s going on inside there.

Blackheads No More

I used to have a lot of blackheads on my nose and was constantly getting rid of blackheads by scratching and peeling them. Sometimes, I would hurt my nose by making it bleed from all the peeling. Ever since I started a daily exercise regime, those blackheads vanished and NEVER came back. Unbelievable but it’s true. Not only that. Those pimples that decorated by back never came back too. That’s one of the amazing benefits of exercising. So don’t give yourself anymore excuses to skip that morning jog or run on the treadmill.

Breaking The Self-Restraint Tonight

My weight dropped further lately due to my recent throat infection and cough. Being unwell, my appetite went down hill for more than a week. The only pro that I get from being unwell is that I don’t need weight loss products or appetite suppressants to help me shed the last two stubborn kilos. When you are unwell, you naturally lose appetite. I have not gorged on ice-creams, curry, snacks or any deep fried food stuff for more than a week now. But tonight, I will break the self-restraint as hubby is bringing all of us out for seafood to celebrate Mother’s Day! And there’s going to be a fattening white chocolate cake too!

Sweet Peanut Sauce Open Sandwich

Hubby bought some Kajang satay and was given a huge packet of satay sauce (made from peanuts, chilli paste and sugar). I love the sauce and the satay but dare not indulge in too much of BBQ meat. Did you know that burnt meat, especially those with black carbon are really damaging to your health and is carcinogenic (i.e. causes cancer) if eaten excessively? So these days, I try to avoid eating BBQ meat and meat in general so that my body is less acidic. Yup, meat causes acid built up, especially acid uric, which causes gout. Try to keep your body more alkaline and you'll feel healthy! You can read more on keeping the body alkaline for optimum health by googling on it. You'll find tons of websites offering info on this.

Anyway, back to the satay sauce. Since I just lurve the satay sauce, I spread some on a slice of homemade multigrain bread. It tasted superb, well at least for this health freak! I'll bet no one has tried eating satay sauce this way, eh?

My lunch - a slice of homemade multigrain bread (made of oat groats, wheat bran and olive oil) spread with satay sauce and 3 skewers of satay. Then downed a glass of lemon juice to neutralize the acid from the meat and peanuts.

Whatever Will Be Will Be

I always wonder what profession my girls will hold in future. Will one of them realize my very own childhood dream of becoming a flight stewardess? I actually got the job offer by an airlines company to be a flight stewardess but relinquished the offer and I still regret not accepting this offer up to this day.
I wonder whether my girls will turn out to be something that’s out of my expectation in future. Alycia told me that she wants to be a chef while Sherilyn said she wants to be a hairdresser!! There are thousands of courses offered by colleges now and I have never even heard of some of them like energy auditing. Whatever my girls become in future, I just hope that it’s something that’s decent and that they will be really happy in it.

She Wants To Go To Kindy At 7am

Rascal #2 wakes up every morning feeling cranky and whiny. It’s also a struggle to get her to hop out of bed every morning. Today is an exception. She woke up really early, at 6:30am, drank her milk, brushed her teeth, washed up and was raring to go to her kindy at 7am! And she did all these without being nagged! But it was too early to go to school. Before I left the house to exercise, I gave her a stack of books, magazines and daddy’s atv magazine and told her to read. When I returned from jogging, she was sitting at the couch, daydreaming away and the books were untouched, sigh, that’s Sherilyn!

Another Kuih Lover

Everyone in our family loves kuih muih. Who doesn't right? They are sweet, full of santan and so addictive. Even health freaks like me cannot resist gorging on them once a week. But be careful not to over indulge in kuih muihs as they are empty calories, darn fattening and can cause diabetes if you eat too much of them. Now, even Baby loves kuih and her favorite is the 'kau chung koa' or 9-layer kuih.

She even exclaims "hmmmmmm....." whenever she eats those kuih muih haha!

Onde onde is her other favorite and mine too. So unhealthy eh? But it's ok if you eat these kuih once a week to satiate your sweet cravings :D

Unique Seafood Restaurant, Section 13 PJ

We had been to Unique Seafood Restaurat @ Section 13, PJ for lunch and dinner umpteen times over the last few years but I can't recall blogging about this restaurant. For seafood lovers who are looking for fresh seafood, fresh from the water tank, as well as unique and exotic seafood, Unique Seafood is the place to go to. This restaurant also serves dim sum on weekends.

Here's what we had....

Stir fried noodles with seafood, specially ordered for my noodles crazed #2...



Some kind of prawn dim sum with fish maw and chilli sauce which iLike...


'Lau chup' pau (which literally means 'sauce dripping' pau in Cantonese), which iLikey very much. But be cautious when you sink your teeth into the hot pau as the sauce inside is piping hot and can burn your lip, throat and fingers.


My princess wannabe...


Plain steamed fresh prawns, dipped with chilli sauce...


Alycia my prawn lover, who gobbled down more prawns than me...


prawn dumpling and fried radish cake...


Salt baked female crabs served with some pickles. Only female crabs have roe and I just lurve those sinfully creamy, cholesterol raising and artery clogging crab roe!

We also had a stack of steamed dim sum but didn't snap pix of them as they were just run of the mill dim sum like siew mai, fish balls, Hong Kong style rice roll (chee cheong fun), lor mai kai, etc.

Restaurant Fresh Unique Seafood 23, PJ
Lot 9B-3, Jalan Kemajuan, Section 13,
46200 Petaling Jaya, Selangor
Tel: +603. 7960 2088/2066
Business hours: 11.45am to 2.30pm / 6pm to 10.30pm