Ice-Cream On Toast

I love mornings on school-going days. Why? That's because I have PEACE at home, absolute silence, save for the sound of jazz music playing in the background. And I can munch of junk food as and when I wish without doing it stealthily in the wet kitchen and getting choked at times *COUGHS*!

See, I can even have ice cream on hot toast, how blissful!  Cold food like ice creams are something that I have been keeping away from my kids as they get cough pretty easily.  So it is during the morning when all 3 rascals are in school that I can freely eat and savor every single bite, yumz!

 
 Love this Freezy vanilla flavor ice-cream on my walnut toast.

My Pet Dogs

I had 2 pet dogs when I was a teenage girl. The first one, named Ricky was slightly over 1 year old when it was run over by a school bus when my brother left the gate opened. I was devastated and locked myself in my room to cry my eyes out for 2 days.   I was thirteen.  Ricky was euthanized as the pet told us that its ribs were crushed. I remember that I begged my daddy to bring me to the vet after swimming class to say my last good-bye to Ricky. I was controlling so hard not to weep out loud when I turned my back on Ricky to walk out of the vet’s clinic. Ricky was resting in the cage. He was staring at me with tears in its eyes. I will never forget that moment. 

My second pet dog was named Spotty as it had light brown spots all over its body. My hubby (then only friend – my brother’s classmate actually) gave me Spotty. It was a Spitz mixed with Mongrel.  Spotty was a ball of cutie when it was a puppy.  He was my source of joy and my playmate every evening.  I would walk Spotty round the neighborhood to let him release himself.  Those days, our pet dogs ate what we ate and they ate lots of bones, except for fish bones.  Dog food was not very popular about 20 over years ago.  These days, dog owners would cringe at the thought of their beloved pet dog eating left over food and bones, fearing that their precious dog would choke or would have watery stools.  Pet owners these days even join pet forums to mingle with fellow pet owners to discuss about their pets.  In those days, forums were hardly heard of, much less pet forums.  Though he was never fed with dog food, never really received any jabs for dogs, save for some Vitamins when he was showing signs of aging, Spotty was as healthy and strong as a tiger. He lived till a ripe old age of 12 human years and died of old age in the vet.  When he died, my mum called me on the phone to break me the sad news.  I cried for a day. I was very disappointed that I did not make it back to Ipoh on time to say my last good-bye and give a last hug to my beloved Spotty – the dog that had brought me so much joy throughout my teenage years.

Loving My Melaleuca Products!

I received my second batch of Melaleuca products and am loving them !  Now that I am the maid of the house and am constantly in contact with detergents and cleaners, I do not mind investing in products that do not contain harsh chemicals and are environmentally friendly.  Melaleuca's range of shampoos and body shampoos are free from SLS (sodium laureth sulfate - which can cause cancer) and paraben.





Renew Intensive Skin Therapy is by far the best dry skin relief cream that I have tried.  My cracked heels and extremely dry sole of feet are improving by the day after applying Renew.  I just need to keep my itchy hands off peeling the dry skin though as pricking and peeling will aggravate the problem!

The mouth rinse and tooth polish contain melaleuca oil (tea tree oil) and I bought them with the hubs in mind as he is very prone to getting ulcers in his mouth. Hopefully after using these, those nasty mouth ulcers will be kept at bay.
 

Health Freak Mommy is 5 Years Old!

My life will be totally different if the internet was not a part of my life. Because of the affordable accessibility of broadband internet, I can communicate with the world at my finger tips at a few clicks of the mouse at any time I like. Today, as I was walking to Cassandra’s kindy to pick her up, I was trying to take stock of my life and then went on to have an ‘audit trail’ of what I am today. Six years ago, I was a not-so-contented housewife with only 2 young toddlers. Life then with 2 toddlers who were not even in school yet was pretty monotonous. I had a live-in helper who was by far the best maid I’ve ever had, no blogs to update and no online store business to worry about. Can you imagine what a humdrum life was for me then? I am one who needs a little challenge and ‘good stress’ to add a dash of spice to my life. I spent most of my free time socializing in a reputable mom forum, a forum for Glenn Doman inspired parents and a few other forums for parents. I was an active member of these mom forums and made friends with a bunch of new mommies like me, who remain my good friends up until this day. From these forums, I clicked on links to blogs written by SAHMs. And from some of these blogs, I gathered that I could actually make lots of money from blogging… in US Dollars that is! A light bulb moment struck 5 years ago!  I was very excited. Being the impatient and ambitious me, I spent many late nights on my ‘project’ and the rest is history. Health Freak Mommy was conceived in April 2007 and now has over 37,000 visits a month (with over 15,000 unique visitors a month) (statistics for January 2012).

Today, I am a writer of 3 blogs who also churn money from my blogs and am a small-time entrepreneur. I cannot imagine my life without the internet. I guess I would be a full-time housewife without a live-in helper who spends all my time doing household chores, cooking, fetching the kids everywhere and coaching them in their school work. I wonder if I will like this kind of lifestyle.

Junkie Sunday

Sunday is a day where we eat out the whole day. It is a day of junk for us. After our outing at Pavillion on Sunday last week, we took away some snacks for dinner.

Our dinner on Sunday last week...
Egg bread from Lavender, fish balls from New Shanghai dim sum restaurant, colorful sandwiches, Hokkaido crepe cakes, cream puffs and Japanese buns from The Loaf.



Charcoal bread and beet root bread sandwiches and my favorite Japanese buns from The Loaf.




But my fan thoong (rice bucket) Alycia did not feel satiated after eating all these snacks. She wanted rice with chicken and fish and kept fantasizing about rice for hours after dinner that night! It's always not easy to please 3 girls who have different preferences, SIGH!!

Colorful Blu Tack

Cass has an obsession with Blu Tack and play dough. I guess this is partly because I do not encourage my girls to play with these at home as they are too messy -- mess on the table, on the floor, on the walls and the worse part is these sticky stuff will get stuck underneath their finger nails or get stuck like chewing gum on their hair, blah!  And I have absolutely no time to dig those sticky dough out from under their finger nails before meal times.  So my girls secretly kept the play dough that they got from Sunday School aeons ago and would steal some of my Blu Tack which I bought some time back.  At times, Cass would pinch some dough from mah mah's cake mixing bowl when she prepares dough for bread making and would play with the flour dough for hours till the white doughs turn into greyish black dough, eeeewwwwwww!


When I saw Blu Tack Colour at Ace Hardware shop recently, I bought a pack and am now using this as rewards for Cass.  She can be quite rebellious and disobedient at times.  So this colorful Blu Tack comes in handy.  Cass gets a small piece on days that she earns her 'Blu Tack points' ! 





Blu Tack Color is a much better alternative to  play dough as it is not as sticky and does not disintegrate as easily as play dough does.

 

A Match Made In Heaven

Do you believe in a marriage made in heaven with a life that is as blissful and as perfect as in fairy tales?  I never believed that it can happen in real life until I saw this happening to my close friend. She was 30 and he was only 28 but they were madly in love. The boy’s family did not quite like the girl. What else? The boy's old folks’ old school of thought that a wife cannot be older than her husband. But they got married anyway.  That was 10 years ago and their marriage is still as strong as ever now. The wedding was like a fairy tale. They both had unique wedding rings and she had a big bling bling diamond ring too! She was and is still a very beautiful lady, though she has doubled up in size now.  Never mind, her man still finds her the most beautiful woman ever. They have 2 beautiful kids and have now migrated to a neighboring country to expand their business. Talk about luck, guardian angels and shining stars, they have them all and their business is soaring up until today. A perfect marriage plus a very successful business that is generating big bucks.   What more can they ask for?  This pair must have been made in heaven!

If you are wondering what unique wedding rings or unique wedding bands are,  they are rings designed and hand-braided!  I know handwovenbands.com has a very talented artist named Todd Alan who makes unique wedding bands. Each ring is made one at a time as they are ordered and they are braided - which is something that most other jewelry artists do not do. If you are interested, do hop over to http://handwovenbands.com/. They have a free 30-day risk free return policy, secure online ordering options and all the bands are made from the finest materials.




 

More Home-cooked Dishes Pix

Here are more home-cooked dishes pix to replace 'words posts'.  Brain feeling a tad void (blame it on the darn PMS!) and time is not on my side the past few days, thus only pix... just to let readers know that this blog is still very much alive :D

That's our dinner on 22 Oct 2012...

My favorite jai choi dish (vegetarian dish) cooked with fermented tofu and glass noodles, blanched organic greens...



my favorite turmeric chicken cooked with organic Thai lemon grass and sliced organic Japanese pumpkin cooked with pork slices.  My girls never really liked pumpkin cooked  mashed or mushy but when cooked this style, this dish was all polished off. 

Delish Homecooked Meals

Whenever I run out of stories to dish up in my 3 blogs, the best posts to dish up is to show pictures of homecooked dishes, no pun intended :D

So here goes... pix of some of the dishes that my mil dished up over the past 1 week...



Stir-fried spaghetti with beef slices, fresh mushrooms, homemade sundried tomatoes infused with olive oil, big onions and black pepper.







Stir fried vermicelli.  I can never produce fried vermicelli like hers, just wonder why!  The reason why she can cook such delish fried vermicelli for so many mouths is that she divides all the ingredients into half and cooks two times!  Yes, twice the time needed so that all the ingredients get the 'wok hei' aka heat from the hot wok.




My all-time favorite minced pork with fermented beans (tau cheong) and chilli.  A very appetizing dish to go with rice. For my non-halal readers, you can try using chicken meat or perhaps minced beef.




Braised chicken with Chinese chestnuts and dried mushrooms.





Braised fish belly with tofu pok.




Organic baby yau mak veggie and organic yeh far heong (a kind of flower veggie that resembles coconut tree flowers, thus the moniker.  These are only blanched with some oil and my girls have no problem eating their greens.

Getaway At Hilton Sentral (26-27 Oct 2012)

We returned from our short getaway at Hilton Sentral this afternoon. After 1.5 days of blissful eating, sleeping and watching TV in the hotel room, it's back to the grind for me.  Thankfully there's still tomorrow to catch up on my sleep before Monday and school week start all over again.

The most dreaded part of a post-holiday...





Thankfully I have helpers...

'S' For Snakes!

My 4.5yo baby girl drew this. When Alycia and I saw her art work, we ROTFLOL! 

What was my baby girl thinking of? 'S' for snake and lots of snakes that is! And that botak person with a scared face must be her I guess? LOL!!

And I just realized why there were 5 snakes in the picture - 2 big snakes are her daddy and mummy... and the 3 smaller snakes in different length must be her 2 che ches and her LOL!  Such a cute drawing.


She still gets her 'd' written the other way round.

Shot Execution Style

On our way out for brunch last Sunday, we saw a big commotion outside one of the houses with police cars, ambulance and sirens wailing away. Many people were seen at the main road, just opposite the house. When we saw that the entire road was cordoned off, we knew that a serious crime resulting in death had just happened. As we approached the scene, the hubs exclaimed that the house is his friend's house. He called his friend on the mobile phone and I only heard my hubs saying "I'm sorry". His friend's father was shot on the head, execution style and was dead on the spot. Life is just too unpredictable. The man was on his way out to the market with his wife and maid and without even having a chance to say goodbye to his loved ones, was shot dead.

Perform Better Under Stress

My brain always works better under stress with deadlines. When there is no stress at work, the brain is in a plateau mode and I need to give it a little excitement to jump-start it. I almost fell off my chair when I saw the long list of online assignments allocated for me yesterday. I put aside work from my online store and worked on the assignments at full steam. I am almost done with the assignments and am now working on the most difficult one on coilhose pneumatics.

Nihon Kai Japanese Restaurant @ Old Klang Road, KL

One of our favorite and most visited Japanese restaurants  is Nihon Kai located along Old Klang Road. Years ago, hubs and I used to frequent Japanese restaurants in hotels to dig into buffet lunches almost every week but as we grow older, our tummies can only fill up this much of food and buffet meals often make us sick after 2 hours of crazy digging LOL! So, we prefer ala-carte meals these days and prefer to patronize Japanese restaurants that offer ala-carte menus. The portion is not big and this often leaves us raring to savour more and to come back for more... and not a feeling of overly stuffed sick with oily fish.

Nihon Kai is quite a small restaurant and simply decorated, yet it offers good quality Japanese food that is not too taxing on the wallet. Although this shop is located in a hidden area along Old Klang Road but they still enjoy brisk business for lunch and dinner. The restaurant is perpetually packed to the brim and never go there on a Saturday evening unless you are there at around 6ish pm.   We went to this restaurant several times on a Saturday evening at around 7ish - 8ishpm and each time, we had to leave with tail behind our legs.

One of the items on their menu that often leaves me craving for more is their phoenix sushi roll? (well, not really sure of the name of the sushi). It is wrapped with soft shell crab, avocado and lots of crunchy stuff on top. For one who eats no rice, I have to succumb to this sushi and give it a rating of 10/10!  No pic of this sushi this round as we did not order this item.

Several days before Aly and Sher's final exam, I told the MIL not to cook so that I could have more time to do revision with them.  So we headed to Nihon Kai for dinner.

Here's what we had:

 Ramen with bacon and eggs, which is the girls' all-time favorite.

 

Grilled salmon for moi... no rice for me, as usual.




Deep fried chicken with eggs on top of rice for my fan thoong Alycia, to be shared.




Alycia's all-time favorite and the most expensive -- grilled Unagi fish with rice.






Restaurant Information
No. 4-2, Jalan Telok Gadong, Off Old Klang Road, Kuala Lumpur. Tel: 03-7982 3668

Half-Boiled Eggs That Are Still A Tad Raw

Cass loves half-boiled eggs but I can hardly get the right consistency, i.e. one that is not too runny with egg white that is not transparent. I used to fry the half-boiled eggs that are still a tad raw but ever since we were maidless, any frying would mean washing and wiping the stove for me.  And I hate washing and wiping! So lazy me found a better way of getting the half-boiled eggs right whenever they turn out too raw... by steaming the egg for about 5 minutes.




The half-boiled eggs that are still a tad raw...





After approximately 5 minutes of steaming the 'quarter-boiled' eggs...



The eggs are now in the right consistency, with smiley face some more... which Cass just loved!  She eats 1-2 free-range eggs a day... brain-power boosting food for her :D

Music To My Ears

What's music to my ears is when my daughters perform well in their exams.  Today was by far one of the best days for me when Alycia told me that her position is 4th in class. I really did not expect this as I think her marks for several test papers have gone down.  But I must say that the test papers were very hard for most of the subjects and I guess most of the students did not get 90% and above, so Alycia stood a good chance in climbing up the numbers in the class position.  Her position in the entire standard improved by the leaps and bounds too.  I am really happy for her.  I think I worked harder than she did.  I think she could have done much better if she had been more careful. Yup, this girl is an extremely careless girl and so is Sherilyn.   Despite the hubs and I being yellow bananas and cannot help her in her subjects where Chinese language is used, Alycia can still perform satisfactorily is already an achievement.  I am not expecting a position of top 5 from the top in class as I know her capabilities and limitation in her Chinese language. Yet she proved me wrong.

Alycia and Sherilyn are as cool as cucumbers.  Had I not been such a tiger mum to them, I know they would be like a lalang (wild grass) and would not even bother to do any revision.  The moment I turn my back on them, I am rest assured that they would be up to something, other than poring into their school books. 

It looks like Alycia now stands a chance to go to the top class next year.  She was streamed to the 2nd best class this year.  With this position, I think she would be moved to the cream class and I am hoping that this will NOT happen. I know I will be 100% more stressed up if she's in the cream class and I do not want this kind of stress to plague my life and that of Alycia's.  2nd best class is good enough for me and tough enough for her. Now, I am curious to know what position Sherilyn is placed in her class.  I am not placing too high a hope on this fella.

Long Weekend

It is a long weekend for us as there are 2 public holidays before the weekend. We had planned to check into Hilton Sentral for a short getaway but the rooms are fully booked. So we shall visit the shopping malls instead, to do some retail therapy as well as tummy therapy. I know the foodie hubs will be one very happy man if we can join him in his food adventures to try out new eateries. Besides retail and tummy therapy, the hubs also needs to check out some cigar deals for a VIP client.

A Productive Morning

This morning has been a pretty productive morning for me, outside the house.  I managed to settle some banking issues that I had been procrastinating for over 7 years since my Southern Bank and Renong Group days!  In fact, had I not receive a letter from the bank to advice me to claim my money asap before the money goes to the Unclaimed Monies in BNM, I would have procrastinated to heavens know when!  This is one of my weaknesses - I tend to do things that I like to do but important things like this which involves so much money, I will just push it aside until some punitive action / warning is taken. Oh well, that's just me.  Anyway, I am glad that I managed to close my current account at this bank located in the busiest part of KL -- that's the main reason why I kept procrastinating going to the bank as I hate to be in this part of the city, albeit I had worked in that area for almost a decade.  Then, with the cheque that this bank had issued me, I went back to my neighborhood bank to deposit into a Fixed Deposit account.  At the same time, I withdrew some USD (converted into RM) via Western Union issued to me by Google Inc. and dumped it into the FD as well.  All these $$ would go towards funding the 3 girls' tertiary education in years to come.  While waiting at the 2 banks, I managed to get some work done on my Samsung Galaxy Note.     Next, I went to the organic shop to get organic soy bean powder for Cass and organic almond powder for moi.  And then went to pack lunch and picked up Cass.  Very happy now that I had finally settled this matter that I had pushed to the back-burner for so many years, though I had to pay a penalty and a service fee to the bank.



This Lilo thumb drive adds to my latest collection of thumb drives. The hubs got it for me, cute eh?

Science Experiment For Alycia - Mixing Substances With Vinegar

A few days before Alycia's Science in Mandarin test last weekend, my mil and I did some experiments with her in the kitchen.  I always believe that seeing is believing and we will remember something more prominently and effectively if we see it as opposed to just reading about it. It is pretty tough for a 8YO+ kid to remember what will release bubble, what will precipitate and what will become lumpy when mixed with vinegar.  So here we are experimenting with my Primary 3 daughter...



Alycia pouring the vinegar onto the mixtures by herself...





Baking powder when mixed with vinegar - releases bubbles.

Char Siew Sandwich

My baby girl enjoying her lunch of 'char siew' sandwich. If only my girls have no complaints eating sandwiches for lunch everyday, part of my stress will be resolved. I can use different fillings for the sandwiches everyday from egg mayo to tuna-egg, sardines, char siew, roast chicken breast meat, ice cream, kaya, butter, meat floss and the list goes. While #2 and #3 may have no complaints, #1 will surely put on a long, black and sulky face if I were to tell her that we're having bread again!