Friday, 12 July 2019

I was a lone ranger during lunch today. I don't like eating alone at the kopitiam with no one to talk to. It feels awkward  😏 I usually have my breakfast at the kopitiam with the hubs or Sherilyn but both of them are not available today.

After dropping the mil at the hair salon, I had an hour to kill before I pick her up again. So I had a long leisurely lunch at the open-air kopitiam, sweating it out under the blazing afternoon sun having lunch alone😅
My lunch: Two pieces of stuffed bitter gourd with fish paste, 1 meat ball and 1 piece of fried lobak with curry broth.

I forgot that I'd ordered a bowl of red bean + mung bean sweet soup and later ordered a glass of milk tea. Bummer! There's no way I could chug all these down into my extremely small tummy.  I could only down half the glass of milk tea and half the bowl of bean soup and couldn't finish the meat ball. What a waste of food. That's how little food I eat at each meal. And this is another reason why I don't like to eat alone as I always share my food with my lunch partner.

After lunch, I went shopping for kuih for the SIL from Hong Kong.  This unassuming kuih stall at our neighborhood sells the best assortment of 'Hee Pan' / 'Xi Ban' and 'angku kuih' with super soft and thin skin and generous fillings that's not overly sweet. Love these sinful babies to bits!!

 

If you were to ask me to name you one of my kryptonites, it would be KUIH and I indulge in them at least once or twice a week  🤪 

Random Updates

Hello folks!! Apologies for the lack of updates. I've been super busy the past two weeks and the busyness will only taper off this weekend. Do hop over to my other blog to read up on the random happenings for the past one week.

Besides being busy with everyday events, I've been maid-less for the past few days. Maria our loyal part-time helper has returned to Indonesia to deliver her first child. Annie our replacement helper scalded her hand and couldn't work. So yeah, besides being the round-the-clock driver, I'm also the 24-hour service maid at home. Only God will know how enervated I am 😵

I spent two hours on a Sunday night at the optical store waiting for our Dancing Queen to learn how to insert and remove disposable contact lenses. When she still couldn't do it (gosh, it is scary to insert a lense into your eye!), I went home with Cass and came back an hour later to pick her up. The contact lenses are for Sherilyn to wear during dance and taekwondo competitions.






At the fish shop at 9 p.m. on a Monday just because she said she needed the fishes urgently for her RBT project in school. I got her 5 fishes a few days ago but all died and she needed a new batch 😩




Lunch at Ruay Thai with Sherilyn yesterday before sending her to school:






 At only RM12 a set, the pineapple fried rice set comes with a chilled pandan drink and a piquant non-spicy Thai soup.  We shared the set.

Sunday Lunch At 163 Retail Park @ Mont Kiara (30 June 2019)

It was our first visit to 163 Retail Park, but not the  hubs. He's been there a couple of times. The hubs traverses everywhere in the course of his work and stops at every nook and corner to try out new eateries. His job and his life revolve around food and good food is what makes him truly happy 😁 When a particular establishment is worth visiting a second time, he'll bring us there whenever he has the time.  So that's how we are brought to try new eateries almost every week. Blessings 🙏💓

163 Retail Park is a refreshing premier F&B and retail mall in Mont Kiara.  Within the mall, there are beautiful nature elements of the great outdoors, to enhance patrons' indoor dining and shopping experience.

Waterways that flow through the mall. Soothing lush greenery.  There's also a cascading waterfall from a wall inside the mall.




Our sumptuous lunch was at Rakuzen, without Alycia as she had her own outing with her friends at Sunway Pyramid to shop for a dress for their school concert. Years ago, our Sunday lunches were always the whole family together. Now that the girls are teenagers, they have their own outings and activities but the hubs' house rule to the girls is to not arrange any lunch appointment with friends on Sundays. Sunday lunches are to be spent with him, unless the girls have something important to do.







Sea urchin (uni) sushi anyone? (bottom left).  Hubs loves it but not me.  In fact, I've stopped eating raw fish and have gotten over my obsession with raw salmon and butterfish/white tuna as I have some health concerns over raw fish after reading articles on them. Read here.











The food at Rakuzen never disappoints us. Only the price does but the foodie hubs is always willing to dig a little deeper into his pocket to experience a satisfying meal experience.




After lunch was dessert time, a sine qua non for the hubs after lunch on Sundays.  He works extremely hard for the dough 6 days a week and eats like a king on Sundays😬 On some days when he doesn't even have the time  to drive out to eat, his lunches will only be cheap food at the roadside mamak stall opposite his shop.

The hubs chose Belgische Chocolatier, a chocolate dessert cafe that he's been eyeing on for quite some time.  KL's first Belgische Chocolatier opened its door early this year and relies on Belgian chocolates to thrill cacao lovers.  At Belgische, chocolate lovers are certain to enjoy the best of unadulterated Belgian dark, milk and white chocolate. This café serves chocolate shots, guaranteed to satisfy the taste of the most demanding chocoholic. The shots are served neat and ready to be downed at one go. The café serves an array of offerings. The chef prepares a base comprising pancakes, crepes or crisp waffles to be dipped or drowned in chocolate, in accordance with customers' taste.

Street waffle coated in luscious thick dark milk chocolate.



 Lazy Biscuit with roasted walnuts.



Designer chocolate crepe ~ the design and shape of this piece remind me of the creepy looking gigantic moth that Cass and I are terrified of 😱  Just a few days earlier, Cass was 'chased' by a  gigantic moth with flappy wings when we were walking at the lobby of our condo, which sent her screaming and running like a headless chicken 😆





Prices are pretty reasonable and for chocolate lovers like our family, we will return to this chocolate cafe the next time we are at this mall.

Not Thalassemia

Remember my post on Alycia being anemic and suspected of having Thalassemia? You can read the two posts here and here.

My friend who is a hematologist advised me to put Alycia on Sangobion iron supplement twice a day for 3 months. On top of this, she's increased her intake of red meat and iron-rich foods like eggs and red beans.

Three months have passed and  the latest blood works done on 31 May 2019 showed that her haemoglobin and red blood cells are within the normal range now! Iron Studies test revealed no Thalassemia.  Praise the Lord!

Monday Brunch at Kuchabe, 24 June 2019

The hubs had an hour of free time at 11 a.m. today and after picking up Sherilyn from the tuition centre, we had brunch at a newly opened meat-free restaurant.  Kuchabe serves healthy meat-free dishes.  Eggs are served though.

The dishes are sodium and sugar reduced and contain no MSG. The food tastes very much home-cooked. This is an eatery where the health-savvy, vegetarian, flexitarian and pescatarian would go to.

Kuchabe Salted Tea Rice aka Lui Char. This ensemble tastes very much like it's from grandma's kitchen. Totally not salty or oily.  Even the sick can eat this piece. The flavors come from the blended green vegetables and mint leaves broth/tea, served from the teapot.  Not pitch perfect in taste but perfect for the body as the ingredients are composed of healthy vegetables, ginger and puffed barley.

The Nai Cha Wong (king milk tea) is nicely brewed, has just the right amount of milk and is not overly sweet.  Very nice.




The rice for the Nasi Lemak has nice aroma of coconut milk but somehow, the sambal lacks depth as it's cooked without the unhealthy pungent 'belacan'. It would be perfect for  health freaks and those who cannot tolerate 'belacan'.



The Wantan noodles is served with a huge fried wantan and a non-fried wantan ~ the noodles are sans dark soy sauce and tastes pretty much like the ones that I usually prep for the girls at home, i.e. seasoned with only sesame seed oil and soy sauce.  We were so stuffed that we doggy-bagged the untouched noodles and Cass walloped the entire plate of it with Ba Ku Teh when she came home from school.



Deep fried spring rolls are stuffed with a generous amount of vegetables. Very crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.




Thai Pineapple fried rice is gloriously good and stands out the most among all the items that we ordered. It's fried with brown rice, very flavorful and most importantly to me, it's not overly salty and oily.








Hubs personally preferred a meal with some meat.  But I'm perfectly fine with it. I'll order the pineapple fried rice and milk tea again and try the meat-free curry noodles at our next visit.

The Littlest Brat

The littlest brat is currently into braiding hair. She braids her own hair (only the bangs), she  runs after me to braid my hair (much to my chagrin coz she pulls so much of my precious locks away!) and the latest victim is her grandma - who has super short hair. Of course grandma finds it annoying too and scats the brat away before scramming away herself 😆

When Cass was 4 years old, a good friend of the family gave her a doll head with long hair for her birthday. The toy is just a doll with its head without the lower part of the body. Cass would play hairdresser on the doll's hair and at night, she'd leave the head on the dining table.  Once I got up in the dead of the night to get some water to drink and in my groggy state, stumbled on Annabelle's head, which scared the living daylights out of me.  The same thing happened to the hubs 👻 👽😆  

A couple of months later, we gave Annabelle's head away to another little girl to play hairdresser 😁

What The Celebrities Are Wearing This Summer

This summer not even  Kendall Jenner can resist the lure of the leopard trend. Instead of that one silky midi skirt, though, the gorgeous model who is the half sister of Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian wore the print in a sexy summery square-neck short dress.  The style is called the Rouen, the print the Bengal. The flounce-skirt linen mini, which Jenner paired with is a knee-high black leather boots.  Simple yet elegant.  Love it to the max.  How I love leopard print clothing. I find this print sexy. The Rouen leopard print dress that Kendall Jenner wore is from the celebrity-loved brand Reformation and costs USD178. Yes you read it right!   But if you want to find similar leopard print dresses at prices that you'll love, you can get them from TrendySuper at a fraction of the price.  TrendySuper is the place to get cheap clothes for women.





Check out similar leopard print short dresses from TrendySuper:










What better way to beat the roasting temperatures of summer than to wear white.  Gigi Hadid proves the value of a sleeveless white dress here on a hot summer day.



And Emily Ratajkowski just proved that white dresses can actually look fresh and modern.



If you, like Gigi and Emily are ready to give in to the white trend for summer 2019, I've got you covered. Shop some of the best white dresses for the season under $50, below, from TrendySuper of course.












Don't we girls just love summer? The choice of clothes to wear in summer is just endless and exciting. You don't have to break the bank to dress like a celeb. TrendySuper has the best summer dresses and sexy dresses for women at prices you won't believe and they ship to anywhere in the world!

Importance Of Fruits And Vegetables

According to an article by CBS News, a new analysis finds that eating more than five servings of fruits and veggies per day can reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, cancer, and early death.

The researchers found the greatest benefit came from eating 10 portions of fruits and vegetables a day. They estimated that if everyone ate this amount – equivalent to about 800 grams, or 28 ounces – approximately 7.8 million premature deaths worldwide could be prevented.

To arrive at these figures, scientists from Imperial College London analyzed 95 studies on fruit and vegetable intake. The meta-analysis included 2 million people from populations worldwide and assessed up to 43,000 cases of heart disease, 47,000 cases of stroke, 81,000 cases of cardiovascular disease, 112,000 cancer cases, and 94,000 deaths. The results are published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Eating 10 portions of fruits and vegetables per day was tied to a:

• 24 percent reduced risk of heart disease.
• 33 percent reduced risk of stroke.
• 28 percent reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
• 13 percent reduced risk of cancer.
• 31 percent reduction in premature death. 

It's an eye-opening analysis. It shows what fruits and vegetables are the best in the prevention of heart disease, stroke, cancer and early death.  The full results can be read here.

And this is why I place great importance in the intake of fruits and vegetables in my household.  Though my girls are old enough to cut and prep fruits on their own, they are sometimes too busy or simply lazy to do it.  That's OK, I will still do it for them for as long as they want me to. That's one of the ways I express my 💓to them. My parents at 76 and 73 years old still cut fruits for me when I am back home 💝

Daily fruit boxes for my girls.

Red dragon fruit, mango, organic kyuri and apple.



Banana, apple, kiwi, mango and organic cherry tomatoes.


Blueberries, banana, orange and mango.

With the vegetables that we eat for lunch and dinner, I think our fruits and vegetables intake make up to 800 gm a day. I spend a minimum of RM800 on fruits and organic vegetables each month and I hope it's a good investment for a life free from major ailments.

Dress Up In Summer Dresses

Summer is here and some of the best things about summer are the warm weather, perfect blue skies,  outdoor activities, trying new sports, beach fun, bikini and donning on sexy women bodycon dresses!  Yes, summer is all about flaunting your curves with a collection of bodycon dresses from dressab.com because before you know it, summer is over and you'll be all wrapped up in thick woollies again.

Whether you wear an S, M, L or 2XL, dressab.com has the perfect bodycon dress for your body.  Rock a bodycon midi dress for a classy look and pair with statement jewellery and a hot red lip.  Or create a luxe look in a silky bodycon dress with layered accessories and a sparkly spherical clutch.









For those of you who prefer not to show off your legs, maxi dresses are your next best choice this summer. This frock exudes charm and makes every woman look elegant and feminine.  Maxi dresses are very versatile and allows you to wear it for just about any occasion ~ party, beach, office, shopping. If you've never tried on a maxi dress, then head over to dressab.com to check out their amazing choice of high quality maxi dresses. You can see some of the maxi dresses below and you'll be spoilt for choices at dressab.com.











Of course you can wear a maxi dress during fall and winter months as well. Summer maxi gown styles are mostly strapless, sleeveless, sheer, made of thin fabric while maxis made of thicker fabric and long sleeves are for chilly weather.  Maxi dresses are pretty forgiving. Even if you are on the larger side, you can still look stunning in a maxi. I recommend that you choose floaty and lightweight fabrics, so your bulges don’t appear too obvious. Better go for dark colored dresses, as they have the ability to camouflage unwanted parts and make you look slender.

Specially for Health Freak Mommy blog readers!
Get a USD8 discount off USD100 when you shop at dressab.com
Just key in discount code BLOG8 during checkout.

Whatever the occasion and season, if you're a dress lover, www.dressab.com is the place to shop for them.👗
Happy shopping!  😉

Monday Lunch, 17 June 2019

After half a day of cafe-hopping and trying out new eateries at The Sphere @ Bangsar South on Sunday, Monday is a day of home-cooked meals.

For lunch, we had organic quinoa, millet and white rice porridge cooked with roast pork ribs with a side of chilled ice plant.


Fried vermicelli with bitter gourd, roast pork slices, bean sprouts, fish cake and curry leaves. We had this for lunch and dinner.


If you've run out of creative ideas on how best to cook bitter gourd to make it more palatable,  try frying it with noodles.  The noodles, sauces and other ingredients are sure to mask the  bitterness of this superfood known to have several impressive health benefits.

Oppo F11 Pro Review

So I finally got a new mobile phone last Saturday!  That's after my 3-year old Huawei repeatedly died on me whenever I needed it the most.  I was initially undecided on which brand of phone to get as I was very comfortable with my Huawei and didn't want to get any other brands.  In view of the current trade war that China and USA are trading, I do not want to take any chances in getting a new Huawei phone.  I had in mind to get Samsung again (I used to own one) but gosh, Samsung android phones are super expensive ~ ranges between RM2,500 - RM4,000!

Having used the Oppo F11 Pro for exactly 7 days as of today, it has become increasingly difficult to find any reasonable flaw that might deflect people from buying this device.  It's incredibly user-friendly, produces equally good photo quality as my Huawei Mate 10 and has been serving my needs very well.

The truth is that for a price of RM1,300, the F11 Pro is a device that looks and feels way more expensive. The price is almost half of what hubs paid for my old Huawei Mate 10 three years ago and its performance is pretty much the same. Well, at least that's how I feel for the past seven days.

The internals may be lacking a little in comparison to the phone’s exterior, but this is not a device that has marketed itself as a performance beast. I don't need a high performance phone anyway.  It is, as most of Oppo’s phones are, a camera-first device, and a very good example of one.  A good camera phone is what a blogger mommy's top priority is 😁

Released in March 2019, the F11 has a triple-shaded gradient at the back panel.  There is a dual-camera setup that's aligned centrally with the flash on the phone’s backside, and so is the pop-up camera on the top of the phone for purpose of selfie and wefie (I don't do selfie and wefie often though). The polished edges do not cut into my palm and also give a grippy feel.

Love the fingerprint reader feature (one of my requirements as I have to prevent the littlest brat from hijacking my phone all the time!) and this time, I scanned both my pointer fingers for ease of access.  Being a busy mom, my hands are either wet or dirty most of the time. If one hand is not accessible, I can access the phone with the other hand.

The display auto dims in the dark to not hurt my eyes. Oppo also provided a blue light filter for night-time phone browsing. Overall, this China-made device is totally up to my satisfaction.  Let's see how long it can serve me. This time, I have banned the littlest brat from downloading Roblox and Clash Royale into my phone as these two games use up quite a bit of memory.







Photos credit: gsmarena.com



My first food snapshot taken with my new Oppo F11 Pro ~ dad's homemade pandan kaya on a slice of sourdough jalapeno cheese toast.



My first outdoor view taken with the F11.

The F11 Pro has a 48 MP main camera and a 5 MP depth sensor, in which the latter is used only for background blurring to give DSLR-like pictures.  In this aspect, I prefer my Huawei Mate 10 camera as it has a button that I can touch on screen that gives an instant DSLR-blurring effect.  F11 Pro lacks this feature.  By default, the F11 Pro uses a technique called pixel binning to produce relatively sharp, detailed 12 MP images from that 48 MP sensor. You can change camera settings to shoot at 48 MP if you prefer.

According to the seller, F11 has superb battery life that can last for 48 hours.  I haven't tried it yet as I charge my phone every night.

Thanks to my darling for this belated birthday and mother's day gift 😍

Bridesmaid Dresses 101

When I got hitched 19 years ago, I didn't get my bridesmaids proper bridesmaid dresses.  I had a fairly simple wedding and my bridesmaids wore simple yet elegant dresses of their own. There was no theme for my wedding either. Generation X weddings were pretty simple back then.  Fast forward many years later to weddings of the millenials and we welcome an exciting era of themed bridesmaid dresses, personalized wedding favors, chi chi wedding themes and venues, wedding planners, extreme wedding shoots and all the bells and whistles to make a wedding feel like a wedding made in heaven 😅

There are many things to consider when choosing your bridesmaid’s dresses. You need to consider the most flattering shapes, the color scheme, the theme. the venue and whether there is one style fits all solution. It can be a challenge appeasing all your bridesmaids but it's not that difficult if you know where to shop for bridesmaid dresses.

If you’re a bride on a budget, check out BM Bridal for the perfect bridesmaid dresses. With hundreds of fashion essentials and unique fashion insight, this site is the best place to find trend-led bridesmaid dresses at affordable prices.  There's no need to worry about the sizing of the dresses as there is a Custom Measurements feature at the site where you can key in your specific measurements and the dress will be customized to your measurements.  Isn't this just awesome?

Navy doesn’t just have to be for winter, this one-shoulder piece in flair long skirt from BM Bridal is light and breezy and your bridesmaids will be able to move it and shake it all night long! I so love this dress!



I can’t promise you won’t get jealous of your bridesmaids in this gorgeous cold shoulder Maxi Dress in burgundy from BM Bridal. The glittery straps and waist are wedding perfection.



I also couldn’t resist this simple yet elegant flounce sleeves maxi dress in sunny yellow from BM Bridal for all the same reasons…



Choosing a look for your best pals on your big day is equal parts fun, funny and stressful.  In 2019, it's all about bold colors and statement detailing, so prepare to gasp when you see some of these looks at BMbridal.com 😊