Papaya With Sprouted Seeds

For the first time in my life, I came across a papaya with seeds that had sprouts shooting out. I got a shock of my life when I cut the papaya into half and saw white stuff inside. For a moment I thought they were maggots but on taking a closer look, I realized they were just shoots like bean sprouts, sprouting out from the seeds. Ewwwwww, they looked really gross and I only ate half the papaya. I wonder if it's safe to eat papayas with sprouted seeds. I had read from a source that potatoes with shoots sprouting out are toxic or harmful to our bodies if consumed. So I'm not sure if the same goes with fruits with sprouted seeds. Anyone has any views on this for this health freak mom?





A macro shot of the sprouted seeds. Don't the shoots look very much like bean sprouts? Geli or not? Eeeeekkk!!

Kids Just Love Being A Baby Again

My daily routine involves getting Alycia to go inside Baby's playpen either in my bedroom or at the living room and play with Baby. Alycia doesn't have to do much actually. Baby just loves having her jie jie around her. She will climb on Alycia's head, tummy and all over and they just enjoy each other's company.

This was what happened recently. First Alycia climbed into the playpen and babysit Baby while I had a quick shower in the afternoon. When I came out, I saw Sherilyn inside the playpen too. Both of them had dozed off with Baby inside. I quickly brought Baby out, for fear that the playpen would give way and collapse! Then quickly grabbed my camera and took some snapshots hehe...

Video Of Baby C Climbing Up Sofa

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Here's a video of Baby climbing up the sofa shot yesterday evening, this time with the aid of an Ikea stool. She always climbs up the sofa without any aid but yesterday, she discovered that with the aid of a stool, it was so, so, so much more fun and faster. Once up the stool, she sort of dived onto the sofa lol! She did that (up and down the sofa) over and over again for almost an hour and I just stood behind her like her bodyguard, with an aching back. When I took the stool away and told her to climb up the sofa, she got angry and threw a little tantrum, then went to fetch the stool herself.

Meal Time Battle

When Baby becomes bored with her porridge or is already full when she's on her highchair during meal times, she will get restless and will move about. Next, she will shriek and fuss, stand up and tries to climb out of the highchair. Here she is in action, with her back facing the highchair table, legs up the chair and attempting to stand up, then climb down. Recently she has re-accepted porridge but in the past few days, she is sick of them again. My mil has just flown to Hong Kong today and from tonight onwards, I will have to take over the wok and kitchen again for the next one month. It's time for me to go through this blog archive to look up recipes of my gals' favorite dishes again!

Smart Or Just Being Impatient?

Elaine gave Baby a shape sorter as a get-well gift recently. While Baby loves playing with the shape sorter (recommended for toddlers 18 months up) with me guiding her, she would get really frustrated when she could not slot the blocks into the hole for the correct shape. So each time she will end up lifting up the door of the shape sorter and then she will grab the blocks and dump them into the shape sorter, then close the door, haha! This was exactly what Alycia did when she was Baby's age. So you think kids like that are smart or just plain impatient?


Don't know why the adults keep asking me to slot the blocks into the right hole. It's so much easier to just dump everything in through this door. Haiyah....

Lunch At Hongkie Kopitiam @ Auto City

Before heading to St. Anne's Church at Bukit Mertajam to give thanks 2 weeks ago, we stopped at the Auto City at Juru, Penang for a very late lunch at around 3pm. We were all really famished and ordered many items. Here they are for you to salivate again, hehe :)


Stir-fried beef koay teow - tasty but a tad too salty...


Fried rice - tasty but also too salty for a health freak like moi...



My chicken chop platter with fried sausages and french fries, which I shared with my maid. All the set meals come with a soup and a piece of really thick toast with garlic butter...


My Hong Kong 'lai char' (tea with milk), minus the sugar and sweetened condensed milk. Very 'kau' and rich with evaporated milk. Uummmm, iLike! I could have drank another cup and I almost wanted to order the almond lai char.



Super thick white toast with garlic butter. The toasts went really well with the Hong Kong lai char. Most of the set meals come with this toast. Nice but really jelly-belly friendly, hah!


The hubs' 'pak kopi peng' (chilled white coffee) - nice, very 'kau' and refreshing. Just look at the froth, yummy!



Hubby's steak with lots of french fries, sweet corn and tomatoes - nice.


We were all quite satisfied with our meals. It would be good if the food is cooked with less salt. We won't mind coming back to this restaurant in our next trip. This time, I want to try their other 'lai char' ala Hong Kong style that comes in many flavors and styles.

Cup Cakes From CupCake Chic @ The Curve

The hubs bought some cupcakes from The CupCake Chic @ The Curve the other day. The cup cakes are not the typical 'dumb blonde' cup cakes which are prettily decorated and in bright colored cream. The cup cakes from CupCake Chic are creamed quite simply with minimal colors, which is something that I prefer. 'Dumb Blonde' cup cakes are pretty to look at but frankly, would you actually eat the cream and decor on the cup cake? I would never. Food coloring and sugar are your body's immune system's enemy. Yup, I'm a real health freak mom and I rarely allow my gals to eat the colorful cream and icing of a cake.

Anyway, I didn't eat the cream on these cup cakes. I scraped the cream away and only ate the cake, which tasted good. I'm really not a 'Dumb Blonde' cup cake person. I still prefer the old fashion muffins and cakes, free from cream, sweet icing and decor, hehe. No offense to those who bake 'Dumb Blonde' cup cakes and cakes k? Don't mean to rain on your parade. If you give me a box of Dumb Blonde cup cakes, I would still go "oooo ahhhh" and get carried away. I would still eat the cake, minus the icing and cream. I am a cake person anyway.







CupCake Chic is located at the ground floor of The Curve. You can visit their website at www.cupcakechic.com.my

A Saturday Afternoon Without #2

Saturday afternoons are now pretty quiet without #2 as she would be off attending her ballet lesson. This is what we did on one Saturday afternoon without #2. I could spend some time reading all the books that Alycia had wanted to read without distraction from #2. Alycia fished out all the story books that she had longed to read and made me read with her the entire book of about 5 books. Whilst I read to her, Baby played inside the room which I had had the door locked and the bathroom door closed. The moment #2 returned home, the house was abuzz again with this chatterbox talking nineteen to the dozen, singing, screaming, whining and complaining lol! Listening to #2 whine can really cause wrinkles on my eyes and face and I think soon, I will need to apply eye wrinkle cream to get rid of those crow's feet lines at the corner of my eyes lol!

What Water Do You Feed Your Kids With When You Travel?

Though most hotels provide a small kettle in the room to facilitate you to boil water for tea and coffee making, I am not sure if the water that flows out of the tap in the bathroom is filtered. I wonder if these hotels install water filters in their buildings. Even if they do install a huge water filter at the main water source, I am not sure if there is another smaller water filter installed inside the kitchens of the restaurants. When I was in Penang with the kids recently, I had reservations giving my gals water that I boiled using the kettle from our room.

During breakfast each morning, I politely asked the waitress at the coffee house to fill up my gals’ water tumblers and milk bottle with warm water. I suppose drinking water from the restaurants in the hotel is filtered and boiled. For those of you with babies and toddlers, when you travel with them on vacations, what drinking water do you feed them with? Do you feed them with bottled mineral water directly from the bottle (unboiled), or do you boil water in your hotel room using the water from the bathroom or do you boil bottled mineral water? The next time I go on vacation with my kids, I think I’ll buy bottled drinking water and boil them using the kettle provided by the hotel in our room, just to be safe.

Glorious Ipoh Food

Before we headed back to KL on Saturday, the hubs received a list of food orders from his mum and relatives. Here they are:

Dim sum from the new Foh San in Ipoh...



My favorite 'Ma Lai Koa' from Foh San...


Char Siew Pau from Foh San....



Curry noodles from the coffee shop opposite the police station in Ipoh town - the famous
Ma Ta Liu (Police station in Cantonese) Curry Noodles @ Xin Quan Fang...

The hubs who is really pernickety when it comes to food and the way food is presented/stored, went to buy a stack of transparent plastic take-away boxes to store all the food that he had bought, to bring back to KL.

The curry broth for the curry noodles, stored inside the take-away boxes to prevent spillages, which would be really very very messy if they are spilled out and stained his car boot.....



The most delicious and soft hoong koo with mung bean filling from a stall inside a coffee shop in Ipoh Garden South. The skin of the hoong koo is made from rice flour and black glutinous rice. Damn syiok and nice and damn fattening too!


20 packets of Menglembu groundnuts...




Also bought a lots of Hakka fishballs, stuffed tofu with fish paste and 'chau liu' from the famous noodles and fishball stall in town.... but no pix taken coz we were in a hurry to leave for KL.

DIY See-Saw

This is one of Baby's favorite activity with mah mah...


... she lays with her back on mah mah's legs and then mah mah moves her legs up and down making Baby feel like she's on a see-saw haha! I wish I could do that too, so syiok!

More Mouth-Watering Food From Penang

This is by far the 'bestest' apam I've ever eaten :

Coconut-Banana-Sweet Corn Apam. It's super soft and fluffy, has generous amounts of eggs (which makes the apam soft and fragrant), santan, grated coconut, bananas and sweet corn. I can easily tuck into 5 apams at one go and yet not feel jelak or full. I'm already missing the apam and craving for them now!





... and this old man makes them and sells them on his cart along Jalan Burmah. There are 2 carts selling apam along Jalan Burmah and both tastes just as good. I really wonder how this man makes profits when the apam he sells only costs 30 sen each. And yes, he uses his bare hands to make the apam and packs them for you, if you don't mind. And Lord knows what he did before he touches the apam and packs them lol! But hey, what the heck, that's one of the reasons why hawkers' food always taste so good because of all the 'kar liu' (added ingredients) muahahahah!




And this delicious pandan kaya from Rainforest Bakery & Pastry at Chulia Lane is one of the best I've ever tasted. The kaya is really rich in eggs and so tasty that I always eat it on its own, the way I would eat ice-cream. Hubby bought the kaya for me during my 3-week stay in the hospital with Baby in May. When we were in Penang last week, I asked him to get me another tub. I had wanted to get 3-4 more tubs before we left for Ipoh/KL but we forgot all about it.






The bread and buns at Rainforest are also tasty and free from preservatives, so said the person who sold them to hubby. This bakery makes marvelous artisan breads and the first thing you see on entering is the shelves stacked with loaves of all shapes and sizes, offering Baguette, Ciabatta, English Blommers, Farmhouse, Mixed Grains, Rye, Wholemeal and pastries.

Lunch At Shing Kheang Aun Restaurant @ Chulia Lane, Penang

The first place that the hubs targetted the moment we arrived in Penang last week was his favorite Shing Kheang Aun Restaurant at Chulia Lane, which he has been patronizing since he was a small kid. Established in 1941 just before the Japanese Occupation, this very old Hainanese restaurant is now stepping into its second half of a century, and is now run by the second generation. This restaurant offers a collective variety of food ranging from Straits Chinese and Hainanese cuisine to Baba Nyonya delicacies.

Here are the dishes that we ordered (for you to salivate hehe...):


Stewed pork with salted fish and chillies



Fried chicken with black sauce


Deep fried Lobak


Fried prawns with assam and chicken feet kerabu


Assam 'tau tai chong' (pomfret) fish
This is by far the 'bestest' assam fish I've ever tasted. The fish is really fresh and has not the slightest taste of fishy odor... and the serving is huge and enough to satiate everyone.

We also ordered a stir-fried kailan veggie with chicken breast.

Food for customers seated upstairs are still being brought up using the pulley system in this pre-war shop. If you are seated upstairs, please mind the stairs as the pre-war wooden stairs are really steep and narrow.


All the food was polished off in no time as everyone was feeling really peckish after travelling in the car for about 2 hours. For 5 adults and 2 kids eating, the bill was only RM140, inclusive of drinks and rice. We would definitely head back to this restaurant in December when we make our next trip to Penang.

Shing Kheang Aun Restaurant is situated at 2,Chulia Lane 10200 Penang, Malaysia.
Telephone Number : 04-2614786
Business Hours : 10 am to 2pm, 5pm to 8pm.
Resting Day : Alternate Monday
Payment : Cash
Come early to get a parking lot.

This unassuming pre-war restaurant even has a website at http://shingkheangaun.wordpress.com/!

Baby Loves Feeding Herself

For the past few days, Baby has been very demanding during meal times. She would only eat if she's given the freedom to feed herself.... and she's really enjoying her new found feat, freedom and independance. She does not only want to hold the spoon herself, she does not even want me to hold the bowl for her. She wants to eat like an adult!

Sweet taste of freedom and independance....



But half the food goes into her mouth and half is splattered everywhere. Post meal-times are really, really messy, everywhere.

What We Have Been Up To

We are now back in Ipoh at my parents'. We were on the road for almost the entire afternoon yesterday. The hubs, a foodie, drove round Penang to get the 'bestest' Penang food - to Lorong Selamat to get a few packets of 'kar liu' (extra ingredients) char koay teow, to Air Itam to get a few packets of assam laksa, to Macalister Street to get the famous yam cake with dried shrimp floss, to Jalan Burmah to get a few boxes of Him Heang tambun biscuits and I got to gorge on my favorite sweet corn-banana-coconut apam from the man who sold them on his tricycle cart at Jalan Burmah.

After we checked out from the hotel, we took the gals on a ferry ride to cross over from Penang to Butterworth. It was their first ever ride on a ferry and boat. Then we stopped at the Auto City @ Juru and had a very late lunch at around 3pm. After lunch, we drove to St. Anne's Church at Bukit Mertajam again. This time, it was to offer thanks to St. Anne. 3 months ago when Baby was just discharged from the hospital after undergoing 2 major surgeries, we were there to seek help from St. Anne for Baby to be healed from kidney reflux. This time, we were there to offer thanks as Baby has been confirmed free from kidney reflux after the MCUG scan on Thursday! Praise the Lord!

We reached Ipoh at 6:30pm and after settling down, we reheated all the food that we had packed from Penang and had a very satisfying dinner of good old Penang hawkers' food at the comforts of our own home, minus the sweat, dust, fumes and stench from the drains and bustling roads.

The hubs has now gone out to town to pack a long list of Ipoh hawkers' food for his mum and relatives back in KL. There's going to be another binging session today! Thank God I haven't gained a pound though I've been gorging on quite a bit of carbs for the past few days and have not got the time to exercise for 2 days. I finally managed to run for 35 minutes today and I better work-out longer tomorrow to run away the calories that I've piled up.

Enough Is Enough

I have had enough of my maid. Throughout our time together in Ipoh and Penang for the past 3 days, she's been getting on my nerves. I can still tolerate it each time she disobeys me and does things however way she wants, despite me telling her not to.

Yesterday, Sherilyn was happily watching TV in the hotel room when she came and sat next to her, snatched the remote control that she was holding and switched channels. Did I tell you she's hooked on the TV? Another long story to tell on that. She got reprimanded. Next, we had bought a packet of peanuts for the gals to feed monkeys at Botanical Garden. Instead, this control freak clung on to the peanuts and fed monkeys herself. When the gals asked for peanuts, she refused to give. Next, in the car when Alycia wanted to look at a brochure on the Toys Museum, she also refused to give Alycia and was happily looking at the brochure herself. She even had the cheek to chide off Alycia and created a stupid excuse so that Alycia didn't get to see the brochure. The hubs and I were really pissed off with her. All these I can still close one eye and forgive her.

I got so steaming mad with her just now when she hit Baby's hand. She thought I was in the toilet and she gave Baby a monstrous expression on her face, snatched the plastic bag that Baby grabbed and hit her hand. That, I cannot accept. Who is she to hit my Baby? That was not the first time. I had caught her many times giving Baby a hideous and spiteful expression on her face and tried to hit Baby on the hand. But when she realized that I was standing behind her, she turned 360 degrees and pretended to play with Baby.

I now feel like I am keeping a time bomb waiting to explode in my house. I no longer trust her and she gets on everyone's nerves all the time, including my 2 older gals. This is really straining my relationship with her and it's really bad for me as well as for her. If I send her back to the agent, I'm not sure if I can cope without a maid. Moreover, my mil will be away overseas for more than a month soon. Her contract will only expire in April next year. If we decide to get another maid, it would probably take another half a year for the new maid to arrive. Long sigh..... should I keep her or send her back?

Anxious

I am now all alone in the hotel with Baby, sitting at the hotel office furniture blogging and surfing the net. My parents and hubby have brought Alycia and Sherilyn to Kek Lok Si in Penang for sight-seeing and shopping. Also for them to indulge in the famous Assam Laksa. I decided to stay back in the room as Baby had dozed off. She skipped her nap yesterday and woke up pretty early this morning. I am also a tad worried that she would give me a big unwanted surprise later when we are out shopping as she has not pooped for 2 days. If she still does not poo poo later, I will get our surgeon to give her an enema when we see him in the afternoon. I am feeling really anxious now. Anxious of the whole traumatic procedure that Baby would be going through again later and most of all, anxious of the results of the scan.

Outgrowing Her Shoes Real Fast

Alycia is outgrowing her shoes at an unbelievable rapid rate. Apart from her Crocs which she wears to pre-school everyday, all her shoes are worn less than 20 times, some are even never worn. She is lucky that she has aunts and grandparents who keep buying her shoes but the problem with her is that she is quite picky on her choice of shoes. My mil bought her a pair of white Zara Kids shoes that look like ballerina shoes last year. The shoes were a tad oversized for her then. Recently when I dug out the pair of shoes and asked her to wear them, she refused to. She not only dislikes ballet, she even dislikes shoes that look like her old ballet shoes! It looks as if I have to bring her shopping to get her a new pair of shoes. There ain't many brands of kids' shoes that are nice and priced affordably here. Perhaps I should ask my friend from the U.S. to help me get Alycia a nice pair of MBT shoes when she visits me.

If Only She Would Drink From A Cup

I was at Babyland the other day to get Baby a 3-in-1 cup, i.e. a cup that comes with a spout, a straw and a teat. There were so many brands of 3-in-1 cup that I didn't know which one to buy. Initially I chose a Tommy Tippee cup and that cup was almost RM40. When I was about to pay, I changed my mind and got a Pureen cup instead, which cost way cheaper. I just had a hunch that Baby would resist using the teat, spout and straw (as I had tried in vain to feed her with those countless times) and I didn't want the expensive cup to go to waste.

I was right. When I let Baby use the cup with the straw, teat and spout, all she did was played with the cup, shoke the cup as if it was her new toy and spilled water everywhere. It was back to square one and I ended up spoon feeding her again, looooooong sigh......

Our Delicious Lunch At Delicous @ Bangsar Village

We had lunch at Delicious @ Bangsar Village today. Here're what we had:

Beef lasagne - tasty but the portion is a tad too big. A small eater like me will surely get jai (stuffed) easily after digging on only half of this rich and cheesy delight.


Salmon quiche - also too big a portion for a small eater. Though tasty, this is another creamy, eggy and cheesy dish that would make you go real jai very easily.



Seafood linguine for the gals.


Hubby's breakfast set


Spaghetti Carbonara for the gals.


My warm Mediterranean chicken salad with avocado.



Flour-free orange cake with coconut - very delicious and not too sweet, just perfect for a health freak cake lover like me. I ditched the fattening cream.


Chocolate brioche - I find it too starchy, too chocolaty, sweet and creamy.... an empty calorie dessert that is really fei sei lor (darn fattening)!



Hubby also ordered 2 scones with cream and strawberry jam, a tray of warm and delicious croissants with yummy marmalade jam which were polished off in a flash and 2 scoops of vanilla ice-creams.