Beating Exam Blues

When it comes to revising for exams, Alycia can act like a small kid who needs loads of sweet talks, loads of rewards, loads of praises and tons of laughter to get her going. Yesterday, after Alycia and Sherilyn wasted half a day doing nothing, I managed to warm them up into doing revision by first having a quiz in BM and English. The winner shall share a Magnum almond ice cream with me. I knew that Alycia would win the quiz, so here she is, enjoying her Magnum ice-cream while working on her English workbook.

 

After the ice cream, this girl obediently finished off all that the work that I had set for her. Before I attempted to ask her to do more workbooks, I goofed around with the girls to crack them up. One incident got us all rolling on the floor laughing. I got Alycia to try on one of my super tight bra spaghetti strap tops. The bra top fitted her so well and she looked like a teenager with 'boops' and all LOL!! I joked that if any of her friends or relatives saw her in the bra top, their eye balls would pop out from their eye sockets seeing her morphed into a teenager overnight. All of us rolled on the floor laughing till our tummies ached.

It is not easy to get my girls to obediently do revision for their exam on their own.They do not have the zeal and drive to do it on their own yet. Well, I can't blame them as their daddy and mummy were not overzealous scorers in school either ;:P

Crispy Baked Egg And Cheese Sandwich

I whipped this up for the girls' lunch some time back. It has been a great success and thus, I am posting the pix here. When I say success, it simply means that I have gotten the thumbs up from my persnickety foodie-in-the-making girls :)  Only HFM Angels'-approved- food will be posted here :D

First I boiled some hard-boiled eggs and heated up some snap frozen sweet corn kernels from Wattie's.  Then mashed the eggs up, added some Kewpie mayo, pepper and sprinkled some chia seeds.

 

I used 3 slices of white bread for the girls and 2 slices of wholemeal bread for myself. As you can see from the picture below, I spread the egg mixture on the first slice, inserted a slice of cheese on the next 2 layers followed by another layer of egg mixture and finally on the top layer of bread, I spread it with butter before sprinkling some mixed herbs. Then in went the tray into the oven  for 15 minutes.

 


The baked sandwich, hot from the oven...


Cut the sandwich into half to make triangles.  This was Cass' lunch, with her favorite Envy apples and some cool cucumbers.




The baked sandwich was really crispy, even after an hour later when Alycia ate her portion. I am going to bake this again today to finish up the left over bread in the fridge :)

Bad Week!

This week has been a bad week for Cass and Sherilyn, which means it is even worst for me. When the girls are unwell, it is always the mom who suffers the most.

Cass has been unwell for almost the whole of this week. She has been suffering from a phlegmy throat and had fever for two days earlier this week.  As she is getting better today, the virulent sick virus has now attacked Sherilyn.

Last night at exactly 12 midnight, she ran from her bedroom to the bathroom and puked into the toilet bowl. I was jolted up from my sleep. I saw the vomit pouring out into the bowl and her long hair was dipping into the bowl with vomit!!!  I thought it was a nightmare but the nightmare turned into a reality! At 12 midnight, I had to wash her hair and scrub the toilet bowl and  floor as stinky vomit was splattered everywhere.

I used to post in my blogs years ago when Sherilyn was about 3 years old that I thought it was a jinx that she would puke at 12 midnight very often. The jinx stopped short after Cass was born. Now I know that it ain't any jinx. The culprit is again MILK! 

Then at 3am, Sherilyn woke up and ran to my room. I thought she wanted to puke but she told me that she wanted to drink water and that she felt very sick.

Today has been bad. She has vomited more than 5 times and the hubs brought her to the doctor in the morning.

We had lunch at Nihon Kai Japanese restaurant today. While all of us ate, Sherilyn sat there in a daze. She only drank a few sips of hot matcha and a few slurps of soba.

In the car, she puked again.





Back home, I gave her 2 slices of cream crackers before feeding her with anti-vomiting medicine.

She has been napping the whole afternoon and she seems really unwell. At one point, she had hallucination when I woke her up from her nap. She really scared the shit out of me when she blabbered out words that did not make sense and acted strangely!

To be continued...

Meltdown

This morning Cass and I had a big meltdown.  For the past 1 week, Cass has been uber cantankerous, so much that she has gotten on my rawest nerves and getting me really pissed off. I think one of the reasons why she has been acting this way is that she has not been feeling well.  But I have feelings too. I am also not in my top form (feeling under the weather and darn the PMS!) and getting nonsense from this girl all the time has really worn out my patience totally. You know, things like I give her an orange but she wants an apple instead, refusing to follow me out though there is no one at home, refusing to pee, refusing to eat, refusing to drink and  refusing to follow every single instruction from me. Everyone of them!! This morning was the final straw that broke my back.  I had woken her up to get her ready for school but she just laid down on the couch with a cup of water in her hand, almost spilling it. After being reprimanded from me, she sat at the dining table but she was not drinking. She was staring outside in a daze. No sweet talk nor threats from me would make her move and  get ready for school.  She had already skipped school for 3 days this week as she was down with a bad throat. She has to take part in her school concert next week and she needs to practise her concert dance everyday.  Exam is around the corner too. Finally, she was too late to go to school. She ponteng school!

With  pent-up anger from yesterday when she refused to eat the porridge that I cooked and refused to follow me out to the mini mart when there was no one at home to watch over her, I could no longer stomach her nonsense anymore. I barked at her with lava spewing out from me. But she was emotionless! That made me even more enraged. That was it. I told her that I was not going to care about her anymore. And I just burst out sobbing myself.  I did not fix her breakfast. I ignored her the whole morning. She came to me and asked me why my eyes were wet. She smelled my arm and touched me but I was and still am super pissed off with this brat! 

For lunch, I have reheated the porridge that she refused to eat yesterday for her to eat. She ate it all. She was starved from having no breakfast.  For dinner, I am on a strike. I ain't going to cook but will just take-away dinner. The brat has spoiled my mood entirely.  She is corroded with guilt now. She helped me to change the bedsheet just now and asked me if I wanted a massage.  But I am just in no mood for any of these but to run away from her!!

Deep Freezing Uncooked Dishes For Future Meals In A Jiffy!

My girls and I love steamed pork.  Recently, I have figured a way to prepare delish steamed pork dishes in a jiffy. All I have to do is to spend some time on a day when I have free time to prepare the ingredients in the kitchen, store the raw steamed pork nicely and deep freeze them. On days when I ain't in a mood to cook but the girls want yummy and hot dishes to go with rice, I can easily remove this from the freezer, defrost it and steam it.


Here's what I now do...

1) Buy minced pork from the butcher. You can buy half-lean-half- fat meat and chop them yourself. I don't have the time, so I buy readily minced pork.

2) Here, I have minced pork with watercress veggie and prawns. Just chop up the watercress and prawns and mix them well with the pork. Add sesame seed oil, pepper and a little sea salt.

3) Then distribute the pork mixture into several stainless steel plates and bowls.  These will be ready to be steamed when I want to cook it.  I oiled the plates with some sesame seed oil too, so that the meat won't stick to the plate.




4) Next, I will place the plate of raw minced pork into an airtight container and store it in the freezer.

5) On the day when I plan to steam the minced pork, I will defrost a container in the morning. When the kids are almost back from school, I will then steam the minced pork.  In the pot where I steam this, I will put a couple of eggs so that the eggs can 'tumpang' to be cooked.  Thus, my girls will have a complete and well-balanced meal consisting of meat, veggie and eggs :D





How many of you do this? I am always trying to figure out how to dish out delish and hot meals for my girls, thus I came up with this idea.   Maybe you have already been doing this for aeons. But if you have not, do try this out. Your kids and family can have freshly steamed dishes on days when you are too busy to cook or just feel like doing nothing but warm your butt on the couch :D

Bored Baby

My poor baby has been feeling pretty bored these days. Her second oddball che che used to be her playmate in the afternoons but ever since Sherilyn started attending half-day tutoring at a tuition centre, Cass has been finding things to do on her own.  On most days, she will be drawing, scribbling and playing with her pretend cook set.  For the past few days, the iPad has been her best buddy.  Today, she's watching how cakes are being baked on You Tube! LOL!  Besides the iPad, Cass has also been helping me fold and keep the clean laundry. She also gave me a good 20-minute massage yesterday!  When she's in her goody two shoes self, she is totally lovable but when she steps out from her goody shoes and decides to play villain by protesting every single instruction from me disregarding every single threat from me, she can really drive me to strangle her!!

Udon With Awase Miso

Here's another post on food.  Lately, this blog has morphed into a food blog with almost every posting and picture on food LOL!  For those who visit to read updates on my girls or for stories on parenting, pardon me. I have been very busy lately with my online store and with cooking, thus, the lack of  write-up on the girls and on parenting.

Last week, I prepared a new dish for the girls.

I cooked Udon noodles with Awase miso paste as the soup base.   There was also a stir-fried cabbage with minced pork dish to go along with the Udon.

 


I bought this pack of Awase Miso paste from one of those stores that sell Japanese food stuff in Tokyo Street @ Pavillion KL.

I find Miso paste a versatile condiment to use.  It can be used to prepare soup and to flavor meat, fish, veggie and to stir-fry noodles.   The soup with Miso paste can be prepared into a 1-pot dish when you add tofu, seaweed, chicken fillet, veggie, crab meat sticks, eggs and whatever you fancy into the soup.

Miso paste can be very salty if you use too much.  Just go easy on the serving and test the taste before serving.  You can add more water to dilute the saltiness.

Simple Homecooked Meals

Here are some of the simple yet wholesome meals that I whipped up for the kids this week....

Dinner on 24 September 2013...

Braised pork ribs with wine and potatoes, sardines with big onions and lime juice and a veggie dish.


 

Close up picture of the delish braised pork with potato dish...





Dinner on 25 September 2013...

Chicken rice and a veggie dish




This bento set was for Sherilyn as she came home late from the tuition centre that night...

Papaya, coconut water, chicken rice and veggie and a cream puff for dessert.

 


I cooked porridge for dinner last night as Cass had fever. We had planned to  have a relaxing dinner outside but had to cancel our plan when Cass' fever did not subside. Thank God, she is well again today :)



 

My girls like really watery porridge, thus you will see that the porridge looks like soup here. It was delish, sweet and tasty as there was a whole load of ingredients in the porridge, yums!

Alycia's New Hair Cut

Today I brought Alycia for a hair cut. She had been bugging me to bring her to the hair salon since last week but I only did so after she told me that the prefectorial teacher gave the prefects an ultimatum that if anyone with hair touching the collar of the shirt  tomorrow, the hair would be snipped off by the teacher!



After the hair cut, Alycia has been fretting about how awful she looks. While I really think that the hair style suits her type of hair and her face shape, I think she is still not used to her new look. I told her jokingly that if she did not like the new hair, there is really nothing much she can do except to get some natural noriko wigs to don on while waiting for her hair to grow LOL!

Cassandra's Doodle

Cass loves drawing and 'writing'. She definitely has her daddy's artistic DNA running in her blood.

While eating lunch yesterday, she doodled this :


 

I am putting this picture in this blog for online storage before I bin it. She has too many drawings and I am already running out of space to keep them.

 Cass at 5 years 5 months

Cheese-Baked Rice

Last week, I tried a new dish - cheese baked rice.  The girls and I had tried cheese-baked rice at several restaurants when we were back in Ipoh this year and I had told them that some day, I am going to try dishing it out.

It is pretty simple and I did not follow any recipe. I diced some chicken fillet and marinated them with soy sauce, mixed herbs, garlic salt and pepper in the morning. I like to do all the cooking preparation like cutting and marinating in the morning. Once this chore is over and done with, I can sit at my work place without having to worry about it.  In the evening, I stir fried the chicken fillet with big onions and garlic, red and yellow bell pepper, diced pumpkin and fresh sweet corn kernels.





Cooked rice is placed in a corningware. The ingredients are then transferred into the rice-filled corningware.


Then Alycia helped me to mix the ingredients with the rice.







Next Alycia poured in half a packet of parmesan cheese and 4 slices of cheddar cheese on the dish. 
This is how it looks before being baked in the oven for about 15 minutes, uncovered.





That's the final product!   Add some chopped spring onions or you can even throw in more cheese if you like it really cheeeeesy!






My homemade baked-cheese rice was absolutely delightful and my girls totally loved it.  It ain't very hard to whip up and I am definitely going to cook this dish more often! :)



The yellowish outcome of the last two pix was caused by the yellow lighting at my dining table. Actual color of this dish was way more appealing ;)

Multi-tasking Aunty

This is the aunty who wants to accomplish a lot in under an hour in the morning but does not have enough hands to do so like an octopus.

With  no hands to press on the button of the car key, no hands to hold the card to swipe on the door scanner and no hands left to open the house door,  this ah-soe has to clip the car keys, house keys and access card to 3 card holders and hang them on her neck.  Like soh por or not?


This aunty bought breakfast for the kids, bought newspapers and has bags of veggie and meat to whip up a warm and healthy dinner for her family tonight!

That is why this aunty has strong arms and muscles on her hands. No flabby auntie underarms, earned from years of hardcore training holding weights like a kuli to her 3 kiddos!

Food Glorious Food!

After days of eating bread with jam or wholewheat crackers with jam for breakfast, my taste bud yearned for something different this morning. So I asked the hubs to join me for breakfast at a nearby food court after dropping off Cass at school.

This was my bowl of  Ipoh Kai See Hor Fun with shredded chicken meat and wanton, which tasted very good but just not there yet. If you hail from Ipoh and have tasted the best of the best, nothing beats the authentic Ipoh Kai See Hor Fun, especially the distinct taste and sweetness of the broth and the smoothness of the hor fun (flat rice noodles). And the plump, crunchy and sweet beat sprouts too!  Oh, talking about this, I am already missing good old Ipoh food!

This bowl of noodles cost RM8 alright. No more RM3.50 or RM4 like it used to be just  a year ago.  A hike in the cost of petrol causes a chain reaction and the price of everything goes up! 

The next dish on my To Cook List is to learn how to make Ipoh Kai See Hor Fun broth!  Shall google for it when I am absolutely free.




This was Sherilyn's simple dinner bento yesterday.  These days, she comes back from the tuition centre between 6:30pm to 7:30pm.  If we eat first, I will prepare a bento for her.


 

The set consisted of a peeled orange, fried fish, freshly grated organic raw radish with Japanese soy sauce, beet root soup and a bowl of soba with veggie and seaweed. Someone at home was green with envy when she saw the bento set yesterday and today.  So it looks like I will have to prepare a bento set to ease the jealousy from raging!

Simple Lunch For The Girls - 13 September 2013

This is for my anti-rice but noodles-loving Cass...

Vermicelli with minced meat (left-over from the previous night's dinner), steamed chicken drumstick and a free-range chicken egg.



Tiny but she's got a very ravenous appetite. She polished off this big Pyrex bowl of food!




And this is for my rice-craze Alycia...





This is a pretty no-sweat meal which I managed to whip up in under an hour.

Steamed chicken drumsticks with sesame seed oil, pepper, sea salt, red dates and since I had an excess of pandan leaves which were starting to whither in the fridge, I dumped in a few sprigs of pandan leaves to add flavor to the chicken drumsticks.

The girls were very satisfied with their lunch :D

Can You Guess What This Is?

Some of you have probably seen and used this modern gadget but this jakun me saw it for the first time at a 5-star hotel the other day.  My girls and their outmoded mommy had a good laugh when the gadget finally functioned and we were all wowed by it muahahaha!

Would you like to guess what this is?

Dinner In A Jiffy

Here's the dinner that I dished up in under an hour. I love using the oven to cook as there is no oil splatter and I can do other chores when the meat is grilling inside the oven.

Oven-grilled wild salmon with herbs, garlic salt, black pepper and olive oil...



I also made a quick chicken soup using chicken bones, carrots and pumpkin and threw in some green veggie and an egg each for the girls.  Also reheated the frozen braised Hakka pork dish that the MIL cooked for us before she left for HK.

 

Of Maids And Lovers

I am now in a dilemma. And I feel like one of those very lost and confused lovers who cannot make up her mind on which man to choose to marry!  If you have been following my blogs, you would have read my struggles and frustrations with finding a good part-time maid.  Well, in December last year, I found a very, very good part-time maid (Maid M) who worked for me for half a year until she dropped the most dreaded news to me -- that she wanted to quit as she was very worried over the sudden appearance of a huge lump in her neck. She was not lying to me as I saw and felt the big lump on her neck.

When she left, I felt jilted, like a girl who was ditched by her most beloved lover. I was lost without any help. I engaged those part-time maids who were paid hourly and I hated their services. I'd rather do the work myself than have those hourly paid maids in my house. I went searching high and low for another lover part-time maid. At one point of time, I was on the verge of hiring a live-in maid from an unregistered maid agency as the low fees were too good to be true. Yea I said it.  Can maids be good and cheap legally these days? NO!  Crap! Not anymore.  The hubs said NO, don't be stupid and gullible!  We made up part of the statistics of those victims being cheated by  unscrupulous maid agents a few years ago and the maid agent was Alycia's classmate's father! Well, that man went behind bars later.   So I had to bite the bullet and forget about the whole idea of getting a live-in maid and do the work myself. Those days were tough and I felt like crying. My online business went from soaring to a sore as I had very, very little time left to do my online work.

I went to almost all the coffee shops and roadside stalls at my neighborhood to spread news to sellers that I was looking for a part-time maid who could come for 2-3 hours daily, Monday through Saturday.  A month past, still I had no luck.  Then one fine day, when I almost lost hope of ever finding someone like Maid M,  I received a call from Maid Y.  I immediately asked her to come for an interview at 5pm the same day.  When I saw her, my guts feeling told me that she's the one and she started to work for me the next day. That was 2 months ago. She is still working for me and she is almost as good as Maid M but she is just not there yet. Anyway, I am very thankful that she came at a time when I needed some help.

A few days ago, Maid M sent me a text message.  We have been sending each other text messages quite often, with me asking her whether the lump on her neck had subsided and how her check ups at the hospital went.  She always replied me by telling me that the lump was still there and she still had a few more appointments at UMC.  Coming back to Maid M's text message 3 days ago.  She told me that she was well and that the lump on her neck has subsided. She wanted to for me again!  I did not know how to reply her.  I wanted her back badly but if I accept her back, I would be unfair to Maid Y.  What if Maid M leaves me again after I have turned Maid Y away?  It was a very hard decision to make, just like a girl choosing her life partner LOL!  Finally, I retained Maid Y and told Maid M the truth about my predicament.

Maid Y will be going back to Indonesia in December this year.  There is a high percentage that she will NOT return to work for me though she assured me that she will come back. She kept telling me that she likes working for me. Well, I have seen too many cases where maids who had worked for my friends for donkey years never returned and my friends were left waiting at the airport, like a forlorn lover.  So I told Maid M that I may need her again in December when Maid Y goes back to Indon for a holiday.

I hope I have made the right decision. The hubs is unable to make a decision too.


Maid M is friendly, was paid RM700 per month and worked 5 hours each time she came. She is very simple and not calculative. Her work is detailed and her work is very good, albeit quite slow as she pays too much time to details.  She was ever willing to work longer than what she had to.

Maid Y is very reserved, quiet but her work is good. She is currently paid RM900 per month and works only 3 hours each time she comes. She will leave on the dot when it is time to leave.

What would you have done if you were me?  

Simplest Lunch Ever

A few days ago, I was clearing the fridge and found 2 packets of organic Japanese sweet potatoes and 2 packets of sweet corns that the mil had bought before she left for Hong Kong about 3 weeks ago.  The sweet potatoes were starting to sprout shoots and the sweet corns look like they were starting to dry up. So I told Alycia and Cass that we would have to quickly clear those stuff before they go to the bin. They had no objection to my suggestion as they are hardly served such 'simple food'.  Whoopie, that was music to my ears as I needn't have to sweat it out in the kitchen to dish up a proper meal for lunch!

Here's Alycia's very simple and very healthy whole food lunch, consisting of papaya, steamed Japanese sweet potatoes, steamed sweet corn and 2 sunny side up free range chicken eggs. 



 


By the way, this kind of meal is known as The Caveman Diet, which is also called the Paleo / Stone Age / Warrior Diet.  It is a  plan on eating plants and wild animals similar to what cavemen are presumed to have eaten around 10,000 years ago. The diet is based on the foods that could be hunted, fished, planted and gathered during the Paleolithic era -- meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, vegetables, roots, fruits, and berries... all eaten raw or cooked using the cavemen way.  So go figure ;)
 

Random Events

The weather for the past few days has been awesome and just too good, well, at least for me, who is absolutely terrified of being hot and will literally melt under the sun. For the past three nights, I have been sleeping sans air-conditioner and sans fan.  Thankfully the hubs has no complaints as well and he went sans blanket.  Just a month ago, the temperature was hovering at 33 to 35 degrees Celsius and it is now about 22 to 23 degrees Celsius at night and during pre-dawn hours. Jogging at 6:30am is such an exhilarating time for me as the air is crisp and cold and I find so much peace exercising in the stillness of the pre-dawn darkness. Perfect for emptying all negative vibes from my mind and to absorb positive ones.

All in the name of charity, I paid RM10 to have this picture taken with these Star Wars characters at Bangsar Village on 1 September 2013.  The donation went towards the Society For The Severely Mentally Handicapped.  The 'package' also came with a copy of the picture and 3 badges. If I have the financial means, I would love to continue to donate more to the needy, like I used to when I was in the corporate world.

Impulse Buying

I love shopping at this shop in my neighborhood that sells everything at 5 bucks but I try to refrain myself from stepping foot into this shop. Each time I enter this shop, I end up buying stuff which I do not need and overspend. This shop is a bane for those on a tight budget. Although everything is cheap, many people actually indulge in impulse buying and end up wasting money buying things that they do not really need. One time, the hubs bought a couple of stands & mounts , trays and containers and they are still unused and collecting dust in the storeroom! I have a love-hate-relationship with this shop and now only visit the shop if I have something that I absolutely need to buy.

Radish Cabbage Soup For The Soul

This is my lunch and dinner today:
Organic radish + organic cabbage + roast pork bones + pork ribs soup.  No rice. No noodles.  Just an awesome bowl of soup.  I also ate one half-boiled free-range chicken egg for lunch. Cass ate the same thing and had 2 half-boiled eggs and 2 slices of homemade kaya toast.




The girls did not scoff when I told them that they will be having just soup and sunny-side-up eggs to go with rice for dinner.  They managed to polish off half the amount of pork ribs from the soup.  There is still a bowl of soup with ribs and that will be my lunch for tomorrow.  This is good stuff and a complete meal with protein, fibre, calcium, iron and much more, all in a bowl of soup.

And guess what the girls will be having for lunch tomorrow? Steamed purple sweet potatoes!  Just now I found 2 packets of organic sweet potatoes that my MIL had placed in a bag in the kitchen. I told the girls that since the sweet potatoes were starting to sprout shoots, we had better finish them off instead of binning them as they ain't cheap being organically grown.  The girls were A-OK with my suggestion and requested for sunny-side-ups again to go with the sweet potatoes, LOL!  Good girls, mummy is so proud that you all ain't fussy after all. 

Pesto Pasta For Lunch - 4 September 2013

This is Cass' lunch today...

Leftover pesto pasta from last night's dinner. I added 1 teaspoon of pesto sauce, a little hot water and a little olive oil to the pasta before heating it up in the microwave oven. This way, the pasta will not be hard and dry after reheating in the microwave oven.

I also made some hard-boiled free-range chicken eggs, mashed them up and squeezed in some Japanese mayonaise and pepper, coz that's just how this sweetie-pie likes hard-boiled eggs eaten.






I now love Wednesdays as I only have to settle Cass' lunch. She is the least fussy of the 3 rascals and is pretty easy to please too, when it comes to food.  Alycia comes home at 4ish pm and Sherilyn who has started to attend after-school care at a nearby tuition-cum-daycare only comes home at 7pm for dinner.

Our Dinner - 30 August 2013

This was our dinner yesterday. It was the first dinner that I cooked after the MIL's departure to Hong Kong.


From top, clockwise : egg omelette with herbs, baby bok choy, organic 'yeh fah heong' flower veggie and steam minced pork with prawns, sesame seed oil and chopped watercress veggie.




Yesterday, I drew up a 4-day menu. I used to draw up a 7-day and sometimes 14-day menu in the past but since I do not have much time to cover for 7 days, I had to settle with a 3 or 4-day menu now.  I like to have a drawn up menu so that I can stick to it without having to stress myself up everyday on what to cook. It is easier and faster to do grocery shopping too.


For the 2 veggie dishes, I drizzled some Goma sauce on them, tossed in some chopped spring onions (my kids and I love spring onions) and cut up strips of olive-flavored seaweed. I still have 3 packets of  seaweed that my mum bought from Korea recently. Since the seaweeds are near the expiration date, I am now using them in almost all my dishes. The good thing is that my girls and I all love seaweed!

We are having lasagne for lunch today. For dinner, I will be stir-frying organic cabbage with minced meat and reheating the stewed pork dish (frozen now) that the MIL mass-cooked for us just before she left.

We will be having a short getaway at one of the 5-star hotels in KL from tomorrow through Sunday. That is our yearly retreat at this hotel and our stay has always been on this particular date as the hubs would normally only utilize his complimentary hotel room voucher at the eleventh hour before its expiration date *roll eyes*!!

Happy weekend friends! :)

Organic / Naturally Grown Vegetables - How Do You Verify?

I bought this bundle of organic sawi from my regular organic veggie seller this morning. I just love to see the tiny worm holes on the leaves of vegetables. This way, I am almost assured that the veggies were grown without the use of pesticides and bugs repellents.

There is this self-claimed organic veggie stall at the night market that claim that all their vegetables and fruits are naturally grown without the use of pesticides in Cameron Highlands. However, their veggies are free from worm holes, huge and can last pretty long in the fridge too!  I feel really dubious about their claim, yet many people flock to buy their veggies and paying two to three-fold!  Most of all, there is no certification whatsoever to confirm their claim that their produce are organic or grown naturally.



 

Don't you just love to see holes on your vegetables like me? ;)

I only buy organic produce if I see a sticker of certification on the packaging.  Do you buy so-called organic produce that have no sticker of certification on the packaging?

While Waiting...

For the past few days, I had to chauffeur the MIL around to run errands before she flies off tomorrow. She helps me and I help her. There is team work in our house haha!  For the past few days too, the mil has been cooking and baking big portions of dishes and bread for deep freezing. That will be our 'ration' on days when I am too busy or lazy to do anything.

To save time, I cut up some fruits for Cass to eat in the car while we wait for her grandma to do banking yesterday. While Cass ate and read, I was busy Facebooking and replying to emails on my phone.

In the picture below, Cass was munching on some sweet and crunchy Envy apples while 'reading' her Alycia che che's comic book. With food and a good book, this rascal will sit still in the car, else she would be jumping up and down the car restlessly with her itchy hands pressing on every single button that she sees while we wait for grandma while whining and telling me that "I AM SO BORED!".

Employee Wellness Programs

To help encourage mental, physical and emotional health, employee wellness programs are being created and have grown in popularity. These programs are designed to assist employees who want to lose weight, manage stress, quit smoking and begin living healthier lives. A great sign of a successful wellness program is measuring how well the program changes employees’ negative habits and creates healthier habits.

In most cases, senior management teams identify a committee to manage their wellness program for employees. Committee members can supervise others who cover specific areas of the wellness program such as physical fitness, vision, medical and employee assistance programs.

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Edamame Beans For School Recess

The girls love Edamame beans. They are pretty costly if ordered from a Japanese restaurant and I do not like it that salt is often sprinkled on the beans.  The best is of course home-prepared, sans salt and washed before briefly cooking them in the microwave oven. My girls love to bring Edamame beans to school as snacks during recess.

This picture was taken this morning. Last night, Cass asked me if she could bring the green soy beans to school and I told her yes on condition that she does not dilly dally and can get herself ready for school on time. She promised me and kept her promise this morning.  So here she is... getting her favorite snack ready for recess today by removing the beans from the pods.





In Cass' pre-school, Mondays are bright green colored green cakes  for snacks *shudder*  and I usually let her bring something to school instead of letting her eat the 'green monster'.  Thursdays are usually corn flakes  (which Cass always tells me that she hates them as they are dry) or belly button biscuits with neon colored and hardened icing on top (aka biscuits to be offered to children ghosts during the Ghost Festival!). Most pre-schools these days offer junk food as snacks to toddlers and pre-schoolers, all in the name of greed and selfishness so that money is saved from buying better quality snacks.

Shoes That Were Swapped

Further to my earlier post on 'What Would You Do If You Were Me?', I had a 'brainstorming' session with Sherilyn and Alycia over this issue and what I found out was that this problem happens quite frequently after the library period.  Though every student is given a number card to claim their shoes when they leave the library, this system seems to have some flaws as shoes are still swapped and missing. And though the principal has advised the students to write their names on their shoes, many students are still not doing it. For some of the students who obediently write their names, the ink had  faded after several washes, like in the case of Sherilyn.

Sherilyn told me that after she lost her shoes, she reported the matter to her class teacher, who only nodded her head to acknowledge the problem but did not try to help her! I have met her class teacher once during the parents-teachers day in June when I collected her report card. The teacher seems to me like a passive
teacher and she is in her early twenties. She also seems to be the reticent type and did not tell us much about Sherilyn's progress in class. A good teacher (like Alycia's class teacher) would tell us about our child's strengths, weaknesses and what areas she/he has to improve on and how she/he can improve in the weak areas.  This could be because the hubs and I could not speak in Mandarin while the teacher is not good in her English language, thus the lack of communication.

Anyway, I told Sherilyn to speak to the teacher in charged of the library to seek her help but Alycia and Sherilyn told me that it is useless as the library teacher did not manage to help other 'victims' to locate their shoes in the past. I kept urging Sherilyn to bring the wrong shoes back to school since they are not hers and to seek the library teacher's help to find hers but she was dogged reluctant to do so reason being the teacher in charged of the library was not around at that time of the incident and her name written in marker pen, has faded from her shoes.

I guess I have to close the case and write off her shoes.  As a preventive measure, I have asked Sherilyn to place a very noticeable identification on her shoes each time she removes her shoes in school, on top of having her name written on both sides of her shoes.  I suggested to her that she either places her shoes into a plastic bag (this was what tourists were asked to do at one of the museums that we visited recently in Malacca) or places a small name card onto each side of the shoes but she said that this would make her look very stupid *roll eyes*   Instead, she came out with the idea of sticking her cartoon name sticker onto her shoes each time she removes her shoes in school. She will then pull out the two name stickers from the shoes after she wears them back and will stick them back onto the plastic cover of her mini note pad which she puts in her pinafore pocket.  I sure hopes that this method will prevent other pupils from wearing her shoes again.

Working Very Hard

The hubs and his team have been working at full steam for the past one week on several mega functions this week. Many of these corporate functions were Hari Raya Open House events, which involved over a thousand pax for each function. In this week also, one of his staff resigned and one of his chefs took leave. As a responsible and caring employer who did not want to over-work his other staff, he rolled up his sleeves and headed for the kitchen, helping out to cook and even to peel prawn shells! Can you imagine how many thousands of prawns he had to peel to cater for over a thousand pax?  He also carried heavy cartons of China plates, stainless steel cutleries, tables, chairs and everything that was needed to set up the buffet lines. He has over-worked himself this week and I think he must have torn some muscles in his hands. This morning, he could not even bend down to pick up his clothes or to open these to get his things out. By the way, if you are wondering what my hubs does, he runs a catering business. If you need a caterer, just give me a buzz ;)

What Would You Do If You Were Me?

Today, Sherilyn came home from school looking very down. When we were inside the lift, she told me this "mummy, someone wore my shoes after library today. I had no shoes to wear, so I had to wear someone's shoes" and then pointed to the over-sized white canvass shoes that she was wearing.  I told her that she should not have worn shoes that did not belong to her but should have reported the matter to the teacher in-charged in the library, to which she told me that the teacher in charged in the library was not around. So she just picked a pair of shoes to wear as they were about to go home.

Moments later, Sherilyn told me angrily that she hated the pair of over-sized shoes as they were loose on her feet.  I told her that since someone had worn her shoes and she has taken another person's shoes, she will have to wear that pair of shoes now. It will not be practical for me to drive all the way to her school to report to the teacher in charged of the library about this incident.  I had just bought her an extra pair of school shoes on Sunday and I told her that I will not buy her another pair of shoes again.  She then broke down and ran into the house, throwing tantrums and hurling replies to me saying that she will NOT wear that pair of big shoes that are not hers. She wanted me to buy her another pair of spare shoes, again!  She refused to eat her lunch and only ate when I gave her an ultimatum to finish her lunch by 3pm, failing which she will face the music.

As a responsible and sensible mother, what should I do now?

1) Do I go to school and report this incident to the teacher in charged of the library? I will definitely cause a big hoopla when the teacher calls all the students that were in the library today and asks Sherilyn to look for her pair of shoes.  For all I know, the student who accidentally wore Sherilyn's shoes would have left the pair of shoes at home and wore another pair of shoes.

2) Take the easy way out - buy her another pair of shoes and throw away the over-sized shoes that are not hers?  But I will be sending her a wrong signal... that if she loses things, mummy will buy her a new one. No way!

3) Force her to wear the over-sized shoes and get her to ask around and to hunt for her own shoes tomorrow and for the next few days? 

4) Leave her with only 1 pair of shoes and let her take accountability over her own actions. If that sole pair of shoes are not dried on time for school on Monday, she will have to wear semi-wet shoes to school.

What would you do if you were me?

Super Easy To Dish Out Japanese Fried Rice

Yesterday, I whipped up some very yummy Japanese fried rice, on an impromptu basis.  After a super heavy breakfast at TedBoy Bakery @ Bangsar, we skipped lunch.  By 4ish pm, the girls announced that they were quite hungry. Note : quite hungry only hehe... and Alycia volunteered to cook scrambled eggs.  So she took 6 eggs out from the fridge, cracked them in a bowl, whipped them up and heated up the non-stick pan.  After pouring in the 6 eggs mixture (seasoned with mixed herbs and pepper) and frying them for a minute, I suggested that we should put in the Japanese rice that we had the night before and make that our dinner since it was already close to 5pm.  Without a thought, Alycia my rice-pot seconded my suggestion. Then I asked her to chop up a tomato for the fried rice and I added some seaweed that my mum bought from Korea. With a dash of soy sauce and a few stirs, the Japanese style yummy fried rice was ready.

Sherilyn quickly cut up some cucumbers BUT cut her finger AGAIN!  Then she fished out the block of Emmentel cheese from the fridge and scraped some onto the rice.  It was an impromptu decision to cook fried rice and the girls and I had fun in the kitchen.  The cut finger did not dampen Sherilyn's mood and everyone had a very satisfying early dinner at 5pm yesterday, which was the last day of the school holidays.



 
Our Japanese fried rice with 6 eggs, 1 tomato, soy sauce, pepper, mixed herbs, Emmentel cheese and Korean seaweed, yums!

Favorite Body Parts

There is a part in each of my daughter that is my favorite.  For Alycia, they are her trademark deep and seductive dimples, her flawless fair skin and huge eyes with double eyelids.  For Sherilyn, they are her silky smooth skin and dimples and for Cass, I love her baby pearly whites and errr, her forehead :P

I am truly obsessed and proud of Cass' flawless baby teeth and I know that I can only admire them for the next 2 years, after which they will shed and will be replaced with irregular size and shapes of adult teeth. I pray that my girls will not have 'vampire teeth' like the hubs and me. And I pray that they need not have to wear braces. Dear Lord, please bestow my girls with beautiful, white, strong and aligned teeth alwayz, amen!! :)

Cleaning Pillows, Mattresses and Bedding

The other day, one of my blog friends wrote in her blog that she washes her pillows in the washing machine each time she changes the pillowcases. I love the idea of washing my pillows to keep the pillows clean and free from dust mites, head lice and other bugs which are invisible to our naked eyes, which could be nesting and multiplying comfortably deep inside our pillows. I would do the same too if I live in a house with a garden or patio so that I can expose the pillows to the sun.

Living in a condo, we do not have the benefit of exposing our laundry directly to the sun, uncovered. We only get to hang our laundry at the balcony with limited exposure to the sun. Half of our laundry are hung indoors, under the fan.  Living in a condo with such limited space in the kitchen, we cannot even squeeze in a clothes dryer or a dishwasher as our extra space has been taken up by another refrigerator. Yes, we have 2 refrigerators  and built-in cabinets in the kitchen, occupying most of the space..

What I do is that I will sun our pillows and bolsters at least once a week. For bedsheets, pillowcases, bolster cases and blankets, I wash them every week. I also spray our mattresses with Sol-U-Guard disinfectant from Melaleuca to kill any germs and Sol-U-Mel (also from Melaleuca) to kill any dust mites and bed bugs.

That is the best I can do to avoid triggering the allergy button in my kids and I.  We have very sensitive noses and that is the reason why I am such a clean freak.


This is Sol-U-Guard disinfectant from Melaleuca. It kills mozzies, insects and cockroaches very effectively and safely as well.  It's definitely a life-safer for Katsaridaphobians like yours truly :P





Besides killing dust mites, Sol-U-Mel can also remove odors, stains and cleans the air.    Melaleuca products are safe and contain no harsh chemicals and toxic fumes. The main ingredients in their products is tea tree oil aka Melaleuca oil.  Just buzz me if you want to get these products from Melaleuca and I can help you get them at member's price.



How do you clean your pillows?

And how often do you change your bedding sheets?

Do you disinfectant and clean your mattress as well?

Trip Back To The Land Of Smooth Tofu

We left KL to head to Ipoh on Thursday, 8 August 2013. About 20 minutes into our journey, we saw a darn massive traffic jam ahead of us, near the Sg. Buloh overhead bridge. After getting stuck there for about 20 minutes, the hubs and I were on the verge of making a U-turn to return to KL and only leave KL the next day.  It was a double holiday here in Malaysia, where the Hari Raya holiday coincided with the school holiday.  We would normally stay put in KL during such times but we had a mission in Ipoh, which was to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday.

But the kids were disappointed upon hearing that we may only go to Ipoh the next day, so we moved on. The traffic eased up a little, later... and then at certain stretches, traffic was heavy again.  Overall, the traffic was not that horrendous and we took 3 hours to reach Ipoh vs. 2 hours on regular days.




Pictures taken on Thursday, 8 August 2013

To quench thirst, we snacked on some fruits and cucumbers and refrained from drinking water throughout the 3-hour journey.  No one wanted to queue up for half an hour just to inch our way into the rest and relax area and then queue up for another half an hour to pee... and then inch our way out into the highway again!  

 


And the picture below was taken today...

We left Ipoh for KL at 9:30am and reached KL at about 12:30pm.  Traffic was heavy at a few stretches on the highway and overall, it was quite a smooth ride, albeit there were many vehicles.  It also poured quite heavily throughout our journey.



I am still amazed and thankful that my girls can read a book in the car without feeling a wee bit queasy, unlike me, who would definitely have my entire day spoiled from having severe bouts of nauseousness if I were to spend just 15 minutes reading in a moving car, dang it!

Darn Those Eye Lid Twitches!

You had probably read in one of my blog posts where I wrote that whenever my right eye lid twitches, it is a foreboding that someone in the family will fall sick. This eyelid twitch premonition comes true nine out of ten times.  True to the eyelid twitches that I was getting about 2 weeks ago, Sherilyn was down with Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease, next Alycia had a mild bout of cold and now it is my turn to succumb to those darn vengeful viruses lingering in the house.  No wonder for the past few days, I felt so malaise and lacking in energy. I did not have the stamina to run in the morning and only did a light workout on the Air Walker at the gym, which is less strenuous on my legs and stamina.  Yesterday, I started to sneeze non-stop and had a watery nose.  I felt really sick and my eyes were swollen. Some of the symptoms I am getting now are similar to those that Sherilyn got 2 weeks ago when she was down with Hand-Foot-Mouth disease! Oh God, please don't let me get bitten too, I can't afford to fall this sick!   I slept at 10pm last night, which is a record-breaking time. The only time I would leave my work place early for the bed is when I am sick.   I can't describe how hard it was for me to go through the motions of a typical work-from-home-mum's routine yesterday as I was feeling really down and out, with aches from head to toe. 
 
This morning, I woke up with an achy jaw, headache, body aches and felt malaise. I skipped exercising again to return to my bed to have a short nap after getting Alycia and Sherilyn ready for school. When one part of our body is malfunctioned, the other parts of the body have to work doubly hard to support the entire body, thus all the aches and jadedness, I reckon.

Then at 9am, the hubs told me that by hook or crook, I had to bring my new car to the Hyundai Service Centre for servicing, failing which, the free service will be rendered null and void. I had to park the car down the road and walk under the hot morning sun to the Hyundai office, which aggravated all the aches in my body!

I have just had a nice warm shower and I just do not feel like walking  to Cass' school to pick her up in this crazy, hot and hazy weather.  All I want to do now is to rest and relax and nurse myself to recovery so that I am well enough to make our trip to Ipoh on Thursday to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday.

To Cane Or Not To Cane?

The other day while I was walking Cass home from school, she told me that teacher A (her English teacher) told her class that she would cane whoever who did not know how to read a long list of English words in their Spelling book.  The moment we reached home, she quickly fished out the book from her school bag and showed me the list of English words, which consisted of these words : dancing, fine, thank you, knee, neck, very, much, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents, drawing and about 10 more words. She then made me go through the words with her.  See, I can even memorize these words as she made me go through these words with her umpteen times!  She refused to wash up or eat her fruits. She was glued to her books and wanted to complete her homework, as well as to master those words.

What made Cass so obedient and seem like an exemplary student was achieved through the hard and painful way.  The teachers in her pre-school would punish and cane kids who did not complete their homework, kids who could not read and kids who chit chat a lot when lessons are on-going.  Let me tell you that Cass had been punished too many times that I have lost count. Most times, she was called to stand up as a form of punishment for being too talkative and sometimes she would be canned on her hand for not completing her homework.

Some parents would freak out upon learning that their kids (whom they themselves do not cane) are being canned in school. They view such punishment as being too draconian on kids, what more pre-schoolers.

For me, I am not against this form of punishment for Cass.  I admit that she can be very stubborn and disobedient, even at home. My hubs, mil and I are having a hard time disciplining her.  I think she has been spoilt rotten since birth due to her medical condition which has since been rectified after a surgery when she was 13 months old.

However, for kids who are timid and sensitive (like Alycia), canning and punishment would backfire and cause a negative impact on the child's emotions.  Alycia dropped out of the school team in Calligraphy just because the teacher threatened the students that they need not have to attend lessons again if they did not write the Chinese characters nicely.  This happened when she was in Standard 1. She was in tears when I pressed her for the reasons on why she wanted to quit.

Do you agree or disagree to canning being carried out in schools to discipline students?