vacation

Hi all, we've all been terribly sick these past 2 weeks. Coughing and sneezing, especially Kai. She got hit the worse.
Anyway, happy easter everyone. Hope you guys have a fun holiday.
We're going on vacation to Prague this week.
So, see you next week.

I feel random today.

1. I won a blog contest a few days ago. I've never won a contest before. Yipiiii! (I won a beautiful cabled beret pattern).

2. If you have 10 minutes, bake these vanilla cookies now! It's really really good. I didn't chill the dough before baking. I dropped spoonful to cookie sheet, and put several raisins on top. The cookies came out mound-y. Sorry about the terrible pic. Monkey King wasn't home, and JD insisted on being in the pic :P


3. Finally, I can have dessert for breakfast. I made this a few days ago, and it tasted just like carrot cake. Yummy! The carrots need to be steamed/microwaved before added to the batter or the resulted pancake will be crunchy. Otherwise, you can microplaned them like I did.

4. This is also very good. All da monkeys in the house loves it :) Next time, I will upped the cranberries to a cup.

5.
What's so special about the beds? Well, JD made the beds this morning. I didn't even ask her to. She said that I was busy with Kai, so she made the bed. And yes, we all sleep together in oneroom, even though JD has her own room. She hasn't sleep in her "real" bed for more than a year now.

6. Yesterday was a great day. After more than 15 months in waiting and trying, Kai finally sleeps in her stroller. We were on our way back from the library, and I saw her pull her hat down. When I stopped to open it, she woke up, and pull it down again. Funny monkey :) You can also see that she was holding a piece of banana in her hand. She was asleep for 1.5 hours, and woke up asking for nursing, and slept again in my arms for another hour.

And that's all folks.

Dinner time

Kai has been particularly stubborn lately. She refuses to seat on her baby chair. She only wants to seat on my lap or big sis' chair.



When she sits on my lap. Dinner is easier, but well...

Help help

JD loves to have date nights with us. We usually read more books, play computer games or eat late night snacks and drink tea. On this particular night, we opened up a new cookie box. She peeled off the sticker and stick it onto the top of her head.
She said help me mama, help me.

Hi!

We broke our washing machine. Ad our landlord bought us and new one, and gave us the box for the kids to play. A door and a window later. Voila! A new toy for the kids.
Hi!


Peek-a-boo

Spider Mitts

The Monkey King loves to stalk take pictures of people. And he put on a request for a photographing mitt last winter. The project started off with a promising future. I spent a few days designing, and swatching. However, I lost steam somewhere in the spring. And the unfinished mitt stayed languishing in my knitting basket, until I picked it up again a few months ago, and finished it. The King tested the mittens during snow, lo and behold, it turned into gorilla mitten when wet. Well, they were 10 sts too big when dry anyway. I'm contemplating on knitting him a new one, but hey, it's almost spring already :P

The left one


The right one


On action


Project: spider mittens, inspired by Spider socks
Ravelled here

JD's 4th birthday

2 weeks ago was JD's birthday. We celebrated as usual by eating red egg.


Then, I brought some mini blueberry muffins to her school. I used frozen blueberry, and omitted the crumble top.


When she got home, she showed us the birthday crown that her teacher made for her.


Since her birthday was on Monday, we waited until that weekend to really celebrate it. We decorated the house with balloons (as usual). Sorry about the messy table. It was really hectic because the kids were sleeping, and me and the Monkey King was on crunch time to decorate the cake and cleaning a bit.


JD wanted princess cake. Thank goodness for youtube. I found a tutorial for princess cake. The cake is a white cake recipe that I found on allrecipes.com. The icing is white cake icing. I doubled the recipe and baked the cake in 2 round pans. It should be tall enough, however, I think because I didn't use cake flour, the cake fell.


The b'day girl with the cake, and family pic. The hat crown is my birthday present for her.


The birthday presents. The ones that she loves most are the crown, fairy wings, princess dress and high heel.

Look who's in the dryer

Sisterly love

On most days having a sister is good. You have someone to share with and to do things together.

Watch cartoons on computer

Hold hands on an icy pavement

Reading books together

But having a sister means that you have to really share things.

No Kai, I played with this first. Don't touch!

Don't get too close to the edge, watch out!

Okay, I guess we can share. I really really don't like it though

Asian Food

I was craving for Japanese food last week. Sadly, there is no good Japanese restaurant here. They offer decent sushi, but hot food wise? It's terrible.
So, I browsed the internet (thank God, for internet), and found the recipe for what I want.

Hambaagu (Japanese hamburger)

Recipe from Just hungry
I didn't really follow the recipe to the dot because I was out of several items. But it still turned out decent, and quick dinner.

Croquette

Basically coat leftover mashed potato with flour, egg, and panko bread. And fry it.
Really awesome use of leftover mashed potato. It's a very versatile recipe. You can put veggies, meat or herbs, curry in the mashed potato before you turn it into croquette. I put veggies (carrot, corn and peas) and ground beef in the mashed potato.

Kwetiau Sirem

Surprisingly quick to make.

Somewhat of a direction to make:

1. Boil kwetiaw til soft (2-3 min). Put into a bowl, add about 1 Tbs of oil, oyster sauce, and sesame oil.
2. Heat cooking oil in a wok. Add minced shallot, minced garlic til fragrant. Add meat. Cook til cooked through. Add in vegetables.
   
3. Ad water about 1.5-2 cups. After the water boil, add in salt, pepper, and a bit sugar. Stir.
   
4. In a small bowl, mix 1Tbs cornstarch with a bit of water
5. Add the cornstarch mix to the wok. After the sauce thickens, add in 1 egg. Immediately stir it. Turn heat off.
6. Prepare bowl/plate with kwetiaw. Pour the sauce on top.
   

By the way, kwetiaw is he fen.

Playing with hair wax

I bought a tube of hair wax for the Monkey King. I tried to convince him that it'll make his hair better looking, not like an overgrown chi chi chia. So, I slather some wax on my hair, and the kids. We had fun creating funny hairstyles.

There's something about Mary JD



Wind-swept hair

Kai: "Waaa...stop playing with my hair, I just wanna take a bath"

Future Professor



This is not a product of hair wax. This is what happens when you put mashed bananas on your hair. It sticks out even after I wiped scrubbed it with wet towel. Nice to know that bananas is a good substitute for hair gel/wax. Good experiment, Professor!

Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy Valentine!

In this Valentine, I'd like to declare my love for my.... cast iron pan. Heh heh heh...

I acquired a used pan sometime in the fall at a flea market for almost nothing. Just recently I managed to properly season it, used it, and fell in love with it. If you owned one, you know what I'm talking about.

Things you can make with the pan:

Apple cake

Recipe: Apple cake in iron skillet
Verdict: Really yummy, but next time I would use 1 more apple, and reduce the butter used in cooking the apples

Pork chops

Recipe: mine. But it's basically pork seasoned with salt n' pepper, dredge with flour and fried.
Please overlook the blackness of the pork. It's not that burned, just a little bit :)

Potato skillet

Recipe: improvised.
Finally I can eat a proper skillet like the ones at Denny's. There's no Denny's or potato skillets here, so I'm quite excited.

And finally...Fried Chicken!!!!

Pretend there's a fried chicken pic here

I completely forgot taking pictures of it. We're so excited in having fried chicken for dinner, that we forgot to take a pic until there were just piles of bones left.
The chicken is really really good. The Monkey King said that it's comparable to Kentucky's. Mwahaha....that's good. Coz there's no Kentucky here either.
Man...remind me why we move here again?

Anywho...last but not least...

Homemade pizza

I know it's not made from the iron pan. But, it's so good that I just have to post :)

Happy Valentine everyone!
And Happy Chinese New Year too! Wish you all the best in the Year of Tiger.
Gong Xi Fa Cai! I'm off to make dinner. Hopefully I won't burn my duck :P

Basara Restaurant

We ate lunch at the Basara some time ago. (Ma, if you read this, it's over at the meat shop. We ate carrot cake there 2 years ago). The restaurant is situated inside a market hall. The restaurant/cafe on one side, and the market on the other side. They have butcher, fish stall, cheese and coffee stall, and green produce. It was quite fun for the kids to eat there because they don't get bored waiting for the food to come. They can walk around looking at the live lobster, crabs, and scallops in the aquariums.

We ordered margherita pizza (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, with freshly grated parmesan and ruccula on top)


Appetizer of the day (meatball, roast potato and dijon mayonaise, grill salmon, bread with herbed butter)


Raw Scallop
We choose the scallops from the aquarium, and prepared fresh. It's drizzled with olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper.

This was our first time eating raw scallop. I kinda like the texture, and the sweetness of it. But I think the olive oil overpowered the whole thing.




The brave kid trying the scallop. (She didn't like it though)

A Day at the Mall

This ride is fun, just make sure don't put money in it or I'll be scared.