Bento # 6

Jac enjoyed yesterday's mee goreng bento but true enough it was too much for him!! Being the nice him, he did not want to waste my efforts and kwai kwai finished all!

So today, I made a conscious effort not to pack too big a portion for him... i tried!!

Today bento is brown rice, stir fried 苦瓜 and stewed chicken thigh with sea cucumber and mushroom! I marinated the chicken thigh with oyster sauce, pepper and seasame oil. Put a little oil and fry the chinese spices, ginger and garlic, add the mushroom and chicken, simmer for 1/2 hour, add sea cucumber and simmer for another 1/2 hour. Volia... another delicious dinner for my darling!!

My lunch was a simple stir fried 苦瓜 with sliced beef... also very yummy but not very filling cos I was hungry by abt 4pm!!

Bento # 5

I am very excited about today's bento.

I brought home some uncooked yellow noodles from school and decided to cook mee goreng for Jac's bento. I remembered Jac telling me that the spicy noodles were tasty but a bit dry. So I added more water to make it more moist but hopefully not too soggy when he eats. Stir fry the sliced big onions, egg, shredded carrot, cai xin, add the yellow noodles, tomato ketchup and chili sauce and mix well. I spicy up the dish with his name using the mini alphabet cutters from Angie, turned out pretty right?

Besides mee goreng, I also cooked sliced beef with seasame seed and big onion. Vegetable was cauliflower and broccoli with flat beans.

I must admit, today's portion maybe too huge but since all cooked liao don't waste it!! Sorry darling, tomorrow will be a more manageable portion!!

My lunch was chicken nugget with the same veg. I chopped the chicken breast, water chestnut, a little of big onion and parsley. Marinate them with a little salt and black pepper. Shape it and pan fry it with little oil! Yummy!!

Bento #4

Today is a school holiday & I got up to prepare fresh (no overnight) dinner for Jac.

Today menu is spicy fried noodles with prawn, egg omelet, minced meat patty and green spinach. I soaked the Koka noodles in cold water until soften. Add some sliced big onion and chili flakes to the noodles and fry until cooked. The minced meat were marinated with chopped water chestnut, chopped carrot, parsley, salt and pepper than shaped and pan fried with the prawn. I bought some interesting food picks and make a flower with the prawn!!
I arranged the food into the new microwavable lunch boxes and fork and spoon (all newly purchased!) so that it makes it easy for Jac to heat up in the office.
Today bento comes neatly packed into a black carrier (again newly purchased!) with a nectarine! And its all ready to be brought to office!!
After sending Jac off to the door, I cut up some fruits as breakfast & Ezra joined me!!
My dinner is black pepper beef steak with cabbage and black fungus!! Yummy!!

A Long Weekend of Gatherings.....

Gathering #1 @ 7 Aug - 9.30am

The reading class that I am helping out had a special movie treat on Sat & I made popcorn and baked mini muffins for the children. 1 whole big tray of freshly popped popcorn and almost 80 mini muffins were snapped by in record time!!


Gathering #2 @ 8 Aug - 12.30pm

Its baby Zoe 1st birthday party @ Kayun & Flo new place on Sunday afternoon, right aft church service. Their place is very cosy with many fine details by the very talented Flo. I was amazed at how efficient they were to unpack and got the place ready for parties in less a week's time!!

All the pic were taken by Lundy, our friendly professional photographer!! Nice & beautiful family!!And equally beautiful guests!! I was playing knock head with Zoe and she was so thrilled!!

Ezra taking a sip of my coke zero!!

Gathering #3 @ 8 Aug - 6.30pm

After Zoe's party, I went home with 3 kids; Ezra, Nana and Nadya. I was all alone cos Jac was in office and Siya had her day off but God is so so good.... All the 3 kids took their afternoon nap (including Nana) and while they were sleeping, I had just the right length of time to cook the 3 eggs spinach and broccoli with mushroom. Since Nan's family have not been to Ron place, our fortnightly meet-up was at Ron's place instead!! Each family brought a dish or two and we had a BIG spread!! We had the veg, fried mee, baked chicken wings, satay & otah, fried potato balls, and mee siam
The kids having some bubble fun...

We also celebrated Keith's birthday.... yes he is a National Day baby!!

Gathering #4 @ 9 Aug - 5.00pm

With these mummies, each having our own specialty, we decided that we will have monthly enrichment class for our 4 kids. We had Chinese lesson in July and now Aug we are having English lesson by yours truly. I went through some of Ezra's books and chose the book "Pip's Garden" about an ordinary boy who planted simple seeds but out grew extraordinary plants!! I hope it was an interesting story for the children.
Instead of word recognition, I decided to focus my activity on thinking, having the kids match the name of the plant to the strange pictures of the plant and tell me why the match. As a closure, I got the children to make their own little garden with simple red and green bean growing.
Dinner was a simply yet delicious and yummy steamboat. After feeding the children, we were all able to sit down and enjoy our dinner while the children played on their own! We were pleasantly surprised they had no trouble without our supervision!! Well done children!! More sit down meals please!!

After dinner, the daddies were watching the NDP parade in the living room and we mummies chatted in Ezra's room and totally missed the pledge at 2010hours!! But dessert time cant be missed!! Angie brought super chewy jap jellies... some in national colours even!! Wolfie brought fruits and Joyce had some delicious mini desserts (oops dont know the name) which we each brought home instead. I made some durian puffs which were snapped up in double quick time!!
It's was a very enjoyable evening with dear friends!!


Gathering #5 @ 10 Aug - 11.00am

Since today is a school holiday, another 4 of my friends had a play date for our kids at Jessy place. The kids had so much fun jumping, climbing and even rolling on each other!!
Lunch was ordered in pizza and KFC. While we were waiting for Jessy to feed the little girl, we tried to get the kids to take some pictures for us... it was DIFFICULT with some many of them running around and trying to squeeze into the picture!!

After lunch, the kids went down to the playground and continued to expend their endless energy while we mummies caught up on lives!! Our friendship has gone a long way from our uni time.... from single ladies to married woman and now beautiful mummies!!
For the records, Iris has 4 kids, Alice and Jess 2 kids and me just 1. It was like a childcare when our families meet up but it was such a joy to see the kids play together, the older ones looking after the younger ones!!

Bento #3

I think you really need to be creative when doing this!! I am still at this stage where its more of putting food together in a nice manner rather than creating a picture.

Tonight's dinner is left over x2 chicken rice, pork chops, garlic prawn with jap mayo and stir fried veg. I simply pan fry the butterfly prawn and drizzle a little mayo over it. The pork chops are marinated with oyster sauce, pepper and some oil, coated with crushed Meji crackers and flour and deep fried (oops no healthy)
As I am writing this, i hope Jac is taking time off to eat his dinner!!

Bento #2

Jac has been working late these days n we realized that having dinner at 9.45pm is not the best idea. So I decided to start making bento for his dinner so he can take a break n eat in office. His 1st bento was prepared in the morning but it was too rushed for me. Now I will cook dinner the night before instead.

This is his second bento...





Japanese fried rice with cherry tomatoes. Steam tofu with chopped water chestnut m carrot, stir fried veg with chicken meat.

I am finding the boxes a little small n I really need to pack everything very tight! Guess it's time to do some shopping! Yippe!

老爷生日 Party

Last Saturday was my father in law's birthday. Instead of cooking at home, we decided to dine out instead! Dinner was arranged at Fook Wah near Link Hotel at Seng Poh Road. We actually thought of Canto Kitchen at Chinatown but with more google, we realised the famous Chef Chen left that kitchen and is now at Fook Wah.

While waiting for the dishes to arrive... its photo time!!


The really Chuang family

Yeye, Nai Nai and the grandchildren

Almost whole family photo except for Michelle who is out-stationed.

Anyway dinner is a at least 10 course meal... we had glutinous rice crab, fried eggplant with pork floss, wasabi prawn, steam fish, portugese pork chop, stewed duck with pear, hotpot pork ribs, crispy chicken, fried longevity noodles, veg!

When the food arrived, it was wiped out almost immediately!! Guess everyone is hungry and the dishes were quite tasty. I personally find the dishes more unique, but the usual fare you find in most chinese rest. I broke all rules of my dieting, mixed proteins and some oh so delicious carbo!!

While we were eating, Nai nai found a chicken feet and gave it to Ezra. She mentioned that he was very good at eating chicken feet!! True enough, he started chewing the feet and spitting out all the tiny bones.... mummy also eats & loves chicken feet!!
Nai nai asked how come no flowers for yeye & so yeye gets a big fat crab claw shelled nicely by nai nai!!
While yeye gets the flash, Ezra gets the shell!! He is just contented playing with it!
Last but not least, the birthday cake!! Look how happy yeye was when little 肥bi sang her heart out & kissed him so hard on the cheeks!!
A family photo to remember this occasion!

What a morning

When I finally opened my eyes this morning it's already 9.15am! Yes it has been a long long time since I slept till so late, never even on days off or holidays! Thank you God for the rest!

The other beautiful thing is to wake up with Ezra next to me! This boy coughed very badly n kept us awake most night but poor jac can't take off. I managed to get an appt with dr Tan at 11am so we are getting ready for that!

Dinner

I cooked minced chicken wanton soup for dinner. Added veg n mushroom to my soup...

A Very Enjoyable Day

I promised Ezra that I will be back early today and do something special with him. I got home about 3.20pm, rested a little and Ezra woke up abt 4pm. I asked if he like to go to the library or bake muffin.... Guess what was his instant, no need to think respond! "I want to bake muffin!" and dash straight into the kitchen.

I made some butter cream, a cocoa and lemon favour. The cocoa turned out yummy but the lemon one is a little to sour!

It has been a while since I baked with Ezra... however this round I realised that I was able to involve him more besides just decorating the muffin after its cooked. He helped to sieve the flour, fetched the egg and even helped to crack an egg. He was very careful with the assigned task!!

He also helped to scoop the dough into the big muffin cups and I was surprised he managed to even do so for the mini ones!! Good motor control!
He was just monkeying ard with the oven mittens while waiting impatiently for the muffins to cook.
After the muffin cooled off, Ezra added some finishing touch to the muffin with the colourful sugar! See how serious he was to his task!

He wasted no time to demolish 2 mini and 1 big muffin at 1 setting!!
So Super Yummy!Since we baked quite a bit of muffin, Ezra will be bringing some to share with his friends and teachers in school tomorrow!

After the muffin baking, Aunty and I were busy in the kitchen preparing our dinner. In our busyness, we totally forgot abt Ezra. After sometime, I sensed something is not too right as he was way too quiet! True enough, we found him messing up his room with body powder and he was having a wild time playing! When I questioned him, his reply was "Mum, I am just having fun pretending that I am ice skating! See mum, its so slippery rite!" I don't know whether to be angry with him or laugh at him! I thought it was a very creative idea but anyway he was given orders to clean up the mess.... see he was still having FUN cleaning up!!
After dinner, Ezra sneaked into the kitchen and stole another muffin!! He came out dancing and saying "The muffins are so yummy, they are making me dance!"
Tonight's dinner was steamed promfret and stir fried asparagus with fresh abalone mushroom... I started using lots of black pepper and chili flakes for my dishes and that certainly added much favour to the dishes!! Yummy!!