Baking Day

Today is baking day. We made pineapple jam tarts again, this time using the pineapple jam which I had made instead of using the ready made jams.

Here is the tarts Mei-mei made using the cookie cutters and decorating them with chocolate rice, jam and also chocolate chips:

 And these are the more "normal" tarts. So much work for just so little tarts.

Magnet Factory

We put the mixture into the mold yesterday and here you are painting the magnets. This was a present for Ko-ko so many years ago. Luckily the paint did not dry up. 

16th Wedding Anniversary

Today is our 16th Wedding Anniversary. While we usually go out to celebrate the occasion, this year we celebrated at home, with daddy cooking dinner. Daddy and I took the afternoon half off so that we could prepare the meal. This is the dinner table all set up for our meal:

The menu- Appetizers:

2 appetizers: tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese. And another is tomatoes with garlic and Italian parsley on toasted french loaf 

A piece of each for my appetizer with my bubbly.. 

In two choices - mains:

Lasagna 

Spaghetti Carbonara.. with or without cheese 

Ko-ko was busy eating. He had both mains!

And we finished off our dinner with creme brulee which Ko-ko had mad the day before and was kept chilled in the fridge:

Ko-ko putting on the finishing touches to the creme brulee 

Doesn't it look amazing??

We went upstairs and Mei-mei decided to have this picture taken of daddy and I ties together by these pretty ribbons.

It was a lovely celebration. Just the few of us at home. The best way to celebrate our anniversary.

Creme Brulee

You had been asking me to make this. It sounded so scary to make. So many ingredients which I am not familiar with. I had bought extra ramekins in preparation for this last week (or was that the week before last? I have really lost track of time with the Movement Control Order). 

Anyhow, today we really got to preparing it. Luckily we had enough cream in the fridge. I found a recipe with very good instructions, printed them out and we started working from there. 

You were tasked to separate the yolk from the whites... and I reckon you had fun playing with the yolks (and yes, thank you for braking 2 of the yolks into the whites!!)

While you were busy with the eggs, I heated up the heavy cream. Luckily we had a meat thermometer which we had bought MANY years ago when we went to Alaska which came in handy to determine the temperature of the cream and later the creme brulee in the oven.
Ta-da.. here is the creme brulee hot out of the oven:

Next job for you was to remove the ramekins from the water bath to cool down before moving them into the fridge.

You were really careful not to break or drop any of them:

After dinner and the creme brulee were all nice and chilled, we moved on to the final step before serving them - adding the sugar.

Mei-mei finally got to help out: by adding the sugar and spreading them around the top 

And you got to play with fire! Yup.. to blow torch the sugar to caramelize it 

And this is the end result

This is a bomerang of you using the blow torch on the sugar:

As for the egg whites (and 2 broken yolks, I made crustless quiche with them. Would be good for breakfast.

Planting Journey Part 4

Today we decided to move the very long "Mr. Bean" (French bean) seedlings from the egg trays into a larger pot. I had missed one water session yesterday evening and today, the leaves shriveled up. Luckily they managed to revive after I sprayed them with water this morning. I'm not too sure about the survival possibilities of the bayam plants as they are so small. Will not be transplanting them until they grow bigger.

Adding soil to the larger pot 

Digging a hole to place the seedling 

Removing the seedling from the tray to be transplanted 

Planting the seedling into the new pot 

They are all so thin, which was why we added the sticks for them to (hopefully) creep up

Ta-da.. our newly planted french bean plants. We have 5 of them. Hopefully we will have some french beans to eat soon. 

Korean Kimchi Pancake Round 2

Today was a busy day. This was another of the things we had cooked/baked. Kimchi Pancake. This time I reduced the Kimchi (chopping them up smaller so that it is easier to cut the pancake) and increased the flour and water ratio to the amount of Kimchi. We also fried in 2 smaller pancakes.. making it easier to flip, crunchier and for faster cooking.
Daddy was the "fry master" for today's pancake.

Water Gun Fun

No pictures of us all getting each other drenched as we were too busy playing. It was nice weather for water fun as it was not too sunny and not rainy. 

Indian Night Dinner

Looks like we have been having theme dinners for the many weekends we have been dining at home during the MCO.
Tonight is no different. It is Indian Night. Can you guess what was on the menu?

This is Evelyn;s plate (G&T was borrowed from me) 

This is the full fare: Tandoori Chicken, Garlic Naan, Dhal Curry, Prawn Curry and Mint and Cucumber Salad

Dinner was prepared by:

• Tandoori Chicken: Ah Ma
• Prawn Curry: Ah Ma
• Garlic Naan: Mummy and Daddy
• Dhal Curry: Mummy and Daddy
• Salad: Ah Ma
• Jelly for dessert: Evelyn and mummy

Our two other family members, Ko-ko and Ah Kong's contribution for the night was their stomachs to store the food. 

Tonight was a competition between Mei-mei and Ah Ma. To see who was the best dressed. Here you are all decked in your best glittery clothes complete with necklace, earrings and you claimed to have won since you had painted nails (both fingers and toes) 

Sewing Bug

I had to get quite a bit of felt for Ko-ko for his school DT project. And since we had so much left, you have been asking me to sew some things for your toys. You even tried your hand in sewing.. well running stitches, but it's a start. 

Sewing the little (padded) pillow for your little doll's bed 

Added more stitches to the adopted bag 

(partially sewn by Ko-ko who decided he wanted another design for the bag) 

Little bed (in light blue), pillow cases and blanket for your two toys named John and Tom

Evelyn's Drawing

I bought some little drawing canvases which came with easels. Mei-mei hijacked two and came up with these two art work using Ko-ko's markers.

Such a cute teddy bear 

Ariel admiring your artwork

Venturing Out

You had told daddy earlier that you were afraid of going out due to the Covid-19. Finally today, he managed to persuade you to follow him and Ko-ko out for a walk around Jalan 15 & 16. 

And when you came back from the walk, you asked Ah Kong to let you play with your scooter downstairs. He even moved Ah Ma's car out of the porch so that you would have more space to ride.

Baby steps to get you to go out and not be so fearful of the virus. 

Korean Kimchi Pancake

I have been thinking of making this for a while. Daddy had bought a packet of kimchi when he went grocery shopping during MCO (it's now CMCO already). Last week he noticed that the bag had expanded and looked like it was about to explode. 

So today, I prepared the ingredients based on the instructions on a very good website. And of course, I had to engage the services of Ko-ko our in-house "fryer and flipper".

This was the first round, it didn't seem to be cooked enough so we put it back to the pan for another round of frying.

Mei-mei enjoyed it, but gave some to me when it got too spicy for her. (P/S: Can see Ko-ko in the background enjoying his too).

It was a good and easy recipe. We'll probably make it again soon.

Pau Making

I had planned to make pau and since I am off this week, I decided to try my hands at it today. The instructions from the video was very clear. So I tried my hand to get the pau with chewy texture. Evelyn also had a try to knead out the bubbles in the dough. Not bad for a first time: 

Mei-mei had to stand on a stool to work on the kitchen island 

Eyaaagh.... a lot of strength to work the dough

Ta-da.. one of the (nicer) outcome of the pau

The texture of the pau was the way we liked it. Just that it expands quite a bit, so I should roll out the dough more (larger) and that way I can add more fillings to the pau. 

Mei-mei and Kakak had a "mantou" each as they did not take the fillings. 

Maybe next time we can make momofuku buns to be eaten with duck. Yummy...

Planting Journey Part 3

It rained so heavily the whole of last night. I woke up wondering if the whole tray would overturn in case the winds were strong. I had propped the tray on an overturned planting pot. 

Luckily this morning, it all seem ok. Other than the fact that the tray was super soggy, all the seedlings were doing fine. In fact, we spotted more shoots today than yesterday. 

I moved the tray to the floor as I was afraid that the tray might tear. 

Our tray of seedlings 

A closer look at the shoots. Can you spot them?

Today, I also added the bitter gourd seeds to the tray. I do not seem to see any roots, but hopefully it can grow in the soil. 

Planting Journey Part 2

The seeds did not really germinate yesterday. Maybe because you decided to sleep in the room where the seeds were kept so it was too cold. So we waited another day and voila! The roots were growing in most of the larger seeds and on the little seeds too. So it is time to grow the seedlings.

Oh by the way we had germinated: bayam (tiny seeds), ladies fingers (from our own plant), french beans (large red seeds which lost color when being germinated) and one sunflower seed. 

1. We used an egg carton to grow the seedlings. First you put in the soil. 

2. Then you dig a hole to put in the seed. Try to put the roots facing downwards. 

3. You labelled the tray so that you'd know which seedlings were in which tray for transplanting. Spray more water on the soil.

Now we wait a while for the seedlings to grow and to transplant them to larger pots.

Oh and quite a few of the bayam seeds did not germinate and we didn't want too many plants either, so we decided to keep 5 more slots for the baby bitter gourd which we germinated. 

Planting Journey Part 1

Have decided to start our little vegetable garden. Well, we have a ladies fingers plant which was growing well. It was the one and only one which would germinate of the many seeds we tried to grow.

Today we are doing a proper way to germinate after I learnt it (or part of it as the video I watched was in Mandarin). Step 1 is to germinate the seed:

1. Spray container covered in tissue with water 

2. Put the see in the tissue or wrap up in tissue for larger seeds (larger seeds need to be soaked in warm water before being wrapped up: I missed out on this step.. oops!) 

3. Spray more water on the tissue paper. Keep the covered container in a dark area. The seeds will germinate by the next day