Being Mom

This morning while exercising at the park, I overhead a conversation among a few ladies. One of them mentioned that eating some sweet food in the morning is good. Another lady agreed and added that it will make a person look prettier. This conversation caught my attention and got me thinking how sweet food can help someone look prettier. Is it really true? I don't know. But I do know that if I go on a healthy diet, and exercise regularly, I will surely become fit and healthy and that will certainly make me look prettier. Do you follow a certain diet or do you eat at your heart's content? I do the latter most of them time. I just cannot resist food, especially savoury ones. Once upon a time (more than a decade ago), I heard of a diet where every once a month, you eat only apples for three consecutive days. Then about a  year or two ago, I heard of another diet where you fast for three consecutive days, also once every month. I was introduced to yet another kind o...

Birthdays. Do you love celebrating birthdays? Do you have a birthday tradition in your family? Or are you among those who try to avoid a celebration? We don't do birthday celebrations. Not until the kids arrived. Aside from the celebrations in their kindergarten, we only had simple celebrations at home with a cake. No present. I like it simple because I think simple is sweet. And more personal. I would love to create a birthday tradition for my family but have not thought of one. As of now, I would stick with a birthday cake, a birthday song and a few pictures. If you have a special birthday tradition, please share with us!

One evening over dinner... Son: Mummy, what was it? The language that you use to talk to grandma on the phone?  Me: That's Hokkien. It's a kind of dialect spoken by those of the Min ancestry called the Hokkiens.  Son: What? Hokkien Mee? (He started laughing)  Me: Not Hokkien Mee. It's people of the Min ancestry.  And since my son related my ancestry to food, I continued my answer by saying... Me: You know, if you say I am Hokkien Mee, then your dad is Hainanese Chicken Rice.  Son: Hainanese Chicken Rice? That's so funny! So, this led to some ancestry and heritage talk with my kids. If you are a Malaysian, I am sure you know what Hainanese Chicken Rice and Hokkien Mee are.  When we talk about the Hainanese Chicken Rice it is poached chicken served with seasoned rice. It is a complete meal by itself, served with a special chilli sauce, ginger sauce, fresh slices of cucumber, coriander and a bowl of soup. It is sometimes served ...

A few years ago my son was into growing plants and asked if he could grow some flowers. We did not have any flower seeds at home and I suggested that he plant some mongo seeds instead. The other reason I told him to grow mongo seeds is that they grow very fast and kids are not very patient at waiting for results.  So everyday, as we leave the house for school (he was attending kindergarten then) he would look at the plants and say, "Mommy! They are growing!" A few days after we planted the mongo seeds, I suggested that we plant some garlic. This time, unlike the mongo seeds that showed some growth immediately on the following day, the garlics showed none.  Two days after we planted the garlics, we went on a short vacation and when we returned, he saw some changes to the garlic plant and shouted, "Mommy, look! The garlics are growing!" Two weeks after that, we found time to do some detailed observations on the plants. We compared the roots and ...

I couldn't even recall when I cooked this plate of rice. It was a little less than a fortnight ago, few days before Chinese New Year (CNY) but I just couldn't remember if it was on Jan 31 or Feb 1. Hmmm. Was it forgetfulness or negligence? Yes, we were all busy preparing for CNY, buying cookies, new clothes, packing up, making sure we have enough new notes for the "angpow" or red packets, and we still wanted to do CNY scrapbooks (with the children), etc... With so many things to do, was it forgivable? That I left a plate of steamed rice in the wok? I only found the plate of rice in the wok when I was about to prepare lunch, on Feb 10. The rice has been there for about 10 days! 😱😱😱 Fortunately it was in the wok. It was not difficult to clean up. I would be so frustrated if it was in the rice cooker. I hate washing the rice cooker. That's why I have kept it away in the storeroom for years. Fortunately , it was just a plate of rice left there an...

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Repeat daily, for the rest of our lives. How do our stomach manage to do so much work? I wonder. But above all, how much effort we spend each day in preparing those meals that took us minutes to finish? Hmmm... Based on what I mentioned above, I asked myself if I could reduce cooking time. I mean, the entire process, so I could have more time to do other things. I have experimented with a few different methods. Here, I would like to share one of them. USE ONE MAIN INGREDIENT FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK'S MEALS Let me introduce you to the ALL CAPABLE... GROUND MEAT! If you want variety, you could buy different kinds of ground meat - chicken, beef, mutton, pork. Buy as much as you need for a week's meal. Marinate all at once. Ingredients: Minced garlic and shallots, soy sauce, tapioca or corn starch, sesame oil (optional), grated ginger (for beef and mutton only), egg (optional) Pla...

One evening during dinner... when my son was four. He was eating and looking at a vase of flowers on the table. The flowers were withering. Son: Mummy. Why do the flowers look like that? Are they sick? Me: That's called withering. Something like dying. Son: Oh, Mummy! You have to take them to the doctor! I laughed before I explained to him that doctors cannot heal withering flowers. I just couldn't help it. I regretted not taking a photo of the withering flowers so I could use them for this post but anyway... At that time, we were doing an experiment on absorption. We let the flowers "drink" coloured water so we could clearly see changes in the petals that would explain absorption. **Hubby saw what we did and commented that we were abusing the flowers. 😓😭😭     I have no comment on this remark.*** It was an interesting experiment though, for the children. Here are some pictures of what we did. We got some chrysanthemum from a florist. ...

The Chinese Plum blossom, or the Prunus mume, is a flower that blossoms around the Chinese New Year. It symbolises prosperity, courage, hope, beauty and purity. It is a common decoration item for the celebration.  It is also a common subject in the Chinese art such as paintings and poetry. This Chinese New Year, my son's art teacher at school taught them a simple yet interesting way to draw the Chinese Plum blossom. After he described to us how it was done, his sister got very interested and requested to do it. So, here's what we did. First, we squeezed some black paint on a piece of drawing paper. Diluted it with some water and using a straw, blew the black paint to create the branches and twigs. Next, we mixed red and white paint to make some pink paint and painted the flowers.  It's done!  Just like what my daughter said: Easy peasy lemon squeezy!  Took us about 20 minutes from gathering the materials to the completion of the pai...

Now, as I typed on my laptop, my 5 year-old daughter sits in front of me, doing her own work. She is doing something on her own. Something that no one tells her to do. It is 100% at her own will. She is copying from a storybook. It is a Malay storybook she borrowed from school. And she is trying to read as she copies.  She is smiling as she tries to read the words and although she still struggles with many of the words, she is smiling while she tries. Once in a while, she would ask me how to pronounce a certain syllable.  And now, she is singing out the words she copies.  _________________________________________________ This scene, right in front of me, is the result of an important lesson I learnt a year ago.  I learnt that, for effective learning to take place, the learner should be in a "stress free mode".  And for them to be in that mode, it most probably has to be something they find interesting or rather, something they w...

Lego again??! Yes. Lego is a big part of our everyday lives and there is a reason for that. FAMILIARITY. Because Lego has been part of our lives since my first child was one year old and it was being played almost everyday. And it is still being played everyday. Familiarity makes learning easier. It also makes teaching easier. Well, in this case, it is not so much about teaching but about a little variation in our bedtime routine. Big Lego and Small Lego: Based on my son's imagination We have been reading bedtime stories to the children since my first child was about 8 months old. And a few years down the road, I thought it was time for some changes. Instead of reading them stories, I started telling them stories and the main characters were Big Lego and Small Lego. They knew that I was referring to both of them, and they were always very attentive, eager to know how I would describe them in the stories. If they would be the kind, the mischief or the brave one....

Food, food and more food!!! As I promised, here is Part Two of our trip to Seoul, and it's all about FOOD! 1. This is one of the first Korean food we ate. We were at Guro-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul, looking for the car rental company. It was lunch time so we had lunch at a random restaurant here. We had fried and boiled dumplings, with vegetables and meat fillings. I couldn't remember the price though. We also had two bowls of noodles, one was quiet interesting for us because we didn't expect to find sliced rice cakes in the soup instead of the long and thin shaped noodles that we were familiar with! I did not take any pictures of the noodles but you could refer to the menu in the picture below. We ordered a bowl of noodles (second row, first from the left) and a set of noodles + meat patty (last row, second from left). 2.  This is our lunch at the National Museum of Korea at Yongsan-gu.  My son ordered shrimp fried rice (no picture available) ...