Easter feast

My Easter bunnies are too cute 🥰. They’ve really been enjoying the Easter holidays so far.

There was so much yummy home cooked food today, we had Sarawak laksa, char kueh, stir fried clams, orh jieb substitute with prawns. It was all delicious hawker street fare prepared by ah ma and myself (hc cooked the clams which were delish) for my BIL’s birthday family gathering.

I’m so glad I don’t have to return to work this week, I suspect I will still be doing some work and I really need to work on job hunting but it’s still nice to not have to dread waking up and getting ready for another gruelling day of office politics. Hooray for holidays.

Babysitting the kids

The day didn’t start out well. I think Saitaoha and I both got out from the wrong side of the bed because we were both so grouchy!

Saitaoha finally had her overdue haircut. The hairdresser bribed her with promises of a lollipop so she was an angel throughout the haircut.

Plans to cook dinner for the whole family were scrapped because they forgot about a Japanese degustation dinner tonight that they had booked for a while back.

So I had all the kids tonight and experienced what it’s like to have four kids ranging from 6 to 4.5 months haha. No lah it wasn’t too bad, I had help from HC earlier in the night, then R came over after his seminar ended.

The older kids played well together! No quarrelling, good sharing and lots of pretend play. Saitaoha tried to join in now and then and they tolerated her haha.

Eating ice lollies, the older kids were good and only ate half, guess who had the entire popsicle? The one stuffing her mouth in the picture 😅.

Hai…. too small to eat ice cream, life sucks as a baby.

So while most of the family were feasting on yummy Japanese delicacies, we had …

Chicken rice for dinner! I was always going to cook chicken rice for the family and decided to go ahead since the kids like chicken rice too. Also cooked ah ma’s homemade tofu and mushrooms. The two men, HC and R, and the kids cleared all the dishes!

Most 😓😓😓 moment of the evening:

LG: (comes running to me while I’m changing Saitaomei’s nappy) Daitaoha yee yee!! Saitaoha left chocolate handprints on Mah Mah’s sofa!!

I rush out to the living room, yep, my fault for leaving Saitaoha unsupervised with a chocolate biscuit, there were two very visible small handprints on the sofa! Grrrr…. I stripped off the covers and washed them.

Couldn’t help laughing when LG told me solemnly ‘This is very serious!! I think you’d better not give Saitaoha chocolate biscuits till she’s older’.

I sent R home with Saitaoha close to her bedtime and stayed at ah ma’s with LG and Saitaomei. LG and I had lots of fun chatting and laughing at Peppa pig cartoons. My niece is so grown up now, I felt sad that I haven’t had much time to spend with her ever since the arrival of my kids. Even though it was a bit tiring, I am glad I could babysit the kids because it meant a well deserved night out for my parents and sisters and I managed to have a lovely bonding session with my niece and nephew too ❤️.

Ah pa in jeans 👖

Mummy and Saitaoha having the same breakfast of cereal and milk. We both had a good night, I had a deep sleep because Saitaomei was with my parents 😬.

Brother and ah pa came over in the morning to clean up my backyard, how nice. I think ah pa is really happy doing all these manly jobs with my brother, sigh I feel sad when I think of him leaving in a few days. I’m not so secretly wishing that he and my sil will consider moving to Perth in the near future.

We had a nice day today. The whole family trooped off to the shops for some shopping and lunch. My niece joined us because she wasn’t well so had the day off from school. Saitaoha was so pleased to have her company. She started acting up in the shopping centre though because she was overdue a nap. We went straight home afterwards where she had a two hour nap! I was a bit stressed because I wanted to go over to ah Ma’s early to prep dinner.

Luckily dinner was still cooked in time. I made nasi lemak with chicken curry, our special addition was turmeric fried fish that my brother, HC and ah pa caught during the weekend. The fish was 😋. Everyone seemed to enjoy dinner which made me feel happy.

The kids played well together and even had a mini concert which I missed because I was washing up in the kitchen.

Saitaomei had her own mini concert too. Only it was my brother serenading her, lucky girl.

Afterwards when I was giving Saitaoha a bath, ah Ma came to the bathroom collapsed in laughter. She giggled helplessly and said ‘quick, Daitaoha, quick, go and look at ah pa!!’

I went out and saw this.

Wah! Ah pa in jeans!! I’ve never seen ah pa in jeans, he’s more of an ah pek pants formal sort of guy. I think ah Ma hasn’t seen him in jeans since their early twenties days so she found it hilarious. It was even funnier when my brother taught ah pa to hook his thumbs in his pockets for that classic pose. We all burst into fits of laughter, hahahaha I’m glad I have such a funny family.

Laksa night

My big/little girl is learning how to put on and take off her shoes. She gets frustrated if she puts them on the wrong side and refuses to give up. I’m not sure whether to be pleased that she is so independent or worried that she’s so stubborn.

Meanwhile this little one made a new friend. Ah Ma sent me a video of her cooing away to teddy, so cute.

Both kids had their immunisation jabs today. Saitaoha was actually just there to accompany her sister but the nurse offered to give her the free meningococcal vaccine (there’s an outbreak in WA) so she ended up getting a jab too. Luckily she was very good and didn’t even flinch or cry. Nurse was so surprised she rewarded her with a sticker.

My beef brisket noodles for lunch. It was nice meeting up with the family, I feel a bit sad that I can’t go for many outings with my brother and sil. It’s just difficult going for long outings with my pumping schedule and two kids in tow. I just hope I’m not stopping my parents from spending time with their son too. Lately I’ve been thinking of how much my parents had to sacrifice to send us overseas for studies. Worse still, they lose us to foreign countries when we migrate and don’t return home! We can hardly bear to be apart from our kids for more than a couple of days, yet my parents are willing to be apart from us forever if it means we will have a better life elsewhere.

We had a Sarawak laksa night with char kueh. This time I made the laksa instead of R, but it’s his turn to make chicken rice on Friday woo hoo.

After dinner we had a little music session. My brother played on his guitar and my niece sang a lovely song. We all clapped in rhythm to the music, Saitaoha too, she even stomped her foot 😀. Ah pa was video-ing the entire scene and I was carrying Saitaomei who seemed to enjoy the music too. At that moment I wished time could standstill.

Then it was time to go home. I carried Saitaoha in my arms, we admired the stars in the sky and sang twinkle twinkle little star together in soft whispery tones. A heartwarming end to a lovely family day.

Sunday family dinners

I now have a bigger family to feed 🙂

Monday lunch bentos of fried beehoon. Beehoon is great for bulk cooking hehe. Other dishes that I’ve tried include lasagne, what should we have for next week?

Nasi lemak for Sunday family dinner. We source the satay which are great from Jo’s colleague. My nasi lemak however wasn’t great, rice too dry and my sambal sotong was a bit too watery. I’m going to ask my mum for her sambal recipe next time.

I wonder whether these Sunday family dinners will become a family tradition and when the kids grow up we will talk about ‘remember how Daitaoha yee yee and yee zhang used to come over every Sunday for dinner?’

I snapped a picture of the evening sky just when we were about to leave Jo’s home. I love Perth’s pink skies. Sigh, and the weekend is over again. But woohoo, at least it’s a long weekend next week! Counting down again …

WA Day long weekend with kueh chap

It’s the last long weekend for a long long time (T___T). Luckily we made the most of it and it was a relaxing and fun one.

Starting the long weekend with R’s souvenir from Sydney, an Adriano Zumbo cronut, hehe, he knows me so well. It was a lovely treat to start the weekend with a hot cup of coffee and a custard filled cronut.

Dinner at Jo’s with Wendy and Jason whom we haven’t caught up with for a long long time.Wendy brought her homemade rice dumplings, just in time for Duan Wu Jie :).

The daitaoha family love buffets. This time it was the Hyatt buffet which was also a pre birthday celebration for R. Everyone was impressed with the quality of the oysters which we agreed were better than Atrium’s, but we still prefer Atrium overall and think it’s the better buffet joint in terms of variety and service.

I cooked R a big Sunday breakfast of eggs, ham and sausages while it was  HC’s signature butter cake slices and coffee for me. Love HC’s butter cakes.

The rest of Sunday was spent cleaning one kg worth of pig’s intestines. My method includes rubbing the intestines with coarse salt, turning the intestines inside out with chopsticks, rubbing with tapioca flour, washing and ripping off the yucky membrane bits (repeat a couple of times), trimming the stubborn bits with a knife, searing on a hot pan then par boiling in hot water.

Is it worth all the effort and trouble you ask? Definitely. Especially when it means you can serve your family a bowl of kueh chap at the end of the day. I also used half the intestines to braise it with belly pork which I prefer eating that way.

A great long weekend. I’m glad we made it count.

Kolo mee @ daitaoha’s

It’s finally December!!! 22 more days to go till Christmas holidays, I can’t wait, I need a break and am looking forward to sleeping in, woo hoo.

A bit early for Christmas roasts, but here is R’s favourite roast pork, I’m not sure why he likes roast pork so much, I think it’s just for the crackling.

I made my own apple sauce, I didn’t realise it would be so easy to make apple sauce, not buying jars in the future.

Christmas cookies, this was almond and dark chocolate biscotti, the colleagues liked it but I think next time I will try different flavours, maybe hazelnut and coffee or almond cinammon?

Kuching kolo mee in Perth!! Courtesy of Jo’s lovely and generous colleague F who gave Jo three packs of dried kolo mee.

The noodles were remarkably authentic, we just need to get the seasoning portions right but if we can ship in many boxes next pasar malam we will be selling kolo mee haha. I made my own pork lard, shallot oil, minced pork and charsiew. Needs more work but I’m sure Jo and co. will be willing guinea pigs. Jan, you and Andy can be my guinea pigs too in 2014.

Tristan is bigger every time I see him, and still so cute, can’t resist smothering him with kisses everytime I see him, I bet he’s rolling his eyes behind my back and thinking ‘yee yee going crazy again’.  Haha, crazy yee yee syndrome.

Vego lunch bento

Sundays are always very productive days for me in the kitchen. I know friends and family think I’m a bit nuts cooking or baking after work even when it’s been a crazy week, but really, it relaxes me, I call it cooking therapy.

This was a while back, making a tray of ricotta and spinach cannelloni.

Finally managed to tick off one of my 2013 kitchen resolutions, also my first time baking a layered cake, it wasn’t as pretty as I would have liked it to be, but I will get better I hope :). This was a double ginger cake with cream cheese lime frosting.

It was actually fragrant and moreish. Double whammy of ginger with fresh ginger in the batter as well as crystallized ginger pieces as garnish. The lime zest and lime juice in the cream cheese frosting cut through the richness of the cake. I’m not sure I will bake this again because there are so many more cakes to bake, but I did like the combination of ginger and lime.

R’s favourite pork belly loh bak again. With braised eggs and tofu.

I have a good friend at work who is vegetarian and a sweet tooth so I’ve been bringing her lots of sweet treats. But tomorrow I’m making her a vegetarian lunch box! Teriyaki tofu, tamagoyaki and grilled eggplant dengaku style (sweet miso sauce) with rice. I hope she likes it Y(^___^)Y.

I will be trying chocolate caramel slice and macarons next!

Rainy Sundays

There’s a severe thunderstorm warning for tonight. The crummy weather since we’ve returned to Perth matches our post holiday blues.

It’s funny how quickly we slot back into our Perth schedules , back again are our Sunday chicken roasts with R being the chief carver. We also had seafood chowder so it was a very very filling Sunday meal. I look forward to when Jan and family arrive so they can help us finish the food.

This is Jo’s new favourite dish, gone are the days of teriyaki hambagu and pineapple rice (actually I think she’s still into pineapple rice), this is Jamie Oliver’s chilli con carne with my secret ingredient (not so secret now) of dark chocolate. There’s something about the slightly bitter cocoa flavour that makes this simple dish extra tasty. We had ours with black rice.

My mum bought me these nifty puteri ayu moulds to make these cute kuihs. They look really cute right? But actually I failed miserably and the texture was way too hard instead of the fluffy pandan flavoured sponge cakes that I was expecting. I will try again soon.

Tristan has grown so much bigger since his Kuching trip. It’s so fun to see how much his character has developed, he is so cheeky and active nowadays and is eating everything in sight!

Back to Hongkong posts after this. I need to start planning for another holiday!

Sap ha sap ha

It’s been a bit difficult getting into cooking mode since my parents have left. I will start revisiting my 30 must cook list soon, double ginger cake with lime frosting sounds delish :p

A while ago we had a lasagne weekend. Big tray which made several lunch bentos.

Jo’s request for a laksa weekend. Sadly I am down to my last pack of laksa paste so we will have to limit our laksa weekends until I get a fresh supply.

This weekend our theme was ‘sap ha sap ha’ steamboat weekend. We had a simple chicken herbal soup base with wolfberries, red dates and dang gui. What should our theme be for the next cooking weekend?