Edible football field?

Bon Voyage Ian!

Bento 229

Simple stuff and repeats until I sit down and start planning again!!

Boo hoo hoo!

Did you know?

Bento 228

This morning's bento had to last up to 4.00p.m. #2 stays back for Choir practice because this weekend there is a Charity Choral-thon in Subang Parade in aid of an orphanage.

It's also that time of the year that all schools begin taking class photographs for their annual school magazine. #2 is in the Editorial team under the Graphics section. Nevertheless, all team members has been rostered to co-ordinate the photography sessions for the morning and afternoon classes.

This bento should make her happy!

Left box has raisins and grapes, a silicon cup of hiziki from my freezer stash. The right side box has a mix of salads, alfalfa, cut courgette and tomatoes.


The center box are some wholemeal baguette with some sauerkraut, courgette, roast lemon chicken (from my freezer stash) and some sweet basil topped with a dash of mayo.

Random bentos

Last week was a hectic week of erratic schedules and late nights. We ate out too much! Bentos were quick, easy and nondescript.

I'm not numbering them because most were quick fixes in different forms.


Below: Vegetable in garlic rolls, Tuna mayo sandwiches and home made butter cake.



#3's bento of spaghetti and kewpie mayo, some banana cinnamon and tuna mayo.



Another nondescript bento of leftovers.



Bruschetta and tuna croissant snack with a Vitagen.


Another week and late posts!!!

Mum's Chicken Stew recipe in Smilebox

When I was growing up, my mother used to make this delicious chicken stew which my siblings and I would rave about. We'd always request for it during occasions when mum would most certainly cook it!

The only problem was that the 'Bombay curry powder' concoction was only available at Cold Storage in section 14, the 'old' Jaya Supermarket. This Bombay curry powder was always out of stock and whenever mum saw it on the shelves, she would certainly buy 3 bottles to store.

After many years, we never saw that brand on the shelves anymore. Nevertheless, mum found another similar tasting curry powder and this has been used ever since. Mind you, I don't know why it's called 'curry powder' when it's not spicy at all!! Well the Bombay curry powder wasn't spicy either, just very aromatic and full of flavor.

This is the recipe:

Ingredients:
2 tbsp curry powder (check the brand in the smilebox slide show)
2 tsp salt
1 chicken, cut into 14 pieces (med-large size)
5 medium size red onions
5 small potatoes or 3 large ones, cut into smaller pieces

Method:

1. Marinate cut chicken pieces with curry powder and salt.
2. Keep in refrigerator for about 3 hours or overnight.
3. Deep fry onions and potatoes and put into a deep pot.
4. Fry chicken pieces and add to the deep pot.
5. Fill the deep pot with water to cover chicken.
6. Bring to boil and lower heat to a simmering boil.
7. Simmer for 20 - 30 minutes.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Eat with baguette or spaghetti or even steaming white rice!!!

Enjoy!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Bento 227

First day of school after a hectic 2 weeks school holiday! Here's another quick fix bento which took less than 10 minutes to put together.

Left box has some chopped up romaine salad, onion alfalfa and cherry tomatoes mixed in a dash of sesame seed dressing.



Right box has three quarters of a rolled ham, salad, mayo and garlic tortilla wrap. The balance quarter went into my stomach for breakfast!!

Making cooking time family time

I was reading some old articles which I linked ages ago and I'd like to share something practical which we, mummies can make good use of.

Read this:

Making Cooking Time Family Time: 10 Tips for Beginners

Personally, I think that the 10 tips are very practical and all of which I've adopted over 20 years of being a mother. I can stand by firmly by those tips and assure you that the results just creep in to surprise you time after time.

My eldest daughter posted this on her blog on

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Because I am cool like that, I think I will put some funky smiley at the beginning of every post, just so I remember how I felt la ok. *shy. Actually, I just found these smiley's and they make me happy, so I wanna post them up. I think I should be studying.

So you see, over the weekend and a little before that, father has been in

mother and baby sis has been in

.

So I was thinking, what should I do for the weekend?


Well, I ended up
(Without the beard la of course. Too manly.)



For breakfast, I decided to make


while Rachel made



We had a good weekend home alone, sleeping in different rooms and waking up and eating well and all sorts lar. Let me explain different rooms, in case you think we share rooms on normal days (no way, can die, pls thank u, cos we're both awful sleepers like that). Instead of sleeping in our own rooms, she slept in the parents' room while I slept in the guest room. Just for fun =_= very lifeless right. *shy. T'was a good weekend.


Oh I love you Rachel, cos you ALWAYS feed me


The End.
(cos I'm lazy to google more pictures) =_=

Photo credits: Google
Smiley credits: Yahoo!


LOVE LOVE YOU ALL!

Original post has been edited slightly.

It's one of those things you read in your kid's blog which overwhelms and gives you a sense of unrivaled happiness!!!

Quick Mac n Cheese

I made a batch of this last week and the entire process took me slightly over half an hour.

Very simple, all you need is:

150 gm macaroni elbows - boil till Al Dente
1 yellow onion - diced
6 button mushrooms from a can - diced
1 can of Campbell's mushroom soup
150 ml milk
100 gm streaky bacon - diced and fried
3 slices of Cheddar cheese

Method:
1. Saute diced onions in some olive oil and then add diced button mushrooms.
2. Pour in Campbell mushroom soup and milk and mix well.
3. Mix in the cooked macaroni elbows and fried bacon.
4. Add 3 slices of cheddar cheese and flavor with salt and pepper.
5. I used foil cups for Bento purposes but it can also be baked in one big casserole.
6. Bake at medium heat for about 10 minutes and eat warm!!

Below: Before going into the oven.

Below: After 10 minutes in the oven!

Below: A closer look!

After it cooled down, I covered each cup with a small piece of foil paper and packed them into the freezer as Bento stash.

Another recipe uploaded in Smilebox

This is the second week of the midterm holidays in Malaysia. School begins the coming Monday. It's been busy, busy, busy!

I cooked this sometime back and had wanted to post it up to smilebox. I finally managed to. It's really simple and you can improvise with meats or carrots and potatoes too. Someone brought this dish to a potluck dinner and just rattled the ingredients. I re-created the taste by memory.

After adding the seafood in at the end, add salt and pepper to taste. Eat it warm with baguette or simply with Spaghetti Alio Oglio! Yummy!!!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

#2 had her school choir over for a pot luck party last night and I enjoyed listening to the angelic sounds they produced! Well done Harmonix A & B!

Bento 226 and more updates!

What's happened to idioms like these, which in my days we used and sincerely meant them:

"May the best man win" - it's something that you say just before a competition begins which says that you hope the people who deserves to win will win!

"Break a leg" - Theatrical types are well-known for their belief in superstitions, or at least for their willingness to make a show of pretending to believe them. The term 'break a leg' appears to come from the belief that one ought not to utter the words 'good luck' to an actor. By wishing someone bad luck, it is supposed that the opposite will occur.

Nowadays, and too commonly, when a competing team wins, there seem to be animosity, back stabbing, gossip and complaints. I don't claim to enjoy being on the supporting team of a loosing competitor but I believe in fair play and consideration.

We need to analyse the short comings and contributory factors to the loss and move forward even if we feel victimized. Really, "One man's meat is another man's poison" is as real as it gets!

If we were to dwell on revenge, unhappiness, jealousy, ways to 'bitch' about the winning team or those who were placed above us on the victory rung, then I think we need to re-focus.

Yes! Very sadly, one school is 'bitching' about another over the recent school choir competitions and the one at the Choral festival.

There is childish gossip and accusations about "BRIBERY" which I feel is totally unfounded! I can't stand up and say that the school judges were 'qualified' and guided by some standard criteria of judging or that there is a standard guideline of "Do's" and "Don'ts" in terms of 'creativity' but I'm quite sure that there is no gain in doing so. There is not much exposure for the winning school team in terms of monetary income or lime light other than self posting in a YouTube clip.

Last night, when I fetched #2 from the venue of the Choral festival, she was happily sharing her day's experience with the Professor and sectional leaders who were guiding the participants in a large group choral presentation for the final night's concert. There are about 300 participants for this year's Choral festival and she and some others were selected to make the 10% of a smaller ensemble.

After that, she began to share about the animosity present. I'm just happy to note that she didn't allow all the gossip and back stabbing to affect her and she could stand up to answer to the alleged accusations which were ridiculous and childish.

One of the accusations was that #2 was seen to have left her lunch plate on the table and not returned it to the collection area.

Everybody can vouch that #2 NEVER eats food from the canteen and has for years brought packed food from home. Even last year at the Choral Festival, she brought onigiri for the whole duration at KLPac.

I'm glad that she stood firm in response and defense to the accusations towards her school's choir and that she's not adopted a negative perspective towards what has happened and continues to be a team player sharing her skills and leadership experiences.

I can see that this is really the result of her, participating actively in our Church activities. The exposure to hands-on skill acquisition, spiritual input, team spirit, responsibility, leadership and others has been contributory to the EQ that she now posses.

Nevertheless, #2 still looked forward to another day there at the Choral Festival today and I've simply packed another croissant, salad, ham and mayo sandwich in one box. To fill the gap are two cherry tomatoes skewered together.

In the other box are some cubed apples and some black sesame seed marshmallows!

Bento 225

This morning was another mad rush to USJ 2 where the Malaysian Choral Eisteddfod VII (MCE) is into it's fourth day. #2 has attended this Choral Festival for the second consecutive year and enjoys it tremendously. In fact, she has waited a whole year looking forward to this event.

It's a time where the school choirs are graded (based on standard criteria) by judges from different parts of the world. They undergo master classes and are guided to enjoy a variety of choral activities which is sadly missing in our Malaysian Choral scene.

Nevertheless, every night when I fetch #2 from USJ 2, she's bubbly and in an adrenaline pumped up mood! I know she's tired and exhausted even but I also know she's enjoying herself and learning as much as possible from this wonderful God given opportunity.

This morning's bento was as quick as it could get from left overs and repeats!

There was a quarter of a scone from Coffee Bean which I bought for her supper from Subang Parade, some de-seeded grapes and a skewer of Salami pizza from Pizza Hut.



I thought that she needed more greens and so made a zucchini sandwich with smoked turkey ham and broccoli alfalfa in between. To keep it intact, I skewered them with two animal skewers and topped the slice of zucchini with half of a grape for added color!

Bento 224 and update on Choir competition

I posted my last bento about 3 weeks ago. When the mid term exams began for #2, she didn't want to bring bento to school because, according to her, there was no time in between papers to eat.

When the holidays began, the State level School Choir competitions began the next day which incidentally was also the Malaysian Choral Eisteddfod VII (MCE)! The DJ Choir was also competing in the Youth Choir competition at the MCE. Schedules were clashing the distance between the two venues were challenging!

Nevertheless, #2 managed to work it with all the necessary quarters even though it was quite a task. On the morning of the competition, we reached school by 6.45a.m. In the evening after two exciting competitions, she got home past 10.00p.m.

This is an extract from her blog post:

"woohoo! god is good! :)

we won runner up at state. well, actually i was really really really upset. but then i realized, god probably wanted me to study. so yeahp. LoL.

this were the results
1st - SMK Kepong (Gombak)
2nd - SMK Damansara Jaya (Petaling Utama) - #2's school!
3rd - Convent Klang (Klang)
4th - SMK Seafield (Petaling Perdana)

the rest i forgot.

lol.

done with that,

our second competition, we won 4th or a silver diploma - IX.
top in the state at least. :) and either 2nd or 1st in peninsula Malaysia lah.

first prize was won by Philippines. Those people are AWESOME!! :):)

i am happy!"

So, today and for the next 2 days, she would be participating at the MCE and having another remarkable experience. I'm looking forward to the final day concert! I am just so happy too that she's finally got time to study for the year end SPM!

As usual, #2 has huge issues with 'FOOD' served at these crowded events for young people! So there is a need for bento but after 3 weeks I'm too lazy to crank up!!!

Here's a quick fix!

Just some baguette sandwich with smoked turkey ham and broccoli alfalfa with a squeeze of kewpie mayo! Plopped some cherry tomatoes for her to snack on.


Read my last post on the School Choir competition if you missed it.



"So much to do but so little time" - music, culinary course, vocals, dance, etc....