Home Made Peanut Butter Recipe

Ingredients:

250 to 300g of peanuts ( for a family of 3 to 4 ,up to 1 week consumption)
pinch of salt and sugar to taste
1/2 teaspoon of oil (optional)


1. Roast peanuts till fragrant.
2. Remove coat.
3. Blend till it turns powdery.
4. Add oil to stimulate the production of the natural oil from peanut (optional. If no oil is added, it will just take longer to turn it into a paste)
5. Pulse several times till it turns into a paste
6. Add salt and sugar to taste

Daa...daa....100% fresh homemade peaunut butter !

Consume within 5 to 7 days for optimum freshness (since no preservative is added)

Enjoy :)

Happy Belated Birthday Su!

A double chocolate walnut birthday cake for a dear friend of mine!

Counting down....

We are counting down to our year end vacation....Well, i shouldn't count this one as a vacation. We dont count home trips as vacations right? Hmmm.....Well, well, at least we get to detour to another state to attend my younger cousin's wedding...now this is the real excitment!!

There will be a Church wedding ceremony. E and N will be the page boy and flower girl respectively.....and I get to be an "old-bridesmaid on stand-by"....haha....isnt it funny? :)

It will be a mega family reunion of somesort. Relatives flying in from NZ, Singapore, HK and Malaysia. We won't be able to bunk in with my aunt and so we will be putting up at a serviced apartment, given our sheer number (easily 20 to 25 of us). First time hiring a car for our own use! We never needed to hire any as there were several spare cars to go around but obviously not for this busy period when my aunt and cousins would be fussing over some last minute wedding preparation.

I look forward to going back to Uni for a casual walk just to see how things might have changed over the years; dining at our favourite restaurants; eating our favourite sorbet ice cream; walking down many streets in the City for old time sake. Looking back, it has been such a long long time... From a Uni under-graduate to being mum......and God has been kind to us in every aspect of our lives.

Homemade peanut butter

Homemade peanut butter! My personal favourite :)

Xiao Mantou Recipe

1 egg yolk
Potato starch 130g (pan fried and sifted)
Fine sugar 2 tablespoon (to ajust to your liking)
Milk powder 1 tablespoon


1. Beat egg yolk and sugar till pale yellow
2. Add milk powder and potato starch
3. Depending on the size of the egg yolk, you may need to add some milk/water to form a pliable dough
4. Divde dough into portions and roll into the shape of a rope
5. Cut into pieces - 1 cm per piece and roll into a ball
6. Bake at pre heated oven at 170C for about 20 to 25min, or until it turns light golden brown.
7. Enjoy the cute little Xiao Mantou.....

I love You

Little E, well not so little anymore, gave me a shock, in a pleasant way the other day when I picked him up from his pre-school.

E " Mummy, wait. I have to give something to M"
Me " Oh, ok...what is it?"

Guess what I saw? E handed a handwritten note to M : I love you.

A 4 yo giving a love note to another 4 y0? I didn't know E could write that. We all had a good laugh and the teacher commented " Oh, your son starts early"

Well?....I agree, it is a definitely too early!

Star Award

The happiest moment for Nic indeed. L and I were at a cocktail party after a conference and the phone rang.

N " Mummy, Mummy! Today, I went on stage to receive the Star Award. I got a $20 book voucher and a certificate. I didnt do my student leader duties today because I went on stage. So, I will resume my duties tomorrow. My teacher said I have to behave and do well in my studies in order to be a student leader"

Me " Wow! Excellent! You did us proud!! Well, what more do we need to say? You have been absolutely fantastic. Congratulaions! I will be back soon. Can't wait to see your certificate"

Guess what? When I got home, I saw a crumbled certificate (close to a piece of "giap chai" :(). This little girl had happily chucked it inside her bag. Well, thankfully we still managed to salvage it.

English paper

The expression was slightly different.

Nic " Mummy, I scored 45.5/50 for English...but no one scored 50/50. A scored 42, B scored 40, C scored 43, E scored 38"

Me " Oic. It must have been a difficult paper I would image. Well, we can go through the paper later and see where you have gone wrong. but, you still did well!"


This little girl has her own mind and assesses things in quite a matured manner, relative to many of her peers, in my view. She has the concept of "relativity" which I think would help her as she progresses. Afterall, we are all connected and everything exists in a delicate balance, right?

Maths paper

Nic came back from school, with a gentle smile hanging over her lips. Just a gentle one.

Me " Hi Cutie, how did you go in the Maths paper?"
Nic " Ok"
Me" meaning? "
Nic " I scored 100%"
Me " Wow! That's another achievement! I am very proud of you! Why arent you as chirpy as you were yesterday when you received your grades for your Chinese paper?"
Nic" Oh...I dont know... may be because many pupils scored 100% in my class and I was the only one who scored 100% for Chinese"

Me " Ah....you felt more special then ya? Regardless, I think you have done wonderfully well."

Oh well, that is my little gal. Fairly competitive but not so diligent :)

Chinese paper

N rang me.

N " Mummy, I got back my result for the Chinese paper today"
Me " Great, how did you go?"
N " The teacher said only 1 pupil scored full marks"
Me " Oh really! Who is that pupil?"

N " ME!!! ME!!!"
Me " Wow! That is absolutely fantastic! You did exceptionally well! Congratulations"

N " So, how many stickers can I buy this Saturday?" (that was the reason for the call :) )
Me " As many as you wish"
N " Really?? yeh!!"

L and I were more than pleased to learn about N's performance. N has always been an achiever in all that she sets out to do. We know our little girl is very attentive in class despite not being very dilligent and organised/careful (E.g. keeping the text books in the locker even during exam period, doing her Friday homework on every Monday morning, learning her spelling/ tin xia in 5 minutes and sometimes not learning at all , making silly mistakes in Maths etc ).

We are very thankful in everyway!

Wholemeal Chocolate Chip Loaf

I just love this loaf of wholemeal chocolate chip bread!

It is so full of texture and yet soft to the palate. It was so good with a generous spread of home-made orange jam. I like the tangy sensation of the orange jam followed by the sweetness of the chocolate chips! We will surely be making more of this going forward! Yummy!

Exotic roast pork pizza

We had such an exotic pizza for dinner over the weekend. Unfortunately, no pictures here. Due to technical fault, I have not been able to download any pictures from the camera :(

We baked many mini pizzas with sardine, cheese, cherry tomatoes and onions/ garlic and a larger pizza with the extra roast pork topping - home baked too! Instead of eating the roast pork pizza, N chewed up the entire plate of roast pork on her own!

I was stuck in the kitchen from 23opm to 530pm just to get the pizza dinner ready by 530pm! In between, I got a loaf of bread done up too as N loves to dip fresh bread into olive oil/balsamic vinegar as a side dish. It was tiring but as long as the kids enjoy it, I wouldnt mind doing it again :)

Gingerbread man

A day full of fun activities. E' first attempt at baking. He was all excited about his first gingerbread man! "One chocolate chip for the gingerbread man, one for me, one chocolate chip for the gingerbread man, one for me......."

He insisted on packing the cookies for his teabreak in school! He loved them too much to share with his friends :)

Brown Belt...

2 more gradings....yes. just 2 more and N will be holding a pom belt (black equivalent) until she turns 15 for a full conversion to black!

She is now a proud Brown :)

The instructor's comments :

Nicole is very good at her pattern. She has very good memory. She learns very fast, despite not practising her pattern at home. Now, what she needs to brush up on is her sparring. She is so afraid of hurting her opponent. She tends to hold back her kick. That will not work as she progresses on. Otherwise, she is doing well!"

Congratulations Cutie! You are doing a great job! You can do it, just let go of your kicks!

At 4.....

E has shown vast improvement in all areas lately. He is able to write many words freely on his own. When asked to do some academic exercises, though not quite interested, he is able to spell out and write the names of the objects shown. (E.g. Bat, cat, pin, van, apple, school, table etc). He has progressed to recognising and writing verbs and adjectives (e.g. happy, sad, slow, fast, clean, messy, sleep, run etc ).

What I am more excited about is his ability to decode a word phonetically. It is such a great contentment to see him try to make out of some alphabets.

He even sets his own mathematical equations:

4 + 3 = 7
2 + 2 = 4
5 + 1 = 6

I just realised that he could "draw" his chinese name too. Somehow, he is able to join the strokes and lines together to form his name. How very creative :)

His latest interest is in dinosours! He has been drawing so many versions of them...his all time favourites are Triceratops and Ankylosoraus ! Even I have to learn the super long names with him. They just get my tongue twisted....haha