Baking and Me (Episode 4)

As I blogged, long weekend means more baking.
Here's another product produced during the weekend.

May I present the chocolate-coffee cake. Baked one with chocolate chips and one without. Was too busy eating the one with chocolate chips and didn't manage to capture it in my camera.

Of course the main reason for forgetting it is because it tasted DELICIOUS!!

What's next?

Enhancing the Active Movement Campaign @ Home

In conjunction with the Active Movement campaign to advocate Kevin to just MOVEEEE (his ass), the abode has added a new electronic device. It aims to egg him on to shed off the excess kilos without having to feel being forced to do so. So what’s the device that works wonder?

Wii.

So happened, this is my Christmas present too! Thanks dear!

A story and a moral

Here’s a story to share.

Uncle Ace Ho owned a supermarket and for the past quarter, his business was not doing too good.

So, he went home and told his kids, “Sorry kids, Daddy’s business have not been doing well for the past one year and for this year, I cannot afford to buy you chocolate for Christmas. However, to reward all of you for achieving excellent results in your examination, I have decided to reward you all with something lower in value, but hey, at least there’s something.” Ace Ho had a great wife, he educated his children to be scholars and they often top the class. Uncle Ace Ho continued, “Daddy will reward you all with not more than 7 sweets, and that depends on your examination performance, so if you got an A1, you will have 2 sweets, A2, 1 sweet and so on, but remember, not more than 7 sweets in total for all the subjects.”

Uncle Ace Ho was so proud of himself for thinking such bright idea, and he called my Dad. He persuaded my Dad to do what he did. When I learnt about that, I was so angry with Uncle Ace Ho’s stingy ways and even though I was just an average student in class, that doesn’t mean I have to settle for something less, cause at least, I behave myself in class and at home!

Luckily, my Dad was understanding and he still bought me chocolates and some other cookies because he told me he had a pay raise from his company. I am lucky to have such a good father.

Moral of the story, we don’t have to be scholar, or top of the class to be someone lovable to our parents, it is how much we are valued in our parents’ eyes (as a kid) and that is the most important thing.

Baking and Me (Episode 3)

Who ever says baking is an inexpensive hobby is certainly wrong. I don't even want to calculate how much I have spent on the newfound hobby. The electrical mixer, assorted bowls/trays, trays and trays of eggs, pricey ingredients such as Hersheys chocolates etc.

Anyway, this Friday I decided to make something which Ziv really really love. Started baking at 12midnight because I went to Fair Price and Giant to buy the ingredients and necessary apparatus.

I love midnight baking, because no one is there to distract me or see how I fail.

This is the first time I tried a supposed-to-be reliable online recipe and as expected, it doesn't work for me and I ended up sleeping at 3am, feeling disgruntled. Woke up this morning at 630am to go Yoga class, came back drove Kev to spa together, went house viewing, and started baking again at 4pm using the same recipe.

Alas, mission failed painfully.

With these 2 failures, I lost 17 eggs, lots of flour, half pack of sugar... I feel bad not because I fail, but I wasted the ingredients. In the evening, I went to buy new ingredients and found new recipe, returned home at 8pm, started baking again.

I am in fact a very determined person and I hate to fail in things that are within my control.

Guess what?

Ziv ate 6 small pcs and kept asking for more. We had to stop him because it was near to bed time.

Another mission accomplished!!

Baking and Me (Episode 2)

One cannot judge a cookie by its dark appearance. Oh, maybe brown appearance. Whatever.

That is besides the case, I baked cookies last weekend and o-lala… they surely taste GOOD. And I mean G-O-O-D, good! Tasty! Delicious! Yummy!

This is the second time that I bake under my own steam and in no time, I will ripen into a professional baker (just kidding), so watch this space. Even my very own, self acclaimed, epicure tasted the cookies without frowning. And when I said ‘without frowning’ IS in fact the greatest achievement, because he frowned at the slightest mistake made.

Nevertheless, I was walking on air when I knew that the coming Friday is going to be a public holiday, apart from vegging out during the long weekend, that also means more time to bake, bake, bake and bake!

The Active Movement

I have to admit that I was never inspired to be sporty or categorized as a sport enthused. I don’t take pleasure in swimming mainly because I had aquaphobia and do not know how to swim. Recently, I have seen a whole new different meaning in swimming and I ‘swim’ with unvarnished brio.

I have been really active these days (and I wonder how long it will last), maybe the 3 layers of flab that surrounded my used to be 24inch waist tells me ‘it’s time to stop being a couch potato’, maybe under the influenced of my colleague who always go kickboxing during lunch time, maybe I should lead a healthy lifestyle once again. And almost certainly, I have to ensure that I fit into my red tight-fitting H&M dress without showing any excess fats!

It started with me trying to get Kevin to do some exercise by accompanying him to the pool. Sluggish people like him love to give craps for not exercising and hence, I thought of a way to make him MOVE a little. I tricked him to teach me swim and eventually I tell him to swim himself while I practice on my own. From there, he starts to swim again. It is good to see him exercise once again, especially after trying so many times to get him to run, to walk around our estate.

Soon, I started to develop a wee-bit of interest in swimming. And I started learning it. Now, my exercise regime has extended to even working hours. I tried to attend aerobic and yoga class 1 to 3 times a week and after work, I will swim at home for about 3 to 4 times a week depending if I attended any class during office hour.

Baking on one of the weekend is part of my exercise routine because it burns fats too! Two weeks ago was cup cakes and last week was the Subway style cookies. The downside of baking? You get to load back all the calories burned by eating what you bake!

More pictures of my cookies in the next post.

P.S: I mean swimming in water, not MJ, I mean it, OK.

2012

I am the kind of person who digs catastrophic movies. And very often, after watching these movies, they have lots of repercussion on me. I cried a bucket when I watched ‘Armageddon’, I had nightmare after watching ‘End of the World’. As for ‘2012’, I am more positive. I did not cry. I reflected. And a lot.

There are many articles about Apocalypse and whatnot and seriously I am not bothered by any of them. Not that my fear for death is lessen as time goes by (somewhat true). But I know one thing, everything will come to an end one day, and after the end of something, there will be a new beginning. That is always my philosophy in life for everything and anything. Just like people die, and after death, it may be a new beginning of a new life, such as reborn. I reflected a lot on my life.
Such as –
Shall I buy myself another Birkin bag?
Shall I buy that FM watch?
The dinner tonight at il Lido is definitely worth it despite of the price.
Have I recently said ‘I Love You’ to Kevin?
Where is our next travel destination for next year and how many months is it going to be?
If everything is going to be like the movie 2012, no one in Singapore (I believed, except you-know-who) is affluent enough to get on the Ark and if given a chance to sneak into the Ark, I will probably put Ziv before me, and let him sneak up the Ark himself and pass him my iphone, tell him to look at the pictures in the phone whenever he thinks of Mummy and Daddy (since we are definitely be gone by then). In short, I am willing to give up my life for my son.

I was thinking, so what if you are one of the wealthiest man in Singapore, who cares if you have special abilities such as driving your Lamborghinis with your toes, extremely good in math, ultimately, you have to die with the rest of the less wealthy people and talented people. The thing is, Singapore is too infinitesimal to get noticed for talent (porn stars not included). Maybe those richer ones will die a few minutes to hours later, because they struggled to get to the peak of Bt Timah hill or they get on a plane to nowhere and probably die from a plane crash due to lack of fuel.

What I want in life now is experience. The experience of being able to buy something I like, the experience of enjoying high life. I don’t care if Ziv is ever going to make use of what he will be learning in The Shichidah Kindergarten, I don’t care if paying the exorbitant (and some said outrageous) school fee is going to be worth-while for his life later, what I want is, Ziv being able to experience the unique learning techniques applied to their syllabus.

Of course, after all the said and done, that doesn’t mean I have to fritter all my money away on something which I do not need or mindlessly, but I think that being contented in life and not having regrets is the key to living. I don’t want to be running away from a giant Tsunami and still complaining, “Shit! I haven’t try this and haven’t try that!”

We still have to keep a good amount of money for savings just in case the day do not come, or come much later after our death.

Go watch 2012. You will see life differently, perhaps.

Baking and Me

Baking is never my forte. The only memory of me baking is during my secondary school Home Economic days. I reminisced that during the final year examination, I decided to make cup cakes and hence, I beseeched my mum to pre-pack the ingredients and all I merely need to do is just to mix them, and TA-DA! Hot and delicious cup cakes! I also remembered making my first ever cheese cake for Kevin for some unknown occasion. These are the reminiscences of some one who doesn’t take pleasure in baking.

Come to think of it, it is a shame that I know nothing much about baking since my brother used to be a 5-star hotel pastry maker and as for my mum, she knows everything from making curry puff to even nonya kueh. I recalled having to forgo my unhealthy recess indulgence during my primary school days for her homemade butter cakes and cookies. I lost some friends too since I didn't join them for 'zero-point' game.

Maybe being a mum changed me. I decided to take a crack at baking again and this time, alone, no one to help or guide me. I rely on the recipe which I got from a magazine and that was it. I know Ziv likes to eat cup cakes and obviously that will be my first endeavor.

I went to supermarket yesterday to buy all my baking needs (cost me a good $73!) and I started making the cupcakes at 12 midnight. By the time it was ready, it was already 1am. Kevin and Ziv supported me by simply staying awake and the first attempt was disastrous. I did not buy a weighing scale and everything was based on estimation and alas, my estimation SUCKS big time. So it came out looking BAD but edible. I have to say it smelt like POPCORN. Ziv had a few of the small cutie cup cakes while Kevin finished up 6 at one go (see the picture below you will know why 6 is an easy job)! With his limited vocabulary, Ziv even comforted me by exclaiming, “NICE!” I was so touched and vowed to come back tomorrow with PERFECT cupcakes.

The next day early morning I called up my consultant (aka my brother) and he told me my mistake and I should really get a kitchen scale. Hence during Ziv’s Shichidah class I went around TPY to look for the scale. Managed to get one and started making during dinner time and this time it was a success (to me) but not entirely great, it was a bit dry and I called up the older consultant (aka my mum) and she told me some tips. I sent a MMS to my brother and as usual his pet peeves in wanting everything to be perfect, told me that the ones I have are NOT perfect, because the cake should cover the cake wrapper.

Ok, fine. I agreed. I have that in mind now and I will take on more baking challenges (such as brownie, muffins, cheesecakes) so that I can make some really nice cakes for Ziv. As for Kevin, he doesn’t like to eat cakes, so maybe Subway-alike cookies will be my next attempt for him!

These are the small cutie cupcakes for kids...

Finally!!

Born on the same day but having different fate. One in the stomach and the other one in the rubbish bin.

P.S: Thanks to the Shi Chi Da Hui (aka, food tasting session) participants, Emily, Dylan and Jayden, for risking their 'life' for these cupcakes. I should get you guys to give me star rating. Haha...

Some pictures of Ziv

That supposed to be 'artistic'. Taken during my inspection of my current house. He simply loves camera.

My abode for the next 1 year

Today I decided to stop dwadling and upload pics of my abode. I have been staying in my current place for almost 2 months and already paid 3 times rental.

The current place is not entirely bigger than the old one, just slightly smaller and has 3 rooms. However, one of the rooms now is used as a storage space for us, we haven't really unpack all the boxes because we know we will be shifting real soon.

Nevertheless, we still decorate the house so as to make it more comfy and more 'us'. My main exasperation was the full mirror at the living room reflecting my neighbour's laundry. Luckily Kevin is in window furnishing business, we managed to source some string curtains to get it covered, a little bit. I hate full length mirror in living room!

As for location, it was great, very near to expressway CTE and has lots of eateries nearby not forgetting Searangoon Garden Estate. Initially we wanted to buy the unit above us, which is the penthouse, but the negiotation led us to nowhere. Kevin thought that it was really lucky that we didn't buy the unit above us because it was very hot in the morning especially in our master bedroom, most of the time we wake up not because we want to wake up, it is because of the HEAT. Grrrrr...

Some before and after pictures...

We did something unusual this time, by placing our refrigeration in the living room area, not because our gigantic fridge is out of place in the kitchen. Just that we want to give Coby more space to urine and poo. Having the fridge in the living room is so convenient! Maybe I will do that when I shift to a new place.

My Life Right Now

There isn’t much in life to blog about these days. There’s no new bags, no new shoes, no new job, no new baby…

The colleague sitting next to me is nowhere near loquacious.

I lost my ability to shop, not even window shopping. It is like I finally wake up, wake up from the fact that, I already have enough clothes to dress me up for half a year without repeating them. I don’t even have the urge to go to the mall because nothing interests me, perhaps only the restaurants are luring me to the malls.

This ennui is absolutely abnormal (for those who know me); I used to have ‘something’ on my shopping list with at least 10 support reasons for needing that ‘something’. There is simply no more impulse for anything.

I wonder what will be the pulling factor for me to hit the mall to select and buy 15 Christmas presents for my loved ones. Sat is simply stay-home with Ziv and swimming at home, while Sun is Shichidah day and swimming at home.

On the other hand, Kevin is zealous about house hunting. He was checking the units online every day, hoping that we will get our dream apartment really soon. We did offer a penthouse unit lately, but we stopped at a mil, thinking that the price is still as crazy as before as long as it is priced beyond a mil (of course that depends on the location).

As for my current abode, it is bizarre, we used to be walking distance away from the Jalan Kayu prata and now we are nearby to The Prata House and with lots of crab-py temptations. The House of Seafood (specialized in crabs) is nearby, so do The Crab Party, The Crab Place and lots more to mention.

What am I droning on now? I don’t know.

Back to work and Rihanna.