When Daniel meets babies, he loves to smile and "talk" to them! ^__^ In the video below, Daniel meets She Who Shall Not Be Named - watch him "show off" to her!
One of my favourite activities to do with Daniel is to read to him. There are several ways I do this - 1) I make him sit facing me so that he can watch me pronounce all the words as I read to him, 2) We both sit facing the same direction, him nestling within the warm space created by my legs and arched back, with the book in front of us 3) He lies down on the mattress and I lie next to him. Then, I lift the book high up in the air and read to him. The 3rd way is actually my favourite way of reading to Daniel because my view of him is like this:
Hey mommy! Muaks!
Isn't he adorable up close? He loves my reading voice and often ends up staring at me more than the book!
I'm not sure if reading to someone of such a tender age has any benefits. But it sure is fun and a great opportunity to converse about any number of things. I love the DK (Dorling Kindersley) series of children's books - they have pretty captivating stuff, like "My first body board book" which shows pictures of baby hands, legs, faces, hair, eyes and so on. I use this to show Daniel what his various body parts are called. Daniel always gets very excited when we come to this page:
taken from DK website
He loves the pictures of babies - probably thinks they're real babies or something! He keeps pawing at them and cooing self-consciously, as if he's so pleased to meet them or something.
Then, there is the "Touch and Feel Home" book, also by DK. With this book, Daniel gets to feel various textures, including a furry kitten, a rough towel and a smooth curtain. The last page of the book, however, is his favourite:
taken from DK website
It's a mirror! He always gets a kick out of seeing himself. It's hilarious!
The other series of books I read to Daniel is the Sandra Boynton books. Some of us will remember Sandra Boynton who draws quirky animals on T-shirts.
taken from Sandra's
website
Sandra's quirky animals and quirky sense of humour has spawned an entire industry of T-shirts, jewellery, calendars, children's books and even, a musical called "Philadelphia Chickens", which I have the soundtrack to. (It's hilarious by the way!)
I'll admit, the Sandra Boynton books are more for kids of the age where they can appreciate rhyme and cute pictures - Daniel spends most of his time trying to chew her books! But the thing is, I love these books and so I read them to Daniel in the hope that one day he'll understand and love them too. Titles like "A to Z", "Blue Hat, Green Hat" and "The Going to Bed Book" are lovely to read and I suppose, if anything, they get Daniel used to the patterns and inflections of the English language.
Hmm... what do you read to your child? ^__^
Bak kut teh (pork rib tea) is one of my favourite dishes because it's so easy to cook. Also, oddly enough, it brings back memories of college - you see, whenever I fell sick due to the punishing Chicago winters, I would whip out my trusty Bak kut teh spice pack and make myself some soup, sometimes with chicken if pork ribs could not be found at the local Osco supermarket. I still remember the day my blondie hall mate squealed when she caught sight of my simmering pot of half-a-pale-chicken carcass floating with a brown spice pack in the common kitchen. "Eeks... what is THAT?" I guess to her dainty American sensibilities, it smelt pretty bad and looked kinda strange. But oh my, to me, bak kut teh never failed to revive my senses and make me feel... restored.
So it was today, with both Husband & I down with a damning flu, and me having to cancel several appointments to nurse us back to good health, I found myself reaching for my Bak kut teh spice pack once again and cooking this easy and healthy dish.
Does anybody know a good recipe for making dark non-peppery version of Bak kut teh from scratch? I really don't fancy the light-coloured peppery version that much. Anyway, here's my version, using the "Claypot" brand bak kut teh spices:
image taken from Linaco
website
Marinade 1kg of pork ribs with 2tb of dark soya sauce and 2tb of oyster sauce. Heat up 8-9 bowls of water in a large pot together with 3 whole bulbs of garlic (no need to peel, or separate into cloves) and the spice pack. When water comes to a rolling boil, add the pork ribs and return to boil. Simmer for at least one hour and serve! (serves 5-6 persons)
I find that if the pork is fresh, there is no need to further flavour the soup with soya sauce or anything as the soup will be mildly sweet and, due to the spice pack, mildly herbal in taste. Yums!
When cooking for a truckload of people, it's best to whip out the tried and tested family favourites. For me, that would be tandoori chicken & basmati rice. ^__^ I've been cooking this combination since ... well, since I started cooking and it's mighty easy - the method described below yields juicy and tender tandoori chicken, not the usual version which tends to be a bit dry.
For the chicken, I used Sharwood's Tandoori Spice Mix from Cold Storage. There's a pic of something similar here, though it is not the exact same spice mix. I marinated 8-9 chicken thighs with 3 dollops (tablespoons) of plain yogurt, 3 tablespoons of spice mix and 3 squeezes of lemon juice. Simple! Then, when the time came to eat, I fired up the oven to maximum temperature and grilled the chicken as close to the top heating element as possible for 25 minutes, flipping the chicken half way through.
The charred bits were especially yummy!
The key to getting tender chicken is to remove the skin from the chicken, allowing the yogurt to "tenderise" the chicken meat better. The key to getting juicy chicken is to grill the chicken, instead of bake it! I'm no expert on the difference between grill and bake, but my friend KPT once told me - to grill is to place the meat as close to the heating element as possible, at maximum temperature. That is why you basically turn your oven to the maximum temperature it has and place your meat as close to the top heating element as possible. Also called broiling in some circles, grilling "mimics" BBQ-ing - the high temperature seals in the juices of the meat. Because the heating is uni-directional - i.e., the heat comes solely from the top - grilling cannot be done for too-thick pieces of meat, e.g., you can't grill an entire chook. You can however, bake a chook. This is because baking is usually done at lower temperatures, e.g., 180/200 degree celsius and the heating is multi-directional. Convectional baking aims for even and gradual heating and hence you usually place your dish in the middle of the oven, not at the top. Baking usually takes longer, e.g., 40mins to 1.5 hours.
Anyway, this grilled tandoori chicken recipe is scrummy. As for the saffron rice, Husband recently bought saffron from an online shop - I mixed 2ts of saffron with 1 cup of hot water and poured the yellow-red mixture into the rice cooker when cooking the basmati rice. I also added 2 tb of brown sugar into the rice cooker. Then, I simply mixed the cooked rice with roasted cashews, chopped coriander and dried cranberries. Personally, I didn't really think the rice was special or anything, but my guests loved it! I'm more crazy about the chicken actually. Ah well...
I went all arty-farty and took some stylin' black and white pics of Daniel a few days ago. Here's some of the nicer shots. More can be found on my flickr site. It's so funny how Daniel manages to look like me and Husband, all at the same time. Cheers!
Does anybody know the origins of these memes? As in who starts them? And who started THE FIRST meme ever? Anyway, have been tagged by the lovely Chickpea - so here goes:
Four Jobs I've Had in My Life:
1. Administrator in Tuition Centre - do they have Tuition Centres in any other
country other than Singapore?!
2. Civil Servant
3. Mother - my current occupation and pre-occupation
4. Secretary for Christian magazine company
Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over:
1. Anything with Mel Gibson in it (The Patriot, Payback, even Braveheart!)
2. Matrix - the first one, not the other two
3. I am strangely attracted to Vin Diesel's Riddick
4. Princess Bride
(5. Say Anything)
Four Places I've Lived:
1. Singapore
2. On Campus in suburbia, Evanston, Illinois
3. Downtown Chicago near the Water Tower
4. Trinity College, Cambridge University, UK
Four TV Shows I Watch:
1. The West Wing (on DVD)
I don't have a TV at home - but I do fancy cooking shows and American Idol,
everytime I get the chance.
Four Places I Have Been on Vacation:
1. Southwest Ohio (??!!)
2. Bali
3. Ronda, Spain
4. Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Four Websites I Visit Regularly:
1. Mrbrown.com
2. Kitchen Capers
3. Etsy
4. CNN or BBC (definitely NOT Straits Times online!)
Four of My Favourite Foods:
1. Warm chocolate cake (with the melting centres)
2. Anything Japanese
3. Hakka Food from Grandma's
Place (brings me to tears)
4. A well-cooked fatty lamb chop
Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1. Swimming in Alila Manggis Hotel's beautiful swimming pool in Bali
2. Walking along East Coast Park with my husband
3. Mag's Wine Kitchen
4. Recording my first jazz album with Rani
Singam
Four Tags to Continue This Meme:
1. Chubby Hubby
2. Cass loves
cooking
3. Obachan
4. Kuidaore
I love these cookies because they have such a complex taste. I can't describe it, but these cookies defy one-dimensional descriptors like "sweet" or "crunchy". They are sweet and crunchy - but to be more accurate, they are fruity & milky chocolate-sweet (those two types of sweet are quite different, and they blend nicely in this recipe) and, they are crunchy but also soft, filling in a wholesome way and yet, not too filling that you feel "gelat" after eating them (i.e. not too buttery). ^__^
Another great thing about these cookies is that there is no "creaming" or "rubbing in" of butter - no need to get your fingers dirty for this one, ladies! It's a real cinch! Here's the recipe:
Cranberry oatmeal white chocolate cookies adapted from Annabel
Karmel's "Family Favourite Recipes"
(friends have suggested skimping slightly on the sugar amounts below to make
the cookies less sweet)
150g plain flour
150g brown sugar
150g butter
50g instant oats
50g dried cranberries (I put in about 80g though!)
25g ground almonds
2oz white chocolate, cut into chunks
2 eggs yolks
1/2 ts baking soda
1/2 ts salt
1ts vanilla essence
1. Preheat oven at 190 degrees C. Sieve together the flour, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the ground almonds, brown sugar, oats, cranberries and white chocolate chunks.
2. Melt butter in a small pan over low fire. Stir the butter into the dry ingredients together with the egg yolks. Mix well, then using your hands, form balls of dough, pressing down on a baking tray lined with a baking sheet. Leave space in between the cookies for them to spread.
3. Depending on how big your cookies are, bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until sufficiently browned. Remove and cool on wire rack for them to harden.
Enjoy!
| www.flickr.com
|
 |
| |
* Einstein Never Used Flash Cards - How Our
Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize less
* The Bible
* What to Expect When You're Expecting
Cravings
* Good takeout Chinese or Thai food - which
does NOT exist in Palo Alto
:: local floggers::
Renee Kho (shiokadelicious.com)
Aromacookery
Cheat Eat
Chubby hubby
Cass
loves cooking
Treats
by Trishratna
Eatzybitzy
Umami
She bakes and
she cooks
Kuidaore
The Skinny Epicurean
Quick and Easy
Treats from Zu's Kitchen
Nibble & Scribble
Cuisine
Paradise
Piggy's
cooking journal
Eat fat
fat
Greedy goose
:: everywhere else floggers::
The
passionate cook
A spoonful of
sugar
L'art de vivre
da*xiang
Cooking for engineers
Obachan's kitchen
& balcony garden
She who eats
The scent
of green bananas
Baby rambutan
Delicious days
101cookbooks
Rubber
slippers in Italy
Delicious delicious
Eatchicago
Bakingsheet
Cupcake bakeshop
Yummy fun
Eat stuff
The bakers rack
Rice and noodles
A curious mix
Raging yogurt
Funky cookies
Kokblog
Food
beam
Dessert
first
Becks & Posh
Taste of the suburbs
Stephen cooks
Felicity wishes
Food storm
Our Patisserie
Bloggers (non-floggers)
Bim
Mac
Ling
Alto
Intherain
Mass rapid
The Goh family
Neonangel
Iz reloaded
Mongchacha
In a little while
Students sketchpad
Bits
& bites
Lovely room
Owen for God
Ashton's Diary
My
wedding photos
My single
life
«
#
picture
this! ?
»
SearchSG - the SG web community
eatonweb
photoblogs.org
foodbloggers
foodnmore
ricebowl journals
Best
viewed with Firefox
at 800 x 600 resolution