School holidays are here again!

I'm forever lamenting here in this blog that time flies way, way too fast. It's one month since I updated this blog. We're in the midst of school holidays, again! This time it was preceded by the Hari Raya holiday which fell on last Thursday and Friday and school has been out since then till end of this week.

It's a good thing that C didn't get any homework at all from school this time around. Either that, or she decided not to bring the work home! She's capable of that at times! But I trust that the teachers really didn't give any homework this time :)

As usual, we, or rather C, has grand plans to do many things during her free time. But since she is the type who dawdles and lives in the moment, she is pretty slow (by my standards) in getting things moving.

She however surprised us on the first morning of the holidays by waking up at 6.30am. On normal school days, that would be rare as we'd have to shake her out to get to school on time! She couldn't go back to sleep so I jokingly suggested she went and got breakfast ready. Lo and behold, she did. She came to us with a notebook and pencil and asked us for our breakfast orders *rolling my eyes*

While E and I continued to laze in bed for a while, she made sandwiches with butter and jam, and a fried egg for E, cereal with milk and an omelette for me, plus coffee for both of us.

 

 

During the Hari Raya break, we caught two movies, Wolverine and Percy Jackson on two separate days, at two different movie theatres. The two sweet-tooth people in my family had to have popcorn, of course.

 

Apart from movies, tv, iPad and computer games and videos from Brainpop, C started another 'storybook' of her own, writing an assortment of her own stories.

 

Yesterday, we sent her to a 3-day, 2-night nature camp at Janda Baik. She was so excited to go that she awoke at 4am. After dropping her off and returning to KL, E and I decided to visit Petaling Street, KL's Chinatown.

 

It's been more than 10 years since I last went there. Things have changed in that old part of KL. The roads were rather messy with the construction of LRT tracks. Some old buildings were demolished to make way for them, what a pity. What's 'Chinese' that remains of Chinatown is the food, some of the shops selling clothes, bags, shoes, etc. As for the stalls lining the roadside selling all sorts of knock offs, most of them are now manned by foreigners like Bangaldeshis :( 

 

 

Murals by a group of people who want to preserve the heritage on Jalan Sultan where six lots of buildings have been demolished to make way for development. Watch this video for more info:

 

 

Foreigners manning stalls

 

But some 'historical' gems are still there if you've lived in KL long enough to know. For a foodie like me, I took note of the stalls that have been faithful residents there for decades, although they could now be manned by a younger generation.

 

The daughter of the original salted roast duck seller is now continuing the business. They have been here for decades, selling their roast ducks and wrapped duck feet delicacy out of this cart by the roadside.

 

The roast duck seller's well-known name, 'Sze Ngan Chye' (Four-eyed Guy). This highly recognisable signage with red and white letterings in this typical typeface has not changed at all. Talk about strong branding! 

 

 

This 'air mata kuching' (longan drink) stall has been here for as long as I can remember, at the corner of Hong Leong Bank. It used to be a must-buy for E long ago during our single days when we visited this place, so yesterday, he re-lived 'history' by buying a cup, now priced at RM1.50. Those days, they served it in a bowl and many people would stand around the stall, drinking from the bowl.

 

 

This is another decades-old stall selling fried snacks and some specialty Cantonese kuih, including 'sat kei ma', 'siu hou chou', 'ham chim peng', 'mah kiok', 'hup tou sou', etc.

 

 

On our way home, we had to stop at a the traffic light junction facing Central Market. The former wet market of old, now a cultural/handicraft centre named Pasar Seni (Art Market) is now painted in light blue (I remember it as greyish or green back then). Alongside it, the alley has been transformed to what's called Kasturi Walk, with a giant wau (Malaysian traditional kite) fronting it!

 

 

It's good that I got to visit Petaling Street and drive past the areas surrounding it yesterday to take a look at the changes in town. Puduraya, the old central bus station got a facelift and the busy roundabout there is gone. The Klang Bus Station also got a facelift. The heart of old KL feels totally different from the one I used to know when I first moved here to live and work in the early 1990s....

 

Driving past Jalan Pudu on our way home, I could still at least feel that there wasn't as much change on that road, despite some new buildings coming up and the Pudu Jail gone. The popular Teochew porridge shop behind Berjaya Times Square (I can't stop thinking about food :-p) is still there too! 

 



 

The recent school holidays

The one-week school holiday was over too quickly! A and C spent the entire week at home, while E went to work as usual except for Friday when he took the day off for Good Friday. We got into a routine of work and play, mostly led by C herself as she drew up daily checklists of work items she  needed to look into, such as household chores I said she had to do, homework given by her teachers, music practice, and ideas/projects of her own.

Day 1: C's handwriting is very untidy! Since we told her she needs to earn her own money to buy things she wants, as well as for savings, she's been thinking of ideas, but so far, her ideas have yet to be put into action. Obviously, 'optional' in item no. 5 indicates some reluctance!

 

Day 2: She did quite a good job washing her shower stall but concluded that she would "never, never, ever want to do it again". It was hard work scrubbing the tiles, and floor and washing the glass door.  Her illustration on the whiteboard echoed my dream of being on a paradise island, instead of being stuck at home!

 

Later in the week, 'help do chore' got bumped to the bottom of the list, and indeed she did only one chore, insisting that she had written 'chore', a singular noun according to her, and not 'chores'.

 

Helping to mop the floor was one of the 'help do chores' activities.

We made meatballs for a soupy noodle one afternoon.

 

Caitlin's home-made lunch

 



We took a day off our work-and-play routine and went out to a mall for some fun and shopping in the middle of the week. Coincidentally, there was a free workshop with an eco-friendly theme at the concourse. You could participate if you had a certain credit card, or spent at least RM50 at the mall. She made an accessories hanger using recycled wood from tree stems or branches.

 

 

 

 

 And we did more cooking. One evening, C cooked a dish of basil chicken all by herself, with me providing the verbal instructions. We had it for dinner and it was a rare instance where she actually ate leafy greens (the basil leaves). This is one example that proves (although not all the time) that kids are more willing to try new food or food they dislike when you involve them in the cooking.

 

Caitlin's basil chicken stir fry.

 

On Saturday afternoon, C's five-year-old cousin came over to play and they made some cookies.

Apart from these, C managed to complete all her homework, and practised her piano and drums adequately. Her BM tuition and music lessons went on as usual. We went to church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. She played the drums at church for the praise and worship session.

Phew, we survived the school holidays quite well this time, and now we're back to the grind. Earlier this week, we had some difficulty waking early and getting back into our daily routine.

This month of April, we will have a few events to take note of -- C's school sports day, a field trip for a theatrical play of Roald Dahl's 'George's Marvellous Medicine', and of course, the long-awaited 13th General Elections. The PM had announced the dissolution of Parliament yesterday and now we're waiting for the announcement of the polling date. Also, E will be another year older this month.

Public holidays and cooking

I'm glad my laptop computer has been revived. Two weeks ago, it 'died' unexpectedly when one morning, I switched it on and nothing happened. We sent it for repair and they said there was a problem with the motherboard. It cost quite a bit for the repair and replacement of a new battery as the old one was also 'dying'. However, it's still cheaper than buying a brand new laptop.

We have a number of public holidays between last week and this. Last Thursday was the Prophet Muhammad's birthday and Sunday was Thaipusam, making Monday a holiday too. So if you had taken Friday off, you'd have a five-day weekend. We didn't take Friday off however since C still had to go to school. But on Sunday, we went over to E's sister's home and together with E's brother's family and parents, the entire 'clan' got together for a one-night sleepover. The kids enjoyed themselves playing toys, games and swimming. This Friday, February 1, is another holiday for those in Kuala Lumpur as it's Federal Territory Day. I think I shall be giving Rusty a long overdue haircut. His fur is so long that I can hardly see his eyes now!

I'm back to my 'experiments' in the kitchen and C did one too recently with her own kid's cookbook. She made some merengues by whisking some egg whites with sugar and baked them in the oven.

My regular visits to recipe sites and re-visits of my various cookbooks got me concocting food using whatever I have in my fridge in order to not let stuff that have been sitting in there go to waste. Most of the time they are stuff like spices and sauces leftover from my other experiments with new recipes.

Last week I made chicken baked with honey and mustard. That was to use up the mustard I got some time back for mustard pork chops. However, it still didn't get used up, so I made hotdogs and that still didn't deplete the mustard supply....

Then one day, I was wondering what to do with leftover bread which weren't as soft as when fresh. I would usually toast them or make French toast with them but I was getting bored with doing that and found a simple recipe for what they call 'egg in a nest'. C liked the novelty of have a fried egg inside a hole of a slice of bread and that got her into the kitchen with me too.

I also have breadcrumbs sitting in the fridge from my experiment with crabmeat patties in the past. These patties contain lemon zest. E liked it but not C.



 

Last night, I used the breadcrumbs for a Western meal of pan fried breaded chicken thighs....and I still didn't use up all the breadcrumbs....I made a cheesy gravy to go with the chicken and potatoes.

 

And now while writing this, I'm trying to think of tonight's dinner menu. Although I enjoy cooking, there are days when I wish I could snap my fingers and delicious food would appear. Sometimes, it gets tiring when you think of all you have to do to get just a meal on the table.

You need to get stuck in a traffic jam to go to the market, decide what to buy from all the varieties of meat, seafood, vegetables etc, consider what your family members like and will or will not eat, consider the price and ease of using that particular food or ingredient. Then when you get home with your purchases, you have to sort, clean and store them. When it comes to cooking, you need to thaw, prepare, chop, marinate or do whatever is needed for the recipe. Then comes the actual cooking and washing up the utensils after cooking. So much time and effort to prepare a meal that's just gobbled up within half an hour....

Children's Day and C's birthday at school

C's school celebrated Chidren's Day yesterday. The teachers organised a day of fun, food and games for the children. The celebration started off with a time of singing in the school hall, a speech by the headmistress and another by the PTA Chairman. Then children from Years 3,4 and 6 peformed on stage. C and seven other girls represented Year 4 with their rendition of One Direction's 'One Thing'.

Then a clown entertained the kids with his funny antics.

C's birthday falls on Saturday so we took the opportunity to celebrate it alongside Children's Day. At break time, the children sat in the canteen and had a feast of chicken rice, muffins, ice cream and drinks. I brought a cake, the one which C asked me to make (see previous post), and C distributed the party packs to her friends which contained some candy, a CD of Christina Perri's single 'A Thousand Years' and of course, the cookies we had made.

This is the chocolate cake with buttercream icing, decorated with chocolatge fingers and jellybeans I laboured through the afternoon (and night!) before. I had initially planned to spell out her name with the jellybeans but it didn't turn out well. Removing the jellybeans would have damaged the icing so I improvised. It was too painstaking to cover the entire surface with jellybeans so I turned it into a cross design instead, making it look like a cake for Easter! However, I felt it was also appropriate since it is our hope that our faith will be more meaningful to her as she begins life as a pre-teen. As it is, she is already showing some annoying teenager behaviour and attitude....

After eating, the kids proceeded to the field to play some telematch games. School dismissed early and everyone went home happy with snacks and souvenirs.

Cookie-cutter shortbread cookies

Yesterday afternoon, C made more cookies. The 'moon rocks' and 'meteor showers' she made last week had all been devoured, mostly by E and her. This time, she used another recipe, a basic one for shortbread cookies. After rolling out the dough, she was excited about using cookie cutters to cut out the various shapes.

 

 

They turned out quite well considering it's her first time baking shortbread cookies, and after tasting one, she said she liked it. She made two trays of them to be packed into the goody bags she wants to give her classmates when she celebrates her birthday at school next week. However, these two trays will not be enough so I guess I'll have to help her make more in the next few days, plus pack them into the little plastic bags I bought for her from the baking supplies shop.

 

I am bracing myself too to bake and decorate a chocolate cake to bring to school for her birthday. It'll be my very first time making a cake for public viewing and consumption! I prepared her by telling her that if it doesn't turn out right, I'll have to buy one from a bakery at the last minute that day!

 

This is the kind of cake she wants (scroll all the way down the page to see the picture), which I hope and think is simple enough for me to make.  We were browsing through foodgawker together one day and she said she wanted it for the coming birthday. I'm not too keen on filling the top of the cake with so much jellybeans, so the compromise is that I'll spell out her name on the cake with jellybeans.

 

Watch this space for further updates on how our baking endeavours for her birthday turns out.....

 

 



Caitlin's homemade cookies

Caitlin got interested in making some cookies from a children's baking book I bought recently. So after lunch on Sunday, she took the book out and thawed the butter while I gathered the required ingredients in the kitchen. I told her she'd have to do everything herself from measuring to making the cookies. They are actually what I know as 'rock buns'. I also said she had to wash up after cooking, and only when she needed help should she call on me.

It went fine until she realised she didn't plan well enough. She was impatient and didn't follow the book's instruction to "collect the ingredients together, then turn the page to receive instructions for moon rock contruction". After measuring the flour and butter she started rubbing them together and getting both hands all messy. She had yet to measure and set aside the other ingredients, so she asked for help....she learned her lesson for not following the book's instructions and listening to my advice to plan for everything she needed.

After that little snag, she went on to make the cookies. They turned out fine and edible, although a little dry for my liking. She was proud of her first attempt at baking cookies all by herself. She is planning to try other recipes and bake more soon to include them into the party packs she wants to give her classmates when she celebrates her birthday at school next week. We'll see how that works out soon....

The novice baker at work.

The book calls this 'moon rocks'. The exposed raisins got burnt and tasted a little bitter :)

This is 'meteor shower'. The same recipe, raisins substituted with colourful sugar strands.

 



Slowly getting into the grind

Phew, finally....the school holiday-Christmas-New Year-Chinese New Year back-to-back madness has come to an end. Yesterday was another public holiday, Federal Territory Day, and there'll be another two public holidays next Monday and Tuesday! So many holidays....After next week, there'll be five full and proper weeks of school before the first term one-week break in mid-March. It's hard to get into the full swing of things when there are so many holidays, so much food to eat, so many gatherings, short travels...and now I'm recovering from the consequences of all these -- sore throat, cold and cough. And we've moved into February already!

Here's a summary of what we did between the last blog post and this:

CNY reunion dinner with E's family - lots of food prepared by my MIL, one of E's cousins and his family visiting from Melbourne joined us at the sumptuos dinner. We spent the night at my in-law's home to herald the new lunar year of the Dragon. The neighbours let off loads of firecrackers but C slept through it all. I hardly slept a wink that night as I'm a light sleeper and do not take to strange beds.

The next morning, we went to a special CNY mass at church and received blessings in the form of mandarin oranges and angpows from the church. Then, we went home to have brunch, another round of the same dishes we had the night before. We then left for home in the afternoon. We spent the rest of the first day by ourselves at home, packing our stuff to visit my parents at their  home the next day.

Upon arrival at my parents on the second day of CNY, we went out for lunch. Luckily, my favourite beef noodle shop was open so we had the town's specialty. Unfortunately, that day's serving didn't taste as nice as it usually does. Maybe their regular cook was off celebrating CNY and the stand-in wasn't as skilful in preparing the dish....

Beef noodles at Yee Kee, Seremban

The next day, we made a day trip to Melaka to visit a few of my aunts and uncles. C even belted out a few Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber songs with my aunt's karaoke set! We got home to my parents' house in the evening and proceeded to have dinner at a restaurant. We were lucky that this restaurant could take our reservation. The night before, we checked out three restaurants and they were fully booked, and we had to go to a nearby mall for dinner at Secret Recipe, a local cake-cum-cafe chain.

Here's some of the yummy stuff we ate for dinner at Silver Dragon Restaurant.

Stir fried mixed vegetables

Fried rice

Pork trotters in red wine sauce

Steamed cod

Tofu with minced meat

We returned to KL on Thursday, rested a bit and attended a few more gatherings with family and friends over the weekend. Needless to say, we ate a lot at every gathering! 

Ipoh - An Adventure of Sorts

After a gastronomic thrill on the northern island dubbed as the Pearl of the Orient, we headed back south to a town in a neighbouring state known for its tin mining in the past, limestone hills and caves, 'white' coffee and pretty lasses (they say it's because of the fresh spring waters there!?). Ipoh has always been a town we bypassed on the way to Penang. Come to think of it, if not for E having relatives there, I'd probably not have visited it at all. This year, ACE made a record number of three visits to Ipoh - once in August for his cousin's wedding, once in early December for his uncle's 80th birthday, and recently, this food and cave-visiting trip with my parents and younger brother's family that I'm writing about here.

While there are places to see in Ipoh, although not as many compared to Penang, our main intention of visiting this town was to taste the good Chinese food it's well known for. Ipoh is a smaller town compared to Penang and you need not drive too far to get to any good eating spot. We spent two nights in Ipoh going to a few good Chinese restaurants, coffee shops and Ipoh's dim sum 'landmark', a place named Foh San, which is perpetually crowded on weekdays and weekends. We also did not leave out Ipoh's famous chicken dishes - the beansprout chicken noodles and salt-baked chicken. We also bought some Tambun pomelos and 'heong peng'.

Other than our foodie and cave adventures, we took an unexpected drive to Menglembu, about half hour's drive from Ipoh town. What happened was that our car got hit from the back as we were waiting to exit a junction and after a short discussion with the 'lady in the blue car', we tailed her to her home in the 'groundnut territory' (Menglembu is famous for its groundnuts) to collect compensation for the damage she inadvertently caused as she didn't have enough cash on her when it happened. It's a good thing that no one was hurt and other than exterior damage, our car could still take us around for another day and home safely.

Roast pork knuckle - note the size of the bone!

Steamed cod

Pan fried freshwater prawns

Some of the dim sum we had at Foh San

'Chee cheong fun' and fried radish cake

Self service at Foh San, too many, too greedy...

Popiah

A long row of shops selling pomelos

Groundnut sculpture at roundabout in Menglembu!

Ipoh is located in the part of Peninsular Malaysia that is saturated with limestone hills and a number of the caves in those hills have become Chinese (Taoist/Buddhist) temples. They are also tourist and outdoor adventure seekers' attractions. We first visited Sam Poh Tong and the one next to it (Ling Sen Tong). These two temples are very well decorated with colourful temple adornments, statues and figurines of religious deities, plus a reasonably nice landscaped garden. Then on our way out of Ipoh to KL, we dropped by the Kek Look Tong cave temple which had a much nicer natural cave formation. These visits were C's first ever experience of caves, where she got to see real stalagmites and stalactites. We could have taken her to see Batu Caves, the other famous Hindu cave temple which is closer to home but we've not gotten around to that (the 272 steps to climb is somewhat a deterrent!).

Front view and entrance to Ling Seng Tong

Coils of incense

Inside Kek Look Tong

Altars inside Kek Look Tong

Cave opening to 'backyard' garden

The 'backyard' garden

After Kek Look Tong, we headed back into town as it was lunchtime. We savoured some coffee shop fare and finally with a full stomach, we headed for home. Halfway into our journey, we stopped at the Bukit Gantang rest stop which has many shops selling local fruits like guavas, sweet corn, mangosteens, and our favourite, the King of Fruits! We ate some of course!

Back home in KL, we went to pick up Rusty who had been in boarding for a whole week. The poor 'boy' displayed mixed feelings upon seeing me -- excited to see a familiar face yet moody because we left him out of our holiday. All the way home in the car, he was just lying down sulking....

Places we ate and bought food at in Ipoh:

Soon Fatt Restaurant

Mun Choong Restaurant

Kong Heng coffeeshop

Skyway Cafe hawker centre

Coffeeshop opposite Lou Wong chicken beansprout noodle

Cowan Street Chicken Beansprout Noodle

Row of shoplots selling Tambun pomelo and heong peng 

Aun Kheng Lim salt baked chicken

Rusty, on a 'happier' day after a trip to the groomers

(A big 'thank you' to my dear and loving parents for sponsoring this Penang/Ipoh family holiday. We rarely get to holiday together given how our lifestyles are in this day and age!)