Another HappyCall.

Having great time shopping at Sg yesterday & bought so many things. I teased my friend that "we must be out of our mind to shop at Sg for food stuff when the exchange rate is so high now" Anyhow, we had great time shopping and dining. The favorite food that I always hunting for is beef noodles.

Without further hesitation, I bought myself another HappyCall grill pan. It's only $89 (from Metro) Well, I should have said a substitute, not another, since the previous one already has a spot on its surface. I think it's time to change to a new, and of course a bigger one.

Well, just a reminder : kitchen ware is subjected to 30% tax (30% of the purchase price). I had a nasty surprise when the custom officer told me about the above tax rate when she found the pan on the backseat. However, she let me off.

 Tadaa..... Can't wait to launch my new pan.

It comes with a spare 'packing' (the rubber around the pan) and a safety instructions handbook.

The first project is spaghetti with tomato sauce, cooked with fresh shitakae mushroom, cucumber, fresh mussles and Taiwan sausages.

 Taiwan sausages 20 for $3.00. Yummy......

 It's so simple and dinner is ready in half an hour time.

Grilling steak/pork chop should be the next assignment.

making delicious cupcakes by using blender

I bought this blender from Total Image roadshow 5 years ago but hardly use it. I remembered back then, I used it only for making fruit juice and the marinade sauce for chicken rice.

I always wanted to try making cupcakes with this blender after watching the Magic Bullet video clip. Always, but no action taken since then. (shy ^_^)

Last Sat night, it just crossed my mind on having it a try. I cut the ingredient into a small portion which fits in well to the tall cup.

Ingredient: (making 8 cupcakes)
100g butter
100g self-raising flour
60g castor sugar
2 eggs
few drops of vanilla essence
raisins or anything to your liking

Steps :
1. Heat up oven at 175°C.
2. Melt butter and blend it together with sugar.
3. Then add in eggs. Press and hold for 3 seconds
4. Fold in flour by using a plastic paddle. Press 3 times  (one second each)
5. Lastly, add in raisin or anything that you like. Mixed well with the plastic paddle.
6. Pour in the batter into cupcake liners and bake for 18mins.

*remember, do not blend the butter for too long as it will make your cupcakes shrink. Like my choc sun-dried tomato cupcakes.

Below website is just for your viewing pleasure. Looking at the way they compressed the usage of the blender into few minustes of video clips is just like watching magic show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtpKjgwi4Sc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plbRSugctAA

for the next experiment, I'd like to try on pasta sauce. I'll definitely share it out once I successfully make my homemade pumpkin and tomato pasta sauce.

easiest way ever to clean your microwave

Believe it or not, many of our household has this. Be it as simple as for heating up to the high capacity type which has the function like convection oven, we are not going to live without one. 

However, cleaning it would be a disaster if you use yours for cooking, grilling as well as heating up food. Food which contains oil will definitely make the cleaning a nightmare. 

Some time ago, I came across an article about cleaning microwave by heating up a cup of water then clean it up with wet clothes and dish wash. I decided to give this a try. 

Instead of heating up a cup of water, I directly pour water on the glass tray with few drops of dish drops. At first, set the timer to 1 minute. After sometime, set the timer to 1 min again. Total 2 minutes can perfectly clean up the oil stain in your microwave. 

Put a cleaning towel on the glass tray to absorb extra water and bring out to wash under the running tap. Then, wipe off the stain inside and voila, your microwave is shining and smell good, like new one. I wish I learnt this 10 yrs ago. LOL

It has been a long while.

I don't even realise my blog has been left unattended for more than half a year! Time really flies too fast than we can imagine. Too many things to accomplish but too little time. (Poor time management, huh?)


After resting for too long, I'm going to start with a short sharing.


After return home from the clinic, you bring along the medicine that prescribed by the doctor. Of course, with the hopes that every single pills or capsules that you are going to swallow will make you recover the soonest. You just don't want to feel sick anymore.

Just my advice, before putting the medicine into your mouth, please spend a little time to google it. For those who has been with the doctor for very long time, you may give him/her a greater deal of trust. I was once prescribed asthma medicine for my cough.

However, the truth is, polyclinics are running by a group of GPs. Different GP may have different understanding on the medicine that they are going to prescribe on you. And the medicine they are going to prescribe to you is whatever they have in their stock at that moment. They may answered your request, "I don't have this medicine, but I'll prescribe you a similar one, xx" Or they don't have it at all. For throat infection, instead of going for antibiotics, I always rely on taking Difflam but many clinics doesn't has this. Some GPs would rather suggest you to take antibiotics right away.

There are many search engines can support this but the simplest one is by using http://www.wikipedia.org/ and this is what I found when I key in Bromhexine ==> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromhexine


And for those who are not very good in English, you may use http://www.baidu.com/
Key in the same word : Bromhexine and you can find the info. in split second.

http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=BvXMwMzFdsF2pYWzjllQJlT5hs8VUU8vO9bnvCnB9vZKxNKWZBfrJdTt7jvrLaEDbIA4RFHcwr2UIFSPlYGhN_

Understand what you are taking may save your time and money, perhaps may speed up the recovery.
This is crucial especially you are given antibiotics which you are required to complete the course, and how if the antibiotics given may not target the exact problem that you are facing.

After checking, and once you have doubt on the medicine that is now in your hand, please consult your GP.

P/s: I used Bromhexine as an example as this medicine is commonly prescribe to cure common colds and cough.

My ambitious girl

While I was cooking in the kitchen, Yvaine came in and had a chat with me. She talked about her school graduation preparation, about her friends wearing wigs during the performance, about her tuition center friends....On and off, she asked me what I was cutting, what is that for.....

Out of sudden, she told me: "when I grow up, I want to buy a lot of pets"
"Why a lot of pets?"
With her eyes shining bright, "I want to buy a lot of pets to sell" (in-born entrepreneurship, what a surprise!)
"Then I use their skin to make clothes, or maybe bags" (OMG! sound so determined, but how she get this idea from?)

Even has a (cruel) business plan in her mind at this age.

"Well, don't you think this sound so cruel; to kill the animals for their skin?"
"Once you take away their skin, the animals will die."
"Huh?! Ok Ok, then I won't use their skin." (then what?)
She smartly changed to another topics. Back to the this Sun graduation preparation, again.

德國的幼稚園。家長們都看過來吧！

http://www.cmoney.tw/notes/note-detail.aspx?nid=16309

The article only has a feature to share via Facebook, and thus, I have to share it by copy the link. (as above) * If you can't view it, please let me know. 

After go through this article,you will be surprised (and feel sorry) on how our kids grown up. No wonder they lack of the ability to manage themselves, do not know what happening in their surrounding (or I should say unconcerned) and afraid to go to school (or nursery). They spend too much time learning from books which they do not know why they need to and maybe at the moment do not see the chance to apply it. They do not know how to 'think' and plan for themselves. Everything in their life is arranged, provided and some to an extend of spoon-feed.

I can't stop nodding my head when I read through this article. It's kinda telling us the reason why our younger generation behave this way. Our kids may start their schooling life in the different track as kids from other Western country, however, we still can't put the blame solely on our education system. Apart from going to school, they spend at least 14 hours a day at home. 

My student's mom was so shocked (I'd use the word shock as she opened her eyes & mouth big) when she found out that I ONLY guided and supervised my son in arranging his school bag according to the timetable during the first few weeks of his standard 1, helping him on his homework only upon his request, let him washing his school shoes and even brushing his own uniform.

In these 3 years time, he get punished (and complains) due to incomplete homework, he had to rushed things last minutes (due to lack of the sense of responsibility and procrastinate) and he even used to not bringing sufficient art material to his art class (as always remind me very last minute) 

At the age of 9, he is already the family "dish washer" and my 6-year old is mopping the floor once a week. They changed their pillow case, bed sheet and helping on laundry. Keeping their own closet clean and tidy. All these are not really emphasized by many parents as they think the kids are too young to do that. Parents will find it very hard to get them to manage their own once they grown up. And, filial parents have to continue doing these chores for them. Kids will become dependent, lack of the sense of responsibility and most of them do not know how to appreciate.

 

We can't change the education system but we can change our way in bringing up our kids. Let them do things by themselves, let them manage their own homework and share out the house work.

Below is the link for the chores chart for your reference. You will notice the training starts from as low as 2 years old.

http://thehappyhousewife.com/home-management/age-appropriate-chores-for-kids-printable/

Bread Pudding

If you have days old bread or you want to have something 'bread-y"  but not toasted bread, not sandwiches; you can think of making it into a dessert.

1/ few slices of bread
2/ 2 tbs of butter - melted
3/ 1/4 cup of raisin
4/ 4 eggs
5/ 3-4 tbs of sugar
6/ 2 cups of milk
7/ few drops of vanilla essence
8/ 1 tsp of cinnamon powder (optional)

Step 1: Spray your baking tray with vege oil.
Step 2: cut bread into any shapes that you like. Lay them nicely on the tray with raisin in between breads.
Step 3: lightly beat #2, 4, 5 & 6 until well-mixed
Step 4: lastly, add in #7. And, pour them onto the bread.

Preheat your oven. Set the temperature to 170 Celsius and time 45mins.

Voila, your 15mins of effort churn into a tummy-warming dessert. If your bread pudding turns out a bit dry, served with hot milk.