Hi

Hello bloggers. 

I have not updated my blog for more than a month. I hope you guys still remember me :)

I've recently lost interest on certain things - working, cooking, baking, blogging and even eating. I just want to sleep whole day. 

It's the hormones.

Yep, I'm pregnant. This is not a planned pregnancy. It took me one week to accept that I'm pregnant - again.

I'm 11 weeks along. No, I don't have any pantang. So, yeah, I do not wait until I hit the 12th week before I announce to the world. My husband (of course), my mum and lady boss are the first few persons I told. Then to a few close colleagues. And now, you :)

So please forgive me if I don't update my blog. Really, I just don't feel like doing anything at all. I just want to sleep - all day. 

Ok, bye.

Please, I Want Somemore

Nothing, I just feel this picture really looks like the famous Oliver Twist's, "Please, I want somemore" tagline, haha.

Hubby sent this picture to me while I was driving home from work. I was stuck in the traffic jam for nearly 2 hours. He was at home, feeding the boys, and that day, they had spaghetti with bacon and mushroom sauce. 

Kz finished his food and proudly showed his dad his empty bowl (he didn't ask for more). Hubby captured that face that very moment and to me, it really looks like he wants more food, with that sad face, and licking tongue somemore, haha. 

But in reality, he already finished a big bowl of spaghetti, showed his dad the empty bowl, then happily continued watching his monster trucks in Youtube :)

Condensed Milk+Raisins Chocolate Cookies

When we go for grocery shopping, we would usually buy something for the kids for them to hold, or to keep them quiet. Usually they request for raisins. And this is what happens. They open a pack, ate some, then request for the same thing again next week, repeat, and now, I have 4 packets of raisins at home - opened half & half.

I want to 'get rid' of the raisins. I am thinking of raisin cookies, or raisin muffins, something simple. I don't have sugar, but I have a LOT of condensed milk. I love my oats with condensed milk so I stock up on condensed milk. 

So, muffins or cookies? Err, I seldom hear condensed milk muffins. But condensed milk cookies, yes. So let's do condensed milk raisin cookies, eh?

All my ingredients are agak-agak. 1 cup butter, 1 cup flour, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, half a can condensed milk and raisins. I have to keep adding more flour because the dough is wet and sticky from the condensed milk.

I rolled them into balls using my hands as I don't have an ice cream scoop.

Gently pressed them down a bit, and bake at 170 degrees for about half an hour.

The result? Very bitter chewy chocolate raisin cookies. Not sweet. Not buttery (maybe I put too much cocoa). Edible, but I won't say it's the best in the world. It taste EXACTLY like bitter-sweet dark chocolate cookies. I prefer sweeter cookies made with sugar or brown sugar. 

I put 16 pieces into a cookie jar.

AND.....

Surprisingly, hubby FINISHED the whole jar of the cookies when he came back from "ching ming" with his family that afternoon.

People who don't like sweet stuff would love this, but not me kua, I prefer my cakes and cookies and desserts to be very SWEET (and condensed milk is not suitable because they are NOT sweet at all when used for baking).

MEANTIME.....

The boys doing some beading.

Ok bye!

Last Thursday's Dinner

Was at home last Thursday, no go to work.

I found two packets of Graddsas beef gravy (for meatballs) bought from Ikea and...

the expiry date is coming soon - 09.04.2015. I don't have time to cook dinner on weekdays, and I don't cook dinner on weekends since we'll be going to mil's place or my mum's place for dinner usually.

So I plan to use up the two packets of beef gravy. But wait, let me show you what I cook that night for dinner, since I'm at home, and I have the whole day. I'm roasting half a chicken. Marinade using just Kikkoman soy sauce and Italian herbs.

And I plan to use up the two packets of gravy by cooking spaghetti. Yep, beef gravy with spaghetti. Gonna cut up some luncheon meat too for the spaghetti. I'm gonna call it luncheon meat with beef gravy spaghetti.

Look at those luncheon meat chunks, yummeh.

I fry luncheon meat and onions separately first. Then I made the gravy, just follow instructions behind the packet. Then, I poured the meat into the gravy, mix with spaghetti when it was time to serve.

Anyway, here is my roast chicken...

My luncheon meat-onions-beef gravy spaghetti... And...

Ta-daaa !! Surprise !! I made another tuna-corn salad with hard boiled eggs too. This one, can make in advance and chuck in the fridge. Erm, missing some cherry tomatoes here I know, but I don't like veggies, so no veggies here, teehee.

Just in case you are wondering why I use aluminium trays for the 3 dishes I cooked, well, just for fun. I wanted it to look like a party buffet. Syiok sendiri.

Ok, bye!

"Same Thing" Day

Am being very honest. Am running out of stuffs to write. So I just randomly take photos of my boys last weekend, and blog about them, haha.

This was their breakfast last weekend. Am getting very lazy now to even fry an egg for them, let alone making pancakes. So they just get a cupcake, yoghurt and a Vitagen each. All from the packet, no cooking required.

After breakfast, it's playtime. I will sit and relax on the sofa watching Astro, while they play and watch YouTube on the tablet. G is not so sticky now as he is bigger already, so I get my TV time for a while, before he makes noise and request for Baby Einstein (on the dvd player).

I'll cook lunch around 10.45am - boil rice, heat up leftover-soup-in-a-jar and steam egg. If you want to see how it looks like, here you go. I only keep the soup in the jar, I took out all the "liew" already.

Not bad, finished all also.

 After lunch, nap time for them. G naps outside, while Kz naps inside the room.

Ok, what's after this? Usual lah, by now, you should have known already. Hubby back around 2pm, the boys wake up, we go to mil's place, hang around until dinner, and come back lah, what else. 

Ooh, I'll do the laundry, take a rest, and zzzz.

Ok, bye!

Photos Taken During CNY

Don't worry, not gonna bore you with report-duty details. Just to keep a record, and show off my boys.

Chor 1 - Went to mil's house in the morning, visited a relative after that, went home for the boys to nap, back to mil's house for dinner. Done.

Chor 2 - Went to my parents' place for lunch, back home for the boys to nap, then to my mil's place for dinner. Done.

*Psst, please ignore the dog at the back.

Chor 3 - Hosted a mini gathering for the in-laws. They came around 12pm, left around 7pm. I cooked - roast chicken, cream sauce spaghetti, potato-egg-bacon salad and cheesecake for desserts. Then they gambled whole day. After they left, I vacuumed and mopped and washed the toilets.

Chor 4 - Went to visit hubby's boss in Klang, and stayed home after that. Done.

Chor 5 - Sent the boys to the daycare (yep, they opened already), while me and hubby went shopping and paktor, yay! Took this photo after we got back from the daycare.

Chor 6 til 9 - Start work already, nothing much to report. Everything back to normal, go to work, come back, tapau dinner, sleep.

Chor 10 - Steamboat at my sil's house, so this was taken at their living room.

A few minutes after taking the family photo, Kz ran around the house and slipped and fell and knocked his head. Look at his "bungalow" (hou mou lau). Ouch !!! I quickly applied some tea tree oil, and the bump subsided after a while, phew!

Chor 11 - Resting and relaxing at home is the best. Nobody cares if I walk around naked or fart loudly while cooking. 

Chor 14 - Last day of CNY. Boiled soup the night before (Chor 13), and "lou tong sik farn" (rice with soup) only for dinner on Chor 14.

Soup ingredients: Pork ribs, chicken carcass, white radish, carrots, wolfberries, red dates, dried oysters and dried scallops.

Ok bye!

Testing... Thinking...

I've had enough pineapple tarts and ngaku chips. Today I want to talk about (no bake) cheesecake, and this time, I plan to use condensed milk instead of my usual whipping cream+sugar (to save cost), so I want to test it first to make sure it's good. 

So, last week, I tested by cutting a small chunk of my Philadelphia cream cheese, just enough to put into two cupcake papercups, and let it rest to room temperature. Then I put one whole Oreo (instead of crushed Marie and melted butter) as the base.

Then I mixed some condensed milk (agak-agak) with my 'test' cream cheese chunk.

I added orange juice because I don't have any lemons in the fridge.

Done. Poured into the cupcake liners. No gelatin, none in the pantry.

Topped with candies, or crushed Oreo, whatever.

Setting in the fridge.

The result? Hubby says nice, but I personally prefer the whipping cream+sugar+gelatin+lemon juice recipe. Thinking, thinking, thinking...

The Ship

While everybody blogs about Chinese New Year food, I will blog about Western food. 

I took a day off from work last Monday together with hubby so that we could go for a nice outing (without the boys *chuckle*). We went to a very nice old place, in Jalan Bukit Bintang - The Ship, yay!  

I had the seafood chowder.

Hubby had the creamy crab meat and corn soup.

I also tried their creamed spinach. Delicious!

For my main course, I ordered the seafood au-gratin. It has oysters, scallops, fish, squid and prawns inside, covered with bechamel sauce, topped with baked cheese. Ooooh la la, delicious to the max!

Hubby ordered the ribeye steak.

We had an enjoyable lunch, and I did a lot of walking and shopping too at Sg. Wang - an old place, full of memories for many I guess.

Suckling Pig Soup

I know the title sounds rude, but it IS suckling pig (abc) soup.

Hubby brought back some suckling pig heads and hands and feet from his "sau gong" dinner, and the very next day, I used them to boil my abc soup, together with some pork ribs, for taste, of course. Ooohh, and I added one piece of snail slice too.

Ingredients: Leftover suckling pig parts, snail slice(s), carrots, tomatoes and some pork ribs. Done. Just chuck everything into the pot and boil for 1.5-2 hours. Add salt. The taste? Boombasticalicious!

Saved some soup in a jar to make noodles for the boys this weekend too *wink*

Pssstt, please ignore those CNY cookies at the background. Those cookies can make you fat and gain 3 kg in a few days. Really.

Exhausted

Gonna be very straight forward, no secrets here. It's my blog, my like, my sukak anyways. I feel sleepy. I feel lazy. I feel tired. I don't feel like doing house chores. I don't feel like taking care of the kids. I sometimes hope I'm still single. And young. And surrounded by many many cute boys.

I've been feeling very tired and exhausted recently (no, not pregnant). And I'm not in the mood for blogging already. Reading blogs and commenting? Don't worry, am still reading blogs and commenting in your blogs, right? It's just that I'm not in the mood to blog, that's all.

Here's my routine. Wake up at 5.45am in the morning, feed G. Sit on the sofa, read blogs, comment (sometimes, I read and comment the night before, when I was about to sleep). Shower, wake Kz up, get him ready for school, leave the house at 6.45am, send G to the nursery, leave my condo by 7am, go to work, back by 7pm, vacuum the house, do the laundry, watch some TV, put the kids to bed by 9.30pm, and the cycle goes on. 

I just feel so tired, so exhausted, so sleepy almost everyday. I wish I could take 5 days MC (annual leaves are saved for emergencies) to just sleep and do nothing and house chores done magically on their own with just a finger snap like Mary Poppins or Nanny McPhee.

See my eye bags? Sign of ageing maybe? Or lack of sleep?