Hello all!!

It’s been awhile since I blogged or anything (across all my sites)…apparently the need to sleep like a baby do not go away!!Ugh! Thanks so much for all your congratulations….I was overly optimistic when I said that the worst is behind me now. Apparently not and it sucks. Well the sickness IS actually behind me now, but I am still sleepy ALL THE TIME which is really messing with me.

Things that no one tells you about re the ‘Joys of Pregnancy’:
The Bads
You sleep, and you sleep and you sleep….and yet its never enough.
You eat, and eat and eat…..and then you feel sick from eating too much.
I can spend all day sleeping, eating, going to the toilet and then repeat. So much for weekends.
Sleep at night is interrupted about 4 times because the baby’s sat on your bladder. Ugh.
I am a walking burping and farting machine. Gross. That is if I can walk at all.
Your changing figure is all well and fine , but it’s so hard to get off the sofa or the bed!! Or even out of the car!
Your belly button shrinks. Ugh. Mine’s not popped out yet, but it’s been threatening to do so.
How can someone so small need so many things bought even before they’re born?

The Goods
The kicks. OMG the kicks. They are ever so wonderful, even if it’s a roundhouse kick to your ribs. I love it and would lay in bed for hours just prodding and feeling the baby kick against me.
The sounds. I got a doppler listening device during my first trimester, and hunting for the baby’s heartbeat and hearing it go is just amazing. We tried it once when it was having a hiccuping session….the on-time gurgling was hilarious
I like having a reason to be fat. No one can say anything about me having double portions of dessert.
Touch wood – no stretchmarks as of yet. Hopefully lathering myself up twice a day since month 2 is going to help.
Cleaning. I have always been a slacker with cleaning the house and it’s usually left in a state of messiness. I am now thoroughly OBSESSED with getting it tidied up and cleaned in preparation for the baby. Poor bacon – as I can’t really move much at the moment, he’s the slave whilst I’m the slave-driver.

I’m well into my 3rd trimester now…and getting fatter by the day if it’s possible. Baby’s due on 9th Jan…which means I’ve got around 8 weeks. GULP. 8 WEEKS. I am terrified. Okay, so this was planned for (not an accident!), but still I can never imagine myself being responsible for someone else….let alone carrying it for 9 months. I’m just trying to enjoy it one day at a time at the moment as we honestly don’t know if there is going to be a no.2….just in case we don’t, then I want to remember this time of my life as I sit back and create a human being.

And also for you that don’t know – we’re having a boy .

PS: Do you like my photo? Heh….self-snapped!

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Hello!

This was the reason why I have been unable to cook for the past three months (can’t stand the smell of raw meat), feel so sick at night (morning sickness my behind) and just sleep and eat whenever I get the chance. In fact, I still do that…seems to need loads and loads of rest. No bentos for me either, I could barely cook dinner let alone lunch….so poor bacon have been doing all the cooking and cleaning and letting me nap. When I go out, all I want to do is come home and crash in bed…..extreme tiredness is one of my symptoms. It’s been quite unpleasant, but it was mostly due to my incessant worry that something might be wrong. Apparently the worst is behind me now…so I’m looking forward to some months of somewhat feeling more myself than I have done in the past few months.

Probably being off the caffeine is not helping with my tiredness…there is just so much that you’re supposed to limit your intake of or just cut straight out of your diet. I don’t really mind things like liver and certain fishes, but caffeine limitation is not one of my favourite. You’d think that after avoiding it for two months (had no idea during month 1) that I’ll be completely off it…but no. I’m still sleepy, and crave for coffees, teas and chocolate. Yeah you didn’t know chocolate contain caffeine huh? So does soft drinks. I have been going de-caf but even that contains some caffeine. Sucks. I can replicate the taste but not the effect!

Other than the random bits of being uncomfortable, me & bacon are looking forward to welcoming our new addition in January. We’ll hopefully be finding out the gender in the next 6 weeks or so – buying items for team yellow is just too hard! We both have an inkling that it’s going to be a boy. Nothing scientific, just a feeling….but we’ll find out in about 6 weeks!!

PS: Yes I still have loaddds of pictures of China. And no, this was not made in china

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My bags are packed and I’m ready to go. I am heading off to China; with about 30ish members of my extended family meeting us there. We are only heading there for a week, not much – for a long-planned family visit. We don’t actually have any close relative members living there any longer (my great grandparents migrated to Penang a long long time ago)…and none of us had ever been back, including my grandparents and their siblings. However, as it is pretty much a clan in Malaysia and in China, relations have been maintained throughout the years, with the people from China visiting Malaysia every so often. Some of our second cousins (it is after all, a clan) visits regularly, spending time at the village on business and pleasure.

I really have no idea why it took us this long; China really isn’t all that far from Malaysia. Why did it take over a century before anyone in the family (second and third cousins ignored) headed back to the land of our forefathers? Most of us have been to China, hitting major cities and attractions over the years. I for one had not seen much of China at all, and this will be the first time that I am in China for a whole week. It is only going to be one area, I won’t be heading to the major sites like Shanghai and Beijing and will see nothing of the Great Wall – but I am heading home.

It took the clan (it’s too big to be simply a family) a decade or two to plan this epic trip. In the meantime we have travelled far and wide; and I have been fortunate to discover countries and cultures across continents and the opportunity to live in a few. But in a way I am very glad that it took them so long to plan the trip – and on perfect timing as well. My parents did not actually think I would even consider on going; they were just letting me know that they are going. I insisted on going, because this is most definately a once in a lifetime trip. It took them decades to plan this trip and there will not be another.

Being a lover of history and stories, I for one am extremely excited in visiting the land of my forefathers. Even with the impending dread of spending five full days with a bus-load of relatives, I am excited. I want to see how they live, what they ate, how their lives were.

To add on to my impending doom, the clan have been invited to lunch by the Chinese Government. Uh. Yeah. **gulp** I could really do without that as I am not a big fan for etiquette, pomp and splendour. But I don’t quite know how do you actually say no to the Chinese government. I would much rather spend time exploring and reflecting, but oh well.

We will be spending a few days with the clan sightseeing and visiting attractions around the city. We are only spending a day in the village, with the clan leaving the next day back for Malaysia whilst me and bacon stay for a couple more days. To be honest, we are in desperate need of some relaxing time, so in the last few days we might just be chilling out by the pool and recharge after the massive stress (of my part) in dealing with family members that I have not seen in years (for a good reason mostly). It’ll be exciting for bacon (heh) I’m sure in being surrounded by cackling, loud people chattering in a foreign language. He’s clinging on to the fact that there is a KFC next to our hotel

Wish me luck – and have a great Easter wherever you are in the world my dear faithful readers. And this time, I will be blogging about my adventure to China here – you can bet on it. This is one trip that I want/need to document for posterity . I’ll get bacon to do a blog post review as well on beers and other strange alcoholic beverage consumed for those of you interested

PS: All cooking posts have been moved to eatwithsticks – I am currently running a GIVEAWAY if you can spare 3 minutes to join in the fun!

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I seemed to have mitosis-ed on myself – you can now find me at eatwithsticks for my cooking/recipe related stuff and notabrownbag for all my bento-related stuff. These links are linked to each other, but not linked here. Pretty special huh .

So yes, if you follow me for food-related tweets and happenings, please re-point to either one of the sites above .

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For whatever that remained of my usual readers, you would be no doubt be sick of me sticking recipes and food-related items up here. Well, so am I. This had always meant to be a personal blog, and as my intrests grew out of control (do you remember that spate with jewelry, and then soap?) this tiny space had struggled to cope with the alarming variety of posts on various topics. So has my brain, confusing itself between the totally irrelevant segmentations of my life. Well, that will be ending as of today.

I am moving all my food-related postings in the future to a separate space. At the moment this is under construction, but it should be up soon-ish. As for my bento-related craze; it’s still going on after all this time; and you can visit it here. I have restrained from too many cross-postings between my personal blog and that, only on important issues like my bento4Japan cause – which I hope you will consider donating to.

In the past few years I have minimized posts of the personal nature. This is probably due to my increasing posts on my other interests and also some local-interest postings. I no longer felt comfortable blogging about personal rants/issues/whatevers in this space that I had publicised as a hold for recipes and my other mad-cap ideas. In time I hope to be in that space again – and it is with hope that moving a big chunk of my ‘cooking’ off this blog will help. I will still post my travel blogs here, it is after all me on holiday – but other than that I hope for this space to start becoming my own personal punching bag again. With time I will learn to divide my time between the various segments of my life – and in the meantime I hope you bear with me.

***omg it all sounds so dire doesn’t it?***

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I love soba – especially in a salad form. I still haven’t quite got used to the hot soupy form of soba yet; preferring udon if it was going to be served hot in a soup. I remember the first time I purchased soba – thinking that it was udon. Uh. Yeah. In my defense, I was 18 and had no idea what was what. Thank god I had a Japanese roomate and she schooled me in the difference and how soba was really only popular in the summer (not too sure how true is this?).

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My go-to soba dish is probably not authentic but it is pretty darn tasty and dare I say a great use of soba. It is also a clever way of using up leftover roast beef – I concotted this dish as a starter once when bacon’s parents dropped by without notice for lunch and I wanted to serve a starter with our mains. They appreciated the cold roast beef more than the noodles; but I fell in love with this tangy, salty and sweet dish. Wonderful in summers; or when you just need a quick meal that just so happens to be bento friendly as well.

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Soba salad with edamame & roast beef strips

Cooked soba noodles, thoroughly rinsed in cold water to get rid of the starchy residue
thinly sliced leftover roast beef slices (or chicken)
cooked edamame (I chuck mine in towards the end of the soba cooking time)

dressing
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vineger
1 tbs mirin
1 tsp sugar

garnish
toasted sesame seeds
nanami togarashi (japanese mixed pepper powder)

Instructions? Mix it all up!! Yes, it really is that easy. Not only is it simple, it keeps well cold and room temperature too, making this a perfect SPEEDY bento dish. I take mine out of the fridge in the morning before I leave for work and then just leave it on my desk until lunchtime. I hate it straight-from-the-fridge cold, so this is perfect for me.

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In my bento I included some pickles as well to eat with my noodles – the pickles enhances the flavours of the noodles. Two carrot flower sticks, a brocolli and some oranges completes the bento. I love the colours in this one; purple, yellow, orange – and most importantly, all the colorful flavours blends well with each other. I did not realize how fragant this is as well – people could smell the wonderful intermingling of rice vineger and soy sauce with mirin when I opened it up during lunch time. In a good way of course – not like when I decided to bring kimchi jjigae for lunch. heh.

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As part of our ongoing efforts for bento4Japan (please read my post on why am I doing this) ,there is also a fundraising page on JustGiving to raise money for the disaster relief efforts. Our nominated charity is the British Red Cross, which is rallying resources to help the people in Japan.

If you are a UK taxpayer,JustGiving will reclaim 28% of your total donation and the Red Cross will end up with 123% of what you donated. JustGiving & FirstGiving takes 5% off all donations to help pay for continuous innovation in online fundraising to help more charities raise funds online. This is the most effective way of donating as the charities gets 23% more than what you donate!

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To try and boost our JustGiving collections slightly and make it easy for people in the UK and the rest of EU who want to participate; me and my friend karaimame have joined forces to set up a teeny raffle! We have four items up for grabs for anyone who donates, no matter how small. The raffle prizes are….drumroll please….

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Set 1

> – 1 onigiri mold, Pikachu shape
> – onigiri mold set : faces ( bear, girl and boy)
> – oshibori and case (little towel with a case)
> – small forks
> – small spoons
> – Chinese Zodiac animals picks
> – Animal themed baran
> – 2 sauce containers, pig shaped

(all of the above are NEW and have been sent directly from Japan)

and

> – a Thermal bento set! It consists of two inner containers, the bigger holds 300ml and the other 220ml. The smaller one has a permanent compartment division. This is a very popular option for those who prefers a hot lunch.

(the box was opened for photo purposes. It is new and unused.

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Set 2

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> – 1 double-layer bento box (cars design)
> – 1 pack of oversized picks
> – 3 nori punches – bunny, car & bear shape
> – 3 sauce containers – pig-shape,bottle-shape & tomato cover
> – 1 mini-cutter – butterfly
> – 2 blue silicon food cups – heart and star

(all of the above are NEW and have been sourced by me on a variety of bentogear shopping trips)

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Bonus prize (x2)

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Oversized food picks

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Anyone can donate, you only need a debit or credit card to do so – or paypal account. We will randomly select the recipient (using http://www.random.org/) from the list of people who donate on bento4Japan‘s Justgiving site before 3 April 2011 (2359h GMT). We will select four people, the first person can choose between my set or karaimame’s; the second will get the other set and the third and fourth person will receive a packet of picks each.

I hope that this will boost numbers a little and make the event worthwhile. We will announce the winners here and also on bento4Japan HQ – and obviously email the winners as well.

Please note that whilst I am not allowed to publicise this raffle on my JustGiving page (as I am bound by terms and conditions), anyone who donates on bento4Japan’s JustGiving page, with a valid email address, will be eligible for this raffle. In order for us to contact you, please make sure you make your email address available to us on the JustGiving fundraising page.

Thank you for your help and please dig deep and give as much as you can. Please also spread the word around, the success of this fundraising event relies on our collective effort.

P/S: The fundraising page will be active till 2016, but only donors who contributed to this page before 3rd April 2011 (2359h GMT) will be considered for the raffle. I am doing this because I am trying to encourage as many people to donate soon as the relief efforts are ongoing and urgently needed. Please donate here! If you want to find out more about why are we doing this or if you want to help, please visit our bento4Japan HQ.

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Okay, have I got the most AMAZING banana-bread recipe for you or what? I am a big fan of banana bread, and had spent ages seeking for the best banana bread recipe ever. Following normal recipes and tweaking a variety of recipes did not seem to work, but this recipe not only works, is is the perfect level of sweetness, super duper moist (sticky, even) and as light as marshmallow. I have been baking quite alot recently, but not many of my tweaked and adapted recipes turn out well…..regularly stuck with two giant loaves of hardened flour. After weeks and months of frustration, I am so stoked to be sharing a recipe here at long last – at last, no more baking #fail!

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Super-moist Banana Bread
adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Book

to cream
250g brown sugar
2 eggs

to sieve
1 tsp baking powder + 1 tsp bicarb soda
1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
1.5 tsp ground ginger

to add
1.5 tsp essence of madagascan vanilla/scraping of 1 vanilla pod
300g mashed bananas
120g unsalted butter, melted

(this makes two 1lb loaves)

Preheat oven at 180C / 340F
Cream eggs and sugar until light and fluffy using an electric mixer.
Fold in mashed banana, you can whip this with the electric mixer.
Sieve in powdered ingredients in three batches, ensuring that it is all properly mixed in.
Add in melted butter and vanilla, and mix well.
Pour in lightly oiled loaf pans
Bake for 50 minutes – 1 hour or until the cake bounces back when depressed.
Leave cake to cool in tin for that crusty texture.
Slice, and serve with a good cuppa tea

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I have never been a massive fan of pickles, but bacon adores pickles. Pickles with cheese on crackers or sandwich, or with pork pies – anything really. The problem that I have with commercial pickles are that they are less of a pickle and more of a sauce. A commercial jar usually contains a small handful of fruits/vegs and more of the ‘sauce’. Maybe it’s part of the traditional culinary make-up of the country, but a watery pickle and cheddar cheese sandwich is an extremely popular choice for lunch.

Even thought I am not a fan of pickles, I think that pickles should really be more chunky rather than watery. It’s not ketchup, it’s a PICKLE. You would think that there needs to be more of the pickled medium rather than the pickling medium. So I have been doing some pickling for bacon, and this weekend was the turn of the farmhouse pickle. This is the pickle that is served with the ubiquitous British ploughman’s lunch – cheese, bread and pickles. It is sweet, savory and tart at the same time. The magic is in ensuring that the balance in taste and flavours are correct. And then the agonizing wait. As nice as the pickles is fresh from cooking, it is important to leave it for a month to develop and mature. The tartness stands out if eaten fresh from the pan, but if given time to develop and mature, it takes on a vastly different character of itself, almost developing an umami-like character.

Farmhouse Pickle (commercially sold as Branston’s Pickle)

to dice:
300g carrots
100g sweet gherkins
130g dried dates
300g courgettes/zuchinni (about 2 med. sized)
300g cauliflower (1/2 a medium head)
300g rutabaga/swede
150g cooking apples (1 large granny smith)
150g red onions (about 2 med. sized)

- 150g palm sugar (you can try muscavodo or other dark brown sugar)
- 300ml cider vineger
- 1-2 tsp liquid pectin
- 1.5 tsp allspice
- 0.5 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp powdered garlic
- pinch of salt

Start by sauteeing the onions, swede and carrot. Once soften, tip everything else in.

Bring this mixture to a rapid boil for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Leave to simmer for 1 hour…occasionally stirring and mixing pickles in the pot.

Wash and steralize new or used jars by washing in warm water. Place in a pan and leave in the oven at 120C for 15 minutes. I usually recycle used jam jars or get some pretty kliners/mason jars if they are for gifts. If you are using Kliners (or Ball Jars) please ensure that you do NOT steralize the rubber stopper in the oven. This WILL MELT.

Once the pickled mixture has softened, taste to check the level of saltiness and sweetness. Ignore the tartness, the vineger will mature with the pickle in a few weeks. Add more sugar/salt as needed.

To seal the recycled jars (hack-style), tighten the covers on the jars immediately. Place this in the oven on a baking tray, with hot water up to 1/2 the height of the jars. Turn the oven on at 150 for 20 minutes. This will suck out air from inside the jar, effectively sucking in the pop-up indicator on the jar.

Wait for a few weeks

Enjoy with cheese, crackers, sandwich…ect!!!

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This batch will be going out to bacon’s ‘two’ moms for Mother’s Day, plus a jar of my delish Caramelized Red Onion Chutney!

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When I was in high school, lunchtime would be only me and my mom as I finished school at 1.30pm. We mostly have leftovers from the night before, but very often she would send me to the local hawker stores (street food) to take away some chicken rice. As she did not speak cantonese, I was sent in to place the order. There are usually a variety of meats available , from the traditional ‘white’ chicken to char xiu and roasted duck. I only ever go for one. Without a doubt, I would always order the roasted chicken breast with extra chilli dipping sauce. Every single time. Even now. I drench my roast chicken breast with the sweet, tangy and spicy light chili sauce, which pairs up wonderfully with the rice cooked in chicken stock and lightly uplifted by a drizzle of soya sauce.

Living in the UK, Hainanese Chicken rice was one of the first item that was added to my repertoire. I have ordered it from a takeaway here before, but it does not even come anywhere near. And now that I’ve got the hang of it, I can make this from scratch under an hour, making it an easy enough weekday dinner when I feel a pang of homesickness, or just need to turn a whole chicken into something wonderful.

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Roasted Hainanese Chicken Rice
serves 4

1 whole chicken
4 inch ginger
1.5 tbs 5-spice powder
flaked sea salt
1 stalk spring onion
1 cucumber
soya sauce

Rice
3.5 cup jasmine rice
4 cup stock
1 inch ginger
2 pandanus leaves, tied in a knot
1 tbs butter

Soup
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
2 cabbage leaves
cracked white pepper

Chili sauce
2 inch ginger
1 clove garlic
2 chilli
splash of rice vineger
1/3 cup water
2 tbs sugar

1) Get prepared. Turn the kettle on (around 1.5l water); place the chicken and ginger in the pot. Chop up the veggies, put them in the pot with the chicken and pour the boiling water in until it just covers the chicken. Let it boil rapidly for 10 minutes, skimming surface scum. You want a light stock, but the veggies can continue to simmer after you’ve removed the chicken.

2) Meanwhile, place all the ingredients for the chilli sauce in a food processor, and whiz away. Bear in mind that chillies vary in amount of heat, so please ensure you keep tasting it to ensure that it is to your taste. If it is too spicy, add sugar/water. Preheat the oven to 220 C.

3) Wash the rice, place the pandanus leaves and ginger. Slice some spring onions and cucumber

4) Take out the chicken, and plunge in ice cold water to stop cooking. Pat dry. Rub ginger slices on the skin, tucking in pieces between the chicken drumsticks, wings ect. Gently rub the 5-spice powder on the skin of the chicken, and sprinkle flaked sea salt all over the skin. This will crisp up the chicken. Pop in oven.

5) Scoop in 4 cups of the chicken soup in the rice cooker (or pot) to cook the rice in. Turn it on to cook. When rice is cooked (roughly 20 mins) , rest covered for 5 minutes, and then stir in the butter. Replace cover.

6) Test the chicken for cook-ness after 40 minutes. Leave to sit for 5 minutes, before slicing it up.

7) Serve it up with rice topped with soya sauce and spring onion, cucumber on the side. Chilli sauce and the sliced chicken can be served family-styled or individually. Serve up the remaining chicken soup in individual bowls

Enjoy!!!

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PS: Traditionally, Hainanese Chicken Rice is just white chicken. You can do this by skipping the roasting part. Boil the chicken in the soup for 30 minutes, and plunge into ice cold water to tighten the skin up. Leave to rest, keeping warm before serving.

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