Homemade chicken essence

My little boy is considered as a picky eater. I have to squeeze my brain or sometimes I just have to use force to make him finish of his food. Else he says "I don't want already. Full already." 😂 The worst is he can sit on the high chair for 1 hour plus just to finish a small bowl of rice. I just wish he has a big appetite, a big love for food just like his big sister. Till today, he only has few favorite foods. Roti canai. Cheese. Anything with strawberry. Anything orange. Soup. Vege except potatoes. Fish. And some other unhealthy food like biscuits, chocolates. No matter how much I feed him, his weight maintained at 11+ kg @ 3yo. We're a little worried about his growth. I just hope that he can put on more weight and he has a big appetite and he loves food. 

I started to google on how to increase appetite in children. One of the ways is to exercise. And no TV while eating. Feed small portion but frequently. With one small baby in hand, I hardly have that time sit down and feed him every two hours. I just have to squeeze out that time and multi-task! 

And suddenly I remember about chicken essence. Since he dislikes chewing chicken/meat,I shall make him chicken essence once a week. Hopefully it helps with his growth and he'll grow up strong. 

 

My MIL bought for me this cookware and I'm beginning to love it. All I need is to place the smashed kampung chicken on top and the golden essence will drop bit by bit from the hole. I set the timer for 5 hours so that the chicken is double boiled as long as possible.

 

The smashed black kampung chicken. I almost vomited when I did this.. haha.

 

After 5 hours.. here's the goodness! The golden soup. A concentrated chicken soup.

I plan to do this every week and hopefully it helps him to gain weight, the much needed weight before he goes to preschool next year.

Imagine and Draw

Recently my little girl loves to imagine and expressed it by drawing on a piece of paper. She imagines this little princess with a nice flower necklace, a soft elegant makeup (just like mommy), long hair and so on.. 

The below is one of her drawings... she said this princess wears a necklace like hers. I gave her one of my old necklace which I used to wear during my college time and she loves it. Don't worry, it's safe for toddlers yeah. She wears for fun at home for few minutes. Few minutes also fun right.. kids! 

Okay peeps, this is not a scary monster with a long black hair yeah. It's a black hair princess. Check out the makeup on the eyes and the curl up eyelashes. And, BLUE lipstick! Wow.. my little girl is cool! And this princess wears a necklace just like hers... but princess has no hands. Haha.

This drawing is just so precious. Gonna keep it in a treasure box and guess when she's older, she will look back and laugh/smile.

Back to juicing with Kuvings

I love my Kuvings! Guess this is the best investment that we've made so far. Everyone in the house loves juice! I've not been juicing for a while ever since I started pregnant with no3, and after I gave birth, I hardly have time to juice. Taking care of a newborn is so tiring that I just leave my Kuvings to rot on the table top.

Baby Vi is now 4 months and slowly, I started to find some extra time that I can juice. One of the reasons to juice is to skip dinner and get rid of all the unwanted fats. Thanks to the delicious RT Pastry swiss roll that I'm hooked and putting a whole lot of weight. *cry* Secondly, to nourish my body to produce the best quality of breastmilk for my baby and the little toddler. Oh well, many said that breastfeeding can help mommy to go back in shape, yeah right, I'm still running out of shape. Blame my appetite? I eat more than I used to. And I always worry if I didn't eat much, I won't produce enough milk. It's quite true though, every time I skipped lunch/dinner I notice that I don't engorged neither do I feel full. 😂 So, I'm determined to go back to juicing!

It's not pure fruit juice, but more of vege juice. If you plan to juice, don't go for pure fruit juice. You're drinking fructose/sugar. Put more vege instead of fruits.

Juice for the day consists of:

kailan + cucumber + carrot + green apples + lemon + oranges

 

 

Our little baby... 

 

This is for the kids : orange + green apple + carrot + cucumber

Mommy and daddy's juice : kailan + cucumber + carrot + lemon + green apple + orange

Kuvings is the best! Look at the dry pulp. Fruits and veges are juiced out to the max!

And today, we're juicing lotus root. After googling the benefits of lotus root, I felt assured that this will help with the little boys' fever. He woke up from his afternoon nap and I felt his forehead was hotter than usual. Checked with the thermometer and true enough, he was down with fever. 38.2 degrees. Sigh. He just recovered from fever two weeks ago and today, he was down with fever again. So sad. Hopefully it's just another round of viral infection and nothing else. Every time when they fall sick, my mind just couldn't stay positive. Sigh. I just need to learn to let go and let God.

 

Lotus root is high in Vit C and it helps to cool down the body as well. If you're prone to nose bleed, this will help. And it does help to bring down your fever. So, I'm gonna juice this and let him drink. But make sure that you wash it properly because you do not want to juice any mud. =D 

It feels good to go back in juicing for health. Gonna grab more raw veges from the store and start to eat healthy!

Salmon Carbonara

Recently everyone in the family is addicted to western food. We are all so bored of chinese food and the hubby kick start the fire with his pork chop pasta. It tasted so good that I asked him to cook again this week.

Not enough of pork chop.. I saw the salmon lying in my freezer for 3 weeks already. 😱 And I decided to come out with my own recipe of salmon cabonara. It tasted good tho, the hubby said it was delicious. Not sure if he's trying to please me. Haha.

Here's my version of salmon cabonara, use what I have in the fridge.

Ingredients :
Salmon (marinade with some salt and coarse pepper)
Cherry tomatoes (cut into halves)
Cooking cream
Milk
Salt to taste
Butter (for healthier version use olive oil)
Onion (chopped)
Garlic (chopped)
Few tablespoons of white wine vinegar
Fettucine/macaroni/penne (you decide)
(since this is my own version of salmon cabonara, I don't have the exact measurement how much you should use and so on, I just go by feel. 😛)

Method:
1. Heat up butter in a saucepan with medium heat. Stir fry the salmon.
2. Add in onion and garlic. Stir fry until fragrant.
3. Add cherry tomatoes. Stir fry again for few minutes.
4. Add in cooking cream and some milk. I make it more watery so that it's easier for the kids to eat.
5. Add cooking vinegar and salt to taste. Set aside.
6. Boil a pot of water with some salt and olive oil. After water is boiled, add in pasta and cook until it's soft. Follow the instructions on the packaging. Drain and mix well with some butter and coarsed black pepper.
7. Serve together with the salmon cream sauce.
8. Enjoy!

Baby Vi's studio photoshoot

You know when you're not going through the process of taking care of a newborn anymore..and when you know she's the last baby you're gonna have.. All you want to do is to go all out for everything! I just want to enjoy her as much as I can before the newborn and baby phases are over. 

Initially I wanted to secure the professional photographer Papierhat that is quite famous in family photography, but they were fully booked. The next available slot is when baby Vi is 2-3 months old. My intention was to get a newborn photography done but sad to say..  I just have to DiY my own. I started Google-ing around on which angle, how to position your baby and so on.. And I came out with this.. 

This was taken at 18 days old. When I was still in confinement, I moved up and down just to get this shot done. At first my mom thought whose baby is this because it looks so professional.. And my friend asked if I did this shot myself. Lol. I can't believe this shot is up to standard. But I still feel that it wasn't the newborn photography that I expected it to be.

And I started to look in Groupon. Hopefully to find a cheaper photography rather than to secure a professional photographer that might cost above RM1k. And I found one! House of Brides and Blooms at Puchong offers two packages RM19 or RM29 photoshoot. After I did some research and reading reviews in Facebook, it seems ok. Many good reviews about them. Excitedly, we bought two RM29 coupons. Which means we will have two photoshoots done, one when she's 2mo and another one at 3mo. Most studios only offer one groupon per family per year, but there's no such rule stated in the terms and conditions, hence we happily booked two slots. Until the day we told them we have two coupons, they said sorry, only one baby per coupon. No repeat. Is either they refund the money to us or get Ash or Da to do the second photoshoot. We checked the terms and conditions again and it was not stated any such rules. The hb was not satisfied and wanted baby Vi to get the photography done because that was the reason we bought the coupon at the first place. After some discussions here and there, the manager was kind enough to honor the terms and conditions and said ok, get baby Vi done for both coupons. 

So here's baby Vi's first photoshoot at 2 months old. She was such a trooper. She didn't fuss from the start to the end..  From changing costumes, changing positions, changing poses.. A whole different kind of environment and she adapted so well. Am so proud of her! 

The two pictures below were done this afternoon at 3 months old. She behaved very well, except she reserved her smiles for mommy only. We acted silly, squeezed the plush toys to make squeak sounds, kring-krang the bell toys and yet couldn't make her smile. Aaaahhh.. Our cool baby girl. 

I just can't wait to see the end result and get the photos printed. Oh, how much I love photography. They grow up too fast and by snapping lots of photos and videos, it creates a beautiful memory down the lane. We do not have time machine to go back to their newborn-baby days, but we have photos and videos that we can always look back and smile and appreciate the "once upon a time" memories. ❤

Daniel, Mommy loves you.

While feeding him his lunch, I kissed him on his head and we started a short conversation.

Me : Daniel, Mommy loves you a lot a lot. Do you know?

Daniel : Yes, I love you too. 

Me : Why do you love me?

Daniel : Because you always give me your milk.

Me : You like mommy's milk? Is it delicious?

Daniel : Yes. So Yummy.

Aaaahhh.. All the sleepless night is paid off. Those words are so sweet to hear, sweet sweet words to my ear. It gives me a lot of strength to carry on with what I'm doing. Baby Vi sleeps long hours at night and I still have my alarm clock set every day at 3am just to express out the milk for him. Some days I might have a lot of stocks and Jie Jie gets a share as well. But she's not so keen. She said yucks. Haha. It works if I add some milo or yoghurt. 

Breastmilk is definitely very powerful. When Jie Jie was down with flu and cough for almost 2 weeks, Di Di doesn't get any symptoms. Even if he does, he recovers very quickly. So thankful for the more-than-enough supply that I get to give them the best! Jia you mommy!

My daddy, my superhero!

Indeed, it is true when the quote says it only takes a special man to be a dad. The man that I love is now a doting father to our three beautiful children. 

• He puts the family first before himself. 
• Playing time with daddy is more fun than mommy. Daddy always goes beyond... 
• When daddy hits the kitchen, he cooks up a storm. The best food on earth. So much love in that one pot meal. 
• Daddy works hard for the family, and yet he still makes time for us. 
• When daddy is away for business trip, foods are stored up in the freezer and cupboard that we can never go hungry. I even have difficulties to find a place to store them. Overflowing! 
• He always gives the best to the family, he's not a cheapskate daddy. 
• He ensures that his family always have enough. Enough in everything! 
• He does everything just to make us happy. He builds a happy family. 
• He loves mommy! He loves his children! 

And we are blessed to call him our daddy! Our hero!