Herb garden

As part of my happiness project, (finding small ways to create more enjoyment in my life) I had decided to start a herb garden. I am starting slowly, of course, as plants don't grow all that fast. So two weeks ago, I went to ACE Hardware and bought myself some small pots, soil, and some gardening equipment, and planted seeds of Dill, Coriander and Chili. Since I have no experience with gardening whatsoever, my husband chose the type of soil, and all the gardening equipment.


Then with Salma's help, we put the soil into the little pots and put them in this sort of tray and placed them on a small garden table. I placed the table underneath one of the living room windows, a spot that gets both shade and sunlight during the day. After days and days of watering them (and not watering them when it rains), the small seedlings finally spurted!

(Left to right: Dill, Coriander, Chili)

Once they are big enough, I will have to transplant the Coriander and Chili into the ground (or Chili into a bigger pot), but for right now, I am happy that they are growing!

Orange cake or orange muffins

The org I work for gives staff fresh fruit everyday, and today's fruit is orange. And for some reason, oranges are not very popular with the people here, and not many people take it. I suppose it's the type of orange that you have to cut rather than peel, and that's why people don't take them. But I will take the orange and bring it home and make orange cake or orange muffins! I am excited about this prospect of trying out a new recipe with my oven. I think I may even add some grated orange rind into my choc chip cookie recipe and see how that turns out.  :)

I am trying to think what other recipes have orange in them, so that I can try them out. But I can only think of orange cake and orange muffins. How about orange chocolate cake? Just with a hint of orange with the chocolate? Orange-tinged brownies? Hmm…

I think tonight I will buy ingredients I need for brownies and then add in the orange rind, and then see how it turns out. Tonight itself I will bake...

Home made jam muffins

Muffins (and chocolate chip cookies) have always been my specialty (as I like to think! hehe). This morning's batch of jam muffins that I made with my new oven turned out great and were a success with Salma! She ate 2 of them straight away!

First, to get Salma to enjoy the baking process, I lined the dining table with newspaper and transferred all my baking materials to the dining table from the kitchen. Once I had mixed the batter, I let Salma stand on the chair and watch me scoop the muffin batter into the muffin tray. I forgot to buy muffin cups, so I just greased the muffin tray with margerine so the batter won't stick. I forgot, though, to take a photo of me scooping the stuff into the muffin tray.

I let Salma lick the spoon with left over batter. She didn't like it.

Next, I put the muffins in the oven. If you read my blog post the last time, you would know that my first trial at baking with my new oven failed because I didn't get the temperature right. This time, after having read a useful article online, I found out that with convection ovens you have to set the temperature 10-15 degrees centigrade lower than in the recipe and minus 5 or 10 minutes from the cooking time stated in the recipe. So that's what I did.

And 20 minutes later the muffins were ready! The toothpick test passed :)

Still, the heat was not properly distributed so some muffins rose higher than others. It seems that the heat is hottest at the back and on the right side of the oven. So maybe next time I have to turn the pan around once during the baking process. Or maybe just scoop extra batter into the cups that are in the middle of the tray. :)  But they are yummy! I just used regular Chivers strawberry jam.

Next time I will buy that jar of Carrefour blueberry jam that is on sale for $1.69 and bake with that.

I love baking stuff that my kid loves to eat. Her daddy (the more fussier eater) will only get to taste the muffins when he comes home in the evening.

10 Things I Can Do To Make Life Easier/Better

Having been inspired by Gretchen Rubin's list of "Nine Things You Can Do Everyday - Even When You Can't Do Anything Else" from her The Happiness Project blog (click on link to go there), I also created a list of 10 Things I Can Do Everyday To Make Life Easier/Better -


1. Make my bed every morning before going out.

2. Wash plates immediately after a meal, so that dishes won't pile up in the sink.

3. Prepare Salma's basket for next day's school before going to bed.

4. Take my multivitamins and evening primrose oil tablets every morning.

5. Switch off the plug or socket of all electrical appliances not being used before going to bed (especially the tv, astro, dvd player and lamp in the living room).

6. Read a book to Salma at least once any time between coming home from school and going to bed.

7. Put lotion on my face in the morning.

8. Put lotion on my face after my shower in the evening.

9. Eat a fruit or vegetable.

10. Put our shoes away on the shoe rack upon reaching home.

11. Bonus: Iron 5 day outfits and 5 night outfits of Salma's on the weekend for her school basket so that I don't have to rush to iron clothes in the morning.

Sometimes I get lazy, and put off doing the simplest things everyday, and in the end, I am rushing to complete these tasks the next day, or worse, over the weekend when I should be resting. And it is so nice to get into a clean, made-up bed every evening (like Gretchen says).

First try with my new oven

Last Saturday, I bought a 42L Faber table-top electric oven. We chose the biggest one after comparing all the electric ovens that they had in the store and figured with the SenQ Member discount, it was the best value-for-money oven that they had there (for that size) for below RM400. I knew that with a table-top oven, I'd have a harder time getting used to the heat distribution, because it's slightly different from built-in ovens. A very informative and lengthy article in the Star online also warned me about this. I'd have to practice, practice, practice before I got it right.

Usually, when I bake anything using the ovens that my parents had in the 5 houses that they've lived in in the past 10 years or so, everything comes out right. Rarely does something come out not right. I'm usually very pleased with my baking skills. And each oven was different. And I never had any problems with the heating or whatever with any of those ovens. And we baked kuih raya and chocolate cake and orange cake every year for Hari Raya using those ovens. And not to mention pizzas, lasagnes, mac & cheese, whatever. But when I brought my Faber oven home, I was a little apprehensive. Because it's not a built-in unit. I knew that these portable ovens are a little harder to discipline, they don't usually do the things you ask them to do. And then the one thing I didn't like was that the temperature dial did not display both Celsius and Fahrenheit temperatures. I liked my mother's previous oven that had showed the temperatures for both of those, because most of the recipes I want to try out are American, and our ovens in Asia are metric.

I was really excited to try out Jessica Seinfeld's recipe for banana bread with cauliflower puree. If it's baked right, your family won't even know you snuck in some vegetables in their dessert! The recipe however was in Fahrenheit, and I had to estimate the suitable equivalent baking temperature in Celsius. Nevertheless, I pre-heated my oven to the temperature I estimated. I whipped up the batter, and everything looked and felt right. I poured it into my cake tray and popped it in the oven. Usually, I just wait for how ever many minutes it says in the recipe, and everything turns out fine. After 50 minutes, I saw that the colour looked right on top, but when I stuck my fork in (I didn't have a toothpick), I found that the batter was not cooked yet! Yikes. I knew that this was temperature problem. Either it was too hot, or not hot enough. The outside cooked faster than the inside. The heat was probably not evenly distributed. I left it in for some more minutes. When I couldn't wait any longer (cos the outside was getting browner and browner) I took the tray out. When the cake had cooled a bit, I cut it up. And it was just not baked right. Part of it was cake, and part of it was still goo. Hmm… I threw it out, because it was just simply not edible, and I told my husband that it ended up looking like a huge cekodok (fried banana balls that have a very dark burnt exterior, but very soft yummy interior). Banana bread should not look like cekodok. (I realise now that I should have taken photos to show you readers, but then I was so pissed off, I just threw the thing into the trash.)

To get the baking temperature right, next I will try to bake my mac & cheese or lasagne or ziti, which is baked in a transparent dish, and that way I can see if the contents are cooking at the right speed for that temperature or not. Only then I will know if 180 degrees Celsius is really 180 degrees Celsius. But I haven't bought the ingredients yet. So save that for next weekend.

However, I did manage to use the cauliflower puree in macaroni & cheese (the type that I don't have to bake. I only bake the type that has meat in it). Salma loved it. She ate it all up. And I even managed to store some in small portions in the freezer for future meals! So I was really proud of myself for that. At least she got to eat some vegetables in the end. But I would have preferred her to have it also in the banana bread, which she can have as a snack anytime, as opposed to macaroni & cheese, which she can only have at lunch or dinner.

Next step: baking

Four posts ago, I spoke about my happiness project (borrowed from Gretchen Rubin's "The Happiness Project"). Okay sure, I haven't gone round to taking walks 3 times a week after work, but my excuse is that it's been raining heavily on most days, so save that activity for another time. The next step in my happiness project is to buy an oven. And I've done my research, and I found out that table top ovens are just as good as built-in ovens. Why? Because they are both electric, so heat is regulated evenly, and they both have fans so cooking meat and things like that can be done. I've also checked out prices of some electric ovens and I am pleasantly surprised that they are all under $500 and so to me is affordable. I think the one I want costs a little more than $400, and if it's on sale, it'll be like $380 or something like that.

I also checked out the prices of some built-in ovens, and there is one that I like that costs something like $1600, but then, I don't have a built-in kitchen cabinet unit, so it would look totally ugly. Ya, I've seen some ppl just stick their built-in oven on the kitchen counter, and it does look odd like that, so no. I'm not doing that.

I've also checked out those ones with the stove/cooker on top, but I read somewhere that if I am baking, then I can't cook on the stove at the same time because it would be too hot. So that's out of the question, because in my experience of baking, I'd be melting the butter and the chocolate on the stove while the chocolate cake is baking. Or whatever. Sauteeing vegetables while my meat is roasting. So to me, the table top electric oven is the way to go.

After purchasing this oven, I will be so excited to prepare the recipes in Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food".

I bought it ages ago... In it, she gives you interesting recipes where you use pureed vegetables and mix it in with other ingredients, and bake it, and it will not taste like vegetables at all! So kids will eat it. Salma doesn't like to eat anything that's green in color. Even green tea ice cream.

She gives recipes for snacks, main course, desserts...

And I can't wait to try them out on Salma! Cos I know she's adventurous, and loves eating!

It's like a sauna in here!

Unbelievable. I guess this is a direct result of global warming because I never remembered Malaysia to be this hot, ever! My house was like a sauna last night! And I just moved in about 2 weeks ago, so still not used to having to sleep with the aircon. And anyway, the aircon in my room is broken, it doesn't blow cold air at all! My previous house was facing the hills, and it was very cold at night without needing to have an aircon. I just had a fan. Well 2 fans, one ceiling fan and another floor standing fan. But sometimes I didn't even have to use the standing fan, because it would be so cold. And the living room was even colder, which was nice. On really hot nights, we'd all sleep on the floor in the living room, in my previous house. But in my new house, eesh! I don't know what's the deal. It is hot hot hot! After tossing and turning for god knows how long, I think I decided to shift everyone into Salma's room for the night (the aircon unit in there works fine) and we slept on the floor.

But Salma was up for the longest time. From 1 am to 2.30 am or something like that. She was so excited to be in her room at night that she started playing with her toys! And as a result of her being up, I am so tired this morning. And my body aches from having to sleep on the floor. Even though the spongy stuff was soft and we put blankets on it, it was still not that comfortable. So have to get the aircon serviced in the master bedroom. And then I wonder how much the electricity bill will be with all this aircon use?

You know it when...

You know that Salma is going to be a girly-girl when she grows up when at 18 months old, she puts on mummy's high heels and waddles around in them without falling! And you know that she's going to be a girly-girl when she tries on every single one of mummy's shoes and waddles around in them! And you know that she's going to be a girly-girl when not only does she try on every single one of mummy's shoes, but she also "asks" mummy in her very own way if she looks nice in the nicest pair of heels that mummy has! This last fact I find totally amazing because:

1.) Why did she choose my black strappy heels (the one that I like best) to show off to me?
2.) How did she know that my black strappy heels were extra special?
3.) Is my baby girl born with an intrinsic knowledge of knowing what is nice and what is not in terms of women's fashion?

The other most amazing thing about the whole thing was that she put on my black strappy heels in the living room (the shoes were near the sliding door which I use as the main door to the house) while I was cooking in the kitchen. So I did not see it happening. She waddled in them (and I can hear the clickety-clack of the heels on the marble floor) all the way from the living room to the kitchen, and stepped down from the raised floor of the living room into the kitchen (whose floor is positioned slightly lower, so there is like a step turun macam tu) without falling! While wearing my heels... I was about to tell her to "Stop!" you know, to prevent her from falling, but she just walked right in without even flinching. And then she stood by the doorway and said to me, "Mummy... shoes."

I was so amused and was not angry at all. Thank God daddy wasn't there, because my husband would not have let her walk all the way from the living room into the kitchen in mummy's heels. Because he recounted a time when he was small and he wore shoes that were too big for him and he fell and split his lip. Or something like that. Well, daddy, your little girl has more grace in her walk than that! She's quite good at it.

Then suddenly I heard from the tv outside that American Idol was starting, so I said, "Hurry, hurry, the show's starting!" And then, just like I would, she took off the heels and carried them in her hands while she ran out of the kitchen, chasing after me. So, what is the conclusion? She knows that it's not easy or good to run in your high heels, so you take them off if you have to run. Clever eh.

So you'll know when your own little girl is a girly-girl when she tries on your heels... hehe :)

Salma's new room (with photos)

We've just moved into our new house in Subang, and for the first time, Salma has her very own room! (Instead of having an unused guest room.) My husband bought a very nice shade of light, creamy green (Nippon Paint's Colour of 2009), and painted the room in just one night. And then he did some touching up the next day. I had bought some nice Korean wall stickers from a flea market, and also those foam floor coverings at Carrefour, so while she was at school, we covered the floor with the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the floor foam, and stuck the stickers on the wall. Then we unpacked her toys and moved her bed into the room. I had also bought some really big cushions for her to lie on a week before, and we brought those in, too.

Then 6pm came around, and it was time to pick her up, and we were so excited to show her the room. I told her that there was a big surprise for her, and I could tell that she understood what the word "surprise" meant, and she looked nervous, and sucked on her index finger. Then her dad did a very big thing of opening the door and surprising her and letting her into the room, and she walked in and was just amazed! There were stickers of cats on the wall, an animal that she adores but is totally afraid of, and she was acting all mengada-ngada, going up to the cat, and giving a fake scream while holding her face, and making us laugh while she was at it, but I knew by doing all that acting, she really really really liked her new room! (The pics I posted are not so good quality because it's been transferred from my husb's phone to my phone then to email)

She started playing with her toys and reading her books, all in her own space. And now I teach her to play and read only in her room. Not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in my bedroom, just in her room. So now after school, the first place she asks me to bring her to is her room. She even asks to have her snacks in her room. Which I did, but I have strict rules about washing hands before and after and cleaning up crumbs. She likes to wash hands.

Yesterday, she fell asleep after breastfeeding in her room. I think she intended to only take a quick break while playing, but she ended up falling asleep. I took the opportunity to do the laundry during that time she was napping. When she woke up, she found out she had fallen asleep in her room by herself and got quite mad at herself! She was complaining and crying in her own language, but I think she rather liked sleeping in her room. We are planning to introduce a big girl's bed, but not so soon. But when the time comes, she will have to sleep in her own bed, in her own room, and not in the master bedroom anymore. That will be a milestone!

Salma's new room

We've just moved into our new house in Subang, and for the first time, Salma has her very own room! (Instead of having an unused guest room.) My husband bought a very nice shade of light, creamy green (Nippon Paint's Colour of 2009), and painted the room in just one night. And then he did some touching up the next day. I had bought some nice Korean wall stickers from a flea market, and also those foam floor coverings at Carrefour, so while she was at school, we covered the floor with the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the floor foam, and stuck the stickers on the wall. Then we unpacked her toys and moved her bed into the room. I had also bought some really big cushions for her to lie on a week before, and we brought those in, too.

Then 6pm came around, and it was time to pick her up, and we were so excited to show her the room. I told her that there was a big surprise for her, and I could tell that she understood what the word "surprise" meant, and she looked nervous, and sucked on her index finger. Then her dad did a very big thing of opening the door and surprising her and letting her into the room, and she walked in and was just amazed! There were stickers of cats on the wall, an animal that she adores but is totally afraid of, and she was acting all mengada-ngada, going up to the cat, and giving a fake scream while holding her face, and making us laugh while she was at it, but I knew by doing all that acting, she really really really liked her new room! (I will post photos later)

She started playing with her toys and reading her books, all in her own space. And now I teach her to play and read only in her room. Not in the living room, not in the kitchen, not in my bedroom, just in her room. So now after school, the first place she asks me to bring her to is her room. She even asks to have her snacks in her room. Which I did, but I have strict rules about washing hands before and after and cleaning up crumbs. She likes to wash hands.

Yesterday, she fell asleep after breastfeeding in her room. I think she intended to only take a quick break while playing, but she ended up falling asleep. I took the opportunity to do the laundry during that time she was napping. When she woke up, she found out she had fallen asleep in her room by herself and got quite mad at herself! She was complaining and crying in her own language, but I think she rather liked sleeping in her room. We are planning to introduce a big girl's bed, but not so soon. But when the time comes, she will have to sleep in her own bed, in her own room, and not in the master bedroom anymore. That will be a milestone!