Easy Risotto

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup rice washed and drained
• a knob of butter
• 1 clove garlic, sliced thin
• 1 small onion or shallot, sliced thin
• chicken stock or soup (that was made for babies with no salt whatsoever)
• vegetable of any kind - carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, white radish, peas, broccoli, cauliflower etc.

Method:

Combine all the ingredients in a pan, cook on low heat till rice is cooked through (according to your baby's liking - for younger baby you can cook it longer). If the liquid dry out before rice is cooked, add more soup/ stock or just plain boiled water. Serve warm.

To make cheese risotto, skip the chicken stock or soup, just use plain boiled water. You can even opt to not add the vege (but I think veges should be fed to babies at every meal) and instead add 2 tbsp of mild shredded cheese before the rice is done and stir to combine. No picture for now, but I will take one the next time I make this.

Hazelnut Toffee Pudding

Food for hubz soul ;o))

I know, I don't think this picture does any justice to the delectable sticky sweetness of this pudding - AND- I should've used a plain plate coz that blue flower is distracting! I made it just according to the recipe without cutting out sugar like I usually would, knowing very well that I wouldn't even want to taste this, so for once, I did not hear hubz complaining :oPP Oh, but the smell of it was just delightful, although the wait was quite painful! It took 1 1/2 hrs to steam!

Hmmmm... Anyways, here's the recipe that has been cut into half so that I got only a small pudding, about 5" in diameter on top and around 7" at the base. For full recipe, just double it. If you are toffee lover like my hubz, double or triple the toffee recipe - the stickier the better ... ermmm... at your own risk however

Ingredients for toffee:

• 1/4 block of butter
• 2 tbsp lemon juice (if you do not have lemon, lime (limau nipis) works fine too!)
• 4 tbsp full fat milk

Ingredients for Pudding:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/8 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup soft brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 90g of butter (slightly more than 1/3rd of a block)
• 1/2 cup roasted & chopped hazelnuts

Method:

Prepare toffee by combining all the ingredients in a small pan on low heat and stir until smooth, set aside.

Prepare a heat proof dish for steaming the pudding by greasing it all over, then pour half of the hazelnuts in. Pour half of the prepared toffee over the nuts and swirl it to coat the dish as much as possible. In a mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar till light & fluffy then add egg and beat to combine. Sift flour, baking soda, powder & salt and fold them into the egg mixture, add the lemon juice and mix in the remaining nuts. Spoon the mixture into the prepared dish. Cover with baking paper with a pleat in the middle, tie with a kitchen string. Steam for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours till pudding is set.

When the pudding dish is cool enough to handle (erm I didn't wait for it to cool coz hubz was starving!) invert onto a plate and pour the remaining toffee on top and dig in!

Throat Infection

Nia just recovered from a bout of throat infection. She has been refusing to eat since last Wednesday, my aunt took her temperature a couple of times and it seemed normal. When I go home she gets attached to me like a leech and refused to go to anyone else, not even her Daddy. According to my aunt she gulped down a bowl of soup Thursday morning but after that refused to eat anything else. We were all just wondering what was wrong because other than these couple of things, she was her usual self, singing & dancing and running around like she always do. Thursday night however, I was cradling her when I felt her body was warmer than usual, so I took her temperature and it was 38.8°, I was shocked and took it a couple more times and they still read 38.7° then 38. 8°, we hauled her up and took her to the nearest open clinic and begged the girl at the counter to let us see the doctor first as we were so worried that, God forbid, she might get another bout of fits.

Thank God there was none of that this time. Doctor diagnosed her with throat infection which explains why she has been refusing food, it wasn't that she didn't want any, she just had difficulty swallowing them, my poor baby. The doctor prescribed some antibiotics for her throat and suppository for her fever, it was a stronger dosage one called Voltrane (if I'm not mistaken), she inserted the first dosage of Voltrane in the clinic, but after that we only gave Nia PCM (Paracetamol) which is less strong and kept giving her this everytime her temperature rises. We started tepid sponging her till she fell asleep on Thursday night and hubz continued that on Friday while I was at work, as he took the day off because I couldn't. She woke up restless a couple of times at night wanting feed. Last we gave her PCM was Saturday morning about 2.30am.

That Saturday morning was a busy day for us as we had breakfast date with my gf Shaz, near our place at 8ish and we had to pick up hubz grandmother from the train station about 9.30am. Before we left we checked her temperature she seemed to be OK at 37.4° so decided not to give her anymore of the PCM as I wanted to see if her fever will return without continuous meds. As precaution, on the way to the TTDI market, we called up her Paed in D'sara Specialist only to find out that they were closed on that day! Thankfully, though, by evening she seemed to have recovered fully with temperature returning to normal (below 37°) but still has been refusing to eat properly so both hubz and I tried to make her different things on Saturday and Sunday to encourage her to eat.

The whole of yesterday I was scrutinising my poor baby for any signs of rashes or anything unusual as aparently most sicknesses in young children start from simple cold, flu and fever. Her Paed mentioned Roseola Infantum (also known as fake measles) to us before, which usually starts with high fever and on the 3rd day when the fever breaks the child will have rashes breakout on the trunk and head. This can happen to babies between 6 and 24 months old, but most children will get this at an earlier age. Although the rash itself are supposedly harmless and last for only 12 -14 hours, the thought of it makes my heart palpitate! And we're only talking about Roseola, I can not imagine what I'll do when I have to deal with chicken pox etcetera! *Sigh*

Anyways, all's well now, just that my aunt still complains that Nia is refusing to eat anything, if this continues I probably would just take her to see a Paed, regardless and see what the pro has to say.

My Boo

my sleepy "Boo"

the original Boo from Monsters Inc.

This is an unfinished version, i'm still editing the video to take out all the unnecessary background noises and am including a new front view video of her shaking her thang, if you notice all these are from behind, so you can't really see her facial expression. Will put in on here once its done.

OMG, my baby's so talented, where do you think she got it from? Her mama, of course ;oPPPP

Mini Meatball Pasta

Mini Meatballs with Tagliatelle

On Saturday Nia had meatballs for the first time, although I have made beef kebabs for her before and fed her pasta on many occassions, I never really got around to do the balls & pasta thing for her, so here you go:

Ingredients:

• 200gm lean steak minced ( I TRY not to use the minced meat as they may not be all meat, you know what I mean?)
• some herbs & spices (I used oregano, thyme, ginger powder, garlic powder, cinnamon powder and bit of paprika for the colour!)
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 2-3 ripe tomatoes
• 1 small carrot cut into thin strips
• 1 clove garlic, chopped fine
• 1 small onion/shallot chopped fine
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter

Method:

In a bowl, mix the mince with the herbs and cornstarch, shape into little balls and set aside. Heat half of the butter in a pan, put the mini balls in and cook them through, You may want to roll them at intervals so that they will be browned evenly on all sides.

Skin the tomatoes by first cutting a small "X" at the bottom of the tomatoes, dip them into boiling water for about 30 seconds, run them under cold water and you can see where the "X" is the skin will be peeling off. Chop the peeled ones coarsely, set aside. Easiest way to cut carrot into thin strips is to use a vegetable peeler then chop them into smaller pieces.

Heat butter in pan, add garlic & onions, saute for a minute, add in the carrots & chopped tomatoes and cover. Reduce heat and let it simmer to a sauce consistency, add in the mini balls let simmer for a couple of minutes more.

Serve this with any type of pasta that is slightly overcooked so that your baby can actually "chew" them. I used Tagliatelle which cooks in 7 minutes and is soft enough for babies.

*Notice the sauce is orangy in colour, if you want it red, add 1 tsp of tomato puree.

Yummy Baby's Frittata

Ingredients

• 2 eggs (if u have kampung eggs, use 3-4 as they are usually much smaller)
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 large ripe tomato, chopped
• 1 medium potato, chopped into thin bits
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter

Method:
Heat butter in a pan, add potato bits, cook through (this may take several minutes). Push them to side of the pan, add chopped onion, saute then add tomato. Mix in the potato, spread them pan-wide. (If your pan is too large, you can do this in a wok)

Break the eggs in a little bowl, beat slightly to mix the yolk & white part of the eggs and pour onto the cooked vege mix in the pan. Reduce heat and cover the pan to allow the eggs to cook through, you may turn the omellette over to cook the other side as well, if you prefer not to wait too long. Cut into wedges and serve. (You can serve the leftovers to the hubz or eat it yourself, but be forewarned, there ain't any salt in the recipe, so do sprinkle some if you want to have it for yourself)

I fed this to Nia for lunch, she devoured one wedgie and came back for more!

* I do not add any salt or sugar in anything I make for Nia at home. According to childcare professionals children below the age of 12 months should not be fed any salt at all as their kidneys aren't able to process execessive salt unlike adults'.

What do kidneys do?"After your body has taken what it needs from the food, waste is sent to the blood. If your kidneys did not remove these wastes, the wastes would build up in the blood and damage your body. Your kidneys measure out chemicals like sodium, phosphorus, and potassium and release them back to the blood to return to the body. In this way, your kidneys regulate the body’s level of these substances. The right balance is necessary for life, but excess levels can be harmful." National Kidney & Urologic Disease Information Clearing House

The daily recommended maximum for children depends on their age:

• 0-12 months - 1g salt a day (0.4g sodium)
• 1 to 3 years - 2 g salt a day (0.8g sodium)
• 4 to 6 years - 3g salt a day (1.2g sodium)
• 7 to 10 years - 5g salt a day (2g sodium)
• 11 and over - 6g salt a day (2.4g sodium)

Most pre-packaged baby food including baby formula as well as breast milk already contain some amount of sodium, so it really is not necessary to add anymore salt into their food. Besides, if your baby is already trained not eating salt, they will not miss it, which is a good thing, no?

Bukit Tinggi Rabbit Park

Ordinarily, Rabbit Park is not somewhere I would take the trouble to go to as I always had this impression that rabbits are smelly creatures. But being a mummy makes you do unusual things and fortunately though, our trip to the Rabbit Park in Bukit Tinggi did not turn out to be a smelly affair, to our(my sister and I) pleasant surprise, those little fury creatures did not smell bad AT ALL. Wow! Anyways, let me start step by step, i.e. how to get there:

From TTDI we drove into LDP heading towards Sg Buloh, kept right after the Penchala tollgate (heading toward Kepong) and just went on & on straight into Karak highway, there will be 1 more tollgate at Karak where you need to pay RM5 (well, i remember it used to be RM2! bloody hell!) and kept going pass the Genting Sempah stop on our right and also the old exit to Genting. After this point the view was magnificient, there were hills after rolling hills of vegetable farms, neatly laid out from the top of the hill right to the bottom (wish I had pictures of this!). Pass Janda Baik and Kampung Bukit Tinggi exit (Kampung Bukit Tinggi is on the left and Janda Baik is on the right side of the highway) and the next exit is Berjaya's Bukit Tinggi resort.

Our first stop was Rabbit Park, obviously. We paid RM3 per adult x 3 of us and since Nia is barely 11 mths, it was free for her. We were greeted by these the moment we set foot into the "paid" compound.

Hubz and Nia were enjoying themselves looking at the baby rabbits from newborn to 4 mths olds

Look at her getting giddy with delight looking at all the little fury creatures ...

Oh, a friend! Hello pretty in pink, how do you do?

Let me go daddy, I wanna follow the bunnies, she seem to be saying..
We thought this panda-eyed bunny was too pretty to miss:

Can we please take this one home, daddy? The other animals at the Rabbit Park.. Spotted deers and donkeys, they even have donkey rides for children, I'm not sure if you'd need to pay extra for it, I know they have it coz I saw a boy riding this white donkey in the picture

Moving on to the rest of Bukit Tinggi - this is at Colmar Tropicale, I spy with my little eye something with a long black neck..
Yes, what do you know? It's a black swan.. ain't it beautiful?
Up, close & personal with the black beauty
And of course, the white one.. it was such a breathtaking sight to behold abeit the small pool area for the 3 swans to share

I remember going up to Bukit Tinggi long time ago when they were just opened, I think the ticket to go up was more expensive then, now it's only RM10 per adult which is a little too much considering there's not much to do up there plus the prices of food are exorbitant. Hubz & my sister have never been up here so I thought although somewhat tacky, the whole French Village thing will be an experience for them. Originally we thought of doing the Japanese garden & tea house thing and grab a bite at the Japanese restaurant but we made the mistake of driving there straight which means, you got to park at the foot of the hill, climb an almost 45° steep hill for 300m (or so the sign says, but who knows if it's really 300m!) to get there. At first we thought what the hell, let's just do this, so we walked up half way of the visible part of the ascending path, then we noticed how dark the sky was and decided to not take the risk and turned back towards the car and drove over to Colmar Tropicale instead! Apparently the better way of getting up there is to get the shuttle service from the hotel at Colmar, well, I didn't know that, so maybe next time.

Finally, a recipe!

We enjoyed this past weekend so much and managed to get quite a lot of things done that we've only been talking about for a few weeks now. We managed to go up to Bukit Tinggi to the Rabbit Park and took loads of pictures, (pictoblog will be duly updated) we ordered Nia's Pocoyo birthday cake, sadly though, our cake lady can't make 3D pocoyo & friends, so we settled for drawings instead :o( *sigh*; we checked out the birthday venue and surprisingly it was quite impressive; and we've ordered the food for the party except few more "loose items" from different suppliers!

Hubz made fantastic chicken rice yesterday, I call it Chicken Rice with a Twist! As instead of having the usual roasted chicken, he decided to make Beggar's Chicken, and OMG did it take ages?! But the outcome? Succulent, juicy chicken that just melts in your mouth! Unfortunately, by the time the chicken was ready all of us were starving like hell that I forgot to take the pictures! hahahaha You wouldn't want to see the picture of chicken carcass now, would you? I thought not :oPP

Baby Food Recipe
I also made different stuff for Nia throughout the weekend as her nanny was compalining that she doesn't want to eat her rice porridge any more, she wants what the adults are having, so I on Saturday I made Leek and Cod in milk. It goes very well with either soft white rice, toasts, plain bread or just on it's own. For dinner I mashed up the fish mixture and shaped into patties, dipped them in egg and rolled them in babies' oats and pan fried them. So that Nia didn't think she was eating the same stuff that was fed to her at lunch! :oP Yesterday I made her Chicken Brocolli dumplings, which was modified from the Steamed Chicken & Brocolli I made for her Sunday dinner - recipe at the bottom. Unfortunately I have no pictures of these! Will remember to take some the next time I make them.

Leek and Cod in Milk
Ingredients:

• 1 leek
• 1/2 of a large slice of cod fish
• 2 oz - 3 oz baby's formula
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Prepare leek by washing and slicing it up, put aside.
2. Wash and cut up the cod into small bite sieze pieces, put aside.
3. Heat butter in a pan, throw in chopped garlic, saute for a minute then add leek, saute again for another 2- 3 minutes (or longer if your baby prefers softer vege).
4. Add the fish followed by the formula, (add more formula if you want it soupy) and cook till fish is done which would only take 2 -3 minutes. If you are using a shallow pan the liquid may dry up faster so have some warm water handy.
5. Scoop em up and feast!

Steamed Chicken and Brocolli

Ingredients:

• Half a chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 small brocolli florette, cut into bite size pieces
• 1 small potato, sliced into small pieces
• 1 small sweet apple chopped up
• 1 tbsp unsalted butter
• a drizzle of sesame oil (for dumpling)

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a steaming dish, steam for about 1/2 an hour until the apples are mushy and chicken pieces are cooked well and serve.
2. To make dumplings, add sesame oil to the mix, put a heaped teaspoon into the dumpling skin, pinch and seal. You can either steam them or pan fry in very little oil , they taste just as good.

Oh I've been LAAZYYY

To update here that is. I wanted to post some recipes up in 'ere, but never managed to find the time to do that! I made beef kebab last week and even took a photo of it to put up and then something got into me and made me delete the photo! :oP Not that the kebab was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or anything. Just that I was so darn proud of myself for making it from scrath. Yea, s-c-r-a-t-c-h. I marinated the beef and left it in the fridge for a couple of days, then I baked it, then choped it up into tiny bits, then I cooked teh onion and tomatoes and put the beef in with tomato ketchup and a bit of chili sauce. It turned out amazing! Weird, but so yummy! Hmmm. I also made chocolate chips cookie dough brownie that everyone loved, that recipe was from Betty Crocker's website, I made it two weekend in a row! Not bad huh?

Anyways, I finally got that camera I was eyeing. Yay! There will be tons of pics from now on, just watch out! We finally got DBKL approval to utilise space in Taman Rimba Kiara for Nia's 1st birthday party. From now on my weekends are going to be crazy making preparation for THE day. I love party planning but it is also very time consuming. Did I mention we are having Pocoyo theme? I got to go speak to our cake lady to see if she can custom-make Pocoyo and firends from fondant as cake toppers, that would mean I'd have to got over to her house on a Monday coz she does not accept any 'cake customers' on any other days to view or discuss cake. I know, but she does make VERY yummy butter cake that's the only reason why we keep going back to her.

Nia on the other hand is getting cuter & cuter, if I may say so myself :oP She's been actively trying to walk all over our little house and her dance moves are getting pretty wicked. I wish I could post a video here, maybe later. She is also refusing to drink her formula as she rather get it straight from me! I can feel that my milk's drying up as it gets more and more painful within 2 minutes after she starts to suckle and as I have no intention to continue breastfeeding her beyond the age of 1, I dont really want to continue with the Milkmaid tea. So went out on Monday and bought a different brand of formula (Frisolac from Dutch Lady) but she does not like it too. Right now she's on Enfapro A+ which she has been on since a few months ago, as I only breastfeed her when I'm home otherwise she'll be on formula. I'm not sure if this is s phase where babies tend to drop their weight every few months as they are growing because I do know that during the phase they will refuse milk and eat less which results in the drop in weight. I just don't want her to grow up like me, not wanting to drink milk the moment I turned 1, and I doubt my parents did anything about it, they just let me be. I do want Nia growing up drinking lots of milk, thank God hubz drink milk otherwise I do not know how I will encourage her to drink milk when she gets to the questioning age! I shall be closely monitoring her eating pattern the next couple of weeks, if there is no improvement perhaps it's time to see her paed.

Scrap Credit to ScrapbookFlair.com