Ash Wednesday, the start of Holy Lent

Ash Wednesday is today, marking the start of Lent. Coincidentally, I am in my late pregnancy, so fasting for 40 days during the last 2 months of my pregnancy will not be that good for my baby because this is the time she will be packing on the pounds before her birth. Plus, I am kind of feeling the urge to eat periodically, which I would like to attribute to the signal that my baby is giving her mummy's body that she needs more nutrition! I did abstain from meat today but I am unable to fast :(.

I remembered last year I quit Facebook for Lent. This year, I think I would need to give up something else, something that would have more significance. A few ideas came up, quitting TV, abstain from eating out or fast food, prevent myself from reprimanding the kids (and their dad) harshly but show them love and explaining my point of view calmly, etc.. I think amongst those, the last is the hardest for me and it will also be something most meaningful for me to try. Afterall, they are the most important people in my life and they deserve much more from me. I should at least try... Each time I feel the urge to scold one of them, I will say a prayer and calm myself. Following that I will explain what they have done wrong and why they should not do it again.

You can read the Pope's Lenten Message here. Wishing all God loving and fearing brothers and sisters in Christ, a Holy Lent.

Cooking Good Time

Most of you who read my blogs know that I like to cook for my family. This past weekend, we cooked a few meals which were so satisfying...

For Saturday lunch, we roasted pre marinated boneless chicken legs on top of lots of vegetable, including bell peppers, carrot, potatoes, onions, japanese cucumbers, brinjals and tomatoes which were added with a little butter, olive oil and salt. Roasted for an hour in the oven, the result was a very satisfying meal indeed. The  chicken was tender and flavourful and the vegetables were delicious too. Wanted to cook mushroom soup and have some bread to go with it but looking at the amount of vegetables we had, we rightfully decided against it.

Before going to the oven.

Cooked and served in bite size pieces on my plate, yummy...

For dinner that night, I tried something for the first time, Tung Po Pork! I have seen my mum done this several times and it seems quite easy. Of course we have to have pork belly, the ones with skin, fat and lean meat together. I bought about RM17 worth of pork belly and used half for this dish. It was quite fatty, i even had to cut off some of the fatty part and used that to make fried crispy lard. Didn't know what to do with the fried crispy lard yet but didn't want to waste the fat! For the Tung Po yoke, I researched a bit and did some modification, I based my recipe on the one in this link but added star anise and cinnamon sticks to it. I also omitted to steam it for 30 mins at the end because I was a bit lazy and I checked the meat was already soft and nice. I cooked it in a slow cooker for more then 2 hours. Next time, I will go easier on the star anise because the smell of the spice was a bit overpowering. After I added more brown sugar, it was ok. This is a nice dish to have with muntou. But for dinner that night, we had rice, fried egg, radish and carrot salad and stir-fried siew pak chow. I also sprinkled the fried crispy lard I made early on the vege and everyone enjoyed dinner, even my little picky-eater daughter.

Lined my slow cooker with spring onion, ginger, star anise and cinnamon stick before placing the pork inside.

After 2 hours of braising in the slow cooker. The sauce is thicken with corn starch in a wok before serving.

My dinner (white rice on the bottom).

My daughter's dinner, she insisted I take a picture of her plate too!

Sunday, we ate out for lunch since we had church and the boys also had Sunday classes. But I already planned ahead that I will be making homemade siew yoke for the other half of the pork belly we bought in Saturday. Made shallow cuts in the meaty part and marinated with 5 spice powder, Chinese Red Fermented Beancurd (Nam Yue), sugar, pepper, chinese wine and salt. The skin part was rubbed with salt. I tried to poke holes into the skin, but the skin was really hard, I only managed to make some lines on it (Later I found out that this caused failure to the skin from becoming crispy and popping, they were hard instead :( ). The meat was left in the fridge uncovered to help in the drying process. When we were back home in the afternoon, I started roasting the pork in the oven at 200 degrees. After 20 minutes, I put some vinegar which was supposed to help make the skin crispy and popping. Continued roasting for another 40 minutes. The result was a bit disappointing, the skin was a failure :( but the meat and the flavour was there. Really fragrant and tasty. I highly suspect that my failure to make deeper holes in the skin caused the failure. Nevermind, I will retry again.

Apart form the hard skin, the meat tasted great! Next try will be better...

But overall, I was still happy with what we made. We had it for dinner, with radish and groundnut soup, stir-fried beans and my hubby's favourite: crispy fried tempe and ikan bilis, stir-fried with onions, dried chillies and caramel. Yummy dinner!

Our dinner on Sunday.

Growing Appetite and Achy Hands

I am in my 30th week, 3rd trimester, now. Went to the doctor and he told me, that I cannot have anymore chinese herbs in my third trimester! I wanted to say, I haven't really started yet... But of course I smiled and kept quiet. I have a few more bottles of bird's nest that I will finish up within these 2 weeks before I really follow his advise. 

Baby is about 1kg now and I am very glad to find that her head has gone down and she is no longer in the breach position like last month. That means she is engaged in the position ready for her birth. Although it's still 2 months away from her due, it lifted up some worry in me. All my other babies got engaged in the head down position quite early.

Lately, my appetite is really growing. I feel hungry and am not satisfied with my regular meals. So I have to buy snacks and eat supper at night. Sometimes, after eating, I am so full that my tummy feels like it's going to burst! Partly because the baby is also getting bigger and sometimes, her position in my womb stretches my tummy a lot. Just for last night, I had lok-lok (truck parked at Prima Kajang) and soup kambing (at Sup Power Ali, Kajang) for supper after the regular dinner! This sup kambing soup along Jalan Semenyih had caught my attention for a long while. Finally last nite we went to try it out. To me the soup is too spicy/hot and that covers the other spices. But the price of the sup kambing was RM3.50 only, pretty cheap and a plate of bread was RM1. Then when we reached home, we still had taufu fah and soya milk.

In office, I will be snacking a lot too. One day I had instant bihun at about 5 pm before going home for dinner. I do feel pretty guilty but I promise to go on a diet right after the baby is born! Or maybe after confinement la, I promise!

Apart from the increased appetite, late pregnancy also cause water retention and achy hands (or carpal tunnel syndrome). My legs now look like they belong to an elephant. Especially at night when I sleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night because of extreme pain in the arms/hands. Carpal tunnel syndrome is when water retained in the body get redistributed in your hand (when you are lying down) and that put pressure on the nerves of the hand, causing pain and numbness. I have this in my previous pregnancies as well, but it was more pain in the wrist. This time is pain on the whole hand. Even regular use of the hands is sometimes hard, like using the chopsticks or typing is difficult sometimes. *Sigh*, lots of changes happen to your body during pregnancies, you men out there should be so glad you cannot get pregnant and appreciate your wives for carrying your children!

Ok, forgive my complaining, every baby is precious and every baby of mine is worth more than diamonds. They are blessings from God.

Rice Wine Making - Lee family tradition

We just had a long weekend holidays, on Tuesday, MIL made rice wine at my house in order to show me how it is done. Her MIL taught her how it was done and now it's my turn. This is what is called passing down the family kong fu...


The process looks pretty simple. Glutinous rice (pulut) must be precooked and cooled. Then rice wine yeast pieces and some red stuff (all bought from the chinese herbal shop, quantity also determined by the shop keeper) were crushed into fine powder form. Get a clean and dry container (we use clay or glass) and sprinkle with generous layer of yeast powder then fill it with a layer of fistful lumps of the cooked rice. This is followed by another generous spread of the yeast powder. Continue to do so in layers until the container is 80/90% full. End with more yeast powder on top and make a hole in the middle and put in more yeast powder.

Sprinkle with water, cover the container with plastic sheet and make a few holes on the sheet.

Cover with 2 layers of newspaper and leave in a cool, dry place. After 3 days, open to check that the fermentation process has begun and add generous amount of chinese white rice wine (whole bottle). Close the container back and wait for 20 to 25 days.

For 6 catties of rice, we should get about 6 bottles of clear rice wine free from debris. The wine that my MIL produced when she tried making it a few months back was really sweet and fragrant. I cooked kampung chicken with ginger and the wine a few times and my hubby and I both loved it so much. We will see how this batch, that is still fermenting in my kitchen, turns out in 20 days or so.  We will be saving this for my confinement in April.

Celebration is (almost) over...

So the water dragon is officially marching into the year. Had a fantastic week for my chinese new year break. Went hometown for a few days and had rounds and rounds of Texas Poker, Black Jack and In-Between with brothers and parents. I think in the end, I made some money, very little though :). Kids had a great time playing fireworks and messing around at home with the cousins (all boys!). My sister did not go back this year, so there was only one girl, my 4 year old, there. She was always getting bullied because she was the only girl, she was crying and complaining every other hour. Poor thing, hopefully next time my nieces will come along so the girls can have a gang of their own.

I also had the chance to meet up some long lost classmates from secondary and primary school, thanks to Facebook. We had 2 tea/coffee sessions. Most of them are in S'pore, KL or still in BP. Glad to hear most of them are doing mighty fine. Hope to see you girls again, maybe next CNY?

Delicious Soup. As usual, forgot to take pix, this one from link.

We ate at home most of the time. My kids and us are very big fans of soups and so for one dinner, I cooked fish maw/bladder, mushrooms and scallops (ingredients were from a gift pack from brother to mum) soup, slow-cooked with pork ribs (recipe here). It was delicious, even the kids loved it, surprisingly (because I thought the taste would be a bit strong for them). I never knew how to cook fish maw and only got acquainted with it through my MIL in recent years. I will be trying that again soon, when I get to buy some fish maw and scallops. But, actually, the things we snacked on most during the week were bak kua and 100 plus. Not too healthy...

Yee Sang in Fortuna Palace, Prima Kajang

We came back on 4th day of CNY and proceeded straight to dinner with hubby's family. 2 tables at Fortuna Palace with my in-laws and sister-in-laws and their families. My eldest sister-in-law's hubby's treat! I heard it was RM1200 for both table! Pretty hefty but maybe because it was CNY period lor.

It was a great week spent with family and friends for me.

I have started work since Monday. So back to the usual routine. But CNY goes on for a few more days and ends on Chap Goh Mei. Next Monday and Tuesday are public holidays and that coincides with Chap Goh Mei, so it would be more celebrations with family. A small fortune was spent on angows for the nieces and nephews and a larger fortune for my parents and in-laws. But what the heck, it's once a year only. Anyways, my bank account is a bit deflated and to make matter worse, all the children fees, i.e. kindy & piano, have been increased! Plus there are assessments and taxes to be paid for the properties every beginning of the year. Sigh, more money going out... sian ah...

Part of the relatives, my kids are in the pix too. Me? I am taking the pix.

Since we are back to reality, we have been thinking of how to make arrangements to take care of the additional bundle of joy which is coming in 2 months plus time. My hubby is really reluctant to get live-in help, which I kind of agree. We will leave this as the last resort only. My hubby tried to ask for aunties living nearby but so far no avail. We asked one of our church lady and she seems willing but she has not given us an answer yet. We still have a few more months before we really need the extra help at home to assist my MIL. And yesterday, we heard some good news that my workplace is setting up a nursery/kindy. Construction is currently underway and I hope it will be ready in a few more months so that can be one option for us. It's within the campus compound and it will be easy for me to check on the baby (or even my 4 year old daughter if I send both of them there). So I really hope the centre will be operational soon enough. This is a really positive step that the company is doing as staff benefits. I just hope it will be affordable or subsidised!

Lastly, my daughter's 4th Birthday is in a few weeks. Too tired to do anything big (sorry girlie girl), so most probably just cake and pizzas with family and in-laws. And I will bring her out to pick up a big present on the day!