I stepped out of the house for the first time in a week to bring the kids to school on Friday. It felt good to be outdoors doing our normal Friday routine after working from home all week. I still had to take painkillers but I was functioning and walking.
I haven’t been cooking much and have been taking out instead. It was a nice lunch at Two Hands Noodles, comfort Kuching food.
I thought we would stay home on Saturday but the kids really wanted to eat out with their grandparents. Saitaoha had her favourite pizza, I’m amazed how she never gets sick of plain cheese pizza, she finished the whole thing herself !
I think I’ve gotten over my ramen phase now (or maybe not) because we had ramen for dinner. The whole family loves noodles, I’m more of a rice and bread person. I was glad my parents could come along, feels like it’s been a long time since we’ve felt well enough to eat out.
I knew I was feeling better because I started baking again. Lemon syrup loaf, lovely for those that love tart cakes, but R and my parents probably prefer it if I made it an orange syrup cake. Only thing is we have lots of lemons at home!
The hardworking girl who wanted me to take a picture of her cleaning up to show her mah mah.
Let’s hope we can kick off all our bugs and aches this week!
We survived gastro but R has now caught the bug 😪! Luckily he didn’t have it over the weekend and we were able to bring the kids to watch the very hungry caterpillar show at the State Theatre. The show was actually pretty good and the kids enjoyed it a lot.
Dinosaur rawrrrr!
We had a fun long weekend and went to Yee yee’s house two nights in a row to play with their new Nintendo Switch. I’m the least gamer person out of us siblings but it was actually very fun. I can’t see myself playing it for more than two days though, that’s why I’ve never been into video games or anything like that. I’m all thumbs and so bad at coordination, I only like watching others play but don’t really like playing myself.
Pandan Swiss roll
It was nice to spend time in the kitchen, leisurely baking. I managed to cook and bake quite a bit this long weekend.
Orange chiffon cake
Haven’t baked a chiffon cake in a while. I have a few trusty bakes, chiffon cake is one of them, I also like making honeycomb cake, lemon syrup cake and traditional butter cake. Hmm having made sticky date pudding in a while, I wonder whether I’ll get to do it the coming weekend ?
Sausage rolls
Haven’t baked sausage rolls for a while too ! It was nice to be able to give some baked goods to the neighbour after a long while.
It was a much needed long weekend and I really appreciated not having to think about work for a little while. I wish we had more long weekends but I think this is the last one for a while sigh …
Ah well at least this was a great one, I feel recharged to face the rest of June now!
I’ve been tossing and turning between baking my own cupcakes or buying cupcakes for Saitaoha’s class birthday celebration. On one hand I had always wanted to bake cupcakes for Saitaoha and didn’t get to for the past few years because she was either sick during her birthday and couldn’t go to school, or her birthday would fall on a weekend or public holiday! On the other hand, my frosting and decorating skills are terrible, so I was very seriously contemplating to buy pretty cupcakes from professional bakers. It’s been a long week at work and the thought of having to bake cupcakes after hours made it all the more tempting to outsource the job.
Birthday cupcakes
In the end I decided to bake them myself, after all my little girl only turns five once and I knew she would be thrilled to decorate the cupcakes for her friends. I actually bought a new piping set just for these, in the hope that my subpar frosting skills would be levelled up by better tools haha. They are not the prettiest cupcakes, but my girls were easily pleased and thought they were ‘soooo goooood!’ They gobbled about 2 each tonight and I had to stop them from eating more !
Pink cupcakes because her favourite colour is pink
I’m glad I decided to bake them myself after all, the kids had a lovely time decorating the cupcakes and enjoyed eating the decorations even more 😅. They also packed all the goodie bags themselves and did a very good job! Saitaoha opened up the bags and Saitaomei popped in the treats, excellent sisterly teamwork! There were many bags and it took them most of the night but they had so much fun.
Happy and sugar high kids
Saitaoha is so excited about her birthday, I hope all this effort is worth it and she has a lovely celebration at school ❤️🧡💛💚💙.
I wasn’t terribly shocked when we headed into a one week lockdown, it just felt inevitable with COVID being everywhere and Perth-ians in general being very complacent. It was a bummer that he had to announce it on my birthday which meant that we couldn’t have our family celebration.
Post
Luckily R had already celebrated my birthday for me a day earlier with a yummy Italian dinner at Post. The food was good Italian fare, wine was lovely and we had a great time out.
Maccas
I also had MCD with my parents and kids as a treat. I’m not a fan of MCD but I love their soft serves. So it was a real treat for me :), but I think the kids enjoyed it even more.
See happy kid!
Took bites of everyone’s icecream that Saitaomei 😥. Honestly, despite the lockdown, my birthday was as good as it gets because I was surrounded by my loved ones and felt loved and celebrated.
Waffle lover
Perks of lockdown and mummy working from home is getting to make special requests for breakfast.
Saitaoha likes waffles too
Actually it was Saitaoha that requested for the waffles but mei ended up liking them so much she requested to have them for dinner!
The lockdown to be honest was a reprieve for me, I enjoyed working from home, the routine and the lack of commute. I had so much more time to do housechores, I had a daily exercise routine, I was still productive at work and I could spend more time with the kids. It was a bonus week for me.
Pineapple tarts
The last time I made pineapple tarts was maybe 9 years ago? I forgot how tedious it is to make tarts and biscuits, it’s my least favourite form of baking and I’m terrible at it #daitaohabakes .
My 收成 this year
But there is such a lack of CNY spirits and festivity this year that I really want to do something for my family, so here’s my CNY gift to them this year, I hope they enjoy the tarts.
Ah ma’s outdoor kitchen
It was a productive weekend ! We hopped to IKEA and bought ah Ma’a outdoor kitchen, she’s been wanting an outdoor kitchen for ages so R finally decided to build her one. hope it all turns out well!
Bak kwa
I also make bak kwa for the first time! It was an easy recipe and surprising legit. Poor ah ma and ah pa must have been wishing that I would hurry go home after messing up their kitchen with the pineapple tarts. But no, I proceeded to smoke out their house with bak kwa making! It reminds me of a Lee Ang movie that I love about this father who is a great chef at a high end Chinese restaurant and always ends up cooking a banquet for his family dinners with his three daughters. His youngest daughter always wanted to follow in her dad’s footsteps but he didn’t want her to be a chef and chased her out of his kitchen. Funnily enough the father who was a widower, shocked his kids when he wanted to sell the family house to start a new life for himself with his girlfriend (the daughters had no idea about the relationship ). The end of the story had the youngest daughter buying over the family home and using her dad’s kitchen, when her father ate his daughter’s food, his tastebuds which had died were awaken and he said he could taste the taste of 家, meaning home, and also meaning family.
Ah pa always says home is where family is. He no longer sees Kuching as his home since my mah mah passed away. And somehow because my parents are here with us, their Perth house has somehow become the family home, and is where us three daughters end up gravitating to, for special occasions, for celebrations and just for every other day. After more than a decade of our lives living overseas and apart from our parents, us girls are getting a second chance of hanging out with my cool parents again, they are very sought after! Hopefully my parents don’t mind me and the kids invading their home so often, I promise to only smoke it out every now and then!
I’ll just end here but wishing my family and friends a Happy Ox year in advance. May the new year bring us renewed energy, positive spirits, best of luck, good health and an abundance of happiness.
Sunday night baking activity with Saitaoha. Also trying out my cheapo $70 Aldi kitchen mixer which looks like a Kitchenaid. I have a lovely Kitchenaid which I received as a birthday gift, but I leave that at my mother’s place because their kitchen space and brand new oven are so much nicer for baking. My plastic Sunbeam mixer served me really well for years but I destroyed it a couple of months ago when I was being a Daitaoha. It’s handy to have a mixer at home for impromptu baking sessions. I can’t wait till we finally get round to renovating our kitchen so I can get a new oven though. We’ve been doing up our laundry and I’m so pleased with the results so far. For a non handy geek, R is proving to be very handy nowadays, he’s getting so good at D.I.Y. even though the amount of tools he is amassing is scary.
Papa getting a kiss from his first love whilst his second love only has eyes for the cake.
Saitaoha’s smile 😅.
Cutting cake time, the kids were very keen to eat the cake even though Saitaoha only wanted to eat the sprinkles and strawberries 😓. R’s birthday isn’t till Tuesday though, I just thought Saitaoha would like to bake and decorate a cake for her favourite papa. She did enjoy herself thoroughly and I think papa was happy too.
I still plan to buy a proper cake for the real day, any excuse for cake right?
Yesterday was a baking day, baked a honeycomb cake and a lemon butter cake. I thought the lemon butter cake could do with more lemon.
Snacking on nuts while watching World Cup. Guess who wants to eat nuts too?
Why are you surprised that I’m a glutton, I am your daughter after all!
I have been contemplating whether to get the Aldi kitchen set for Saitaoha especially since she loves baking so much. This set has diner seats at the back, so fun for playing masak masak, can pretend to have customers and all. There was only one set left when we went to Aldi tonight, I took that as a sign and bought it! Saitaoha was so happy, she said ‘yeah!!bake cake!’
Doggie has a tear and is ‘sick sick’.
Can you fix it Dr Papa?
Can you also fix polar bear while you’re at it?
And also white xiuxiu and pink xiuxiu?
Dr papa is very busy!
Doggie is cured! Check out Saitaomei photo bombing at the back 😆.
Sent this photo to R yesterday. He is addicted to Ali Express and receives a parcel every other day.
Today’s photo with the caption ‘another day another Ali Express package’😅. Both times he replied ‘my two favourite things’.
Ah Ma sent me this photo of gung gung and Saitaoha gardening. They bought her new gloves!
She’s becoming quite the little gardener hehe.
Baked an asparagus, mushroom and bacon quiche. I also did the laundry, changed the bed sheets, had adequate pumping sessions and had dinner ready today, such a sense of accomplishment haha. Little wins, little wins.
But then we discovered that I stuffed up some paperwork and now we have to redo it again! Grrrr… this is really the year to hone my patience, somehow nothing goes smoothly and we have to jump through hoops to get anywhere. The good news is I’m getting much better at dealing with these issues now and it doesn’t stress me out as much. It’s annoying but just get it done, no point stressing or whining. But I can’t wait till we are finally done and can celebrate! Here’s hoping good news is not too far away *fingers crossed*
I know it’s wrong to say this because she’s my child but
So cute !!!! 😍😍😍 we think she resembles a 少林弟子 😂
Feel guilty because Saitaoha was at daycare today which meant I should have spent more time with Saitaomei. Instead, I spent my afternoon baking
Siew pao ! My biggest batch to date, 45 of these babies. They take ages for me to make and I always regret baking them, but my brother loves them and he’s flying in tomorrow so baby brother trumps all. Even Saitaomei, sorry baby.
The whole family is gearing up for my brother and sil’s arrival, it’s going to be a fun two weeks 😃.
On another note, I received my CT scan results today, no cancer 😬 but they discovered that I have a minor fracture in my foot which wasn’t picked up by the X-rays. I’m just glad that there’s a reason for the slow healing process and this pain wasn’t something I imagined in my head haha. It’s also good to finally get a diagnosis and not have to go for more scans and medical appointments. 就这样告一段落吧.
Hi mummy, mah mah dressed me in the theme of shapes.
I love her solemn looking face. This is her favourite seat in the house, the beanbag!
Today ah pa and I brought her for her 4 months child health nurse checkup. She did really well and is tracking well in her growth and development. We’ve been suspecting that she’s put on weight and we were right, she’s now 6.4 kgs 😃. Her sister was 6.1 kg and one cm longer at 4 months, her father commented, ‘so Saitaomei is shorter and fatter lah?’ So bad this papa.
There was a bit of drama on our way to the check up, because it’s a new location we ended up going to the wrong place and couldn’t find the right venue. I was all for giving up and rescheduling a new appointment but ah pa refused to give up. ‘Let’s circle around and try again!’ he said. In the end the lovely nurse called me and gave us directions. When we left she said to ah pa ‘thanks Daitaoha’s dad for your persistence!’ Haha thanks indeed to my father, he is one in a million, I don’t know what I would do without my parents here.
Another chiffon cake, in fact I baked two today, one for Tristan’s class and the other for my uncle.
Roasted a chicken today but it wasn’t well cooked because I took it out too early. I should have put it in the oven earlier but it was occupied by the cakes 😓.
Ah Ma cooked this yummy bak cho mee for lunch, but I was too busy and only had it for dinner.
Saitaomei in her favourite beanbag watching tv.
Meanwhile jeje is hard at work cleaning the house.
‘You missed a spot jeje!’ says Saitaomei.
Hahaha, I would love it if both kids help me with housework in the future. I look forward to cooking and baking with them, just like how I cook and discuss recipes with ah Ma. It’s lots of fun.
Check out my new mint green baby. It was a very generous birthday gift, I still feel 心痛 when I think of the price. I don’t think my baking skills are worthy of a Kitchenaid yet, my plastic cheap Sunbeam mixer has served me well all these years. But when I offered to return the gift, the generous souls gave me this look 😐😐😐. Ok ok, I’ll bake more cakes to make up for the cost then.
Nice soft peaks! I was impressed with its speed, quiet and balanced mixing.
Of course the first bake has to be my go to chiffon cake.
It was an orange chiffon cake, turned out light and fluffy so I was happy.
Gave some cake to our neighbours and they returned the favour with these gorgeous plums and mangoes. We’re really lucky to have such generous and lovely neighbours. I’m glad that my parents have new friends too.
Saitaoha was mirroring her Tspellstrouble yee yee and enjoying sushi rolls for lunch.
Then she had cheese and crackers for afternoon tea, but she only ate all the cheese and left the crackers behind.
‘Mah Mah, buy cheese!’ she said. Poor Mah Mah is now Saitaoha’s grocery shopper.
Ah Ma sent me this photo with the caption ‘jeje watering plants, meimei supervising’. Hehe this duo warm the cockles of my heart ❤️.
daitaoha 
