Posts from — April 2008

This is one of my favourite recipes. It’s so easy and quick to prepare. Good for breakfast (served together with coffee), lunch or dinner (served with ‘Dinuguan’ Pork Blood Stew) and snack time. I even sometimes put it to RD’s lunchbox for school.

Ingredients:

2 c Self Raising Flour, sifted

1 tbsp Baking Powder

1 c Granulated Sugar

½ tsp Fine Salt

1 c Evaporated Milk

1 c Water

Slices of Cheddar Cheese

1 c Grated Coconut (optional)

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.

Add in milk and water. Blend ingredients thoroughly, stir until smooth.

Fill up 2/3 of the muffin pans or moulds with batter.

Place cheese on top of the batter.

Place your moulds/trays on steamer and cook for about 15 minutes uncovered.

Remove from steamer and cool slightly before removing from mould.

Serve with grated coconut.

View my other recipes here

We went to the optometrist to collect CN’s pair of eyeglasses today. After having been observed for about 9 months, her opthalmologist decided to put her on spectacles. It was a challenge looking for the right eyeglass frame for a 3-year old. We must have visited at least 10 optical shops before finding a fit at Merringtons Optometrists in Parramatta.

Anyway, it sure is an ‘ouch’ for us parents to see now both kids to be wearing specs. I’m sure any parent would feel the same. I’ve been telling our daughters, “if it’s possible, I’ll be glad to wear those eyeglasses instead of you!” Neither myself or my husband wears specs. The eye doctor told us that sometimes it does skip a generation or so.

Anyway, we are still thankful to the Lord that we were able to discover their condition early enough to allow for it to be corrected. God is good.

Probably an indispensable tool that most parents (particularly new ones) have is the camera. From the moment a couple discovers that they are on the way to parenthood, it becomes quite compelling to get one.

I guess a common ‘justification’ for getting this ‘tool’ is for the documentation of their child’s life. A lot of families start by capturing moments when the unborn baby makes his/her presence felt by building up the mother’s tummy. Photos of the baby’s first moments outside of the womb is definitely a highlight of a parent-photographer’s folio.

The value of these photos labeled as ‘priceless’ is probably understated. As a personal experience, we have seen our children’s eyes glow when they learn how we treasure their photos throughout the years. I’m sure even we x-generation people still appreciate our parents (who may or may not have actually ‘owned’ a camera) for attempting to salvage our time tested photos in huge albums or boxes.

Yeah, it’s just a camera… but it’s a parent tool that does more than just taking snaps.

I have participated in this experiment and

I’m #1037

in

Here is what it is all about (an excerpt from their site)…

First off, welcome to the site. It is said that there are over 70,000,000 blogs in existence. This is an experiment to see how long it will take to get 1,000,000 blogs to list themselves on our site. Will it work? We think so. The experiment is to see how long will it take. What do you think? take our poll. We started April 10th, 2008.

You can join too by starting to click here and check its progress here

Winter season has not officially started yet but the temperature drop has definitely started.  So I thought it’s a perfect time to serve hot food like Beef Porridge to help warm ourselves.  Anyway, I’m sure my kids will love it.

Beef Porridge is basically thick soup made from rice with beef to flavor it.  Chinese call it ‘congee’ and in the Philippines we call it ‘lugaw’ if it’s just plain rice soup or ‘arrozcaldo’ if you added chicken.

Here is how I do my version of Beef Porridge.

Ingredients:

250 g. of beef tripe sliced in strips

250 g. of beef sliced in strips

2 tbsps olive oil

Thumb size Ginger sliced

Garlic peeled and crushed

Onion chopped

1 cup of rice (regular rice, glutinous rice or a combination)

Bay leaf Salt or Fish Sauce (Patis)

Ground Pepper 10-15 cups meat broth (from the boiled beef tripe)

Saffron Flower (Kasubha)

Onion leaves for garnish (optional)

Eggs - hard boiled (optional)

Before slicing, give the beef and tripe a good wash by running it under tap water.  Place it in a large pot with water (15-20 cups).  Season with salt or fish sauce to taste and bring to boil (removing the scum off as it rises) until beef and tripe are tender. 

Put a large saucepan in medium heat and add olive oil.  Sauté ginger, garlic and onion together.  Before the garlic turns golden brown, add the unwashed rice.  Dash salt and pepper to taste and sauté until rice is golden brown.  Pour the sautéed rice mix into the beef broth.  Add bay leaf and bring to boil.  Continue to simmer while constantly stirring until rice grains puffed. Lastly, add the saffron flowers just before turning the heat off.

Serve in individual soup bowls.  Add boiled egg and top with chopped onion leaves if desired.  Enjoy while hot!

View my other recipes here

Last week, we decided to pick up a family board game. Among other things, we thought that it would help keep our daughter RD busy during the school holidays. It would probably be a good bonding activity, especially as we come close to cold winter days when we’ll probably just curl up inside the house as a family.

So off to Toys R Us in Westfield Parramatta to hunt for a cool board game. Without much effort, the Australian Monopoly Here & Now Electronic Edition caught our fancy. As parents who were once kids playing the old Monopoly game most of us are familiar with, we know how entertaining the game can be (not to mention the long hours that it can possibly burn).

This edition comes with an electronic banking feature that pulled us to the decision that ‘this is it’. With a 3-year old kid who makes toys out of practically anything, we know that having the original version with colourful play money increases the potential to make this game board unusable in no time (I could imagine the play money being used all over the house and in countless play situations). The electronic banking feature is also a relief for the ‘banker’ and other ‘players’ in the game… pretty much close to how ATM/Debit cards make things easier in real life. A payment transaction simply requires the banker to insert the involved cards on both ends, keys in the amount and voila! the transaction is completed. Other aspects of the game are pretty much the same as far as I can recall: metal tokens/movers, chance and community chest cards, dice, and the actual game board (obviously, this version has Australian cities/places).

It’s amazing how this game has evolved! Who knows what’s next?!

It was just another day at work… well, at least that’s what I thought.

That started just like any other day going to work/client: wake up in the morning, take brekky, do the bath stuff and dress up, walk to the bus stop, take the bus to work, take a snooze on the bus, get off the bus, hop on to the next available lift, get off the lift, find an available seat/desk, take off my jacket, open the bag to take out the notebook and… something *special* that made me wear a big smile!

Let’s admit it, probably most parent-workers out there run through the same routine to work everyday. Humans as we are, while we do enjoy working for our family or even if we do enjoy our profession/work, we are still not exempted from feeling the boredom of doing something routinary such as the rituals of going to work. However, I realized that parents probably get some respite once in a while when something breaks that routine. I’m referring to some small things that our kids do, whether intentionally or not, that gives us the welcome break that we need from time to time. For example, when you come home from work and your kids greet and present you with some small craft they’ve done, that will surely take the work stress that may be still be hanging around. Surely, there are many other things that our little bubs do that gives this magical effect. Today, that *special* thing that came out of my work bag made me smile… probably the entire day.

And so there I was on that day… walking into the our client’s office as an esteemed consultant… unpacking things out of my black Targus bag: among them, my gray laptop, its black power cord, and entangled with it was that *special* something… my daughter’s pink toy jumping rope. I looked around if others did see (and probably giggled)… ah… but I didn’t really care… it didn’t really matter. That pink jump rope is owned by someone special and what she did made my day!

Scene: CN was brought to the clinic because her tummy aches and she’s got wet poops. She was asked to lie down so the doctor can check her tummy.

Doctor: (while pushing some parts of the tummy) Ok. Now CN tell me where is it sore?

CN (3 yrs): Inside.

*****
Scene: We are preparing for church. I wore my black trousers and a red blouse that has small glittery silver jewels in it. Not so convinced with what I’m wearing, I went out and asked…

Mama: So tell me how do I look?

Papa: Good!

RD (8 yrs): Mama, you look like Nanay (referring to her grandmother).

CN (3 yrs): (Not agreeing with what everyone said) No! Mama, you look like a … LADY BUG!.

Got this tag from Christine and Leah.

~ start copying here ~Join the Worldwide Link Love!

Benefits of Worldwide Link Love!

1. Make new friends around the world.
2. Feel the Link Love.
3. Gain new readers and subscribers.

Rules:

1. Copy from ~start copying here ~ to ~ end copying here ~ and paste it on your blog.

2. At the end of the list, put your name and the country youre in, it doesn’t matter what’s your nationality just put the country where you are publishing your blog. Don’t forget to put links at your name.

3. If u have many blogs, you can link all of it, just make sure you post the same on each blog.

4. Tag eight (8) or more of your blog friends.

5. Tip for blogspot users: make sure you copy and paste the code in Compose mode.

Wanna join, and you can’t find your name on the list? Just leave a comment here.

Worldwide Link Love! Participants:

1. Julia (Philippines)
2. Catherine (Malaysia)
3. shimumsy (u.s.a)
4. Mitch (Philippines)
5. Hailey (Philippines)
6. Sexymom (USA)
7. Liza (Philippines)
8. Sasha (Philippines)
9. Thesserie (Netherlands)
10. Dagboek (Holland)
11. Enjoy Your Meal (Holland)
12. Meeya - Marikit (USA)
13. Meeya - My Memes (USA)
14. Meeya - My Finds (USA)
15. Jeanny (Phil)
16 Jeanny (Phil)
17. Christine - About Christine (Australia)
18. Christine - My Cyber-Life (Australia)
19. Christine - Only The Good Stuff (Australia)
20. Leah - Mga Muni-muni (Canada)
21. RoseLLe - Reflexes (Australia)

So I am tagging : Ritchiela

What’s with an apple? Why do they always use it in stories? This is but one of the questions my kids and I were discussing while watching the movie “Snow White, The Fairest of Them All” together.

In every Snow White story, everyone knows that a greedy queen used an apple to poison the beautiful Snow White. And in the story of Adam and Eve, most story tellers would tell that the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the garden of Eden was an apple (though the Bible didn’t say any particular fruit).

Is an apple really that good that somehow some people could be tempted to get a bite?  Here are some plain and simple facts that my kids and I agreed upon.

Yummy! It sounds deliciously healthy to me. No wonder my daughters loves it.

Today, everyone in RD’s school is so excited! Why? It’s not only because today is the last day of the term and everyone goes on two weeks holiday, but also because today is a Mufti Day. It is the day on which the students are permitted to wear casual clothes rather than their uniforms. Mufti Day is also used by some schools as a fundraising event.

RD gets to wear her pink top and short pants. Some students were in their dresses and others even dressed up like super heroes. Cute huh! It seems everyone is happy in what they are wearing.

As a fundraising exercise, students wearing Mufti on this day were to give a gold coin donation ($1 or $2 coin). The kids were informed about and it beforehand and were only too glad to help. Mufti proceeds are given to assist a Filipino kindergarten student through the Salvation Army Sponsorship Programme.

It is FUN to HELP.

What a great day!

I believe every mum has the same experience like me. My 3 year old daughter never missed a single day this week to ask me to read her a book… or should I say, ‘the book’. She’s got lots of books but, for some reason, the “Barbie Sleeping Beauty” (A Little Golden Book) is ‘the book’ to read each time. Come reading time, she would sit quietly beside me and listen intently, as though it was the first time! In every page, she patiently waits for her favourite lines. She puts her heart on the story such that when it comes to the scene where princess would prick her finger and fall asleep, my little one would always hide her face and pretend she couldn’t hear it. Then at the end, you’d see that big beautiful smile on her face as she reads with me “…and they lived happily ever after… The End.”

And guess what she would say after that?

AGAIN!

After so many weeks of training, counting the laps she finished and trying to beat her running time, the school announces that the annual school cross country carnival will be postponed until next term.

This was both sad and good news for RD, my eldest daughter. Excited she was to run, but because of the wet weather we have had this week the activity was postponed. She knew she runs slower than her other friends. She always say “Mama you know, I’m not that sporty but at least I tried.”. She is happy that she would have more time to train.

This is the fifth of the series Capturing Genesis1.

Since I already asked what will happen if there is no moon, I might as well ask what will happen if there is no sun? This one is probably easier to answer even without heading for the science books. If there’s no sun, then the earth will probably be like a dark spherical freezer floating around the universe. Again, thank you Lord for this magnificent star!

#4 Capturing Genesis1 : MOUNTAINS