JG PlayClub (27/3)

Last Saturday was Alicia's first lesson of Term 2 at Julia Gabriel. The usual instructor was on reservice so there was a stand-in teacher for the day. Honestly, that lesson really made me appreciate the wonderful lessons Alicia has been having. Truly, a teacher is the one that makes all the difference to a lesson taught. Storytime has never been so boring and never have I seen anyone tell a story like that. She stumbled over the words and it seemed to me that she didn't know the story very well at all (read: poor lesson preparation). Furthermore, I couldn't see any link between the chosen storybook (about a pony) and the theme for the week (noodles). I thought it'd be commonsense that a teacher should choose something relevant, something pertaining to what needs to be emphasised for the lesson. I mean, even if the story didn't centre around noodles, they could have at least chosen a book that centres around something starting with the letter 'n' since that's the emphasis for the week. I was really disappointed with the storytelling and I think most people would have been able to do a better job. Anyway, nobody was paying attention during the English storytelling because it just didn't manage to get the kids' attention. In contrast, the Chinese drama section was fabulous - there was audience participation as well as direct relevance to the theme.

Anyway, we were very late for class that day and when we arrived, it was already time to do art so we'd missed the indoor freeplay session, the funpass and magicbox segments. Here's Alicia's art for the day: a plate of kway teow and a plate of noodles :D

Braised chicken wings in hoisin sauce

We had these braised chicken wings last night and Alicia happily ate up two midwings with rice and broccoli served on the side. She must be wondering where mummy has been hiding all the good food from her all this while... lol. Anyway, we've decided to start feeding her table food as long as it's not too unhealthy or extreme in taste. She's been rejecting her porridge so we figured she should be wanting to start on our food and since she's 20.5mths old already, I feel that it's alright that she stops eating baby food. I'm sure there will be some who don't agree that children should eat such food but I think it's really up to the individual. To each his own. My picky one eats - that's all that matters to me. :D

Braised chicken wings in hoisin sauce

Ingredients:

• 1kg frozen chicken wings (cost me only $4.50! and the taste is not compromised in any way)
• 4 slices ginger
• 2 bunches spring onion (cut into 1-2" length)
• 2 cloves shallots (sliced thinly)
• 2 cloves garlic (sliced and lightly smashed)
• enough water to cover my 1kg of chicken wings (it's ok for the tips to stick out a bit from the water)
• cornflour

Marinade for the chicken:

• Lee Kum Kee chicken marinade
• ground black pepper
• hua diao jiu

Seasoning (amt depends on how much chicken you have and water you add)

• 3-4T hoisin sauce
• 1T oyster sauce

Method:

1. Clean the chicken wings and remove the extremely fatty portions. Marinate chicken for a few hours (I did so overnight).
2. Heat some oil in a wok and fry the ginger till fragrant first.
3. Add the spring onion, shallots and garlic and fry till fragrant.
4. Add the chicken wings and sear both sides (I had to do this in two batches since my wings were fat and huge).
5. Pour enough water to cover the main body of the chicken wings, add the seasoning and bring to a boil.
6. Cover the wok and simmer for 40min on low-medium heat. Stir every now and then for even cooking.
7. Add a little cornflour solution to thicken the gravy.
8. Serve hot with hot fluffy rice.

For toddler's consumption:

• Remove the meat from the chicken wing for the tot if she is unable to handle the chicken wing on her own.

Teriyaki salmon

This was extremely scrumptious! Even my picky Alicia wolved up two pieces of salmon though she's not a fan of salmon at all. And as she ate every mouth of it, she kept 'talking' to me super expressively, as if trying to tell me to cook this more often for her... super cute. lol. I asked her, 'Are you trying to tell mummy to cook this more often?' and she nodded her head and continued with her baby talk. :D

Honestly, if you've made your own teriyaki sauce, you'd never settle for those sold commercially because those don't taste anything like the real stuff!

Teriyaki salmon

Ingredients:

• 340g salmon, skin removed (I bought 1 slab from the fishmonger, costs $8.80 but I got it at $8)
• 1 bunch green onion (slice finely)

Teriyaki sauce:

• 2T cooking sake
• 4T mirin
• 1.5T light soy sauce
• 2T brown sugar

Method:

1. Rinse the slab of salmon and cut into chunks.
2. Marinate the salmon chunks in the teriyaki sauce for about 1/2 hour.
3. Heat up a non-stick pan and sear the salmon chunks, reserve the rest of the teriyaki sauce. The surface of the salmon should turn brownish before you flip it over to the other side for browning. Because the salmon was soaked in the teriyaki marinade, it will brown quite quickly.
4. Once both sides of the salmon are done, remove them from the pan and place on a plate.
5. In a small saucepan, bring the rest of the teriyaki sauce to a boil. By the process of reduction, simmer the teriyaki sauce till it becomes thick.
6. Drizzle the sauce over the salmon.
7. Garnish with finely sliced green onion.

Cauliflower with carrot

This cauliflower has been sitting in my fridge for quite a long while... it was actually meant for Alicia's meals but due to her extremely slow eating, I've often had to skip the veggie at night and just give her fruits instead to balance her meal. And that's how it ended up as our meal instead. Well, she did eat some of it that night and she even drank up the leftover sauce...

Cauliflower with carrot

Ingredients:

• 1 cauliflower
• 1 carrot
• 1/2 handful dried shrimp (omit for tots below 18mths)
• 1-2 cloves garlic (mince)
• water
• fish sauce to taste (optional)

Method:

1. Cut the cauliflower into florets, remove any blemishes. Peel and slice the carrot.
2. Rinse the dried shrimp then soak for a short while then mince the dried shrimp. Keep the water in which the dried shrimps were soaked for the cooking.
3. Heat some oil in a wok and add the dried shrimp and fry till fragrant.
4. Add the garlic and fry till fragrant. Don't add the garlic together with the dried shrimp as garlic browns very quickly.
5. Add the cauliflower, then the carrot (cauliflower takes longer to cook).
6. Add the reserved water so it's not too dry. Let it simmer in the wok till the cauliflower is cooked.
7. Add fish sauce to taste (optional) - I didn't as dried shrimp is already saltish.
8. Dish and serve.

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut cauliflower into small florets and carrot into smaller pieces before serving.
• Omit the dried shrimps in the cooking for tots below 18mths.

Honeysuckle Chrysanthemum drink (金銀花菊花茶)

Just thought I'd share a really simple 'cooling' drink to make in this sweltering heat! Made this on Friday night but had no time to blog at all through the weekend.

Just for information, honeysuckle is not suitable for young children so do not feed this to your little ones. It's too 'cooling' for them; chrysanthemum tea alone is fine (even then, I think diluted in the ratio of 1:1 would be better - I did give Alicia that - and probably once a week is more than enough for young kids).

Honeysuckle, according to the TCM doctor I spoke to, is extremely cooling so unless you're super heaty or are recovering from a high fever etc., it'd be wise not to consume this often.

Another alternative is to combine chrysanthemum with luo han guo (Buddha's fruit). That's nice and nourishing without being too 'cooling'. :)

Honeysuckle Chrysanthemum drink (金銀花菊花茶)

Ingredients:

• 3 handfuls of chrysanthemum flower
• 1 pinch of honeysuckle (don't add too much as it will cause the drink to be bitter)
• rock sugar to taste (I usually put 2 handfuls of small bits of rock sugar)
• about 1L water

Method:

1. Rinse the chrysanthemum flower and honeysuckle to get rid of dirt. Do not soak for long as the taste of the chrysanthemum would then go into the water that it was soaked in.
2. Add the rock sugar to the water in a pot and bring to a boil.
3. When the water's boiling, turn off the fire and add the chrysanthemum and honeysuckle.
4. Let it sit for about 30min.
5. Sieve out the chrysanthemum and honeysuckle and your 'cooling' drink's ready!
6. Serve warm or chilled.

Follow the steps for plain chrysanthemum tea - just omit the honeysuckle

Apple chicken herbal soup

It's the second day in a row that I've not had the chance to go to the market because of Alicia... she woke up in the middle of the night and played through till dawn and my head was spinning when I woke this morning. Needless to say, it must be due to the terribly interrupted sleep I had.

Hence, I had to scour through whatever else was left in my kitchen to cook up a decent meal for the family... I had already set the chicken stock to cook overnight in the slowcooker so I had a soup base to work with. With really nothing much left in the fridge to add to the soup (I thought carrots alone weren't particularly appetising as a soup), I happened to glance into the fruit compartment and I saw that I had an abundance of organic apples... and so, apple soup it is for the day!

I used to cringe whenever I hear fruits cooked in soup when I was younger. Fruits, in my opinion then, weren't meant to be used in soups. :) Hehe...

Anyway, I had initially wanted to add sweet and bitter almonds (南北杏) to the soup (as most people usually do for this apple soup), but I remembered that there was something about bitter almonds so I went to check with the chinese medicinal shop opposite my place and the shop assistant warned me against adding the almonds if I wanted Alicia to have some of the soup. This is due to the fact that bitter almonds contain a trace amount of toxins and should not be given to young children. She went on to elaborate that young children may not be able to process the toxins properly like adults so it could be potentially harmful. She also mentioned that bitter almonds are not like the usual herbs we use in cooking like red dates and such as it is used mainly for medicinal purposes. She didn't mention at which age children could start taking them in soups but I mentioned that Alicia's 20+mths and she warned me against it so just be careful about adding this to soups if you are serving it to your little ones. To replace the sweet and bitter almonds, I decided to add lily bulbs instead. :) Lily bulbs are known to calm the spirit, nourish the lungs, are good for the skin and even for the prevention and treatment of cancers.

Anyway, here's how to cook it...



Apple chicken herbal soup

*Skip the dried scallop for tots below 18mths*

Ingredients:

• 3 large candied dates (金丝蜜枣)
• 4 dried figs (无花果）
• 1 handful of lily bulbs (百合)
• 2 organic apples
• 3 chicken breast bones, leftover chicken thigh bones from a few chicken thighs which I deboned
• 1 dried scallop (place in a soup bag)
• 3 cloves garlic (leave in their skin)
• 1 soup pot water

Method:

1. Clean and blanch the chicken bones.
2. Place the chicken bones, garlic and dried scallop in the slowcooker.
3. Cook on high heat for 1 hour then low for about 6hours (I usually do this overnight).
4. Transfer stock to a pot suitable for cooking on stovetop.
5. Rinse the large candied dates, dried figs and lily bulbs.
6. Soak the apples in a bowl of water for awhile then core and cut into quarters. If you are using non-organic apples, you may want to remove the skin in case of pesticide residue if not washed properly.
7. Bring stock to a boil and add the apples, large candied dates, dried figs and lily bulbs. Bring to a boil again on medium heat then simmer on low for 2 hours.
8. Sieve the soup (remove the bones and garlic) and return the rest of the ingredients to the soup (take the dried scallop out of the soup bag).
9. Dish and serve.

Alicia was receptive to the soup... it's the first time she's drunk so much soup in her whole life! lol... and she loved the lily bulbs and ate a slice of the cooked apple... *happy mummy*

Fresh chinese yam with fresh foxnuts/ euryale seeds soup (山藥芡實湯)

This soup went along well with last night's roast duck fried rice. :D A bowl of piping hot soup, not to mention a highly nutritious one, on a rainy evening is trully comforting!

If you read Chinese, you can check out this site to read more about the benefits of consuming fresh chinese yam. In a nutshell, chinese yam is believed to have the ability to enhance vigour, promote muscle growth, repair worn-out tissue, improve immunity and alleviate bodily weakness after a long-term illness.



Fresh chinese yam with fresh foxnuts soup (山藥芡實湯)

*skip the dried scallop for tots below 18mths*

Ingredients:

• Fresh chinese yam (wai san) - I didn't weigh it but I think it's about 300g
• 1 carrot (optional)
• a handful of red dates
• a handful of fresh foxnuts
• some fresh lotus seeds (remove pith)
• 1 chicken carcass (or 3 chicken breast bones)
• 1 soup pot of water
• 1 dried scallop (place in a small soup bag)
• 3 cloves garlic (leave them in their skin)
• salt/ fish sauce to taste

Method:

1. Clean the chicken bones then blanch them in boiling water.
2. Peel and chop the chinese yam and carrot into chunks.
3. Rinse the dried scallop and red dates.
4. Bring the chicken bones, dried scallop, red dates and garlic to a boil in a soup pot of water.
5. Leave to simmer for a few hours on the stove.
6. Sieve the soup: remove the bones and garlic return the red dates and dried scallop (take out from the small soup bag) to the soup.
7. Add the rest of the ingredients about 10minutes before serving. Chinese yam softens very quickly so unless you like the mashy texture, don't add it into the soup too early.
8. Add salt to taste.

Alternatively, you can cook this stock in a slowcooker overnight, sieve the soup then transfer the stock base to a pot that's suitable for cooking on the stove and just add the rest of the ingredients about 10minutes before serving.


Note: When handling and preparing the chinese yam, hold on to it with a clear plastic bag as it may cause skin irritation should it come into contact with your hands.



Alicia wasn't a fan of the soup or the chinese yam but she took to the foxnuts... and she ate them like popcorn while watching Shrek 3 :)

Updated in May: Alicia loves this soup but still refuses to eat the chinese yam :)

Roast duck fried rice

I cooked this for last night's dinner. I'd meant to go to the market in the morning but Alicia was sleepy and slept in so I couldn't make it to the market to buy groceries - hence this dish. I was thinking about what to cook given the circumstances and the available items in my kitchen when I suddenly had a craving for this fried rice. Besides, it gives me every excuse to buy the roast duck from the coffeeshop downstairs which sells really delish roast duck. :D

I would have added some other ingredients into the fried rice if not for the fact that they weren't present in my kitchen and the afternoon shower at my area meant that I really had to just learn to work with what I have. And so, here's my roast duck fried rice...

Incidentally, Alicia liked this dish... it's the first time she's agreed to eat fried rice!


Roast duck fried rice (serves 2 adults + 1 toddler)


Ingredients:

• Roast duck breast meat ($8)
• 3 slices ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 shallots
• 1/2can canned pineapple (use fresh if you have/ prefer)
• 1/2can straw mushrooms
• 1/2 carrot
• light soy sauce to taste

Method:

1. Shred/ chop duck meat into smaller pieces.
2. Mince the garlic.
3. Slice the shallots thinly.
4. Peel the carrot and cut into fine strips.
5. Cut the mushrooms and pineapple into cubes.
6. Cook rice as you normally would. Use overnight rice if you have.
7. Heat oil in a wok and add in the ginger first. Fry till fragrant.
8. Add the shallots and garlic.
9. Add the carrot, fry for awhile before adding the duck meat.
10. Toss in the pineapple cubes and straw mushrooms.
11. Add the rice and mix all the ingredients thoroughly, making sure that there are no lumps of rice.
12. Add light soy sauce to taste.
13. For a richer taste in the rice, you may want to add some of the syrup from the canned pineapple. (optional)
14. Top with more cubed pineapple and a handful of wolfberries (optional) 
15. Dish and serve.

Songs and books for the teaching of letter B

Almost forgot about this segment! Hehe...

Here are a couple of songs to sing for the teaching of the letter B:

• Phonics Song (B)
• Row, row, row your boat

Here are some other songs that you can try too.

And books that I've read to Alicia include "The Three Bears" and "Snowbear's Surprise". Basically just pick up any book that centres around any B-related words that have been taught! :)

Enjoy!

The letter C - collage cum word-pic matching game

I finally stuck the velcro onto the pieces yesterday and here's how the collage looks like upon completion... all ready for my little one!:

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

My cutie-pie fiddling with the components of the collage last night:

Anyway, she seems to love some of the pictures... I have been unable to find where she hid the pic of the cherries... she was so in love with it last night and kept bringing it around with her... now I can't find it! Sigh. Anyway, other pictures she loves are the cookies (she pretends to munch on them), the car (she goes "嘟嘟") and the comb (she pretends to comb her hair with it).

The criteria for the choice of words that make up this collage:

(i) common everyday words that begin with the letter C

(ii) includes all the different sounds of the letter C (/k/ as in caterpillar, /s/ as in cymbals, /tʃ/ as in cherries).

C for Clown!

Here's what I made for Alicia for the teaching of the letter C:

You can obtain the template from here. What I did was to print out the coloured template, cut out the shapes then laminate them. Next, attach the main body of the clown to the toilet paper roll using scotch tape and the attach the rest of the pieces together using velcro so that Alicia can put the clown together (and of coz, take it apart). The final touches: draw the upper and lower case of the letter C on the stickers and stick it onto the body of the clown. Done! :D

Here's my darling playing with it:

You can view step-by-step instructions on how to make the clown here in an article I wrote for myplayschool. :)

The letter B Lapbook

Since we're officially moving on the letter C, I thought it's time to do up the letter B lapbook so that we can file the teaching materials up nicely and neatly. So here's how the letter B lapbook looks like:

This is the cover of the file: I cut out the upper and lower case of the letter B from her art work. This is one way in which to make use of all those pieces of art that are clogging up the house... lol. I like using her art work to decorate stuff... I feel that it gives a special touch. :D

Here's what's inside the file:

I couldn't fit in the pictures and words into one envelope so I have two envelopes for the word-pic matching game cum collage. There's also the bookmark which she painted which I've stored into a plastic holder which is stuck on the file. And there's that penguin-button game I made for her, stuck onto the file using velcro so that it can be removed anytime if she wants to play with it.

The butterfly toilet paper roll craft obviously can't fit into the lapbook so it's still sitting on my TV console... :D

And that's all for the letter B! :) Moving on!

Teriyaki chicken... I finally got it right!

Yes, the title says it all. I finally got the teriyaki chicken the way I want it to taste on my second attempt. This time, I thrashed the previous recipe I used (since it didn't yield desired results), and tried out this one instead and bingo! :D Cooking sake's the key to the taste! lol...

Teriyaki chicken

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken thighs (about 340g) - deboned, visible fats removed (you may wish to keep the skin on, but I didn't today)

Poke the chicken meat then marinate it with:

• 2T brown sugar
• 1.5T light soy sauce
• 2T cooking sake
• 4T mirin

Method:

1. Heat oil in a pan.
2. Fry the marinated chicken thighs, reserve the marinade for later use. If you kept the skin on, fry the skin side of the chicken on medium heat till it's brown. If you didn't, just fry till the surface of the chicken is cooked (not reddish anymore).
3. Flip over and continue frying the chicken on low heat.
4. Pour the rest of the marinade into the pan and steam cook (cover the pan) till the chicken is thoroughly cooked through.
5. Remove the cover and cook chicken on low heat till the sauce has thickened (there shouldn't be a lot of sauce left).
6. Slice the chicken if desired.
7. Garnish and serve.

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut chicken into small pieces before serving.

French beans with button mushrooms

Alright, this may sound like a strange combination... but that's because I opened a can of button mushrooms to go with my omelette and it was too much for the omelette so I decided to fry them up together with the french beans. Well, it turned out fine so yup, here's how to make it! :D

French beans with button mushrooms

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of french beans
• half a bowl of sliced button mushrooms
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• water
• fish sauce to taste
• tomato (for garnishing) - optional

Method:

1. Pluck the ends of the french beans and slice them diagonally.
2. Heat up some oil, add the minced garlic and fry till fragrant.
3. Add the french beans.
4. Add some water when it gets too dry.
5. When the french beans are cooked, add the button mushrooms and fry for awhile.
6. Add fish sauce to taste.
7. Dish and garnish with tomato.

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut french beans into shorter segments before serving.
• If offering the button mushrooms, make sure it's cut into small pieces to prevent choking.

Balancing on the umbrella...

Alicia has a habit of playing with my umbrella... since today's a rainy day and I used it when I went to the market, here's what she was doing with it when I left it out to dry in the kitchen:

Experimenting with Alicia's menu: Chicken veggie combo

Made this for Alicia's dinner yesterday. I thought to give her a break from porridge so I decided to run this experiment. She was quite wary of it at first but later warmed up to it... even then, she wasn't VERY keen... she definitely wasn't going "more! more!" but well, she ate it though she didn't finish all of it. I may try it again some time later again, varying the texture and ingredients...

If mashed up totally, it's actually suitable for younger babies too. :)

Chicken veggie combo

Ingredients:

• 2T cooked chicken fillet
• 2T broccoli
• 2T yellow sweet potato
• 1T carrot
• 3T potato
• 1T uncooked alphabet pasta
• water
• pinch of salt
• a few drops of oil
• 70-80ml stock
• unsalted all-purpose herbs

Method:

1. Bring a small saucepan of water (with oil and salt added) to boil then cook the alphabet pasta and potato till soft.
2. Steam everything else for about 5min.
3. Mash the cooked potatoes and carrot (I have to hide this as Alicia's not very fond of these).
4. Chop the cooked chicken fillet, broccoli and sweet potato into smaller bits.
5. Bring the stock to a boil.
6. Add all of the cooked ingredients to the stock and bring to a boil again.
7. Add a few dashes of unsalted all-purpose herbs before serving.

Independence

Took these photos of Alicia eating lunch today. Actually I was trying to capture her trying to pick out the broccoli to eat only but I only managed to get one shot of that (unfortunately, I can't see the broccoli!)... Anyway, whenever she's in the mood for self-feeding, she won't let me help her, even if she's not successful in her attempts....

Sometimes it's really exasperating to feed her. Take for instance, today, first I fed her noodles... then after three mouths of noodles, I thought to try one piece of broccoli to break the monotony. Then the fussy one spat out the broccoli... but had second thoughts so she started digging around the noodles to pick out only the broccoli and when I tried to feed her noodles, she spat that out... and tried to salvage the broccoli bits from the mouth-full that she spat out... *faint* so I left her to eat on her own after that... she picked around some more then decided she had enough. Sigh...

Sweet Potato Soup

I cooked this sweet potato soup today because I had a craving for it (no, I'm not pregnant: non-preggies can have cravings too! :) ) and it's such a cold and rainy day today that I decided that it was a perfect day for this hot dessert. Besides, I re-introduced the yellow sweet potato to Alicia yesterday and she's in love with it again... so I thought she could have some of this dessert too!

Just an aside, Alicia had some cold dessert for the first time yesterday - a mango-based cold dessert (we met up with my hubby's colleagues (my ex-colleagues) last night). She usually detests cold food but for the sake of the dessert, she actually tried to overcome that barrier. :D Anyway, she had quite a few sips of it and then decided that she had had enough.

Alicia's response to this sweet potato soup? Extremely keen and happy! She kept saying "more! more!" while pointing at the bowl of dessert even though her mouth was already stuffed full with sweet potato. lol... Well, she still doesn't like the orange sweet potato so we gave her only the yellow ones. After awhile, she wanted to self-feed this dessert: it was a mess!!! She tried to spoon out whole spoonfuls of the soup to drink and that of course meant that she dripped the soup all over... well... time to bathe her anyway... :) and not forgetting to brush her teeth!

You can read more about the goodness of sweet potatoes for babies here.

Sweet potato soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 huge orange sweet potato
• 2 yellow sweet potatoes
• 1 handful dried longans
• 4 slices of ginger
• yellow rock sugar to taste
• 1L water

Method:

1. Skin the sweet potatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.
2. Rinse the dried longans.
3. Bring the water to a boil in a pot.
4. Add all the ingredients (except the rock sugar) and simmer for 12-15min (till the dried longans have puffed up and the sweet potatoes are soft).
5. Add rock sugar to taste.

*Do not add too much ginger as it causes the soup to be 'spicy' - unless you like it that way :) Since I was intending to give it to Alicia, the soup has definitely gotta be not spicy!

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut sweet potato into small cubes.
• Avoid over-use of ginger.

Crockpot chicken stew

Cooked this on the day we went to Sentosa... just chopped everything up (except the chicken) and dumped them into the slow cooker and we were off to Sentosa and I didn't even need to worry about what if I don't have time to prepare dinner when we get home! :) Isn't the slow cooker a wonderful invention? lol...

Alicia's share (I shredded the chicken and cut up the mushrooms and lightly mashed up the carrots and potatoes):

You can serve the stew in this manner for the younger tots.

Crockpot chicken stew

Ingredients

• 3 chicken thighs (deskinned, deboned, visible fats removed)
• 5 big white button mushrooms (remove stem)
• 1/2 large white onion
• 3 thin sticks of leek
• 2 carrots
• 4 small potatoes
• 400-500ml water or stock
• cornflour

Seasoning (after cooking's done):

• light soy sauce
• ground white pepper

Marinade for chicken:

• oyster sauce
• Lee Kum Kee chicken marinade
• brown sugar
• ground black pepper
• cornflour

Method:

1. Marinate the chicken.
2. Peel the carrots and potatoes then cut them into small chunks.
3. Slice the mushrooms, leek and onion.
4. Place the carrot and potato chunks into the slow cooker first, followed by the leek and onion then the mushroom, chicken and water/stock.
5. Cook on low for 6hours.
6. Remove some potato chunks, mash and return to the stew .
7. Add in the cornflour to further thicken the stew if the stew's not thick enough.
8. Remove toddler's share before adding seasoning.
9. Serve hot with rice.

Alicia's response was rather lukewarm again... I think she may not like the taste of leek so the next time I shall try to remove it and add maybe tomatoes instead.. :D

For toddler's consumption:

• Serve as shown in picture above for young tots.
• For older tots more accustomed to larger chunks and more textures, simply cut the potato and carrot into smaller pieces and tear the chicken into bite-size pieces.
• If your tot is fond of mushrooms as well, cut the mushrooms into small bits to prevent choking.

New (Fisherprice) toy car!!! 嘟嘟! Vroom Vroom!

After our trip to Siloso beach today, we went to 1 Lok Yang Way for the Mattel warehouse sale (you can read the details of the sale in my Chatterbox on the right column)... Of coz we were there mainly for the toy car that she's been wanting so badly these few days... she keeps sitting on her pooh bear and going "嘟嘟"!

When we finally found the toy car (Fisherprice), there was a choice of pink or green... there wasn't much to choose really. Pink vs green. It wasn't hard to choose at all... :D

Anyway, she kept going "嘟嘟" non-stop after she saw me with the car and she kept indicating that she wanted it! :D We knew it was definitely the right buy!

Here she is, checking out her spanking new car at home!:

Alicia's first time at the beach!

We had been wanting to bring Alicia to the beach for a long while and we finally got to do it today since hubby didn't need to go to work. We wanted to give her more exposure to sand since she doesn't like it very much at all from what we observed from her behaviour at Julia Gabriel during sandplay sessions.

Going to the beach was also part of my plan for teaching the letter B - field trip to the beach! :D

The last time we brought her to Sentosa was on our stay-cation in June last year but she was ill so we skipped the beach segment...

This is us when we just arrived:

Look at her in her hat! Her head's too big already... :)

So here she is: her first time at the beach!

*Click on the collages for a bigger image*

You can see the apprehension and dislike written all over her face... lol

Next, swimming in the sea: another first!

She was a little apprehensive at first, but later she warmed up to the idea of going into the sea and when we tried to bring her back to shore, she guided us back to the sea!

Having fun swimming in the sea... look at that cheeky face!

and her disappointed face when we were leaving

Feet, footprints and shadows! :)

We stopped by to let her play at this water feature...

And she decided that she needed to help water the plants nearby since it was such a hot day!:

We had great fun today! :)

In love with longans

Alicia has always been fond of longans... Anyway, I think her refusal to eat fruits is slowly diminishing and she's almost back to being the 'fruit baby' that she was before!

Here's a short video of her opening her mouth really wide to eat the longan! If only she were so keen on her main course... lol.

Today's music lesson...

Remember these keyboard cards I made? I actually neglected them for awhile but after chatting with one of my friends a couple of weeks ago, I decided that it was time to start using them proper instead of letting them sit around the house!

*Hop over to Simply Mommie's Precious Handmades to view this learning aid and other interesting learning aids! :)*

And so I got down to doing it: I punched a hole in the cards and strung them together using a ring binder and I'd just go through the cards with Alicia at least once a day, whenever she was willing to sit down for a short while to let me do that with her. Within a couple of days, she was able to look at the cards and pretend to press the 'key(s)' with her finger (that's what I do with her) and say the right alphabets for some of the cards - when she's in a really good mood! :D At least I know that she's been paying attention and absorbing the information so even though she doesn't name the notes every time, at least I know that there's something going on there in that little inquisitive brain!

Anyway, today since we had a bit more quiet time in the room together before naptime (and before she asked for milk), and since she was hanging around my books near the bed, I decided to read this music reference book with her to add on to the keyboard cards for today's music lesson (with Handel's Water Music playing in the background):

It's a really thick reference book which I bought when I was young while I was still studying music theory and I happened to have brought this book along to my place after I got married. Since we were both free and she was scouting around for a book to read, I thought, well, why not try it? And so we both sat down on the bed and read about music instruments and though the illustrations weren't fabulous (I mean, it's a general music reference book after all), the (black and white!) photos of people playing the instruments were able to capture her attention. We managed to go through all the instruments - from the string, woodwind, brass and percussion families!

Time to buy a toy car???

Today I went to the kitchen for awhile and when I came back to the hall, I found Alicia riding on her pooh bear like it was a car... the pooh bear was in her room earlier so she must have ridden on him all the way out from the room, along the corridor of the rooms and out into the hall! And she still added sound effects as she moved around on him: "嘟嘟" (the mandarin equivalent of 'vroom vroom': something she picked up at Julia Gabriel's classes) so I echoed her words...

Crockpot (aka slow cooker) beef stew... finally...

I know the above photo wasn't very well-taken, but I was hungry and I couldn't wait to try out the beef stew that I had been wanting sooo long to try cooking! Besides, it was so hot it kept fogging up the camera lens... :D

Anyway, it's really simple and convenient coz it's a crockpot dish and all you need to do is to serve it with rice or toasted bread, whichever you prefer (my hubby prefers rice, so rice it was...) and if you like, you can pair it with a salad to make the meal a healthier one! I thought the amount was too much for us so I didn't prepare the veggies but it was so tasty we felt that it wasn't enough! :) Should have cooked more rice.... lol.

Anyway, Alicia had this for dinner too! This is hers... I shredded the beef and lightly mashed the potato and carrot chunks... quite a heavy dinner since there's quite a lot of rice and stew... she managed to eat about half of everything... btw, this is a toddler-sized bowl in case you're wondering... :)

Beef Stew (serves 2 adults + 1 toddler) (edited on 27 May 2011)

Ingredients:

• 1 packet of beef (the packaging indicates it's for stewing) bought from Cold Storage (about S$10)
• 1 white/ yellow onion (minced)
• 8-10 white button mushrooms
• 1 big carrot (cut into chunks)
• 4 small potatoes (peeled, cut into chunks)
• 2-3 sticks celery (sliced)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 Knorr Beef cube
• 400ml water

Marinade for beef:

• 2 tablespoons cornflour
• all-purpose salt-free herbs (enough to coat the beef cubes nicely)
• ground black pepper (as desired)
• 1-2 tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce

Method:

1. Rinse the beef cubes and cut into appropriate sizes.
2. Marinate the beef cubes.
3. Dissolve the Knorr beef cube in 400ml hot water to make the beef stock. You may use other types of beef stock if preferred.
4. Add some oil/ butter and brown the beef briefly in a non-stick pan.
5. Remove and set aside.
6. Add a bit more oil/ butter to the pan and fry the onion till soft then add the mushrooms. 
7. After frying the mushrooms and onion for a couple of minutes, add the beef back to the pan together with the beef stock and bay leaves and let it come to a boil.
8. Place the potatoes, celery and carrot chunks in the slowcooker.
9. Pour the ingredients from the pan into the slowcooker and cook on high heat for 4 hours (or low heat for 6hrs) and resist the temptation to open the lid to taste the stew before the time is up! - opening the cover before the cooking's done adds another 15min to cooking time (each time u open it!): so unless you're prepared to wait longer for this stew, do not open the cover unnecessarily.

Here it is, served with rice.. Tuck in!

I'm really starting to love my slow cooker... Because dinner was fixed so easily and so quickly, I had time to iron the laundry today! Yay!!!! :D

Newest food...

Today we bought Alicia a new type of bottle food to try: Only Organic's Cottage Pie (Stage 4):

Much earlier on, she tried Mexicana Beef:

but she didn't like it! The smell and taste of the green capsicum was overwhelming I guess... it's not the first time she's rejected food containing capsicums, green or otherwise. :)

Anyway, the response to the cottage pie was lukewarm. I guess it's coz she's not a fan of potatoes and there're lots of potato cubes in there...

Move, Move!

Alicia just mastered how to move herself on a 'car' yesterday but I didn't manage to get it down on video... but we got it today!!! :D

Bilingual PlayClub (Term 1 Graduation)

Today's the last lesson of the term for Bilingual PlayClub and so the kids had their 'graduation ceremony'. Yesterday Alicia 'graduated' once already but I didn't have my camera with me... today I got my hubby to take a video of her when she went up to receive her 'certificate'. She was very keen to go up to collect it on her own and she was all excited about it after that... :)

Here are some photos of her eating during party time:

It's yummy mummy...

And here's her art for the day (a pull-along art piece of a boat, truck and car and two motorcycles that can revolve on the plate):

and here are the mementoes (a photo taken after Parents Chat and her graduation 'certificate' which comes along with one of her pieces of art):

Can you spot us? :)