Alicia with double eyelids!

Alicia had double eyelids that disappeared after awhile when she was a young baby. Now the double eyelids are returning sometimes, most of the time on the right eye. The first time the double eyelid emerged on both sides was when she woke up from her nap on the way back from Cameron. But it disappeared so quickly after that that I didn't get a chance to take a photo or video of her.

Anyway, here's a video of her when she only had double eyelid on her right eye (before it disappeared again):

And here's my pretty gal when both her eyes had double eyelid:

It's just so difficult to get a good shot of her! Well, this is the best I could manage.. :D

Alicia eating n watching her fav Elmo DVD

Catching up with Mikayla... :)

Went for lunch with my ex-colleagues on 28 Dec (last Monday) and Shirley brought little Mikayla along and the kids had their own 'catch-up' session. Although Mikayla's 1 month younger than Alicia, she's bigger than Alicia - well, who isn't?

Here're some pictures of Alicia (and Mikayla):

Hubby's phone camera's slow...

otherwise it would have captured a nicely posed smile by Alicia! Sigh.

Sitting smugly in Mikayla's pram while Mikayla's having lunch...

Alicia trying to drink from Mikayla's cup while Mikayla's eating from Alicia's snack bowl

Look here babes!

and a video of Alicia playing in Mikayla's pram:

Cream of Mushroom Soup

This is how I made use of Brenda's recipe:

Cream of mushroom soup (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 10 white button mushrooms (diced)
• 1/4 white onion (diced)
• the white part of 1 leek (diced)
• 1-2 cloves garlic (diced)
• 100ml whipping cream (I used President)
• 100ml milk (I used Paul's Whole Milk)
• unsalted butter (I used Lurpak)
• Chicken broth (just boil chicken bones and some cloves of garlic together for 2 hours)
• Cornflour

Method:

1. Melt the butter.


2. Fry the garlic till fragrant.
   
3. Add in the onion, leek and mushrooms.


4. Fry till the water from the mushrooms start to dry up then add in the chicken broth.


5. Simmer for 30minutes.


6. If you like the soup to be smooth rather than textured, you can use an immersion blender to blend the ingredients in the pot. Otherwise, leave it as it is.


7. Whisk in the cream and the milk.


8. Add water to the cornflour and add the mixture into the soup to thicken it. Add as much cornflour according to your own preference of thickness of soup.


9. Add your choice of herbs or a dash of ground black pepper to the soup if you like.


10. Serve hot together with garlic bread sticks.
    

Spaghetti with home-made sauce

Spaghetti with home-made sauce (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti
• $2 worth of chicken fillet (cut into small chunks)
• 2 cans of Hunt's whole tomatoes
• garlic (diced)
• white onion (cut into small pieces)
• Organic raw brown sugar (I used 2.5 tablespoons)
• Basil
• 1-2 dashes ground black pepper
• Grated/Shredded cheese (Parmesan or Mozarella)

Seasoning (for chicken) - not too elaborate so as not to affect the taste of the sauce:

• chicken marinade
• dash of ground black pepper

Method

1. Set the spaghetti to cook.


2. Blend the whole tomatoes. I dun blend them too finely as I prefer having some tomato bits in my sauce. You can choose to blend the garlic and white onion together with the tomatoes if you do not like to bite into them.


3. Heat the oil and fry the garlic and white onion till fragrant and the white onion is quite limp.


4. Pour in the blended tomatoes.


5. Let the sauce simmer till a consistency you like - in general the longer you simmer it, the thicker the sauce would be.


6. Add basil to taste.


7. Add 1-2 dashes of ground black pepper


8. Add sugar to taste.


9. Once the sauce is of the preferred texture and taste, add in the chicken fillet to cook.


10. Once the chicken is cooked, pour the sauce over the cooked spaghetti and top with cheese.


11. Serve hot.

Garlic Bread Sticks

Garlic Bread Sticks (serves 2)

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread (I happened to have Sunshine's Milk Toast in my pantry)


• garlic (diced)


• unsalted butter (I used Lurpak)

Method:

1. Cut the bread into 1cm strips.


2. Melt the butter and saute the garlic in it (the smell is HEAVENLY). Do not brown the garlic as it becomes bitter.


3. Toss the bread strips in and coat them with the garlic butter.


4. Arrange the bread strips and toast them in the oven for about 4 minutes.


5. Leave them in the oven if you prefer totally crispy sticks (we LOVE this). If you prefer them to be soft, take them out immediately after 4 minutes. Toasting them for only 4 minutes prevents the garlic and bread from burning and yet I can still achieve really crispy garlic bread sticks!


6. Serve bread sticks with soup (or you can eat it on its own! - YUM!).

Christmas Eve 09

Christmas eve evening was spent at my mum's place where we mingled, ate delish food, sang Christmas carols, ate mouth-watering food... ooh, did I mention eat again? Lots of eating took place that evening and I ate my fill without feeling guilty coz I climbed 60 storeys before going over to my mum's. I knew I was gonna feast so I'd better 'walk' for my supper first so I could eat to my heart's content...

This year, alongside my mummy's absolutely yummy home-cooked food, my aunty ordered roast beef and two types of ham from Hyatt... and we also had two logcakes, of which one was an ice-cream cake. Honestly, I'm not sure why we needed to have two cakes when one would have sufficed, but oh well, I ate both anyway and they were nice and I'm certainly not complaining. :D

Here's a snapshot of what Alicia busied herself with that day during the party:

She usually hates to wear sunglasses or anything for that matter, on her head. But as you can see, she's very contentedly wearing my niece's sunglasses on her head.

I should be getting more photos of the Christmas party from my cousin some time in the future and I'll probably just upload them in this post. :)

Christmas toy

This is a backdated post... been wanting to blog about so many things but I've been really up to my neck with well, everything! :D

Remember I mentioned that Alicia got a new toy from my mum? Well, here's a video of alicia being introduced to it on Christmas day: