Water play... is it really just play?

I gave some water to Alicia to play with yesterday and she had a great time transferring water from one container to another! I thought to give her some opportunity to practise some gross and fine motor skills and have fun at the same time since she loves water!

While blogging about this, I happened to chance upon this site (which you may be interested to read about the benefits of this activity).

Here she is, concentrating very hard on her task:

And halfway, she started dancing as the DVD was playing one of her favourite parts of Elmo's World (but her eyes remained on her cups and water):

And a short video of her enjoying herself during the activity:

Eventually, she found more containers to transfer water to, making use of her imagination as she used little parts of her toys as 'containers'.

This activity's rather messy though and you've gotta constantly have a dry cloth around to mop up the water that lands on the floor in case the child slips. You've gotta also have some drinking water to replenish the cups of water when the water eventually all gets spilled somehow - Alicia likes to sip from these cups and pretend-cups so drinking water is a must!

Another point I noted during the activity:

Alicia tried transferring water with both her right and left hand and I realised that her right hand's so much more accurate than her left! :D

Stir-fried baby asparagus

This dish is simple to cook and the cooking instructions are basically the same as my other veggie stir-fries... quite a no-brainer.. :D

Nowadays I don't have much time to blog in greater detail about my cooking coz Alicia's taking up a lot of my free time by stretching her eating hours (and hence my feeding hours...)... :(

Hence I've gotta cut the long story short and get to the point!

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of baby asparagus (cut into three sections)
• a few prawns - remove shell but keep tail intact, devein
• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• fish sauce to taste

Marinate prawns with:

• a bit of hua diao jiu
• a dash of ground black pepper

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a wok. Add the garlic and fry till fragrant.
2. Add the prawns and fry till 70% cooked. Remove from wok.
3. Add the baby asparagus and fry till nearly cooked. Add a little water if necessary.
4. Place the prawns back into the wok and fry till both prawns and asparagus are cooked.
5. Add fish sauce to taste.

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut baby asparagus into less than 1cm length and allow child to self-feed.
• The part near the 'spear' of the asparagus is the most tender so you can opt to give that to your tot.

Pan-fried salmon in black pepper sauce

It's been a long time since I cooked this dish so since my mil had bought a slab of salmon for me earlier, I thought this is the dish to cook!

It's really easy, tasty and nutritious!

In the midst of cooking

Done!

Black pepper salmon

Ingredients:

• 1 slab of salmon (not sure how much it weighed) - cut into cubes
• 1 thumb-length ginger - cut into slices
• 1 bunch of spring onions - cut into 1-2inch sections
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee black pepper sauce
• a bit of water to mix with the black pepper sauce

Marinate salmon with:

• a generous amount of crushed black peppercorns
• hua diao jiu

Method:

1. Heat some oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the ginger and spring onion till fragrant.
2. Add the salmon cubes.
3. Fry till the salmon turns a nice golden brown then flip over the the cubes.
4. Continue frying for a short while till the salmon is cooked through.
5. Combine the black pepper sauce with a bit of water in a bowl. Add the sauce to the pan and fry for a little while more.
6. Add cornflour solution if you prefer a thicker sauce. Otherwise, dish and serve. :)
7. Garnish with more spring onion (optional).