Sunday, April 27, 2008

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Chocolate chip muffins
A batch of muffins for tomorrow's breks - quite different from the usual choc muffins mummyji's used to whipping up. These had cocoa powder mixed into the batter, instead of melted chocolate, and then had chocolate chips sprinkled in the middle of the mixture inside the paper cases.
A closer view of the aromatic brown beauties...
Mache Salad with Emmenthal Cheese shavings and Beef Stew
 
Tonight's dinner, which mummyji whipped up single-handedly, cos the resident chef (aka Daddyji) is trying to finish up his MBA paper.
Beef stew, pomegranate seeds, Multi-grains and store-bought foccacia bread.

CZ 6 and 7
Erm, this isn't dinner. It's our little science observation project. We got these 2 baby butterflies from Mamaji's plant, and mummyji decided to keep them in a container, to let the babes observe the whole metamorphosis process, which is part of their science syllabus.


So the nutty Z decided to name these very hungry caterpillars, CZ 6 and 7... please do not ask yours truly to differentiate which is which. It's difficult enough for mummyji to tell Daddyji's twin nieces apart, let alone these wriggly creatures!
Anyway, CZ 6 and 7 will turn into fatty bugs in no time at all, for they'd devoured 2 leaves between them in a day, and look at how much poop they've passed! It just goes to show that the books are right, a fibre-rich diet will surely get your bowels going....
well, that's all for the week, Mummyji's gonna conk out soon, while the other half is still at his homework. Sorry, luv, this woman needs her sleep...


Sunday, April 20, 2008

Sundays

Sundays are when mummy and daddyji put all our recipe-readings to practice. This is a sneak preview of tonight's dinner...



Pomegranate salad, roasted garlic yogurt dip and Roasted vine tomatoes with potatoes...
the lovely ruby red pomegranate is so so sweet! They were brought back from Daddyji's Istanbul trip. We're gonna try potting it here, with a couple of these ruby gems... wonder if it'll work?
7-colour bean salad - organic beans, boiled and tossed in last week's tomato salsa..
so simple, and bursting with goodness -
Lest anyone thinks we've gone vegetarian (?!!) .... of course there's the meat, grilled lamb slices, though there's no picture of the pink tender strips here.

And here's the bake for tomorrow's breks -




Pain d'epice or Honey Spice Loaf
A simple recipe from Clotilde Dusolier's Chocolate & Zucchini cookbook. It smells wonderful, of all its ingredients, the honey, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, baked mostly with organic goodies (the flour, the baking powder, the baking soda, the molasses - all organic!)
It's now wrapped up in foil, for it to rest to "give the honey and spices time to bloom".... taste test will be at breks tomorrow.

If it doesn't rain on sunday afternoons, we'll usually hit the pool after lunch. Today, we decided to go at 11 am when the sun was shining bright and hot. Good thinking too, cos it rained angrily in the afternoon, after lunch.





Babes clowning around in the water...
we've got the pool to ourselves, for once!

And lastly, mummyji'll like to show off her latest piece of jewellery - THE RING which daddyji bought from Istanbul.







THE RING!!!

had meant to post the picture last week, but just didn't find the time. But that doesn't mean it's not been worn yet... in fact, it's on mummyji's right index finger almost everyday.
Love the ring, Sayang! and love you too!


So there, that's our typical sunday.. Cheers everyone, and have a great week ahead!

Thursday, April 10, 2008

express

there's another smell pervading every corner of the house again.. this time, however, it's a lovely enticing cinnammon scent. Mummyji's just baked a batch of apple cinnammon muffins.
Haven't taken a picture of the yummy-smelling babies yet, cos if yours truly were to go any closer to them, she'll definitely devour at least one!
Besides, one has to quickly type down the recipe, before the old gray matter forgets.
You see, yours truly didn't really follow the recipe (from the book 500 cupcakes and muffins) to the T. Mummyji dislike having to weigh her ingredients, much prefering to measure everything in cups and spoonfuls. So it's a bit of guesstimation for the recipe... well, so far, the muffs look pretty alright and as mentioned already, score A* in the smell department, hence they can't be too awful to taste, right?
Recipe:
1.5cup (heaped) organic flour
approx 3/4 cup organic molasses sugar (Afternote tweak : think this should be changed to either 1 heaped cup, or increase to 2 apples)
4 tsp baking soda (actually before adding the 4 tsp, alarm bells were already sounding in mummyji's head, erm, really, do we need THIS much?? Afternote tweak: too much will result in a slightly bitter taste, so probably can cut down to just 2 tsp)
2 tsp ground cinnammon (might increase this to 3 tsp the next round)
pinch of sea salt
4 tbsp sunflower oil
50g melted unsalted butter
2 lightly beaten eggs
175ml milk
juice of half a lemon
1 royal gala apple, peeled, cored and diced (see above, can actually increase to 2)

Method:
Preheat the oven to 175deg C. Line muffin tin with paper cases, this recipe yielded 11 muffins, so the remaining "cup" was half-filled with water to prevent the tin from warping.
Mix the butter, oil, eggs, milk and lemon juice in a big bowl till even.
Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl: the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnammon and salt.
Add the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and just lightly mix till incorporated.
Gently mix in the diced apple.
Spoon into papercases, about slightly less than 3/4 full. In retrospect, if Mummyji had done just that, perhaps we'll have 12 muffins... but then this batch would not have had such cute domed heads that tilted one side or another..so it's not too bad, you could fill it 3/4 full too, to get the domes.
Bake for 20 min, and voila, your house will soon smell like a dozen apple pies!

Now we'll just have to wait for Breakfast, ze most important meal of the day, for the great verdict...
picture will also be posted later.
Sweet dreams!

Friday, April 4, 2008

rewind to March hols

Ok, as mentioned yesterday, these are the pics of our activities during the weeklong March hols...


This box of blue cupcakes were made for Z's ballet teacher. Z had her Royal School of Ballet exams...

And this is our Project Groom Babes' Room!
Mummyji did the artwork, ok, in case you're wondering.... the babes are just the helpers, filling in the sand bit..


Had a pretty stiff neck after working on this "masterpiece" from 10am to 6pm, but mummyji's gotta admit, she's mighty proud of it! It conjures up an image of the beaches which we so love...
Another craft project, on another day... the shells were collected on Sandy Beach in Danang last June.. Thank God there were enough of them to go around the entire mirror!! Mummyji got blistered by the hot glue gun, but looking at the mirror's new look, it's quite worth the pain.

A closer view of the shells, see how pretty?


And finally, 2 star name plaques for the stars in Mummyji's life.... hand-painted, of course...

The babes got their room a new look, and we're mighty pleased with the results! ;-)

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Most hated fruit

There is a stink in the house.
The sickening stench permeates every corner, in particular the dining area where the source, an ugly brown mishapened lump AKA the jackfruit, is perched quite smugly in the fruit basket, as if in mockery of this ONE person who hates it. (Well, not exactly one, since the last check revealed the babes to find it obnoxious too.)

Mummyji hates jackfruits. Have always and still do.

And the ILs apparently adore it, so much that there seems to be one of these putrid-smelling thing in the house every other week.

C’est unbelievable, non?

Found this on wikipedia:

One of the earliest descriptions of the jackfruit is to be found in the 16th century memoirs of the Mughal Emperor Babar, who was not much enamored of it:
"The jackfruit is ugly and to some people is bad tasting. It looks exactly like sheep intestines turned inside out like stuffed tripe. It has a cloyingly sweet taste. Inside it has seeds like hazelnuts that mostly resemble dates, but these seeds are round, not long. The flesh of these seeds, which is what is eaten, is softer than dates. It is sticky, and for that reason some people grease their hands and mouths before eating it. The fruit is said to grow on the branches, the trunk, and the roots of the tree and looks like stuffed tripe hung all over the tree".

Mummyji can only say, Way to go, Babar!!

More from wikipedia:

The jackfruit is something of an acquired taste, but it is very popular in many parts of the world. An unopened ripe fruit can have a unpleasant smell, like ROTTING ONIONS. The light brown to black seeds with white innards are indeed about the size of dates. People often oil their hands with coconut oil, kerosene, or paraffin before preparing jackfruit, as the rest of the fruit is a loose white mass that bleeds a milky, sticky sap often used as glue.

Goodness gracious, it bleeds glue too?! Wonder what that does to the intestines… or even worse, how about the remains that come out of the other end… will that clog up the sewers as well?? WTF?!

Eeeuwh! Can’t wait to have the offending lump quickly consumed by the rest ASAP… in the meantime, Mummyji’ll just have to bear with it, and light lavender candles… sigh…


It’s already April, and it’s Yiyi-ji’s birthday! Happy 38th , dear sis!! (She is a jackfruit hater too, all of mummyji’s clan is, thank Heavens!)

There were quite some pictures taken in March, Mummyji and the babes were pretty busy grooming their room but Mummyji’s been too tied up with other stuff since and haven’t updated this blog for a while.

Perhaps later tonight, if the pong doesn’t give Mummyji a headache first…
Till then, shall have to appreciate the good clean air around before reaching home to the nasty “poison gas” at home…