AL speaking Mandarin

AL has been learning simple mandarin in her kindy...

She is able to recite 1 to 10 in mandarin (in her 'ang mo' slang)...

Today, PohPoh was asking her colour in Mandarin :

PohPoh : AL, what is Red in Mandarin

AL : Hong

PohPoh : How about Yellow?

AL : Huang Se

PohPoh : Green?

AL : Hmmmm... Green Se...

Lasagna

During our last department ‘makan-makan’ session on 15Sept2011, my colleague, Zaireen made this lovely lasagna. It was nice and not too cheesy (in Malay, ‘tak jelak’). All of us keep asking her for the recipe and she was generously emailed to us the recipe with photos. (Yes, Zaireen, you have the quality being a good auditor, welcome to the department). Zaireen was our newest member in the department who got transferred from another department.

This was the exact recipe she gave and I did last Sunday… the outcome was thumb up by JL… the only thing I would need to make it thinner and also baked longer as the lasagna sheets were not soft enough.

Generally there are 3 layers – Bolognese Sauce, Cream Cheese Sauce and Lasagna Sheets. The last and top layer would be the Cream Cheese Sauce with Mozarella+Parmesan cheese.

Ingredients:

Bolognese sauce

3-4 cups minced chicken

½ cup button mushroom

1 can Prego sauce (original)

1 cup onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, chopped

Butter

• Sauté the onion and garlic with butter until golden brown.

• Add the minced chicken and wait until the chicken dry (half cooked) before you put in the mushroom.

• Pour in the Prego sauce (you can also use Kimball sauce, tomato paste or DIY own red pasta sauce. Add salt, dry basil or oregano to taste if you want too but I didn’t since I am using Prego sauce. Wait till the sauce is a bit dry.

Cream cheese sauce

4 tbs butter

2 tbs flour

3 cups fresh milk

1 cup cheddar cheese

Salt

Pepper

• Heat the butter. Put in the flour and sauté till brown (in low heat).

• Add in the milk and wait till it simmers before you put in the cheese.

• Season with salt and pepper

Topping

Mozzarella cheese (grated)

Parmesan cheese (grated)

 

Lasagna Sheets - I used Tesco brand which can be easily found at pasta section.

Method:

• In a casserole (any baking dish will do but square would be better), start by layering the Bolognese sauce, followed with lasagna sheet, then scoop the Bolognese sauce again, followed by cream cheese sauce and finish with lasagna sheet.

• Repeat this till you find the right ‘height’ of your lasagna.

• At the last layer (top), pour the cream cheese sauce and sprinkle with grated Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

• Bake in preheated oven at 150’c (the temp may differ depends on your oven) for 30 mins.

Book Review : Paris goes to Los Angeles

This book 'Paris goes to Los Angeles' had a lot of interesting illustrations, making it a cheerful way of presenting about Los Angeles to kids. It was a diary written by Paris on her trip to Los Angeles with her family meeting her cousins, Jenna and Sarah. This trip was also to celebrate her Uncle Phil’s 50th birthday.

Paris together with her parents and sisters, Liberty and Victoria drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles. One of the interesting places was Hollywood. They visited the Hollywood Walk of Fame where they found lots of their favorite celebrities’ stars on the sidewalk.

From the top of the Ferris wheel, beautiful Venice Beach, a ride on the helicopter, San Diego Zoo, historical place of Gaslamp District, Griffith Park , Angels Flight, and many other places, to last but not least Uncle’s Phil’s party, it was an amazing holiday for Paris and her family. It was also a journey to Los Angeles for both the kids and I as we read this book.

Paris was looking forward for the next trip back to Los Angeles visiting her cousins.

 

Disclosure: As a member of Parent Reviewers' review team, I received the above book for free, courtesy from Amazon (http://www.azmazon.com/). I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Tuna Puff

My colleague, Karina shared with me a simple way of making puffs. Making puffs were a big challenge, she recommended me to buy a frozen puff ‘Kawan’ brand which can be bought from major hypermarket.

I tried on 21Sept2011 morning by using Tuna. I didn’t expect it to be simple and fast.

1. Put some tuna inside the square pastry and fold into triangle (you can opt to fold into half too).

2. Just seal the side with egg yolk and using a fork to press at the side.

3. Using the same fork, make some holes on the part where the pastry was filled with tuna to release the steam while baking

4. Brush the top of the pastry with egg white to give the nice finishing

5. Bake in a pre-heat oven for about 20-25 minutes approximately 180degree Celsius (depend on your oven) or until brown.

JL and AL took to school. That morning, for the 1st time, they both even took some for their breakfast. They usually would only take milk for breakfast but that day, they took Tuna Puff and milk for breakfast.

Next was to check-out how to make different ingredients to fill-up the puff…

Our first Baking – Blueberry Muffins

We bought a few premix from Bake with Yen to try out the oven. I will need to get use using the oven and start hunting for DIY baking before I moved from premix to DIY.

The kids helped up in mixing up the premix with 3 other wet ingredients. We didn’t have a mixer so it was manually mixed. AL helped in putting the lining the muffin tray while JL assisted in pouring the mixture to the muffin mould.

Lastly, we put some chocolate chips on the muffins.

The kids were excited seeing the muffin rising up during baking time in the oven.

This was our first time we did, so it was considered a success even though some muffins were darker than others. I am still trying to learn to get use using the new oven…

Our new oven

We have postponing whether to buy or not an oven for quite some time. We didn’t want to regret at the end and ended up becoming a white elephant taking space of our small and limited kitchen.

At last we decided to get but deciding on the brand and size was the next challenge. After checking with colleague G and friends, we decided to go for Butterfly brand. Another challenge was where to get the oven. Good thing my colleague G told me the HQ was in Jalan Ipoh. I searched in the internet for the telephone number to call and found from HQ a nearby branch for me to go. Next, I searched again in the internet for the nearby shop just before Hari Raya and got the price. PaPa was supposed to go and get it but was caught with outstation work.

So yesterday, Thursday 15Sept2011 (today is Hari Malaysia) after work, I drove home and fetch JL to PJ Old Town. AL was sleeping. It was no jam to go there but quite a bad jam to go home after purchasing the oven. I had already checked in the internet for the location of the shop and using Papago (installed in my phone) with JL help, we found the shop.

We bought a 42l oven, a small square baking tray, a 12-muffin baking tray, cupcakes paper and a mixer spatula, all at slightly over RM400. The oven was RM380. When I saw the oven, it looked similar to Anggie’s oven. Yes, I can get Anggie’s help if I am stuck with this oven.

Our next challenge was to arrange the kitchen… at the end I kept the rice cooker in the cupboard and hopefully PaPa and I would be find the best way to re-arrange things in the kitchen.

The kids were excited to try out that weekend….next post….

DIY Ceiling Fan in JL’s room

After shrinking the kids’ room into JL’s mini room and tiny store room, the ceiling fan was far too long for JL’s room. This was the fan which we had from the time we bought this apartment. It was still in a good condition.

We went to Panasonic shop to check out the long and short blade fans. PaPa found that the fans blade can be interchangeable. So, PaPa went to Panasonic service centre to order for 3xshort blades which was only about RM 40. PaPa went to collect the short blades and came back to change the long blades to the short blades.

We were happy with the outcome because we didn’t need to spend money buying baby fan which would have cost us a few hundred without knowing what to do with the old fan which was still functioning well.

Now, JL’s room had a modified baby fan…

Real Estate Industry

Real estate is blooming very fast with more people moving from the corporate world into the real estate industry as real estate negotiator.  Every deal closed regardless sale or rental will generate income depends on the value of the property. Can you imagine if a person manages to close high end property deal like this in table rock real estate at pinnshores.com? How much will the person earn? It will be quite a big amount which motivates people to move to this industry.

Cost cutting by using conferencing

My previous company went to a drastic cut costing in travelling by introducing conference calling services. All the directors’ rooms were equipped with conferencing telephone. All the meeting rooms were also being equipped with conferencing facilities. This had save the company cost for travelling to meeting venue and also save time from travelling. Nowadays, more companies had embarked to this method with introduction of working from home. This helped to save time from spending too much time on the road to beat all those horrible traffic jams.