After my Japan trip, I’d been attempting to try to prepare some dishes with Japanese flavour at home.

Every weekend, we’ve been having salad with Japanese style dressing.
Sauce : 1 tbs teriyaki sauce, 1 tbs soya sauce, 1 tbs sesame oil, 1 tbs Udo’s oil blend, 1 tbs lime juice, 1 tbs toasted sesame

Yakitori – grilled chicken or Japanese Satay as Zara calls them.
Seasoning : salt, pepper and Mirin; or teriyaki sauce

Zucchini with miso paste
Sauce : Miso paste and ground toasted sesame.

When we have these, the girls will be happily having their Mac and Cheese.

My brother, the romancer the king, threw a not-so surprise party for King’s Wife to celebrate their 20th anniversary. He had the event planned out with the help of my nieces and his staff.

(I was sms-ing my niece, Ally, before the party, if King wanted a real surprise, he should have invited some of her blogger friends.)

It was a garden party in a down town restaurant; the place was adorned with flowers, and candles lining the path to the dining area, very romantic set up. They also hired a music machine for the night.

The royal family arrived after everybody. King’s Wife wasn’t quite surprised because my brother burst his own bubbles in the car. Haih. Nonetheless, I think she must feel very ‘lum’ (Cantonese : touched to the core).

My nieces gave an opening speech, followed by my brother, and then without any planning, this happened.
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Zara took on the stage with little coaxing from Sam, her favourite cousin, and started singing totally irrelevant A, B, C song, and then a Chinese New Year Song (Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni) to an audience of ~40 people. What guts she has! (My dad said she was just like me when I was her age, ever willing to stand up and sing a song to entertain his friends.) o.O

After her, my brother’s staffs made him sing ‘their song’ for King’s Wife, accompanied by a violinist. No prize for guessing who went on stage to dance.

(It wasn’t a karaoke party, so the singing stopped here).

Ally conned her mum into giving her all their really old photos, using the reason that she needed them for school project. Using the photos, a photo slide was done on the royal couple’s courtship to the 20years they’d been married. Everybody had a good laugh seeing some of those really ancient photos!

The food was a disappointment, but when the DJ started playing all the 1980s hit, every body hit the dance floor; even Daddy, who normally shy away from dancing (I trust he had a bit too much to drink too). Haha.

The girls, especially Zara, really had a great time.  What a great party it was!

My google ranking is ZERO now! (actually not just now, but since Jan 1st)

Daddy is not around, so I have to send Zara to school in the mornings, getting stuck in the heavy traffic!

Only 1 maid at home, cannot do my own things or work after 6:30pm until the girls are asleep.

Zara throwing lots of tamtrums, probably missing Tuyam, and maybe also because she’s tired sleeping late and waking up early for school.

So many escalations lately at work. Working late all the time!

I want to do this tooo…..
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(but then I’ll be careful and not knock my head so hard until I get a permanant bruise on my forehead)
(this also explains why I have not been visiting your blogs)

After 8years of working with us, Tuyam finally decided to go home for good, to get married and start a family.

She may not be the most efficient or productive maid, but we’re used to each other. She cooks well, we trusted her, and Zara was in her care since day 1 (this was when Tuyam picked up most of her English). I vent my frustration to her about Daddy, In-laws and sometimes work (whether or not she understood or able to fully comprehend me, she listened).

Yesterday, we drove her to the airport and bid her farewell. Only my Filipino maid, Jelly, was in tears, Tuyam has been her companion since she started working with us in March 2007.

All of us have been preparing Zara for Tuyam’s departure, but I think she didn’t know that this time her kakak wasn’t coming back anymore (unlike previous years where Tuyam went home for holidays and came back). Zara has been saying things like, “I’m going to lock all the doors, so kakak cannot go home.” or “Kakak go back Indonesia, buy me mangos and princess bajus (Malay : clothes) when you come back ok?”

Last night before sleeping, Zara told me, “Mummy I want kakak.” When I told her kakak has already gone, she replied, “I’m going to take a rope and catch the aeroplane. Then I’m going swing the aeroplane so everybody will get dizzy and the plane cannot fly any more. I’ll bring kakak home!” She then came back to reality and said, “We’ll go Indonesia for holiday and visit kakak when kakak get married. Or kakak will come for holidays, right?” That’s what Daddy had agreed, we’ll visit Tuyam sometime this year in Indonesia, or she can always stay with us when she comes to Malaysia for holiday.

Even Zaria is missing Tuyam, this morning she woke up and started calling out, “Kakak.. kakak…”

Bye bye Tuyam, you may not be the best maid but you’d been our companion and we will all miss you.

During the year end, there’s normally a lot of partying to do within the family. There are lots of birthdays to celebrate, and then Christmas and New Year celebration etc etc.

Here are some photos of 2007 year end parties (oh well, if you could call the eat-and-talk, eat-and-more-talk sessions parties).

Tasha’s birthday was celebrated in a Chinese Restaurant, it was also my dad’s early Christmas treat to the family.

Tasha’s cuting her cake. The girls checking out the Elmo Jelly cake

We had a Nasi Lemak pot luck at King’s Wife’s place on Christmas Eve.

My father entertaining Zaria; The older kids played charade while we adults do the guessing

We also celebrated Zaria’s 1st birthday together with my brother’s XXth birthday. Since Lilian from a Piece of Cake could not bake Zaria’s cake, I made it myself. Banana cake with Mascarpone frosting.

Applying the frosting and drizzling toffee just before it was served (kids have fun helping and licking the spatula). Not too bad looking for a first time effort (in frosting a cake).

Before 12am, kids were getting restless and eager to open up the presents.

All happily checking out the presents while Zaria was more keen on tearing the wrapper than the present itself.

Turkey was too expensive this year, so instead of paying for a RM200 bird, I roasted a RM14 chicken at home on Christmas Day.

Preparing the potato casserole; the chicken all roasted; the chicken ready to be served; the mix fruit and nuts stuffing

Last week, I was still working half days on certain days. Now that the holidays are over, it’s back to the grind! Baaaa!

(Thanks to all who’d commented with advice and encouring words in my last post, really appreciate it) 

There’s the office work to complete before the Christmas shutdown.
There’s the paid post to do to make some extra cash.
There’s time to spend with the two girls who now require as much attention.
My way of de-stressing besides going for retail therapy and having a really good meal which can only happen during the weekends is to get myself busy the kitchen.

Besides whipping out the Christmas pudding; I attempted to bake a banana cake with toffee banana filling and mascarpone icing; since A Piece Of Cake will not be around to bake Zaria’s upcoming birthday cake, I thought maybe I’ll attempt the feat this year. The icing needs to be worked on as it was melting real quick. I hope Zaria’s cake will turn out better.

I kept myself busy cooking for the 2 fussy girls (the ‘wai-sek’ or greedy Zaria is becoming real fussy with her food now, sigh, so I had added fish to her diet to give her food more flavour); and also made a real good Hokkien Mee or Har Mee. The latter, I just bought the spice, taught Tuyam how to make it and supervise her cooking.

Last week’s creation.

Banana cake with toffee banana filling and runny mascarpone icing

This home-made Penang Har Mee or prawn noodle is so delicious I tell you.

The girls’ fish slice mee suah (Chinese : Wheat noodle)

And for those who have asked, Christmas pudding really is a type of cake which is either steamed or boiled, and not the same as the jelly like Chinese dessert that we are more aware of. For those of you who are interested in getting the recipe, it can be found here.

Daddy wanted some home made Christmas Puddings. The wife got busy one weekend….

Daddy and the few neighbours I gave this to claimed it’s really nice.
Home made Christmas puddings anyone?

It was a long weekend, but we really didn’t want to go out of town. Heavy traffic on the highway, exorbidant hotel rates, why bother?… Luckily we stayed back.

I had a bad throat infection on Friday. On Saturday, I had back ache and joint ache, but I went on to do some cup cakes baking. My maid was going to visit her friend the following day for Raya, (her once a year off day), I thought I’d make some so she can bring over to her friend’s house, since this will be her last year with us after 8 years of service. On top of that, my friends and a couple of kids were coming over to our house, cup cakes are always great for kids. I even attempted to decorate them using fondant.

Zara messed things up helped out; and she only likes the fondant, not the cup cake

By the time I was done, it was 6:30pm. I was running a fever, I felt as though there’s a hot piece of coal stuck in my throat. I was shivering in cold. Daddy brought me to see a doctor, no panel doctor available near by, and it cost me ~RM50! Grrrrr.. why do we always fall ill on public holidays??!!

I slept after the doctor’s visit to nurse my fever. Shivering one minute, feeling hot another. Luckily, 12hours of sleep later, I recovered, and was able to enjoy my friends’ company.

We were old friends from university, 4 of us used to cram in a run down apartment, and we haven’t met probably since my wedding (we met separately, on other occasions, but it was very rare that all 4 of us could meet up at the same time).

No photos of us, but the kids’, only 1 of my friends brought along her kids.

It was close to imposible to take photos of 4 young kids

Zara had so much fun playing with the older girl. I only realised they were spraying water on everything in the play room, filling up their their toy cups and did the ‘yam seng’ (Chinese : Drink Up or Cheers), washing the ‘dishes’ in the fish tank. No wonder she said she missed Yen Mae after they’d left.

I like the colour of Zaria’s food, so I thought I’d take photos of her every day meal for a few days.

She has so far been given mainly home made cereals (brown rice, quinoa, millet) with vege or fruits, and occasionally, we add some Earth Best Whole Grain Rice Cereal when we need to thicken her fruit or vege puree.

She loves pumpkin, apple, pear, sweet potato, banana, papaya; accepted potato, carrot, cauliflower, spinach, plum, brocoli. She refused avocado twice, using her tongue to push it out and turning away from the spoon.

We started with cereals (brown rice, millet, quinoa) and then later added one fruit or vege to her cereal. Sometimes we just give her 1 type of fruit or vege puree, e.g. puree pumpkin, puree papaya or mash sweet potato or mass banana. Later, we started mixing her favourite item to her vege cereal so that she will enjoy it more, e.g. brocoli + apple cereal; cauliflower + pumpkin cereal.

She enjoys meal time, opening her mouth eagerly, shouts out when the feeding is not quick enough.

From memory : spinach cereal, mash purple sweet potato, carrots cereal, brocoli cereal, plum puree, cauliflower cerel, potato cereal, pumpkin puree, carrot and apple cereal

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Besides paying attention to Zaria’s food at home, I’d also been keeping myself busy in the kitchen with some baking and others.

Let the photos say it.

Cup cakes for Zara and her friends; biscotti; ingredient for pesto; and pesto after blending

Every body is kept happy with some home made food.

Daddy is very supportive of Ikea. When we moved in to our new house, we tried to get most of our furniture from Ikea. People had adviced us against getting wardrobe and kitchen cabinet from Ikea, claiming they are not suitable for our weather. Daddy, however, thought the 10 years warranty given were good ‘guarentee’ enough.

So despite the advice, we bought our kitchens (both wet and dry) cabinets from Ikea.  It was the Nexus Oak series that we got, doors were just oak veneer but we paid quite a lot for them.

After just 2 years, the doors started to have stains, a darkish patch started spreading like some kind of disease. Even the plinth (or the skirting) caught the stain.

Daddy started making calls to Ikea. At first, they claimed we need to bring the items back for exchange. Kitchen doors! To uninstall them and bring them in for exchange!! Daddy asked to speak to higher management, his voice was louder with each calls made.

After a few more calls, the Ikea contractor who did the installation were called in to do inspection, followed by Ikea folks, snapping photos here and there. Then, we were told Nexus Oak is no longer available, how about if they replaced the affected doors with aluminium doors (or was it glass?) or Nexus Birch (similar in price to what we paid). We made several trips to Ikea, to see how we can mix and match our doors, i.e. the current Nexus Oak coexisting with a few aluminium doors or Nexus Birch. I just couldn’t see how they will match.

Daddy made more calls, speaking to various people mainly from customer service, voicing his concerns. Eventually, they agreed to replace our doors and plints with whatever material we choose from their available series! We chose solid oak (Ulriksdal Oak) to replace the oak veneer, it’s more expensive, but the closest we can get to our original doors.

We made our decision in the little room in Ikea.
Customer Service : “Blah blah blah…. Solid Oak then?”
Me : “But they look odd, some with grooves (Ulriksdal Oak) and some without (Nexus Oak)”
Customer Service : “All your doors will be replaced.”
Me : *pupil widened*“At no cost?”
Customer Service : “Yeah, we bear the cost”
Daddy : (usually a bit slow) “How can they charge us? But yeah man, the doors will be a bit mismatch, some with grooves some without.”
Me : *nudged Daddy” “She said ALL doors lah!”
Daddy : *pupil widened (finally got it)* “ALL the DOORS? At no cost?”
Customer Service : “Yes.”

Few days later, doors and plints were sent over by the delivery guys (at NO COST), then Ikea contractor dropped by to install them (at NO COST), and the old doors and plints were packed and brought back to Ikea (at NO COST).

We got our kitchen cabinets upgraded a few days later AT NO COST!

Daddy was happily exclaiming, “See, that’s what I call customer service. And that’s why I don’t want to buy my kitchen cabinets from some Ah Chong company. With Ikea’s 10 years warranty, I don’t have to worry if anything goes wrong”

This is true, but not without some noise making though.