Lego time!

Lately, I have graduated Ethan from his set of wooden ABC blocks to the more sophisticated looking blocks; the good old Lego Duplo. We have been building airplanes, somewhat-giraffe-looking animal, a green-man, and incomprehensible objects (well ,my husband calls it "building out-of-the-box"; hmm, that didn't sound too bad really) just to name a few.

Anyhow, just when I feel so proud after constructing something interesting looking, my engineer-in-the-making will seize it away and de-construct them, each one of them into pieces, back to its original shape … after EVERY ONE MINUTE of play. Speaking about short attention span. Never thought my effort could last only a minute?!?

I can only do less than 10 minutes each lego session and I have obviously run out of objects to impress him.

I think we need new toys.

Gee, I can’t wait to see him construct his own objects because obviously I can’t wait to de-construct them!

sour-paus

As some of you guys knew, I went for a 9km marathon with hubs this morning. So, last night, I thought of a brilliant idea to make Red Bean (tausa) Pau for all of us for breakfast.

So what I did was, I prepared the tausa dough last night, left it in the oven to proof. Thougt I should only line the paus in the steamer this morning so that all of us would have a nice piping hot tausa pau for breakfast.

However, when I went down this morning at 6 to steam the paus, to my horror, I saw these awful, ugly, flat and bubbly pau dough sitting on the oven tray starring at me! THEY LOOKED SICK!!! Immediately, I darted over to my computer to google why my sweet looking tausa pau turned into an ugly-sick looking pau this morning. URGH….

Answer is: I over-proofed my paus.

Gee. So I learned a lesson not to over proof dough(s) for paus, breads etc. Here I thought it would be an intelligent idea to let it sit and to serve it fresh the next day. Not so intelligent after all. ?!

So, I came across some tips when making dough/bread/pau/buns or rather what went wrong when…

Crust is Too Thick
• Too much flour
• Insufficient rising
• Oven temperature too low

Baked Loaf Crumbles
• Dough not well mixed• Too much flour added
• Rising place too warm
• Dough allowed to rise too long
• Oven temperature too low

Bread has Sour Taste
• Rising place too warm and dough rose too fast
• Dough rose too long before being baked

Dough Does Not Rise
• Water temperature too cool for dissolving yeast• Dough to stiff – reduce flour
• Rising place too cool – raise in warmer area

Bread has Dark Streaks
• Uneven mixing or kneading
• Bowl greased too heavily
• Dough not covered during rising

Bread has Holes in it
• Air not completely pressed out of dough during kneading and shaping
• Dough rose too long before baking

Tops of Bread Cracks
• Bread cooled too rapidly – probably in a draft
• Dough too stiff – reduce flour
• Dough not well mixed

Bread Doesn’t Rise in Oven
• Rising place too warm
• Yeast weak or old
• Dough allowed to risk too long

Bread is Heavy and Compact
• Too much flour added
• Dough not allowed to rise long enough
• Certain flours create heavier products (whole wheat and rye)

Bread Doughy Inside and Coarse Grained
• Loaf under baked
• Insufficient rising

Bread Falls in Oven
• Dough rose too much before baking

Bread Does Not Brown on Sides
• Pan too bright which reflects heat away from sides
• Overcrowding in oven
• Poor pan placement – try a different area of the oven

Bread Smells and Tastes of Yeast
• Rising time too long
• Rising place too warm

Bread is Doughy on Bottom
• Bread left in pans to cool. Remove from pans and cool on rack

My goodness. Its not all that easy to make a nice tausa pau isn’t it?

Anyways, all of us ate the ugly looking paus. They tasted a little sour, but the tausa taste manage to cover-up the sour dough. And so, should you want to try making sour paus, ladies and gentlemen, just overproof your paus!

Jog for Hope 2010

Good grief!

I'm joining my husband for his uni's charity marathon drive, Jog for Hope 2010 tomorrow. I'm pretty nervous now. The last time I did running/cross-country, I always finished in the top 10. Right now,after more than 15 years of not running, I'm just hoping I won't be in the LAST 10!

a sweet treat

I made this low fat strawberry ice-ream for the boys.

I'm not usually a strawberry ice-cream person, but I enjoyed this thoroughly myself.

So, I had to dig into my son's share...

I was happy!

Ethan at 18 months

Can I say Ethan's development is growing... exponentially? Gee. He is amazing us with new tricks, words, behavior, and smiles everyday. Just yesterday, we found out that he could put together two/three words together... ie
daddy car
car key
yiyi car
kick ball
cut cake (yiyi has been baking and icing for the past 4 weeks and therefore we had to cut and eat her beautifully decorated cake for the past month)
a, d, she
one, the, tee
a, d, she, d,e, e, g…

We found out that he is able to self feed, but seriously messy. I think we should be making him feed himself more often. And the one time when we gave him a spoon to scoop some mini ice cream cup, he took it with his left hand...uhoooo. so we kinda think he is a leftie.

He loves to eat... we're not really sure if he eats well and if he is eating enough... but sometimes he does eat my kind of portion. On a typical weekday over at the grandma's, he would start off the day with a bottle of 200ml milk, then a huge bowl of cereal for breakfast. For lunch, he would either get a huge bowl of ABC pasta, soup noodle or porridge. He has tea between 4-4.30 and he gets 2 mini pods of yogurt, and 1 kiwi fruit or a banana or sometimes a slice of bread with cheese. Then for dinner, he gets another huge bowl of pasta or porridge.

That's alot isn't it? I don't think I eat as much and as frequent.
Anyway, the drama happens when are on the dining table.


For example:

Eating Mangoes.
Now that it's the mango season.. not sure it is but we have been getting good mangoes, my little champ and I have been feasting on mangoes.

Last night when I asked if he wanted mangoes ... and he started saying ango, ango ango... angoooOOOOOOOO, angoooooooooOOOOOOOOOO, ANGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO... and so

I took out the mango, showed it him and he went ANGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..

And so I had to say WAITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, mummy cut and give! And he replied... "pissss".

10 minutes later he was giggling.

More dramas...


Butter Cheese


Last weekend, hubby and I thought we should just have the old fashion favourite breakfast at home before we head off the day with heaps of activities lined up - back to back! We tossed 2 slices of whole meal bread in the toaster, I had a cup of coffee while hubby had a cup of tea. Then I took the butter dish and a bottle of strawberry preserves to go with the toasts. Ethan was on his highchair next to us eating his cereal. When we opened up the butter dish, he looked at the dish and screamed cisssssssshhh... cisssssssssshhhhhhhhhh... reached out to the dish and screamed cishhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Hubby and I looked at each other, and we looked really puzzled because there weren't any cheese on the table. And for the loudest time, he looked at the dish and yelled CISHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..... and then hubby and I cracked and laughed... Our smartest 18 month old wanted to eat a block of butter because it looked like a block of creamy juicy cheese! And obviously he didn't get the any cheese or butter that morning!

Bedtime stories


So far, we have been quite lucky with this little dynamo because he can actually sleep anywhere, at anytime, and at any position when is tired. And so we learned the trick. To have him do all sorts of activities to zap off his energy during the day and so hubby and I could have some quite time at night. And right now, his bedtime routine will start off hubby giving him warm wash and wipe down, change into his pajamas and finally he gets to choose a book for bedtime stories. Sometimes we will all jump into bed together for bedtime stories. I love it when daddy reads "We're going for a bear hunt"! Funny thing is it's ideal that he goes to sleep (or rather we all go to sleep) after ONE book... but hey no. Our part-time night owl sometimes insist we read the same book a zillion times before he hits slumberland. So what happens when daddy is zonked and mummy is busy ironing, we just chuck in one of his favourites and he will be "reading" his book, and I mean "reading" out LOUD. And sigh, after ironing a mountain load of clothes, I find my tot snoring, with the book next to his mouth and half of it wet! Obviously he has been experimenting if he could potentially chew up the book and swallow it like one of his teething biscuits.

My son.

18 months and counting...