Tomb Sweeping Day, 2013

It has been many years since the last time I went to Qing Ming with my parents. This year Emily and I were able to follow my parents and brother. It was a good experience for her as she has never met her paternal great grandparents.
On Saturday, I tried my luck to make Gula Melaka Huat Kueh, using this recipe, as offering for the Tomb Sweeping Day . I was surprised that they rose very nicely and tasted good, except that they did not turn out as light as it should be.
 

School Holidays

One quarter of the year has passed by, this week is the school's 1st semester break. There are no plans since it is such a short one.

Last Sunday, Emily participated in the Union High School Chess Tournament. Hubby and I were surprised when she told us she will be entering this tournament as she has very little knowledge in playing chess. Beginning of last year, we had sent her for weekly chess class, but after a few months we stopped her as she did not show much progress and interest. 

Starting this year, she has picked chess as her co-curricular activity in school and it seems like she is the only one in the club who doesn't attend external chess class. Luckily the chess club teacher is willing to guide her and she practiced using online chess application.

Early this month, her teacher registered her to participate in MSSPP as beginner player. Out of the 5 games, she won 2 (1 opponent didn't turn up).

In yesterday's event, she lost 4 games, won 3 games and 1 tie.

Now she is pestering us to send her to class, but we are hesitating as she will need to spend alot of time practicing if want to get serious. A parent passed to her 2 chess tactic books, I think she will have to make do with that for now and practice using the online chess games since neither hubby nor I play chess :(

 



 

 

 

We didn't stay to watch her matches, instead we hopped over to the Big Bad Wolf book sales at Penang Times Square. The bargain was very good and everything seems so tempting, prices as low as RM5 for a novel. I had to control myself and ended up with only 25 books. The cookbooks were really cheap too but I ended up not buying any as I thought I could find equally good recipes online for free :) I hope they will be back to Penang again.

 

Sesame Dressing Noodle

I bought a bottle of sesame salad dressing from the organic shop few days ago. The shopkeeper told me that it goes well with noodle too.

So for today's lunch, I prepared sesame dressing noodle. I blanched organic ramen then stirred with the salad dressing, added fried garlic and onion, topped with lettuce, shredded cucumber and carrot and finally sprinkled with sesame seed and ground peanuts. Turned out to be good and everyone liked it.

I also prepared "char siu" but it turned out to be a tad too dry :(

The salad dressing is quite pricey, RM15 for a small bottle like this.  Probably I should look for recipes on how to prepare this dressing. 

 



Sunday Lunch

Bought some US potatoes last night and I found some recipes on oven-baked potato wedges. Due to constraint in ingredients, I had to alter the recipe to fit what is avaialble. I mixed mayonaise, parmesan cheese and salt and baked for ~25 mins. Turned out to be good, the kids love it.

 

 

Buttered rice with pork, pumpkin, carrot and corn, sprinkled with cranberry. Grilled salmon with herbs.

 

 

For dessert, we had snow fungus soup with longan and gingko nuts

Fun Time At the Beach

The last time we were at the beach was during our Langkawi trip.. Gosh, that was about 5 months ago. Since Emily's exam is over and hubby was back from his business trip, we decided to bring the kids to the beach at Batu Ferringhi. We had a quick breakfast at home and by the time we reached the beach, it was almost 11am. We found a shady spot under the tree and the kids got to dig sand using their beach tools playset. Jared was screaming alot as he was afraid of the ants crawling on the sand :(

Jared and his scribbles

This evening, Jared showed me his drawing which he called it the "car motorbike". He explained that the top portion is a car and the bottom is motorbike, with a girl sitting behind and a boy driving it.

 

 

 

Then he continued to draw and this is the end result of his so-called car motobike, with staircase added to the top portion :)

 

A Little Bookmark For My Girl

A FB friend posted these phrases. I thought they are very inspiring. So I decided to print and make a bookmark out of it. Tucked it in Emily's school bag just now to surprise her when she discovers it in school tomorrow. Hopefully she will like it.

 

CNY Gathering with Ex-Colleagues

CNY is already over. Have to blog about this before it slips my mind.
I had a gathering with a few close ex-colleagues. We have all known each other for more than a decade, 1 of them, GY for almost 2 decades. Time flies isn't it.. 
It was a great gathering at Golden Triangle, alot of catching up with everyone, lots of crazy jokes and laughter and too much to eat since it was ala-carte buffet. Everyone ate till we finally surrendered :). I had to skip breakfast and took a very light lunch and dinner the following day, LOL..

Ex-Colleagues cum good friends



 

With BL

 

 

 We talked so much till forgotten to take photos of our dishes. Only 1 photo towards the end of the sesion :)