I'm a full-time mummy

We've been adopting a new timetable for our kiddos since last week where we wake up at 8am, get ready for breakfast by 8.30am and then reading time, or water pool activity time (or replaced with running or cycling at porch when my kiddos do not want to play water) then playroom activities, daytime bath, then preparation for lunch, then learning activities for half an hour then naptime at 2pm to 4pm then they wake up for tea break and another round of learning activities for half an hour and TV time for 1 hour and then dinner time, then rest for a while and go for evening bath followed by bonding time with grandma and/or daddy before heading for bed at 9.30pm.

I've also changed our kiddos breakfast to cereals (we buy Post cereals) and I've been making fruit juices and fruit smoothies for them to accompany their cereal breakfast.

This is one of the fruit smoothies I made last week:

Half a carrot + 1 apple + 1 mango blended nicely and served in their own sippy cups. Sometimes my 1.5 year old girl will finish hers, else I will end up finishing for her while my 4 years old boy will always finish his fruit juices/smoothies. I think this idea is great as I get to sneak in some veggies in the juice/smoothies and they don't notice anything.

I basically just blend whatever fruits we have on hand, but mostly we rotate between apples, pears, bananas, mangoes and carrots definitely.

Do you have any favorite/signature fruit juices/smoothies?

I had earlier confessed that one of my 2013 resolutions (I rarely made them in my life so when I made it for this year, I'm trying to stick by it!) is to learn to cook for the family. For this post, I am sharing my next dish, guided by hubby (who got the recipe from his eldest sister) and to be honest, this is the dish that sort of helped me get over my luncheon meat addiction during my initial morning sickness phase (yup, been eating luncheon meat everyday for almost 2 weeks!)

Ingredients:

1. Chicken (depending how much you want)
2. Salted chicken seasoning mix (I use about 4 tsp for the amount of chicken meat we have)
3. A small ginger (sliced thinly)
4. Some wolfberries (Chinese called it 'gei ji')

Methods:
* Marinate the chicken with the salted chicken seasoning mix for about 1 hour. I usually pour out 4 tsp of the seasoning mix into a small container and rub the chicken meat all over with the seasoning mix.
* Placed the sliced gingers all around the chicken meat in the metal plate.
* After 1 hour of marinate process, cover the metal plate with an aluminium foil and steam for about 45 minutes.
* Add in the wolfberries by placing them all over the steamed chicken and cover back the aluminium foil.
* Steam for another 15 minutes.

Outcome:

I love this dish! Really! So much that I made it again and again over the next few days! I once tried to put the wolfberries together with the chicken and ginger and steamed them straight for 1 hour (according to my MIL, it is best to steam the wolfberries earlier to get the nutrients from it) but the outcome is slightly different in the sense that the juice produced from the steamed chicken is darker (due to the coloration from the steamed wolfberries). I much prefer to add in the wolfberries 15 minutes before the process finished as I prefer the juice to be clearer.

To view my other recipes, feel free to hop over to my Recipe Library page for more info!

Now that I've learned to make a few soup from the recipes shared by my hubby, I love it! I love that I'm finally cooking something for the family (instead of just for my kiddos) and I love seeing my children slurping the soup.

One obvious reason I'm very determined to make soup is my 17 months old girl loves to eat rice. And when I said rice, I meant, plain rice. No matter how you add in chunks or pieces of meat or tofu or eggs or veggies, she will just pushed those aside and eat... RICE. When I first highlighted this to hubby, he said 'All the more you need to make soup so you can pour the soup over her rice and she still gets the goodness of the soup!'

I don't believe it at first. I've always believe that soup is just water boiled for hours with meats and veggies inside. Just water. Then hubby told me that when you boil meat bones (such as pork or chicken) with vegetables, the marrows from the bones will retain in the soup and we get the nutrients from the soup after that. You can read more on the benefits on bone broth/soup here.

I was convinced then and so far, I've made soup 4 times and everytime, my kids finished their meals. And the following morning, I use the leftover soup as the base when I cooked noodles as breakfast for my kiddos. Which they happily eat finish and even slurped all the soup away. Beats making anchovy soup to be honest! And my almost 4 years old boy telling me 'Mmmm... mummy the soup is nice! I love it!' is just wonderful!

I was so determined to make soups more often for the family (at least 3 times a week is my target) that one day, I woke up early and told hubby to watch after the kiddos (still asleep) while I hurried off to the nearest wet market and bought about 2 weeks supply of pork bones to make soup. I was so desperate to get the pork bones that I even parallel parked my car successfully (after 2 rounds around the market area and couldn't find a nice parking spot and yes, I really failed at parallel parking) because time is running out (scared kiddos awake, scared no more pork bones left).

Anyway, I got what I wanted and am very happy that I'm finally learning to cook for the family (soups for now), slow start but better than nothing right?