I'm a full-time mummy

For this post, I am sharing my next food recipe, Stir-Fry Chicken with Chinese Long Beans. I finally had a chance to go for a quick grocery shopping (lugging our 2 older kiddos along and leaving our youngest with my MIL at home) and I passed by the vege sections a few rounds and was beating myself up while mentally scolding myself that I MUST get some veges before I head home with the kiddos.

You see, I am not a fan of vege and ever since I decided to devote my passion in cooking homemade food for all meals (whenever possible) once our 5 years old boy started his preK early this year, I told myself I must include vege in our meals no matter what. Must get kiddos to eat vege and must also show examples to them that mummy also takes vege.

Now my knowledge of green colored vege is really limited and what more at the whim of that moment, I just grabbed one of the familiar looking vege - Chinese long beans and told myself I'll figure out some recipe once we reached home. So without further ado, here is the recipe for Stir-Fry Chicken with Chinese Long Beans:

Ingredients:
* Chinese Long Beans
* Chicken boneless - cut up to small cubes, quantity up to you actually
* 1-2 tbsp of oyster sauce (you can add water to dilute the sauce)
* Garlic - 1-2 cloves sliced finely
* Oil - about 1 tbsp

Methods:
* Wash the Chinese Long Beans, soak them for about 10-15 minutes.
* Cut off the ends, and chopped into smaller lengths (I cut about 1cm each)
* For the chicken, wash and pat dry. Cut into smaller size (I choose boneless part as they are easier for kiddos to eat)
* Heat up oil in pan.
* Fry the garlic next until you smell nice garlic-ky smell from the frying pan. Be careful not to overfry them as it will give bitter taste then.
* Fry the chicken for a few minutes.
* Add the Chinese Long Beans and oyster sauce and stir in.
* Let the sauce simmer for about 5 minutes.
 

Outcome:

I had a horrified look as I see my hubby and our 2 kiddos dig into this dish. I mean, wouldn't you be terrified knowing that you just cooked something without any recipe to follow and watching your 'guinea pigs' trying out your cooking?! Anyway, surprisingly, despite seeing the vibrant green colored vege in their plates, both our kiddos did not mention anything about the existence of green vege in their plates! They ate everything without making a fuss! I'm amazed! I'm gobsmacked! This recipe is for keeps!

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

When I came across this article, I was intrigued and wanted to find out more on what does my statues on Facebook says about myself.

Description from the app page:

 "Five Labs predicts personality by analyzing your language, using an artificial intelligence engine. Five Labs examines the linguistic content of Facebook wall posts, pulling key words to make strikingly accurate estimates about individual personalities. The method is based on a study published by H. Andrew Schwartz and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania's World Well-Being Project. An advisor to Five, Mr. Schwartz’s research on language and personality was featured in the Public Library of Science (PLOS) in September 2013.

The application’s predictions are based around the Big Five personality traits: the leading personality theory in modern psychology. According to the theory, personality is based on the following five characteristics: extraversion, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness."

So I checked out the app and here goes my results! To a certain extent, I do agree with the analysed results, quite accurate for some aspects. Wow, right below my name: Solitary, cautious, sensitive, easy-going and friendly. Not bad, not bad. I am an introvert, shy and not very sociable so yeah, that kinda mean I am a solitary type of person. I am also a cautious person thanks to my paranoia of stalkers and kidnappers and all... sensitive yes, yes... easy-going, oh well, as a mother of 3 hyperactive bouncy kiddos, I have to be easy-going, live and let live you know?

As for friendly traits, well, I would say that will only unfold once I am more comfortable with the person - remember I am a solitary and cautious person? So, these 2 traits will have to be dealt with first in order for people to see my friendly chirpy side hahahaha...

What is cool is you can clicked on each of the characteristics displayed to find out more on how it applies to yourself. You can see some bar graphs of yourself being compared with some famous people and celebs or even your friends on your Facebook, not that I bother to know how I fared against Obama or Oprah etc...

You can find out what does YOUR Facebook statuses say about you at Five Labs website.

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

A month ago, I received an email invitation from WooYu Studio (btw, WooYu means 'milk' in Korean) to try out this concept of 'self-shooting service' in a studio. To tell you the truth, I am a super duper shy person and I guard my family and my privacy strictly. When I saw the 'self-shooting service' concept, it got me interested as that would mean I don't have to fake a smile or pretend to be happy and comfy in front on a stranger! I fell in love with this concept right away!

Now next thing being my paranoid checklist was the safety of the pictures taken. I definitely do not want pictures of my family and I being distributed around without my consent so I find out more from WooYu Studio on how the process goes for the images taken. Turns out, with the 'self-shooting service' concept, since we bring our own camera, we totally have the ownership of the photos taken.

FYI, we do not own any DSLR camera and my digital camera has not been touched for ages since I have my Nokia phone which churns out nice pictures for me hahaha, so for this review, we actually used the DSLR camera from WooYu studio. Do note that for those clients who opted to rent their camera (charges depend on the DSLR camera) to do the shooting in their studio, they will copy all the image files into a disc and give to them once the photoshoot is done.

Without further ado, check out my review below...

About the company:
"WooYu studio is a family and children friendly studio. We know how photos bring back memories. As parents, we would like to capture every moments recording our children's growth....and, we also realize that to hire a photographer may be costly to some family. So, here we are setting up a studio where you can take photos of your family with all the essential lighting, tools, background and props in a comfortable studio at affordable price. Services provided: Families, Little Ones, Singles, Make-Overs, Couples, pre-wedding, pre-birthday, product."

It was a breeze communicating with Yvonne, the person in-charge of WooYu Studio. She answered all my worries and concerns and totally understand my paranoid point of view as well. We settled on doing the photoshoot at 3pm on a Sunday. (*Tips: According to Yvonne, best time to do photoshoot is before noontime, around 11am when the daylight is just nice) I also mentioned to Yvonne that we will need to use their camera since we have none but we will bring our USB thumb drive to copy out the images once done.

So on the photoshoot day, I tried to match our family's clothes but hey, who am I kidding?! We ended up decking our kiddos in purple theme clothing while hubby and I have sort of blue black theme.

** Location wise to the studio: To be honest, we felt that the location does not do justice to WooYu Studio. It is situated in a newly developed area (they just started the studio late last year) So, all around the shoplots area there are a lot of empty lots. Anyway, we finally managed to find the right block based on the map provided by WooYu Studio to us and once we stepped into the studio, we felt so comfortable and at ease. Totally different feel from outside!

** Equipments and facilities provided in the studio:

Tucked at one of the corner in the studio, you can see tons of kiddos' costumes being hung on some wooden rods. There are also cute little caps and hats and hairbands and all sorts of accessories for the kiddos (there are some adults hats as well) One of the things that caught my eyes was a nicely arranged row of disposable diapers in one of the racks. I asked Yvonne what are the diapers for and she told me sometimes, the parents who came for the photoshoot needed to change diapers for their kiddos and hence, the spare diapers for their use. What a nice gesture!

The decoration around the studio has a home-y feel. Lots of nice plush toys and comfy rugs. Smooth clean floor and bright lighting shining into the studio. You can also see different backdrop themes to lighting, cameras, lenses, flashes, props in the studio.

Since we are not experienced in using DSLR camera, Yvonne and her partner, Mr. Yoon were so helpful in guiding and teaching us how to take pictures using their Canon 5D Mark III DSLR camera. All I know is I just need to point to where I want to shoot the picture and press the button hahahaha... While we get ourselves familiarise with the camera and have fun trying out the accessories on our kiddos (and ourselves!), Yvonne and Mr. Yoon quietly and quickly setup the backdrop and everything that is required for us to commence our photoshoot.

** Photoshoot session in the studio:

When everything is ready, we just step into the photoshoot area and start taking pictures. Yvonne and Mr. Yoon quietly slipped away from us to let us enjoy our photoshoot without interruptions from anything else.

I for one am glad I do not need to fake a smile or pose here and there - I mean, I honestly want photos of myself and my family that is natural and not faked out to impress anyone. I want the pictures to show that is how we are.

Some of the pictures such as our family pictures were taken by Mr. Yoon, we love it! And there were some taken of me playing with our 2 older kiddos while hubby carried our sleeping 8 months old baby, those were also taken by Mr. Yoon. Lovely shots at the right time!  

We moved on to other backdrops, each time quietly and quickly setup by WooYu Studio while we hung around, checking out the deco and playing with our kiddos.

Watching our 8 months old baby moving herself up to an almost standing position, priceless! Did I mention that I'm happy that there are so many plush toys and soft comfy rugs around?

** Photos taken in the studio:

We took about 2.5 hours in total for the entire photoshoot. Once done, we passed our USB thumb drive to Mr. Yoon for them to copy out the images from the DSLR to the thumb drive. The process of transferring the images was very fast. The awesome thing is there is no fuss or hidden cost which you might encounter elsewhere whereby if clients like some particular photos, they have to pay extra to take the photos back. At WooYu studio, you won't experience those issues.

** SUMMARY OF REVIEW:

We really enjoyed ourselves, we felt very relaxed and at ease with the whole photoshoot experience. No strangers to boss us around, telling us how to pose or how to smile (quiet impossible with 3 kiddos around to be honest!). This 'self shooting service' concept is amazing as you get to have studio quality pictures and yet feel comfy and at home with the environment even though it is not in the comfort of your own home. I would highly recommend this!

You can find out more at https://www.facebook.com/wooyustudio on camera rental charges and etc.

Do note that I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with the products in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine.