I'm a full-time mummy

I posted a picture of the homemade yogurt drinks we made today while I was preparing our dinner and not long after the picture goes up on my FB page, some of my followers and friends asked for the recipe. Oh boy... I normally blogged 2-3 weeks in advance so if I was to write a blog post for this recipe, it would probably be up around mid this month earliest. Since a lot of people are asking for the recipe, oh heck, you guys win. Please appreciate my sacrifice typing this out as fast as I could in darkness and trying hard not to make so much noise (kiddos all asleep btw) LOL

Oh oh, before I forget, please note that the one preparing part 1 & 2 of this tutorial is my hubby (I took pics) while third part is done by me. Hubby got this wonderful recipe from his eldest sis who is still regularly making her homemade yogurts for her 6 children. So the credits goes to them, my job is just to blog this down as I can foresee I will need to be taking over the task of making this for our kiddos from now on, LOL!

Anyway, due to popular demand, here goes my post on Homemade Yogurt Drinks:

Ingredients:

* UHT full cream milk (I used 2 litres as this could last about 1 week+ for us if I could stretch it that long)

* Fresh yogurt (check the label to make sure it has live, active culture - we use Nestle brand for this post though hubby said best brand is Sunglo)

* Fruit juice (you can even cut up fruits in small cubes and add them for extra kicks yummmmmm!)

You will need:

* A clean stainless steel pot (ours comes together with our 2 litres Thermopot, a gift from SIL)

* A kitchen thermometer

* A pot or big container to store the milk for 8 hours, for us, we use the Thermopot, if you don't have one, you can use a stainless steel pot (1st item above), wrap it around in cloth and put it in those styrofoam box to maintain the temperature.

* An induction cooker (you can use your gas stove as well)

* Plastic or glass containers to store your yogurt.

Part 1 - Preparing the milk: 

Step 1: Pour the UHT full cream milk into the stainless steel pot.

Step 2: Turn on induction cooker and using the kitchen thermometer, continue stirring the milk while you monitor the temperature.

Step 3: We set the induction cooker temperature to 160 Celcius (that would be low fire for gas stove)

Step 4: Once the kitchen thermometer temperature reaches 43 Celcius (about 105°F), remove the stainless steel pot from the induction cooker.

Step 5: You are one step closer to making your homemade yogurt!

***** NOTE: Read here to know why you need to maintain the yogurt at 43 Celcius (about 105°F).

 Part 2 - Adding yogurt and maintaining the temperature:

 Step 1: Get ready your natural yogurt - just make sure the one you get has live active cultures in it.

Step 2: Add a heap tablespoon of the natural yogurt into the milk for each litre. In my case, since I used 2 litres milk, I add 2 tablespoons of yogurt.

Step 3: Stir and stir and stir the yogurts into the milk!

Step 4: Cover the stainless steel pot and put back into the thermopot.

Step 5: Leave the yogurt mixture in the thermopot for 8 hours.

Part 3 - Yogurt fruit juice?

* After 8 hours in the thermopot, you can take out the stainless steel pot and distribute the yogurt drinks into smaller containers for easier consumption.

* I pour half yogurt and half fruit juice into each of our containers. We will slowly increase the yogurt portion and reduce the fruit juice portion once our kiddos get used to drinking the yogurt and are fine with the soury yogurt taste.

* Stir in the fruit juice with the yogurt and you get yourself some nice nice nice yogurt drinks, healthy, homemade and nutritious!!

Btw, just some personal testimony, I am really not a big fan of yogurt drinks all this while but after experiencing a few UTI episodes (during 3rd pregnancy and when I was dehydrated) I took one of the container and drank all, and whoa-lahhhh, UTI gone in less than half hour. I have since been regularly helping myself to a few of the yogurt drinks (ooopsss) to keep my UTI far, far, away from me.

Other than for myself, it is good to know our kiddos are really enjoying the yogurt drinks (even our fussy 2.5 years old Alyson drinks it up and declares 'I like it! MMmmmmm!!') and knowing what goes in it (since it's homemade) and you adjust the fruit juice (sweetness) yourself makes the preparation of this even more satisfying.

Oh hubby mentioned that the next step will be making Greek yogurt... whoaaaa... we'll see!

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

I stumbled upon one of those parenting blogs recently and one of the activities done by the kiddos was playing with crystal soil water beads. It looks pretty fascinating to me, although I've seen them being used in plants before, I never thought it can be used in water play, what more for educational and entertaining aspects!

I immediately googled for more info on how these beads work and where to get them for cheap price.

With the crystal soil water beads activity, I got our kiddos to be patient in waiting for the water beads to grow bigger, letting them scoop out the water beads colors that they like using a spoon (motor skills?) and taught our 5 years old boy what is transparent (one of the beads color)

I'm just thrilled to see our kiddos' faces in amazement as they observed the water beads getting bigger and bigger as time goes by. Fun activities I would say!

**** Warning: Parents / caretakers please take note to pay full attention to your kiddos when playing with the water beads in case they put them into their mouth etc. Must always exercised precautions as these colorful beads are cute to play with and the bouncy jelly-like feel might attract kiddos to put them into their mouth (our kiddos squashed some of the water beads causing quite a wee bit of mess) Do also take note that the longer the beads are soaked in water, the bigger they get and the easier they crushed and break easily.

** 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.

For this post, I am sharing my next food recipe, another cherished dish that I used to love eating! I remember back when my mum was still alive, she used to fried fish for us very often, and I can still remember the yummylicious sauce that drizzled off the fried fish... mmmmm... I remember scooping spoonfuls of the soy sauce all over my plate of rice and enjoying the fish so much! No one I know that so far can replicate my mum's fried fish. Sad but true!

Anyway, hubby taught me how to fry fish to almost perfection, yes, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I have to get guidance from him for cooking, oh well, he's an awesome cook anyway. So, as a disclaimer, I take full responsibilities of the recipe here which I definitely can't give you exact measurements and proper steps to cook as well. I pretty much just go by the live and let live motto and cook away!!!! (and hopefully nobody in the family had food poisoning after having this dish hehehehe) Without further ado, here goes my post on Pan Fried Siakap (Asian Seabass):

Ingredients:

Methods:
* Make sure fish is as dry as possible (use paper towel to absorb)
* Marinate fish with salt and pepper before coating fish with corn flour (to prevent fish from sticking to the pan)
* Heat oil in frying pan, fry the ginger slices for a minute or two.
* 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 fish for about 4-5 minutes before frying the other side for about 3-4 minutes.
* If fish flakes upon poking with chopstick or fork, then fish is done. Take out fish and set aside in a plate.
* Pour in the vegetable broth and soy sauce mixture.
* Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes.
* Pour the sauce over the fish. 

Outcome:

I get "This is very delicious!" comment from hubby for this dish! Woweeeee!! To be honest, I've had some failed attempts in frying some fishes the few times prior to this and was starting to lose faith in cooking fish... even commented to hubby that I do not want to cook fish anymore... and got a long lecture from him for giving up easily... so yeah, with new type of fish and more patience and added faith in ownself in cooking, I'm happy to hear the compliments from hubby for this dish! The awesome thing is the sauce I made for this dish really taste like the one my late mum used to make. What a nice memory!

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