Stir-Fry Fish Slices with Ginger & Scallions

~ Posted on Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 5:07 PM ~

For this post, I am sharing my next food recipe, Stir-Fry Fish with Ginger & Scallions (in Cantonese, we called this 'Keung Choong Yue Phin'). Without further ado, here is the recipe for Stir-Fry Fish Slices with Ginger & Scallions:


Ingredients:
* Fish (I used Asian sea bass or we called it siakap here in Malaysia)
 * Garlic (quantity up to you, the more the better flavor - cut into small slices)
 * Scallions (quantity up to you, the more the better flavor - cut into small pieces about 1cm in length)
* Ginger
(quantity up to you, the more the better flavor - cut into thin slices about 2-3mm wide)
 
* A pinch of salt (to marinade fish and flavoring)
* 1 tsp of chicken stock powder (for gravy/sauce)
* Half cup of water (to make the gravy/sauce)
* Oil - for frying the chicken meat (quantity up to you)

Methods: 
 
* Wash the fish, make sure they are as dry as possible (use paper towel to absorb). Slice the fish into bite-sized chunks.
* Marinate with salt for about 10 minutes.
* Heat up oil in pan.
* Fry the fish until half cooked (I normally fry until a bit brown)
* Add ginger and continue frying for about 2-3 minutes
* Add garlic and scallions followed by water and chicken stock powder, cover the frying pan and continue frying for another 10-15 minutes
* Ready to serve

 

Outcome:

Stir-Fry Fish Slices with Ginger & Scallions


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The Story of A Butterfly

~ Posted on Thursday, November 10, 2016 at 11:20 PM ~

I hope to share with you all the inspiring message from the story of a butterfly that I read recently. There's quite a number of versions to this story but the lessons to learn are the same.

"Once a little boy was playing outdoors and found a fascinating caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy worriedly called his mother who came and understood that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon. The mother explained to the boy how the caterpillar was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The little boy was thrilled to hear about the changes his caterpillar would go through. He watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further. The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He knew that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand. But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly…

The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly. His kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.

If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.

In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.

 

When I asked god for strength, he gave me difficult situations to face.

When I asked god for brain & brown, he gave me puzzles in life to solve.

When I asked god for happiness, he showed me some unhappy people.

When I asked god for wealth, he showed me how to work hard.

When I asked god for favors, he showed me opportunities to work hard.

When I asked god for peace, he showed me how to help others.

God gave me nothing I wanted; he gave me everything I needed."

The Story of A Butterfly

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Play-Doh Town Firehouse

~ Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 12:23 PM ~

We have previously reviewed the Play-Doh party pack a while back and everyone enjoyed the experience so when our kiddos saw the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box on my office table, they went crazy excited and can't wait to open up the box to play with the new Play-Doh set!

Play-Doh Town Firehouse

In the Play-Doh Town Firehouse box set, it included a Firehouse set, firefighter figure with hat, puppy extruder, roof, flame stamper, water cannon extruder, axe, hydrant extruder, and 4 cans of Play-Doh brand modeling compound (color: yellow, neon orange, teal green and bright blue). After making them wait for few hours (testing their patience hehehe!)

I finally opened up the box and slowly assembled the items according to the user-friendly manual that came along with the box. According to the usage guide on the box, the Play-Doh Town Firehouse is for children 3+ years, just nice for our 3 krakens age ranging from 3 to 7.5 years old at the moment :)

Play-Doh Town Firehouse

Like every other Asian parents, I'm very OCD and concerned that it will be messy when my kids play, but the trick is to lay a good "foundation mat" around before they start playing. I like it when our kiddos play with the Play-Doh as I truly believe it helps to cultivate their creativity and helps improve their motor skills as their little fingers squeeze and mould the compound and watching them immersed themselves in their role-play world is just a sight to behold!

I took the opportunity to show our kiddos how to make the fiery flame sculpture from the flame stamper, a bit of yellow in the center bottom part surrounded by some neon orange Play-Doh and voila... fiery flames ready to be played with! I should've used more yellow but I decided to let our kiddos try and figure it out by themselves hehehe... As parents, we should know Play-Doh is a really awesome teaching tool! You get to teach kiddos to identify colors, to mix and create new colors (blue + yellow = green for example). Just gotta seize the moments when the teaching opportunities come along!

Play-Doh Town Firehouse

I also allowed our 3-year-old girl to experiment on making the teddy bear sculpture herself. As you can see in the pictures below, she took a slab of bright blue Play-Doh and stamped out the teddy bear sculpture. Awesome!

Play-Doh Town Firehouse

The nice part is our 3 kiddos were sitting quietly and playing together, not fighting and just enjoy discovering the cool things that they can churned out from the Play-Doh Town Firehouse set. What a nice siblings bonding and teamwork activity hahaha!

Play-Doh Town Firehouse

I'm a full-time mummy

By the way, Play-Doh celebrates its 60th birthday this year! Whoaaaa!! 6 decades of awesomeness for many generations of kiddos! The iconic yellow can has expanded into more than 80 countries across the globe, with more than 3 billion cans of Play-Doh compound sold - that’s enough Play-Doh compound to reach to the moon and back THREE times! Cool-ness!

The Play-Doh Town Firehouse is available in all leading departmental, toy stores, baby shops and hypermarkets.

 

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. 

** 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.