Home mumusings #76: Getting kids to clean their hands

Many children (and adults!!!) do not wash their hands thoroughly. My son is one lazy fellow when it comes to certain routines. He did hand-washing in a perfunctory manner most of the time until he caught food poisoning 2 months ago and learnt not to do the following:

(1) pick food up from the floor (usually sweets he drop) to eat

(2) brush against tables/chairs etc when eating out, especially at food centres

(3) run his hands along gates/railings/walls etc

(4) eat without first cleaning his hands (especially after playing with animals and after toilet visit)

Quirky and fun product

One-bowl meal: Seafood kamameshi with venus clams

My husband did his own kamameshi-style lunch (kettle-rice) today using the venus clams my mom bought for us. Little additional flavouring is needed as the clams lend much sweetness to the rice.

Kid and husband's large steel-bowlful of kamameshi

Just prawns, anchovies, ham and spring onion

with shallots oil over rice for me:)

What's needed:

TO GO INTO THE RICE COOKER

Rice grains

Water

Egg

Fresh venus clams

Fresh prawns

Mushroom balls

Sliced Chinese sausage

Enoki

Garlic

Light soya sauce

TO BE ADDED to complete meal - optional

Ham (shredded)

Shallots oil + soya sauce

Spring onion

Fried anchovies

METHOD:

(1) Measure rice and water for cooking as usual - reduce water by just a little because clams will add moisture to the pot

(2) Arrange ingredients above the rice/water and press START. This is if you want the rice to have full seafood flavour. Alternatively, you could add the ingredients after 20 minutes so that seafood won't be overcooked.

(3) Add more ingredients to the one-bowl meal if you wish or simply dribble some shallot-oil/soya sauce over for light flavouring!

Cost: less than S$3.00 for the entire pot of rice (2 servings)

Time needed: 40 minutes on 'Regular' on the Zojirushi

A kamameshi meal (with not so much ingredients) will easily cost around 1500Yen in Japan (USD11 - USD13) - they definitely style the dish better and will give a bowl of miso soup as well.

Father and son dashing to get their lunch!

If you like this, read also:

Chicken-flavoured rice with white jade clams

Fresh squids and prawns with chilli crab paste

Putien-style seafood bee hoon

Steamed bamboo clams with bean sprouts and Korean bean paste

Where to get seafood?

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My mom and venus clams

My mom refrains from seafood now (due to allergy) and vicariously enjoys them by buying fresh clams and sending my sister to deliver them to us. She knows it's her son-in-law's favourite (not mine -  I only like scallops).

Some of the venus clams sitting in salt water

in the refridgerator:)

Home mumusings #75: mumusings' paper-shredder

I cannot fathom my son's latest hobby.

Kid says he's frying noodles:(

Best dim sum place in Singapore:)

3 months ago, my extended family stumbled on a lovely dimsum stall at Marine Parade food centre (I don't know if this is the right name, correct me if you have the actual name of the place). We ended up there because it rained while we we were on our way to Parkway Parade. Lots of people were crowding around the stall, many leaving with plates of great-looking Cantonese dimsum dishes.

After sampling almost a third of what they had (char siew buns, fried prawn dumplings, steamed dumplings, steamed prawn rolls, siew mai, egg tarts, fried yam rolls and fried beancurd), everyone decided that we wee never ever going back to eat at restaurants again. Not so much because each dish costs around S$2.60 but because they tasted authentic and were hand-made. All the foods are prepared at a separate stall within the food centre so it's no wonder every dish tastes fresh!

Good dim sum need not be expensive

Appearance and reality are often miles apart. My family loves Cantonese dim sum and recently came to a conclusion that the best dim sum in Singapore is no longer found at restaurants.

'Best' = authentic, reasonably priced, tasty (our definition)

Takeaway dim sum - still warm and delicious after

an hour's journey home!

Each piece of fried tofu comes with fresh fish paste and

a prawn - topped with the stall's own gravy (spring onion's my own)

This one dish goes very well with a large bowl of rice.

Timed the cooker just in time for rice + dim sum:)

----Make a guess how much the above dim sum dish costs
before clicking here for the answer!----

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The kid loves old-fashioned pandan cake

We made a trip to Ang Mo supermarket (they now have a branch next to the Potong Pasir MRT station!!!) and half-way browsing, my son grabbed a large round pandan chiffon cake, insisting that I purchased it.

 Don't scoff at this just because of the cheap packaging - the

cake tastes great (coming from a non-pandan fan!)

Vegetables: Stir-fried baby beans with enoki and dried prawns

I bought a pack of baby beans from Ang Mo supermarket to try. They look like French beans except thinner. This pack of beans cost just 90 cents, believe it or not. I've seen them sold at nearly S$3 once elsewhere.

Not knowing what to do with them, I boiled half a pack of the baby beans with some enoki and a pinch of salt (5 minutes, I personally dislike the smell and taste of raw beans) before stir-frying them with just a little oil, garlic, dried prawns and oyster sauce.

These went perfectly well with a plate of white rice, fried egg and the handsomest pork chops I made ever!

Pardon the haphazard stacking - when we're hungry, we cook and eat.

Time needed: 10 minutes (for baby bean dish), 25 minutes for all dishes

Cost: under S$1 for baby bean dish, S$3 for egg and pork chop

Food: Spicy mee hoon kway

I've never mixed chilli into mee hoon kway before! Just a few pieces of chilli padi is more than enough to spice up this bowl of mee hoon kway. Best to drop the chilli on top of the dish rather than boil them - in case I chicken-out.

MHK with enoki, anchovies, green beg, fresh prawns, fish dumplings,

fried shallots and chilli padi (the red bits scattered on top)

Snacks: Preserved nutmeg slices

Nutmeg is one ingredient that I love. Nutmeg oil and preserved nutmeg being my favourites. This thing for nutmeg is definitely my maternal grandmother's doing. Grandma brought me up to understand and enjoy foods that she grew up with in Kuala Lumpur before she came to settle in Singapore after the war.

Snacks: Chilli belinjo

Fried belinjo (or melinjo) is a popular Indonesian snack. I was introduced to this snack during a trip to Indonesia many years back when my family was waiting for a ferry at the jetty. A lady was beckoned me to her snack stall which sold many local snacks, including gigantic pieces of fried-something sealed in clear plastic bags. I bought a pack of spicy-sweet belinjo crackers to try and ended up purchasing 5 more packs (my mom and I finished up almost everything by the time we boarded the ferry).

Watson's belinjo snack S$2.50 or 3-for-S$6

Snacks: 'Small ear' biscuits

Chanced upon a traditional Teochew confectionery which sells local biscuits and snacks this morning. A pity I didn't have my handphone or camera with me - only have 2 packs of snacks (the rest all eaten up along the way) to show by the time we came home. Had a chat with the friendly old staff and found out that no confectionery makes my favourite hew-piah anymore.

What dirty feet!

The monster-toddler of mine has been scooting about the home of late in an intense and accelerated manner. He'd pretend to be driving a vehicle (very predictable masculine choices, NOT that we imposed any idelology on him to like them): police car, racer, bus, air plane and his latest obssession, APACHE attack helicopters. He's also picked up new Mandarin vocabulary words relating to directions and driving movements, blabbering as he pretends to ram into or avoid crashing into 'obstacles' in his way.

Definitely not flat-footed, this guy.

The small fellow (3 years old) can run non-stop like a swishing domestic hurricane within our apartment (balcony + living hall) for 30 minutes non-stop. Wonder where the energy comes from because I'm giddy just looking at him spin about. Imagine Dash+Jack-Jack from Pixar's Incredibles and you'll get an idea of what my son is like when he plays. AND THEN... the kid's feet will end up looking like he's been through fire-walking and goodness-knows-what. Note: We mop the place twice daily - goes to show how much ground he's covered.

Each square tile is 40cm x 40cm - we'll likely run out of

walking space if we fix up all buildings and tracks!

 

Above shows a sample of the obstacles in the middle of our living hall - proliferation of train tracks and ever-messy assortment of vehicles.

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Snacks: Marble cake

How I miss the traditional bakeries which used to serve up piping hot butter cakes in the afternoons in elongated baking tins! While my maternal grandparents were fans of Malaysian pastries and snacks, my paternal grandfather enjoyed eating pandan, butter and marble cake. My paternal grandparents prefer cakes to biscuit-sort snacks because they wore dentures so they tended to avoid harder foods.

There was a bakery near my paternal folks' place so grandfather would bring me out for a walk at around 3pm just in time to buy freshly-baked goodies. The emanating fragrance of just-baked cakes is enough to draw passers-by to the shop. There were smallish tarts, paper cup-cakes and traditional cakes with butter cream, embellishments and chocolate rice. Towards the evening, the same bakery will start selling buns with coconut and red bean paste filling.

Lovely snack to have anytime of the day - marble cake with

kopi siew dai (cheated, used Owl's instant mix)

Food: Nissin's instant mee goreng

There was a period of time when I went crazy over Indomie's instant mee goreng after an Indonesian friend introduced it to me. The noodles tasted fantastic because her mother fried the cooked noodles with the given seasoning with fresh garlic, shallots and chilli.

Instant mee-goreng with giant chye sim, Japanese-style

sausages, fried anchovies and chopped spring onion

Food: Truly Singapore luncheon!

I very patriotic in my choice of luncheon meat this week. Was going to buy Spam or Libby's corned beef when I spotted one of our national motifs on a can of luncheon meat! The actual brand name of the locally-made luncheon meat is Golden Bridge Foods (see picture below).

Home mumusings #74: Giving die-cast trains a new coat of pain

"Flatten my funnel!"

I almost fainted when my husband showed me what he did to 2 of our Thomas&Friends' diecast trains. All pictures on this post taken by my husband. The covert spray-painting was done while our dear son was taking an afternoon nap. He'll definitely wail if he sees what's happened to Rusty and Whiff...

Original Rusty and Whiff an hour ago...

Taped faces and sides before being given a new coat of paint