Packing food from home to work

Recently I've been packing food from home to work more often. Two reasons for that; one is that I am getting way too broke to spend on eating out so often, and secondly I find somehow homemade foodstuff is more filling and of course more nutritious too. I don't get hungry as fast compared when I eat out. Even a double portion of wan tan mee somehow doesn't seem to last me four hours.

Anyway, since I have a little more time to make breakfast, lunch and tea for work in the morning now that Hayden has started kindy early in the morning, I can even pack my food nicely. Presentation makes a difference y'know.

How to make a decent ham sandwich
I realised that not everyone knows how to make a sandwich. I shall try to explain how to make one as easy as possible although I apologize for not having enough photos. I forgot to take as I made it. Another time maybe.

Ham sandwiches are the easiest since all you need to do is just to stack everything and you have a sandwich already. Here are the basic ingredients for the ham sandwich I made.

Ingredients
1 slice of ham (I used honey baked ham)
A slice of cheese
Sliced tomatoes
Sliced cucumbers
Butter
2 slices of bread

1. Use a bread knife to slice off the sides (for those who don't like the crust). Try to use overnight bread instead of fresh loaves as fresh bread is too soft and you might end up with flat bread spotted with fingerprints.
2. Spread butter on one side of both slices.
3. Place ham, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese in that order. I find that by placing vegetables between the ham and cheese instead of letting them be placed next to the bread makes the bread less soggy by the time you eat it. No one likes soggy sandwiches.

4. End with the other slice of bread and voila! You have a nice sandwich!

I wrap them in clingwrap to take to work as I feel it keeps the sandwiches fresh and not soggy. Just make sure you don't accidently squash them when you put it in your bag!

Other than sandwiches, I also take leftovers to work. It isn't really hard. I just steam leftover rice, and heat some stew over the stove and I'm done! I rather use the stove than the microwave especially when heating up food taken out straight from the fridge. Besides, it's healthier.

I also have a thing for cute lunchboxes although I still haven't found the perfect sized one yet. Everything is just too dainty for my big tummy. But since I also made sandwiches, this is fine as well.

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Revenge of the alien

Recently, my friend's Toy Story alien collectable got kidnapped by his colleagues and was brought around town and even back home. Poor alien was passed around the office and only eventually went back to his owner after a few days. Here's what they did to the alien while he was in captivity.

So after all the torture the poor alien has to go through, his owner decided to strike back! [W] decided to steal his colleague's (the main perpetrator of the kidnapping) precious ducky and have his revenge.. Anyway, the following comic strips were actually something that perked me up every morning; well for the last three days anyway. :) Hope you all will enjoy them as much as I did.

Alien's Revenge Part 1

Alien's Revenge Part 2

Alien's Revenge Part 3

If ever [W] decides to continue making these, I probably might just ask him to set up a blog dedicated to his movie-based comics. Till then, I will probably post them here. By the way, would appreciate if you don't steal these and post it up without my permission ya, since they're not mine to begin with. :)

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Hayden's First Day @ Little Footprints

Yes I know it's been a while since I've updated. Been busy and the internut has been horrendous. And since I tend to upload a lot of photos as well, I decided to hold it off till I get Unifi at home.

Anyway, today was Hayden's first day of kindy and I thought to just update it here since it is a momentous occasion after all.

After looking at a few kindergardens, I've decided to send Hayden to Tadika Little Footprints as it is close to my place and on top of that I like the environment and teaching syllabus. They use the Fungates system and although some parents may think it is too strict, I prefer my son to have some discipline instead of always being playful lest he would have a problem when he starts formal schooling.

Today was his first day at kindy at the start of the second term. He probably won't really have a problem catching up since he has learnt quite a lot of things from his parents and relatives as well. He managed to wake up at 7.30am; quite a feat for a kid who normally wakes up between 9-10am. He was pretty excited and was quite fast to get ready although I had to sometimes remind him as he tend to daydream or get distracted, normally the former. He didn't want any breakfast though; maybe his tummy isn't used to eating so early in the morning.

He was very excited during the short drive to his kindy, and when I asked him if he was scared, he replied, "scared of what?". What a funny boy.

However, when we reached his kindy he was so shy he started becoming a koala; keep hugging my leg and my neck. During the assembly and when the other kids were singing the national anthem, he was staring at everyone in curiosity while at the same time hanging on to my hand tightly. Thankfully he wasn't like some of the other kids who were crying and screaming for dear life. Guess sending Hayden to a daycare at a young age prepares him to be sociable and not so easily shocked or scared.

It took a while to let go of my hand, but when his teacher came over to take him to the playroom, he just said bye to me and went. Guess play time is more important to him than his parents.

I watched him from the other side of the window and he didn't even notice my absence. He was too busy playing (and staring) to be scared.

When I picked him up from kindy, I was told he had been good and although he was playing alone most of the time, he didn't make a fuss. He even managed to take a nap in such a new environment. Good boy! I was also told they will start their proper lessons end of this week, so I really hope that he can keep still and pay attention!

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Recipe: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Actually, I made this during the weekend too but I've been too swamped at work to edit the photos and update my blog. Now I'm taking a break from work and decided to write something light hearted instead of my usual reporting pieces.

This was my first time trying out this recipe and I kind of modified the original recipe. The outcome was pretty alright although I feel the cookies were a little too crunchy. Anyway, here's the recipe for those who want to try it out. Do feel free to modify it and if you can I would like to know what did you do to it.

Ingredients:
2 cups of all-purpose flour (basically the Tepung Gandum you see on the shelves)
3/4 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cups of butter, room temperature
3/4 cups of peanut butter
3/4 cups of granulated sugar
3/4 cups of brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Directions:
1. In a bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside for now.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat together butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Use a mixing machine to save unless you enjoy cramping up your arm.
3. Beat in eggs and vanilla essence together with the butters and sugars mixture.
4. Gradually add in flour mixture until mixed properly.
5. Place your dough in cling wrap and refrigerate for about 2 - 4 hours.
6. Prepare your cookie tray by placing waxed paper on it.

7. Heat the oven till about 220 - 250 degree Fahrenheit.
8. Remove chilled dough from refrigerator. Take tablespoon/teaspoons of dough and rolled it to a ball. The size of the ball depends on what size of cookie you like. As for me I like cookies that I can just pop the whole thing in my mouth at one go. Because the dough is oily, do use plastic gloves to roll the balls.

9. Place about 1-2 inch apart on baking sheets.

10. Using a dinner fork, dip the fork in flour and press each dough ball lightly making a lined patterns on the top of the cookie dough.

11. Pop the tray in the oven and bake for about 10 - 15 minutes.

12. After removing the hot tray of cookies from over, let it cool on baking sheet for about 5 minutes before removing them to further cool on cooling rack. Don't put them in containers until fully cooled or it will be soggy!

Enjoy!

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Recipe: Cheese Baked Rice

I realized that I cook something different almost every week and I never shared with anyone. So I thought what the heck, I might as well post all my cooking experiments online. This week I made 2 dishes, one of them was Cheese Baked Rice.

This is quite an easy recipe since it has very little ingredients and preparation is quite fast.

Ingredients: (estimation)
1/4 yellow onion (chopped)
3 cloves of garlic (chopped)
3-4 pcs of canned button mushrooms (can use fresh button mushrooms too)

1 can of diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon of tomato paste
1/2 chicken breast sliced (or 1 deboned thigh if preferred)
1-2 cups of cheddar cheese
steamed rice

Seasoning:
salt and pepper
sugar
basil
mixed herbs

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 180 deg Fahrenheit.
2. Marinate chicken with a pinch of salt and pepper, and a teaspoon of basil and mixed herbs. Add some red wine for extra flavoring if preferred.

3. Heat oil in skillet, and fry onions and garlic till slightly brown.

4. Add mushrooms and stir fry for about 3 minutes or so.

5. Add chicken and stir fry till chicken is brown.

6. Add diced tomato and tomato paste and stir.

7. Let it simmer, then add some cornstarch to thicken the sauce. Make sure to mix the powder with COLD water, not hot. Add approximately 5 teaspoons of the cornstarch to the sauce gradually. Stir.

8. Place steam rice in a OVEN SAFE casserole dish. Do not pack it down since you aren't making sushi. :P

9. Pour the sauce from your skillet to the top of the rice.

10. Add cheese on top. I used Cheddar since that was what I had in my fridge. You can probably use Mozzarella if you wanted as that cheese is stringier. Think pizza cheese.

11. Pop it in the oven.

12. Bake it for about 10-15 minutes. Unless your oven is ridiculously hot, your dish shouldn't get burnt. Check on it off and on and once the cheese is melted, you can actually remove it from the oven.

TADAH! Done!!

I didn't measure as accurately since I tend to go with estimation. If you are unsure, keep tasting your sauce before adding to the rice. Since everyone's tastebuds differ, I suggest you add seasoning sparingly until you reach the taste you prefer. This serving serves about 3-4 persons.

Have fun trying it out!

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Bro's 26th & Mother's Day @ Mom's

If you noticed, there seemed to be a whole lot of parties involving my family recently. That and the fact my family tend to find every excuse to throw a party. Guess we like people around us a lot. If I had the chance I would throw random parties at my house too. However, I've been too broke recently to spend that much cooking up a feast for everyone. Maybe I should throw a pot luck or something.

Anyway, my little brother just turned 26. Not too little anymore. I still remember him being this small drooly brat and now he is engaged already. Gosh. Time sure flies. It was also Mother's day and my mom asked all of us to bring something we cooked for a little pot luck. I made my favorite Guinness beef stew naturally (I wanted to post the recipe in here but I forgot to take a photo of the final product. Sigh). Anyway, it was quite a chaotic night as there were just too many guests. Mom invited my bro's future family in law and my uncle brought his girl who also brought her two daughters. That and my relatives, it was quite a crowd. The food that was brought to the party was generally pretty yummy and I sampled every dish that everyone brought.

Mom was quite appalled at bro's cake though. She asked for the icing color to be Wedgewood blue, but the cake came in electric blue instead. She even had to redecorate it with fresh daisies so it doesn't look too ugly. Yes, mom is a little fussy with details. :P The Mother's Day cake looked better as it was simple and sweet. Frankly I only know how to admire the looks since I don't enjoy eating icing cake as much as mom and sis. It's just too sweet for me.

Hayden, as usual thought every cake with candles on it means he gets to blow it out. Since he was the little boy in the family, he gets what he wants - for now.

And all the mothers in the house took a shot too. Geez, I'm feeling my age now.

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