During this MCO

1. I cook more than I have ever cook before!! Sometimes, it is more than 3 meals a day.
2. I learnt new recipes and skills. I tasted new food during this time. 
3. Homeschooling the kids, and staying connected with school teachers and tuition teachers. This month, I learn about Zoom and Google Classroom!
4. A long school holiday for the kids. From 1st term school holiday stretched till May (or maybe till mid-term school holiday!)
5. First time using FoodPanda and Grab services to order food delivery
6. Not only that, I learnt to use Boost e-wallet. Guess it is not too late to join in the cashless community right now.
7. Our perspective on certain things in life change. We look at little things differently and don't take things too lightly. 

More to add to the list but for now, I am happy to stay at home. A blessing to stay alive and stay healthy during this time. 

Miscellaneous Picture #97 : from them

My brother and sister once in a while sent food photos of what they had at home. We have a family group chat so everyone share information, daily stuff etc.

I could only look and admire my mum's and her mil's cooking through the photos. I miss my mum's cooking very much. My sis' mil is a good cook and my sis learns a lot from her. 

From my sis' house:

Heng Hua pa mee

Fried rice cake

Laksa cum tom yum mee hoon

Homemade dry sambal

Pearl gum dessert

Turnip cake

Food photos sent by my bro showcasing my mum's very homey Hakka food.

Lo ark (braised duck) and egg

Steamed mui choy with pork belly

In time

Our food came just in time on Tuesday evening. I placed order for 4pm delivery and it came in around 415pm. 

Dinner prepared and delivered by Sharing Planet Stapok. It has been ages since we dined at the Stapok branch. I think the last time was back in 2017 when we joined a couple retreat programme.

Okay, for my girl, she has her favourite dish. Fish N Chip. Big fish fillet. 

I went for the RM8 promotion. Grilled fish with fragrant rice. 

I also ordered RM8 promotion set for Jamie. Crispy chicken with rice. 

Jay requested for spaghetti so I ordered carbonara for him. He finished most of it so it was pretty good. 

Salmon Alfredo for hubby. I ate half of the salmon. A bit dry but I added the dipping so it was alright. 

I reheated the food although it was slightly warm when delivered over. The food was sharing around the table. 

Our early dinner that day cost slightly over RM84. If to dine there, it would definitely over RM100!

Happy 14th

My eldest is celebrating her 14th birthday today. Happy birthday, Jan!!

My baby girl has all grown up! Strong minded, mild tempered and friendly young girl, her interests are in arts and music. The artistic lass in the house.

Early in the morning, I cooked chicken mee suah for her and family as breakfast. Added in 2 hard-boiled eggs for her. 

After breakfast, I started to make a chocolate birthday cake. Her favourite flavour (and the only flavour this mummy knows how to make!).

Before this MCO started, we have planned on where to celebrate her birthday. Her special request was dinner at BBQ King Seafood, Stapok but due to the lockdown, we could not do it.

So on her special day, we have a food delivery for dinner.  Food is from Sharing Planet Stapok.

Happy birthday, Jan. Best wishes always; stay healthy, happy and great forever.

We love

My family loves luncheon meat. I usually make them luncheon meat and egg sandwich for breakfast and snack box to schools. 

Our preferred brand is this. We only buy and eat this. 

Other than sandwich, sometimes I would cook the luncheon meat with big onion as a dish. It happened that I had some potatoes at home and I thought of putting everything together to make a tasty dish. 

Simple and quick dish so if you are run out of idea on what to cook or run out of time, this would be a great dish. 

Ingredients:
Luncheon meat, cubed
1 onion, minced

2 medium sized potatoes, peeled and cubed

White pepper powder

6 curry leaves for garnishing, fried slightly in oil and drained on kitchen towel

Methods:

1. In a pan, heat up about 4 tbsp cooking oil. Add in luncheon meat and onion, saute till cooked. 

2. Add in onion ans dashes of white pepper. Cooked till everything is cooked. 

3. Dish out and garnished with fried curry leaves. 

Another family favourite is mung bean soup.  Good to take on this hot season. I usually cook it once a week or at least every 2 weeks. 

I love to use slow cooker to cook my mung bean soup. I had a sliced pumpkin in my fridge and decided to use it up with the mung bean soup. A little variation from normal mung bean soup. Yet, it was good and nice to take, either warm or chilled. 

Ingredients:

Mung beans, soaked and refrigerate overnight

Pumpkin, sliced into smaller bites

Rock sugar

Salt

Methods:

1. Add about 2L water in slow cooker. Boiled the mung bean and pumpkin till soften. 

2. Add in rock sugar, based on your sweetness preference. 

3. Add pinch of salt and switch off the slow cooker. 

4. Serve warm directly or chilled in fridge before serving

More to come

It was Day 26. A Sunday. Easter Sunday. Woke up later than usual.

There was leftover chicken soup from dinner so I used it up for mee suah soup. That was our breakfast. 

Mee suah chicken soup

As for lunch, we had food delivery. This was our 2nd food delivery order. I expected more to come as I lost idea on what to cook. And kids started to complain on how much they missed this and that. Oh well, this mummy doesn't know how to cook everything that they want so we opt for food delivery instead. 

Ah Seng Hainanese chicken rice in Big Thumb Cafe. We ordered through FoodPanda. In less than 30 minutes the food was delivered to our gate. 

Steamed + fried chicken rice RM8.50

It was about time to enjoy a warm pack of chicken rice as it has been quite sometime since we ate Hainanese chicken rice. We do miss our usual chicken rice shop. 

Chilli dipping

That day I also placed a 2nd delivery order but not on food. It was on contact lenses. My disposable lenses ran out in few days time, so I ordered from an optical shop. Paid through internet banking and they delivered my contact lenses and solution the next day by Grab express. 

For Day 27 lunch, I ordered food delivery from FoodPanda as well. This time, we had Sugarbun's well known broasted chicken rice and nasi lemak classic.

In 30 minutes we got our warm lunch well packed in Sugarbun's disposable paper boxes. 

Support the local food industry by ordering and have the food delivered or self pick up!!! 

Life is pretty convenient with all the delivery services. No need to go out from my house. Some more hubby's car broke down few weeks ago. Cannot start. Need to wait for this MCO to be over to be able to call and get the car serviced. So for time being, hubby uses my car to go to work. He also did all the shopping whever he went to work. Tried to reduce the frequency of going out during this time. 

In the rice cooker

Some day we took it easy. Nothing extravagant but simple one pot meal.

Like one evening, my man was inspired to cook this one pot dish. Not sure what to call it but for the purpose of this post, it would be called pumpkin and Chinese sausage rice.

He watched a cooking video of this dish in social media and wanted to taste it. So one evening, the kitchen was all his.

Basically prepared and chopped the ingredients, which was tedious. Except for a peeled potato and handful of groundnuts, other chopped ingredients included a carrot, quarter pumpkin, some fresh shitake mushrooms and Chinese sausage.

In the rice cooker, add washed rice and then arrange the ingredients on top of the rice. Cooked as normal in rice cooker. Recommended to braise the groundnuts first if you prefer softer texture.

Another evening, we had homecooked bak kut teh. How we missed bkt as it has been a while we have that.

I used pork belly and pork ribs for my meat, add some dried beancurd sticks, tau pok, button mushrooms, garlic, and the ready packed bak kut teh herb, our dinner was ready and served warm on the table.

To complement the bkt, I also cooked some fragrant oil rice (yew fan). I fried 10 thinly sliced shallots in 3 tbsp cooking oil till fragrant. Then add in about 3 cups of washed rice and salt to taste. Stir fry and mix well for 2 to 3 minutes. Pour all the rice mixtures into rice cooker. Add water and cook the rice as normal.

Fragrant oil rice and bak kut teh ; they come hand in hand together.