Once upon a time, she designed buildings and interiors of corporate offices and on the rare occasion, homes. Now, she cleans poop and is student of a patience management course. From the drawing board as a London Architect to the realities of Motherhood, she has certainly learned many lessons in humility. And then others.....
To succeed in the corporate world, first succeed with your kid as the happy boss. Seriously.
This blog is about Mamapumpkin: A crazy, demented Mom who cares full time, alone, without any help, for an even crazier preschooler AND a baby with a boob addiction problem.
She writes anything that comes out of her head, mostly without thinking first, which almost always gets her into trouble (according to her husband, whom she considers the love of her life.......on a good day).
Her 2 pet monkeys drive her towards challenge after challenge, 24/7. Day after Day.....and by the way, her parents are Muslim, her in-laws Buddhist, she's Catholic and her Hubs, an Atheist. She's thinking her kids should be Hindu, just to complete the rainbow religion cycle.
Gotta love it.
She'd love to hear from you : Mamapumpkin at gmail dot com
Wherever I can, I’d make use of the kids for some free child labour. It certainly gets things going faster, never mind about the mess. The Hubs will take care of that!
Yesterday, I got T1 to peel a whole bunch of French Beans and T2, of course had to participate. She held one, put it into her mouth, bit a chunk off, then threw the stick away. Then she turned towards the green drawers and opened it. She tried climbing up to see what was in it but her butt was stuck in Bumbo. Yay, Bumbo!
What about you? Do you squeeze child labour out of your kids?
Another thing we did during the school holidays was to bake. It was also one of the first things we did when we finally returned from the hospital after a week’s stay. I felt that T1 needed a treat after that ordeal and since we were in no shape to go out gallivanting the town, we stayed home to bake instead. Comfort food….
These cookies were really good!
All in the name of Betty Crocker, what were you thinking?! I have a baby, hello! Ok, I’m just a very lazy Mom. Truth be told, they were good but too sweet for my liking so definitely it would have been better if I’d baked them from scratch. Soon, soon…..when T2 gives me some reprieve.
Guess who’s been busy in the kitchen every weekend with the blender? T2, of course! I make her hold the hand blender, she loves it as it vibrates and makes NOISE!!! Child labour at 8 months, not bad eh? Which brings me to a very curious question. The Chinese and Korean and Japanese, have a belief that one should never refrigerate or worse, freeze any soups or porridge as it produces a lot of wind. What is the story behind this, an inquiring mind wants to know. Because as it stands, I am freezing porridge (as it is one of Tee’s many favourite food) and I sometimes freeze soups too. I haven’t noticed a surplus of wind coming out from either of us, but then again, we fart so much that it would be hard to notice the difference. Know what I mean?
In any case, what is so wrong with having wind? Is it the discomfort that we may subject a baby to? I haven’t a clue so pray tell…..
On the left is Tee’s porridge, ready to be frozen. And on the right is T2′s exact same porridge, except that it’s blended. Yuck.
Then we have the breakfast spread, blended pear or blended pear with some other fruit combination which I add to her cereals every morning. Mind you, I even freeze the fruit stock and steam it in the morning to make her cereal with some formula(since she is so skinny) and she absolutely loves this. I mean, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Fruit stock with formula, blended fresh fruit and iron-fortified organic cereal. That’s T2′s breakfast every single morning with the variation being different fruit flavours. Isn’t she a lucky girl?
Hmm…I wonder what I was fed when I was 8 months old.
There are 2 people on the internet whom I always go to for recipes because after trying them once and they tasted real good, it was only natural that I went back. One of them is the lovely Jomel, who I wish would one day open her quaint little cafe because I would be seen there regularly with my trusty laptop, chewing on her delicious scones.
What are the many ways to cook black pomfret apart from cooking sweet and sour fish and plain frying with various condiments??? What about white pomfret? Is it only to be steamed with ginger or teo chew style with salted vegetables and tofu? And the silver pomfret, the most expensive of all???
Scones are not easily available in KL – well, good scones that is. The ones that are all buttery and melt in your mouth kind of scones, not the crumbly ones that fall apart at every bite. For the longest time, I’ve been on the hunt for the best scones ever and alas, I’ve finally found it! I cannot express the utter joy and exhilaration that rushed through every blood vessel in my body when I tasted that first bite! And if I loved it, then Tee loved it even more, for not only could she not stop eating it, she asked for it to be packed for school the next day plus she didn’t need any butter, cream or jam to go with it. She just ate it plain!
We have enjoyed scones at the KL Hilton and the Smokehouse in Cameron Highlands. When we were desperate, we had scones at the Shangri La; but after THESE scones, there is no reason anymore to go anywhere else for scones, all thanks to my dearest Jomel.
Last Sunday, I woke up super early and allowed the Hubs a lie in. Within 45 minutes, I had prepared a full breakfast for Tee and chopped up the above vegetables for lunch. It was merely 830am.
The vegetables went into a pot to make chicken soup.
This looks really gross but it is actually steamed brinjals……..not dead slugs.
Topped with sambal that does not look very red but still tasted good!
Sambal fish…..
And Tee’s favourite pumpkin soup – which is to boil any and every vegetable there is in your fridge with pumpkin and potatoes for a very long time until everything just MUSHES UP!!! I told you that girl likes anything MUSHY!!! The Hubs and I? We don’t go near that stuff…..
I had a strong craving for Shepherd’s Pie last week and knew that the only way I was going to be rid of this craving in full force would be to bake my own. Nobody else out there makes it like my family does.
Ingredients:
1.5lbs good quality beef
1 whole onion
1-2 cups frozen vegetables
1.5-2lbs potatoes (3 large potatoes)
8 tablespoons butter
0.5 cup beef broth (beef cube in hot water)
10 dashes of Worcester Sauce (Lee & Perrins Sauce), or as much as you want…..
Salt, pepper and Italian herbs for seasoning
Fragrant Australian lean beef fried with onions and olive oil. Once beef is cooked, add in the frozen vegetables and everything else, apart from butter and potatoes.
Meanwhile, boil the potatoes until soft…..once ready, melt the butter into the potatoes and mash them together to make the top pastry for the Shepherd’s Pie.
Draw a pattern on top with a fork and bake in the oven grill till golden brown.
A real would be hit with toddlers and preschoolers that is healthy yet yummy. I got this recipe from the net after Tee said she really liked those Marmalade baby muffins of which I tasted and err……I didn’t think it was that hot. So I was determined to show her that Mama could do better. Heh! And I did!
What I like best about this recipe is that it’s not sweet. To make 2 dozen baby muffins:
Mix dry ingredients together of 1.5 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 0.25 teaspoon salt, 0.25 cup sugar…………Then add in wet ingredients of 0.25 cup low fat milk, 0.25 cup olive oil, 1 cup mashed bananas, 0.25 cup raisins (o chocolate chips, hehe), a squirt of chocolate sauce, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence – THAT’S IT!!!
Stir the batter and mix well.
Get your helper to scoop bits of batter into baby trays…..
Fill the batter till two thirds filled as it will RISE!!! Bake it in a 180 degree Celsius oven for 20 minutes.
Deliciously tasty baby muffins – not sweet and no icing toppings. In fact, Tee suggested that we decorate it with some fruity bits next time. We loved it so much that we’re going to experiment baking different flavoured muffins every week now!
This pregnancy, the Hubs has been very lazy. He hasn’t been out ONCE to satisfy my pregnancy cravings, mostly because I was vomiting so badly at the beginning and then didn’t really have cravings that sent me into murdering zones, and now he just takes for granted that I DO NOT have any cravings.
I can bet my bottom dollar with you that IF I’d only been with him for 10 months and not 10 years, he’d be out in a jiffy to get me some of that nasi lemak. It wouldn’t even matter if he didn’t know how to get there. Beg, borrow or steal, he’d get it for me.
Bah! That’s what 10 years of marriage does to you, never mind that I’m pregnant. I’ll lick my wounds and console myself that I’m badly diabetic so can’t eat it anyway.
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