baby food

... hardly got time to update this blog now as I have been busy looking after baby Sakura. She has started on solids, so we are pretty busy cooking her meals and feeding her first solid food.

we start with ...

• rice cereal
• carrot puree

we mix about one teaspoon of baby rice with enough warmed water to give an almost watery consistency. We also stick to one new food for 3 - 4 days before introducing another new food to Baby.

then moved on to homemade ...

• pumpkin puree
• rice porridge
  

we have a mini crockpot to cook baby portion meals. The tiny pot is not much bigger than my coffee mug.

today she has ..

• soft pumpkin rice porridge
• mashed bananas

red bean soup n wu zai gao 缽仔糕

... felt like having tangshui after dinner one evening, so made a pot of red bean soup. I added in dried orange peel, sago and glutinous rice to the sweet broth.

but the pot of sweet dessert was too much for us, so I used it to make wu zai gao, red bean pudding steamed in small bowl. This dessert was once a popular street food found in Hong Kong.

guess my red bean soup was a bit too mushy, so looked quite unappetizing in my wu zai gao. Next time I would use a freshly made batch of cooked red bean.

The pudding is made of rice flour, wheat starch, brown sugar and water. Just like making our local chwee kuih except that this red bean kuih is sweet whereas chwee kuih is savory.

... these are the remainder of the twelve pieces of sweet kuih I made.
So at least they were eaten by my girl and son-in-law even though they looked ugly.

guava appetizer

1 guava
8 pieces of dried mandarin orange peels (more/less)

Method :

1. Cut guava and remove seed. Slice thinly into 2mm thick. Set aside.
2. Slice dried mandarin orange peels into tiny, thin pieces.
3. Mix everything together and chill in fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.

this is an addictive and appetizing combination, one bite is not enough. The recipe was from kc and had been shared online in numerous blogs too.

R burger at Ion

I'd heard so much about this particular Jp white burger sold at the basement foodcourt of Orchard Ion that arouses my curiosity to give it a try.

R burger buns used white, fluffy steamed buns instead of normal hamburger buns. The burgers are topped with Japanese sauces like the R sauce, the Ume or Ankake. Japanese Shiso leaves and pickled daikon are used to replace lettuces to give its unique flavour.

Another distinctive feature of R Burger is its use of marine collagen as part of its ingredients. While not at all uncommon in Japan, R Burger remains the first hamburger café to put collagen in their buns... But all this goodness is lost on me as I can only find the bun tastes alot like kong bak bao ( stewed belly pork on mantou). And buying a normal bao is much, much cheaper! The patty filling of the R burger is so pathetic and disappointingly thin.

so guess I will not be buying another R burger anytime soon.

HongKong food 5

breakfast at McDonald's ... We like that in HK n Jp, this fastfood chain serve Asian food in the morning.

.. but nothing beat having local breakfast at the cha chaan teng in HK.

I love bagel in the morning too.

.. or even cakes n coffee at cafe where we can eat and surf online.

my favourite HK places of interest

I am not a good baker or cook, but I just love visiting (n buying) shops that sell bakewares, bento stuff and household wares. This make me a very boring travelling companion for my family members. But they help me to find and visit these places as I am poor in directions.

most of these baking shops are not easy to find. I have to thank my 2nd daughter for being my guide. Without her, I don't know how to get to these shops .... even now.

faces of HongKong

Times Square

one of the busy streets nearby our hotel ...

Nathan Rd, popular shopping area ...

the Avenue of Stars

market where locals shop for daily food.

day market selling bric-a-brac

night market to get cheap, imitation wares ...

we didn't do much sightseeing on this trip to HongKong. Most of the times, my hubby and I took trains to shopping centers and malls while my girl stayed at International Finance Centre to surf and chilled out either at cafe or the bookshop.

it was raining all the time towards the last few days of our trip, so we preferred to remain in the shelter of the covered shopping malls.

Sakura

taking a break from posting HK photos ...

Baby is now 5 months old today. The dress/rompers that I bought in HongKong fits her perfectly. She loves to crush the skirt, hopefully she doesnt tear a hole in it soon. Now she drinks from the bottle again without any fuss.

I give her breastmilk in a mini 4 oz / 120 ml glass bottle as she drinks around that amount only each time. Then she would start playing with the bottle n spilt out the milk. Sometimes, mommy still has to breastfed her after the bottle.

HongKong food 4 - takeout

although eating out in most places in HongKong is cheap and convenient, we prefer to have some of our meals in the comfort of our hotel room, away from the crowd, hustle and bustle. I find that the restaurants in HK are so much noisier and busting with activities than those in Sg. We prefer to eat in quieter enviroment. Also I can watch some of the Cantonese dramas and shows on tv.

Hong Kong food 3

a favourite of ours, black sesame with walnut paste or cold beancurd.

mango dessert n snacks from a famous dessert shop in HK.

our fave supper, curry fishballs, siewmai that is made of fishpaste instead of minced meat and ... pig skin braised with radish. We ate these with "doll" brand cup noodle.

One of the must-eat street food in Hong Kong is the curry fish balls. It’s so famous in Hong Kong and one sees it at a lot of places selling in a shop or stall by the roadside. I just have to try it, although I bought mine in a shop near our hotel, having no guts to try street food because of my weak stomach.