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Sunday, July 31, 2011

Washington County Fair


Saturday, sunny day! the line already started outside the Washington County Fair when it was just approached 10am. The fair opens for business at 10 a.m., and there's lots of things going on until 11 p.m from Thursday till today.



Washington County has been celebrating its agricultural roots since 1855. The “Fair” has had multiple locations and financial follies. It has ended up where all things seem to end up these days, at Hillsboro Airport. Well, just south of it. The land, around 80 acres, is worth a bunch. One of the new goals of the Washington County Fair Board is to increase attendance at the fair from about 85,000 to 100,000 over the four-day event. I think with the crowd that we saw, definitely they are able to achieve their goal.

ES was welcome by a lady who offers her a sticker " I'm bookworm".



Another new exhibit this year, the Hillsboro Argus reports, is "The Growing Grove," an interactive food experience with kids in mind.

Lovely mama were busy preparing pancake using oregon wheat.




MSLS were enjoying the music while taking their porridge.


After finished their porridge, we went to meet the animals. We saw Abby, a 19 years old miniature horse.


At the dairy section
  



Pig...


The sheeps are having competition?


Henna art
 Tattoo shops are also available in the fair



The carnival rides open at noon. Daddy and ES went for the Butler amusement. The one in the middle of this photo ( circle ). ES is not afraid of height and really enjoy it!


We were totally amazed by how grand the fair was organised, and varieties that we saw in the fair including agricultural, arts and crafts, kids game & etc. Unfortunately, we did not bring our camera and iphone was out of battery, if not we can captured more beautiful scenes for memories.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Cake donuts

When I went for meeting in KL previously, sometimes my roommate and I will buy some donuts back, especially when we need to  complete our reports or presentation till late night.

ES and I love donut very much. When we saw SIL made this and posted it in her blog, it looks so yummy and we wanted to try.

We managed to made 20 mini donuts with the donut pan that we bought from Amazon.com.

Ingredients (Makes 20 mini donuts )

•128g unbleached all purpose flour
•64g. whole wheat pastry flour
•1 T. baking powder
•1/4 t. salt
•57g butter, melted
•183g fresh milk
•96g organic sugar

White chocolate glaze:
•76g white chocolate chips
•1 T. olive oil
•Optional: sunflower seeds & almond


Instructions
•Preheat oven to 350 F.

•In a medium bowl, combine flours, baking powder, salt..

•In a small bowl (or just in your liquid measuring cup), combine melted margarine, milk, and sugar. Mix until sugar has dissolved.

•Add milk mixture to flour mixture and stir until just combined.


•Pipe or spoon batter into a donut pan that has been lightly greased or sprayed with cooking spray.

•Bake for 8 minutes or until donuts are firm to the touch. Allow donuts to cool in pan for approximately 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

•For glaze, melt white chocolate and oil in a shallow bowl, either using a microwave in 30-second increments or a double boiler.

•Dip each donut in white chocolate and top with almond or sunflower seeds, if desired.

Just some notes here, the donuts is still too sweet for us. Will cut down the sugar next time.

recipe adapted from peasandthankyou.com

Friday, July 29, 2011

Evening walk

It's 7:30pm and the sun is still shining. The weather is just right today, as it is not too hot, and not too cold when the wind blows. LS is pushing MS on her tricycle while we were having a walk in the evening.



Passed by some beautiful flowers in the park.



MS is trying to stand up, even while we are pushing her tricycle!


LS wanted to go home by herself!!

Fruit Pizza



We had  pizza for dinner yesterday. With 500g of bread flour ( as per recipe posted on 23 May 2011 ), we managed to get five 9 inche pizza base. We finished up three 9 inche pizza and had two pizza base leftover, and I decided to make a fruit pizza today. The pizza base was so crispy even though i left it outside, but i put in a sealed plastic bag. With the fruits that we have in the fridge, we made this. Daddy loves it so much as he almost finished half of it.

Ingredients:
120g cream cheese
2 oz sugar
6 strawberries
12 cherries
40 blueberries
one baked pizza base

Method:  
1. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar and vanilla until light. Spread on cooled crust.
 
2. Arrange desired fruit on top of filling, and chill

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Puppet Show and Ice Cream Social

We went to ES's school for a family fun event  today.  It is a  performance from Dragon Theatre Puppets and Princess. The title of the show is " The Reluctant Dragon", and it runs about 45 minutes. Besides that, the school also holding an Ice Cream Social at the meantime.

The reluctant dragon!


The king is coming out....




At the end of the show, the guy who act as the reluctant dragon and the king came out to say goodbye to the kids.


Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Twice Baked potatoes



We did not cook rice for dinner sometimes. Last few days, we had chicken mushroom pie and twice baked potatoes for dinner. Found this recipe from Allrecipes.com. 

Ingredients

4 large baking potatoes
8 slices bacon
230 g sour cream ( i replaced it with yoghurt )
120 ml milk
55 g butter
3 g salt
1 g pepper
115 g shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
8 green onions, sliced, divided

Methods
1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.Bake potatoes in preheated oven for 1 hour.
3.Meanwhile, place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.
4.When potatoes are done allow them to cool for 10 minutes. Slice potatoes in half lengthwise and scoop the flesh into a large bowl; save skins. To the potato flesh add sour cream, milk, butter, salt, pepper, 1/2 cup cheese and 1/2 the green onions. Mix with a hand mixer until well blended and creamy. Spoon the mixture into the potato skins. Top each with remaining cheese, green onions and bacon.
5.Bake for another 15 minutes.

pork spare rib with bean sauce

One of our favourites, cooked by Ah ma.
Ingredient consists of bean sauce, a pinch of sugar, soy sauce, pork spare rib, cilantro

MSLS

Sometimes when there is spider or insect in our house, MSLS will shout and let us know..
Opps.. She found an insect on the carpet.


They will be fighting for this dog when they want to drink milk - as their pillow.

Peperoni cheese bread

Pepperoni with Tillamook cheese slice, topped with tomatoes


Monday, July 25, 2011

Whole wheat buns

Same as the earlier recipe posted on 22 July 2011. Instead of dividing the dough into two portions, I divided the dough into 120g each after the first proofing.

With the same recipe, I can made 6 hamburger buns and 1 small buns.

We usually keep the extra hamburger buns into the freezer and take out for consumption whenever we feel like eating burgers.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Smiling face

ES's breakfast - rolled oat, raisin with grape tomatoes. She will be very happy to take her breakfast when she sees the smiling face everyday


We had half boiled eggs today and we drawn these on the egg shells

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Cheese slicer

We received a parcel last few days, and it was Prodyne cheese slicer ordered by daddy from amazon. This handmade thick beechwood cheese slicer provide smooth surface when slicing cheese. As previously, we are using knife to slice the cheese. It is not so even, and difficult to cut.
Ah ma is trying out the new cheese slicer...




Our cheese fork breakfast.


While we are trying out the cheese slicer, the two girls also wanted to have a look.

Friday, July 22, 2011

MS having fever

Haha, mummy teached her how to smile like this in front of  the mirror in the bathroom

MS was not sleeping well on Tuesday night.

She woke up very early on Wednesday morning, and she even cannot stand properly when wearing her pants. Something is not right here...

Measured her body temperature at about 6 am, and found she is at 38 C.

She is having high fever again! Wihout hesitation, we gave her 5ml ibuprofen immedicately.

According to Ah Yi, we should always start with paracetamol if the temperature is not more than 39 C. If the temperature is 39 C, then will need to start with ibuprofen after 2 hours. Since she just experienced seizure in May ( at that moment, her body temperature was 38.4 C ), that is the reason we started her with ibuprofen.

Her body temperature goes from 37 even to 39.1 C during daytime. When the temperature goes up to more than 38 C, we quikly wipe her forehead, neck and body with water, to bring down the temperature. When her temperature goes higher, it will be very easy to be noticed as her eyes will looks very tiring, and that is the time that we worried.

Luckily, everything was alright during Wednesday night. And she had slight fever ( about 37.5 C ) on Thursday morning. After one dose of paracetamol on Thursday morning, she is alright now.


Thursday, July 21, 2011

Whole wheat bread





One of my friends, LK would like to make some breads for her son.  She wanted to start with something simple. Coincidently, I made some whole wheat bread last two days, and it is indeed very easy for a beginner. With my limited knowledge in baking, hope she will be able to make some breads, with love to her son.

Ingredient:
  • 210g high protein flour/ bread flour
  • 200g whole wheat flour ( you may replace with high protein flour if you can't get this )
  • 30g sugar
  • 3/4 tbs Instant dry yeast ( dissolve into 120g warm water, add in one tbs of sugar, wait for 10 minutes. )
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 45g fresh milk
  • 30g butter
  • some raisin ( optional )
Method:
1. Stir flour, caster sugar, salt and yeast in a mixing bowl.


2. Add in milk. Mix the ingredients with hand and slowly form a dough

3. Add in egg and butter later. Knead until the dough is no longer sticks to your hand, become smooth and elastic. This should take about 15 - 20 minutes. Do the window pane test: pinch a small piece of the dough, pull and stretch it. It should be elastic, and can be pulled away into a thin membrane without tearing/ breaking part.

4. Cover the dough with cloth or cling wrap and leave it for 1 hour. If the weather is cold, u may leave the dough in the oven, together with one glass of hot water.

5. Divide the dough into two equal portion. Flatten the dough into a round disc, roll the dough like swiss-roll style.

6. Cover the doughs with damp cloth or cling wrap and leave to proof for second time, about 1 hour, or until double in size.

7. Bake in  pre-heated oven at 390 F for 30 minutes. ( if the bread had turn into golden brown, you may cover the bread with aluminium foil after 15 minutes )

Hope I hear some good news from you, my friend!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Daddy's new bike

Daddy had sold off his Kawasaki few months back and he decided to get a new bike for himself again.

ES, ah ma were so excited to be the first two passengers on daddy's new HD.....

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Tuesday storytime

We went to the Tuesday evening storytelling session again. The theme for this week is " Summer". Therefore, you can see there is a tree with green leaves pasted on the blackboard. Besides a few stories telling, the group also sang a few songs including " you are my sunshine" which related to summmer.


                                     
The girls were given a lemon biscuit each for behaved well and staying till the end of the story session.


pork cheeseburgers

Last Sunday morning, I was preparing lunch and making bread ( knead it and let it proof for one hour ) before going out for Sunday mask. With the help of Kitchen Aid Pro 600 mixer, i did my cooking and bread at the same time. I find that the dough is quite soft this time, maybe I follow exactly my recipe. As sometimes, i do like to add in more flour, and in fact it become more firm. 

I was very impressed with the result of the soft, but not so sticky dough. We made quite a few hamburger buns. And Daddy had commented this is the best that he had tasted, even though those breads that we made earlier is soft, but this one is even softer. I think really need to follow this recipe, and do not add in more flour when the dough is slightly sticky at the begigging, I have to be patience to wait for the mixer to knead for awhile before add in more flour.

We had burger again on Tuesday night, as per requested by ES.

Ingredient for hamburger buns ( 7 buns ):
  • 420 high protein flour
  • 1 tbs active yeast
  • 120g warm water
  • 30 g cane sugar
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 46g fresh milk
  • 30g unsalted butter ( melted )

Method:
  1. Pour active yeast into warm water, add  in 1 tbs of sugar. Wait for 10 minutes.  
  2. Mix flour, salt, yeast and fresh milk with mixer for 3 minutes ( speed 2 )
  3. Add in egg, butter and knead for 5 minutes.
  4. Cover the dough with cloth or cling wrap and leave it for 1 hour.
  5. Divide the dough into 120g each. Shape into rounds and flatten rounds.
  6. Let rest for 1 hour again.
  7. bake for 15 minutes in a preheated oven at 390 F.

Ingredient for patties:
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 400g minced pork
  • 1 1/2 sweet onion
  • 1 cup cheddar cheese
  • lettuce
  • 1 tomato
Method:
  1. mix salt, pepper into a large mixing bowl.
  2. Add in pork, onion. and cheese. Form into patties.
  3. Add some olive oil to the pan and cook for 8 to 10 minutes

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Lunch at Red Lobster

Red Lobster has more than 680 locations in United States and Canada. They served good quality seafood here. After the girls wake up from their nap, we went there for lunch.


 The girls start drawing right after we reached the restaurant.


Fresh Garden Salad


 New Engand Clam Chowder, one of Red Lobster's signature soup


Fresh Caesar Salad


 Shrimp-and-Scallops Alfredo


Lobster-Crab-and-Seafood-Stuffed Mushrooms
Fresh mushrooms stuffed with seafood, smothered in Monterey Jack cheese and baked golden brown
It looks ordinary, but it really taste good. It is way better than what i expected

 
Live Maine Lobster ( Steamed ).
We are glad that we ordered it in a steamed way, as we can taste the freshness of the lobster meat.

 
 The "surgeon" busy "operating" the lobster. We want it to be steamed so that we can taste the freshness.


 ES showing me the lobster head.


Finally, our desssert - Chocolate Wave
It is a warm, rich chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce
This is ES's favourite. We had to finish it faster so that she do not over eat!

While we were busy taking our lunch, MSLS also busy eating their biscuits and kiwi.



After lunch, daddy went to a nearby Harley Davidson's shop.