Pineapple Tarts

On Saturday, I finally got round to making pineapple tarts
for the new year. Baking these (and other new year confections)
has always been a family activity so it seemed a bit odd doing
them by myself now that I live in the US. When I was younger,
mum's kitchen was always crowded with the various women of
the extended family (and the occasional husband/son who
came in ostensibly to get a drink of water but invariably
snuck off with one of the finished products
in the name of quality control).

Over the years mum experimented with different sizes,
shapes and cutters. And hers were a work of art, both in
taste and aesthetics. Our favorite versions were what we
called The Pies and The Bombs - the former huge open-faced
tarts and the latter the size of grenades. People would beg her
to sell them and she would have started a small baking
business, but for the manpower- her two children were
inconsiderate enough to go off to the University,
the unfilial wretches.

I used one of those small characterless plastic molds with
scalloped edges so that I wouldn't need to crimp the pastry.
and when I grew tired of the cutting, I made the more
old-fashioned nyonya style pineapple-shaped version which look a bit like mum's Bombs but smaller.
Pineapple tart eaters generally fall into two
camps according to whether they prefer a higher or
lower pastry-to-jam ratio. People in Singapore have been
known to get rather passionate about their leanings. Those
who are afraid usually sit on the fence and murmur weakly,
"Er, it's about the balance between the jam and the pastry."
Rubbish. There is no middle ground with pineapple tarts.

Our family is divided thus:

Jam Camp: Dave, Emily
For such folks, this style of pineapple tart gives a higher
jam-to-pastry ratio (at least the way I make it):
Pastry Camp: Me, Kate, Jenna, who has no qualms about
saying, "No like jam much."
We like this style: Which side are you on?

Chinese New Year

Happy New Year, all!
(insert your own 4-character auspicious Chinese greeting here,
since I've forgotten all of them except for the one about having
fish each year which I am sure is inaccurate).

We had a quiet First Day. We went to the library which,
in this part of the world, is actually open for business.

Emily took over my filling-the-angpows duty this morning:
Tomorrow we are sharing with her little preschool class
some of the more exciting observances of the New Year
(so no tossing the raw fish shreds, pity - the gentlefolk here
would faint). We will be distributing red packets filled with
chocolate coins, which Emily was thrilled to assemble.

We will also be bringing a tiny crate of clementines to give
out - they look like mandarins but are kid-sized!

And because firecrackers are just plain rude, we will instead
be giving each child a traditional Chinese drum noisemaker

which I made out of old pens, straws and recycled cardboard
(and other odds and ends around the house). I am well
aware that I am blatantly flouting the "Everything Must Be New"
rule of the New Year but hey,
reincarnation is auspicious too, innit?

At the library today we found a book about Chinese New Year
so we can read it to the kids instead of depending on my
(mostly made up) knowledge of Chinese customs. Emily has her
Chinese outfit and I am still 10 pounds too fat for mine
will be going in stay-at-home-mum costume.
We're all packed and ready to roll!

New Year Dresses

Finished some dresses for the girls on Saturday night.
When I was growing up in Singapore, our family took
pains to wear old clothes (preferably black, because slimming)
during the new year because we never really liked the
New Clothes rule. Now that I am a mother, I am happy to
wear old rags (preferably black, because slimming) but for
some reason feel my children need to have new clothes.
It must be motherhood.

Here are our children, posing obediently:
(as Emily says) "all three of us are twins together!"

Here are our children, still composed:
you can actually see Jenna's chin.

And here are our children as they usually are:

People have asked me how I find the time to sew
while taking care of the kids.

Here is how I sew while taking care of the kids:
(Excuse the weird hair)

Anyway, since it is never too soon to begin sewing education,
Kate got her first lesson: name the parts of a sewing machine

and How To Sew Interlining For A Sleeveless Garment.

More technical pictures of the dresses on the craft blog here.

More Jennaisms

Jenna and Emily were performing gymnastics /acrobatics for us earlier this week. Their death-defying stunts included climbing onto a stepstool and leaping off onto their small sofa a whopping 18" below. 

"I do some 'nastics now!" declared Jenna, taking her turn after Emily. She leaped, landed and punched her fist in the air, shouting jubilantly, "Hippit hurray!"

Macaroni Soup

Sick this week, so lunch today was comfort food. 

Every culture has its chicken noodle soup and I think 

this is Singapore's. I made it the way mum does (but not 

as well, of course) except without the wangsui chang 

(Chinese parsley and green onions). We don't have the 

fat red chillies here, only the tiny Thai ones, so I 

normally use serrano peppers which are insanely hot 

(i.e. worth eating). Wonderful for clearing congestion-

today's was a 7-Kleenex meal!

Winter

We've just come out of one of the coldest weeks in a long time.
Winter in Minnesota is not for the faint of heart - it lasts
longer than it should and sometimes gets so cold one
wonders if one will ever again feel one's fingers and toes.
Still, the folks here don't complain - and for good reason:
there are real winter sports to be had and all the summer bugs
are well and truly wiped out. I personally haven't lived here
long enough to dislike the winter - when one has lived more
than 3 decades on a tropical island whose only two seasons
are Humid and Humider, change is wonderful.

Then there is the snow, of course, which (when freshly fallen,
at any rate) transforms the outside world into scenes so
gorgeous they literally take one's breath away. And what snow!
I hadn't realized before living here how many different
consistencies it has, the conditions under which snowmen,
snowballs and snowforts can be successfully constructed,
when it is especially hard and compacted and unpleasant
to shovel and how (if we are unlucky) it can turn the entire
street into a skating rink. It sparkles in the sun and makes
the nights bright, quiet and still.

Here are some pictures Dave took over
the winters we've lived here.


The three evergreens in our front yard - we lost the
leftmost one in a summer storm in 2007-


when the sun is out


and in the middle of a snowstorm.


The view up our street before the snowplough
has been to clear the road.








Yes, I quite like the winter. Last week the temperatures fell
to 30 below (-34 C) with windchill. But this week,
while still below freezing point, it's positively balmy!

More Everyday Indoor Winter Happenings

So winter goes on.

Frigid week, this. Today when Emily and I left home 

for school, it was minus 22F (minus 30C). 

Yesterday the girls (actually Emily) wanted to pretend 

it was summer so she set her own little table for a 

picnic lunch. Kate sat in the background and observed 

everything. Notice that she is still in her pyjamas at 

lunchtime - this way her toes stay covered all day. 

Kate is not compatible with socks.

Today we did playdough. I made a batch of 

homemade playdough because Kate was looking like 

she wanted to participate. I know Playdoh is non-toxic 

but I felt better knowing that Kate would be eating 

playing with something all of whose ingredients I knew.  

And it is so incredibly salty that a person would have to be 

insane/a goat to swallow the stuff. Plus homemade 

playdough is so warm and soft in little hands!

Here is Kate's first Science lesson- 

fixed volume, varying shape.

and after poking at the pink mass and tossing it 

to the floor (Ooo- gravity!) several times, 

she finally squished it.

Yes, she is still in her pyjamas.... again!

What the Kids Did

A very miscellaneous post today just to report on our week.
It's fun to post about our particularly-interesting adventures
or our newest baking experiments but we all know that our
typical day (or week) is more often than not, rather routine
and normal. So this post is especially for family overseas
who know what our normal days are like and want photos
to complete the picture, so to speak. So here is what the kids
did this winter week: lots of indoor playing - dressing up,
games, some TV, arts and crafts, baking, tea parties

and running the family bakery - with everyone helping.

Emily served the customers, Jenna decorated the cakes
and Kate ate the candles provided quality control.

Of the three kids, Jenna is usually the hardest to photograph.
In the past, it was largely because she had her mouth full
of fingers (hers) most of the time. Or because she always
had her own agenda. So when we catch her being relatively
stationary, it's fun to snap away and see how many of her
many wonderful, impish expressions we can capture:

Emily has been a great help "reading" to Jenna and being
a vigilant babysitter for Kate. Since turning two, Jenna's
willingness to vocalize has also dramatically blossomed and
we love eavesdropping on her reading her books aloud to herself.

Here she is reading one of her favorite Maisy books.
It's a long videoclip of a not-very-wordy book
but we let Jenna take her time!

Kate is 9 months old

Three quarters of a year old! Kate claps, waves (and says)
bye-bye and, when in the mood (i.e. at 4 am) will call
"meh meh" when she wants Mother. She stands, squats,
bends over to pick things up from the floor and walks.
Yes, she has taken her first steps - often three to six at a time
before landing on her hands and knees again.

With her little walking toy, she can almost run

and there have been times when she would walk in circles
around the kitchen island, pushing a little
wooden kids' chair for support.

But this week she took her first steps and we were determined
to capture her on video walking unaided. She would never
perform on demand, of course. But today she did.

Emily walked at 14 months and Jenna at 11 months,
so Kate's happy feat is in keeping with the pattern. Our
explanation is that this is nature's way of allowing younger
siblings to keep up with their more mobile elder sister(s)!

Cheese-Stuffed Bread

Tried a new recipe today. Used provalone and mozarella
because while I love fondues, not all the family enjoys
the strong flavor. We'll eventually get round to trying the
Great Smells - limburger, roquefort, gorgonzola etc,
but some of us are still, well, small.

The process was a bit long - I started at 430pm yesterday
and we got to eat the finished product at lunchtime today -
and triple-rise, besides, but oh, so good, and milder than
I'd expected. Next time we will try sharp cheddar and
maybe even the original gruyere version.

These loaves are about 6" across and chewy-crusty and rose
beautifully even though our pasty starter looked nothing at all
like the lovely wet bubbly thing in the blog demo photos.
Even Katydid screamed for more.

Hand-kneading is all charming and rustic but I am thinking
very seriously about one of those stand mixers that we used
all the time in mum's house. Mum often had two going
simultaneously, so prolific a baker was she. Dough-hooks
and K-beaters are definitely the way to go.