Quick updates

I used to send people email messages with titles like that. The "quick" turned out to always be untrue. Now I just blog the same content.

Spent the afternoon at the Renaissance Festival today. Photos later. The girls loved it - princesses and knights and dragons and fairies and bards and castles and taverns and flowers everywhere. Sort of like Midsummer Night's Dream meets King Arthur, with a good dose of the circus thrown in. Not a single Disney Princess in sight. Note to self: verify if the word "dude" was used during the Renaissance; I have my doubts. Also google "flying pickle missile+Renaissance" - equally dubious association.

A busy week - Dave covered much ground with landscaping (bad pun, sorry) the backyard. We finally became disgusted enough with our filthy carpet to invite the professional cleaners to work on it. The girls are just finishing yet another round of colds, which they generously shared with me. Jenna sprained her hand early this week and was all mopey for four days while simultaneously becoming amazingly adept at using one hand for everything, including playing in the sandbox and sitting on swings without falling off. Poor sleep for everyone the last week, but this week is looking much more hopeful.

No dreams of Singapore food recently. Very relieved. Hello Kitty birthday party (Emily's) coming up, so Emily and I have been very busy preparing for it. After being immersed in HelloKittyculture the past fortnight, everyone has gained a heightened awareness of the prevalence of Hello Kitty in stores. Even Kate can correctly identify Hello Kitty heads and shout, "Kitty!" Jenna said in Barnes and Noble this week, "Why is there Hello Kitty everywhere?" Yes, why indeed?

Kate talking nineteen to the dozen. Very entertaining, but still climbs tables. We now no longer set the table for meals till the very last minute, haphazardly throwing on plates and cutlery and hoping they land at the right spots, while fending off Kate with one hand. She has also discovered how to release herself from her high chair. This is unfortunate because she usually does not wait to be cleaned up. All she needs is a second when our backs are turned to unlatch herself, yell, "Done!", climb down and run off spreading sticky rice, sauce and mayhem on the (now clean-ish) carpet. Kate's ridiculous physical feats all stem from her false belief that she is as old as her sisters and can therefore do better than they. She will climb any playground equipment that remotely resembles steps and come down slides meant for kids in grade school. She is unstoppable. We have tried. And failed. She has also taken over Emily's car seat in the van and will fight her sisters to plant herself squarely in it or Jenna's (if Emily has rightfully beaten her to it), after which she will survey the deposed occupant with disdain and act all dowager-like in her new throne. We have taken this as a sign that she has outgrown her current car seat and wants a new one.

Time for bed. Although I feel peckish now. Mayhap a nutella sandwich before I retire. Not sure I ate enough at the Festival today. If only mee siam were a Renaissance food. Sigh.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

Lovely, beautiful mum! Gifted in so many ways - the kindest of hearts, the bestest of cooks, the supremest of seamstresses and the most nurturing person I know. And with a never-say-cannot spirit. And mine, all mine! Well, OK, I share her with Sean, my brother. Who has inherited all her cooking genes. Mutter mutter mutter mutter.

How annoying that we are in different countries today! But how lucky for you that I am not there to attempt to cook you a meal for your birthday!

Instead, here is a photo of your birthday present:


and another - look! lots of pockets! For your sunglasses and dad's handphone! And buckles for carabinas!

Behold the top-stitching! Who taught me quality control? Who made me unpick and unpick to get it perfect? Who refused to let me escape with mediocre stitches and poor tension? Three cheers for mum!

Er.... however.... I am ashamed to say that it is STILL in my house, 10 000 miles away. It is being Scotch-garded now in the laundry room sink. It will be very late. Oops.

Anyway, happy birthday, Mum!



We love you! Eat mee siam for me!

Hello Kitty Dry Run

Emily has asked for a Hello Kitty (sigh) birthday party this year.
Could be worse, really.

Anyway, it rained all day today, so a good time for a dry
run. Royal icing (which I usually use) dries hard and is
nice for doing ahead and packing away till the actual day.
But bland. Very bland. Karen's (mother-in-law)'s recipe
for frosting is absolutely scrumptious but not stiff enough
for piping details. So I am testing out the frosting and cookie
recipes from one of my favorite baking blogs,
The Decorated Cookie. Verdict - amazing.

Had so much fun today playing with piping bags. How I wish
I had the time to bake more! Some of the Hello Kitties are a
bit wonky because I dashed them off free-hand with Kate
clinging to my leg. Will try for more consistent faces
for the actual day.

Most enjoyable, though, was teaching Emily to use a piping bag.

She did really well!
Jenna did some piping, too, and I was very impressed with
her attention span and control. Whoo hoo, children! No
pictures of Jenna at work, sadly, because by then my hands
were full of encrusted icing that I daren't touch the camera.
Also was alternating between cutting up raw chicken for
dinner and piping whiskers (Kate still hadn't left my leg),
so didn't to confuse things further.

Raspberry Picking

Last Saturday we made out annual trip to the
berry farm for our fall raspberries.

As earlier mentioned, Kate loved the raspberries

and flowers, some of which she also ate.

Modest harvest this year - only 4 pounds - before the rain
came and we had to stop. We are seriously considering
returning to pig out in the fields. No jam this year because
we still have a vast number of containers in the
freezer from (ulp) two years ago.

Some pictures from previous years here.

Photo(s) of the Weekend

We love raspberries.

Yes, we do.

More raspberry-picking pictures tomorrow!

Ducks and Miscellany

Quite by accident, we discovered a new park yesterday.
In addition to having a superior playground, not the least
because it had "lion blue swings", it also had a little shaded
shrub-lined path leading to a dock overlooking a lovely pond.

With ducks.

Yesterday we had nothing edible except for two small bits
of crackers left in Kate's stroller from who knows when.
So today we returned with bread to feed the ducks.

Kate sneaked in some nibbles of duck food.

Emily and Jenna fell quite in love with the
climbing wall at the playground.

Other miscellaneous reports: we are still loving our evening walks,

the water balloons

and our experiments with growing living things.

Yesterday's harvest:

and grass-heads we bought at the local children's craft fair.

Measuring

At the fabric store today, Jenna took a yellow zipper and measured my legs with it.

"You're one year old, mom." she declared, after carefully stretching the zipper out along my shin.

When we came home, Emily decided she would play cloth store again. So out from my stash came all the fat quarters and other non-precious fabrics to stock her shelves as she carefully set up her new shop.

After lunch, Emily opened the Kiss Lips Cloth Store, a small, family-run enterprise with a modest collection of fabric and outstanding sales service which included a personal- shopper-cum-interpreter (Jenna) to help those of us unable to navigate the technical language of fabric shopping. Everyone took a turn to get in line at the cutting counter, even Kate.

E: How much cloth does Katie want, Jenna?

J: How old is Katie, mom?

M: 16 months.

J: She wants 16 months of cloth, Emily!

And of course, anyone who's ever worked in a fabric store knows what that means.

The Start of the Summer Harvest

On Saturday we harvested the first of our tomatoes.

The girls were very excited. Kate was not sure what was
going on, but Jenna and Emily took their little buckets
and went down to our little garden to pick
"only the red tomatoes".

They returned, with Emily telling Jenna all about how
tomatoes needed to be washed. She had done it all each
summer past, and she was thrilled to be able to share
this with (and teach) Jenna.

Here they are, washing the tomatoes in LOC and dropping
them in clean water. And washing their hands. And playing
with soap suds. Which was the main point of the game,
actually. See Kate taking notes and thinking, "Hah!
That's not how it's done. There needs to be more mess.
More. Next year I'll show them."

The tomatoes continue to ripen daily, so we pick 6-8
each day. Right now the numbers are manageable, but
when the bigger tomatoes ripen and these little ones are
at their peak, we'll need to find time to turn them into
something that can keep. Sundried, maybe.

What We Eat With Sour Green Apples

Behold the humble granny smith.

I am ashamed to say that I have just only discovered
caramel dip. Mmmmmm.

Initially I found it unnatural to eat fruit with dip. Then I
remembered that, as a child, we ate these sour green
apples with a dip of our own in Singapore. Quite an
unusual dip, I must add. In fact, folks in these parts
might well gag and mutter, "vile!" under their
breath, just on the basis of the description alone
(the smell is another thing altogether).

We call it hae-kor in Singapore. It's a salty black tarry
paste made from shrimp. We use it as a dressing in our
local salad, rojak. And we used to dip slices of green
apple in it as children. At least our family did. Our favorite
dipping fruit, though, was something oval and green,
called bauh-bring-bring. Also kacang botol (technically
a vegetable) - those little funny frilly gourds that nonya
people like crunching on. But back to the dip itself -
what's it smell like? Oh, stinky boots.

Recently, Emily has begun finding the smell of white
button mushrooms "very strong". I scoffed. She does
not yet know the meaning of pungent. When she comes
of age, she will be introduced to durian. A person is
not truly a Singaporean until they've had a whiff of it,
keeled over, died, and come back to life.

Happy 9th of August!

Photo from Wikimedia commons.

Today is National Day in Singapore. Which is like Independence
Day in the US. Which is called 4th of July. Which puzzled me.
So I thought I'd refer to our National Day in the same format.

Not very catchy, I must admit.

So, it being National Day and all, I thought it would be nice
to be a bit patriotic today. I didn't wear red and white, and I
didn't log onto you tube to sing along to Count On Me,
Singapore. But I am going to make lists! So here they are:

Ten Things I Don't Miss About Singapore

1. The haze.
2. The elderly uncles (ah cheks) walking around the markets in their white Tshirts and striped pyjama pants, enthusiastically emptying the contents of their lungs on the sidewalks (we call them pavements).
3. The elderly aunties (ah sohs) who descend upon me from nowhere, declaring how much weight I have gained or lost.
4. The perpetual line of sweat down my back.
5. The slimming salon ads that occupy half the space in the newspapers.
6. The crawling, climbing, flying household guests (who are of the insect family). Silly digression: I counted 17 mosquito bites on my person this week. Itchy. But it made me remember getting anything between 20-40 mosquito bites as a child in Singapore during mosquito season. Mum, do you remember me and Sean drawing circles around our mosquito bites with blue ball-point pen? I felt that if I marked them out on my skin, I'd not scratch them because their itchiness couldn't sneak up on me by being invisible. Very strange child I was.
7. The acronyms.
8. The education system.
9. The smell of weird air freshener in taxis.
10. Tearing small circles off prepaid parking tickets.

Ten Things I Miss About Singapore

1. Father.
2. Mother.
3. Brother.
4. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Nephews, Nieces, Friends.
5. Mee Siam.
6. Sambal Belaccan.
7. Ubi Kayu Pedas (tapioca crisps and peanuts in sambal).
8. The education system.
9. Outdoor swimming pools.
10. Textile Centre (where I used to bulk-buy sewing supplies).

Ah, Singapore. Good stuff there. In case anyone is wondering
about my roots - *wah, es-kew me - who say I kenah become
angmohfied until donch know how to talk like we alls kaki
nang anymore, ah? Aaaanyhow say, one.

*semantic translation: Hey, excuse me, don't assume I have
become so much like the people here that I am no longer able
to speak like a local. You have no grounds for saying so.

Yes, I am still quite fluent in Singlish. And still quite Ah Lian.

Kate is 16 months old

New words: "marker", "gummy" (how quickly they learn the names of forbidden things), "read", "book", "cup", "Emily", "Denna" (what she shouts when she she wants the attention of her other sister) and (oh horror) "why?"

New sentences: "More puk-puk" when she wants a second helping of chicken at supper.

New teeth: molars!

New tricks: climbs up the neighbor's slide.

New game: Sneak Up Behind Mom And Pull Her Scrunchie Off.

Photo(s) of the Day

Emily reading library books to Jenna and Kate

and other random deck pictures.

What I Read When I Am Homesick

Has sambal belaccan, gado-gado, sayur lodeh and

rendang. No Chinese food in it, mercifully. Ugh.

Photos, recipes and stories of kampung cooking.

Kampung, people! Real stuff.

Random Summer Updates

Now that Kate can climb the steps of the neighbor's playset

all by herself, this is the girls' newest favorite sliding

technique/game - Let Us All Pile Up At The Bottom.

The girls made some wall art today -

yes, even Kate.

More pictures here.

Our tomatoes have not died. Neither have they been

infested by the frightful tomato horn worms. I am daily

thankful. By next week we might start harvesting.