Sunday, September 18, 2011

Pig Trotter with Black Vinegar

This is another popular confinement dish and we absolutely adore it. Try my hand preparing this dish yesterday and it turned out reasonably good. At least my wife appreciates it and I guess to me, that is more than enough.


I was reading from Health Freak Mommy's blog of this kai lan dish that they tried at Steam Room Restaurant at Viva Home Mall. It definitely looked refreshing and I tried preparing the same thing for dinner last night. Verdict: Definitely a refreshing idea to prepare Kai Lan and taste good too. On top of that, extremely easy to prepare and absolutely healthy.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Confinement Dishes

With the absence of the confinement lady and since wife is still on her maternity leave, I have taken over the kitchen to whip out some confinement dishes till she goes back to work. We have bought two confinement recipe books when we had Ryan. The recipe book has proven to of value again this round....

Some of the dishes cooked are :-

Black Bean Soup with red dates, wolfberries, black dates, ginger and pig's tail bones
Salted Baked Chicken Drumstick with tong gui and wolfberries.

Chinese Herbal soup cooked with black chicken. Herbs include pak kei, wai sun, red dates, wolfberries and yuk chuk and dried scallop..

Braised chicken drumstick with mushroom and ginger ...

Lemon Grass and Shallots soup cooked with Chicken Drumstick ...

Stirred Fried Liver with Ginger and Black Pepper

Young papaya soup cooked with pig tail's bone, wolfberries and red dates....another must apparently for mommies who have just delivered and are under confinement ....

Pork Ribs cooked in sweetened black vinegar and ginger ..

Chicken drumstick steamed with ginger, wolfberries, red dates, chinese wine and essence of chicken

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Chenya Baby portraits.....First attempt

I have always been fascinated with those cute and pretty baby pictures that I often see from the various website ...and I have always wanted to try my hand taking some of those pictures with Ryan..Unfortunately, with only a straight forward point and shoot camera then, it was quite difficult to get the results that I wanted.

With Chenya now and with my Nikon, I am eager to give it another try.

So, on her day when she was exactly one month old, we dressed her up, took out my camera and start shooting away....

This is first series of those shots. We will be attempting more shots in the near future probably with different props....

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Celebrating Chenya's Full Moon

Well..so much rambling about the confinement lady.

Time to move on with our lives. Time flies and the first month came to close. Before we knew it, it was time to plan and celebrate Chenya’s full month party.

We were initially planning a modest party but as we start inviting, the list seemed to grow longer and longer. Before we knew it, we were hitting the 130 pax mark! So, we ended up with catering for a hundred pax and engaging a `lok lok’ van for 50 pax! From our initial two simple tents, we ended up setting up a total of five tents for our friends and guests.

We were really impressed with the cake that we have for Ryan’s recent third birthday party. Hence, we called Joanne to get her to design a two tier cake for Chenya. She came back with a brilliant idea of a rabbit garden party (since little Chenya is born in the year of the rabbit). We simply adore the cake.


We decided to hold it as a lunch instead of dinner since it rains almost every other evening besides August which is the 7th month in the lunar calendar is the ghost festival and hence, we felt it would be better or more comfortable for the guests to attend a lunch then dinner at night.

It was a pretty successful event and we were glad that there so so many friends and relatives sharing our joy and joining in the celebration...


Friday, September 2, 2011

Confinement lady - A nightmare from Hell (Part 4)

Continuation from Part III

When we engaged confinement ladies, we expect them to be a knowledgeable professional with years of experience handling new born and mommies who have just delivered. But seriously, how many of them are really that knowledgeable and is the knowledge that the claimed to have proven or are they just so mid wife's tale......

We have bought a whole new range of Chico BPA free baby bottles for Chenya before her arrival and of course we were excited to pass them to the confinement lady to feed baby Chenya when she arrived.

Barely 2 days into job, Mdm L complained that the nipple holes were way too small and baby Chenya were having a tough time feeding. She insisted that we get her nipples with bigger holes. We went hunting but Chico outlets are difficult to find unless you are prepared to go to shopping complexes that I really don't have the time. Hence, we opted for Avent 4 month old nipples as an alternative. Mdm L seemed to be happier with it but complained constantly that baby Chenya is vomiting milk after feeding. She claimed that Chenya's stomach is `too shallow' and hence can't take that much. She insisted that 2.5 oz is sufficient.

When Mdm L left, it was our turn to take care of Chenya and to feed her. No doubt, the Avent 4 month nipple works wonders and Chenya did finished the milk in no time but we realised that she was not sucking but literally `drinking' since the flow was too fast. At times, we noticed that she literally had to stop to rest because she was just too tired. And we noticed that she vomit quite a fair bit after each feeding. The moment we changed the nipple back to the original one meant for new born, she vomited less and seemed to be enjoying her milk more. Of course the time taken to feed her is much longer as she now has to suck for milk.

Why did Mdm L insisted on a faster flow nipple? Because it is much faster to feed and get it done with. Once we switched to the original nipple, we are able to give Chenya 3 to 3.5 oz per feed without much problem and less vomiting. `Shallow stomach' theory? We dare not even mention this to our paed when we brought Chenya for her regular check up.

So, are all advice given by confinement ladies sound? You will have to be the judge to that.

Another thing we find that confinement ladies would always insist. Firstly, they would insist that we give the baby the pacifier whenever they cried. Honestly, we are seriously against it because we are afraid that the children will be so used to it that it becomes difficult for the baby to rid the habit later. We were adamant that Ryan would not have to use it with our first confinement lady and we shot down the idea the moment Mdm L brought up the subject. Why? Because the pacifier is obviously an easy way to pacify the baby. The problem is after they left and we have to deal with a baby addicted to the pacifier....

The second thing that we have seen confinement ladies likely to suggest was to allow the baby to sleep on the bouncer (sarung). We are again seriously against this idea because we really do not wish to have a baby that can only sleep in a bouncer and not the baby cot. Can you imagine travelling with a bouncer because your baby just can't sleep on a normal bed? The moment Mdm L brought up the subject, we shot it down and she was not at all happy about it.

The question that I tend to ask after this experience is that are confinement ladies really that knowledgeable and will do what is best for the baby or do they recommend methods that will best suit them for the next 28 days?

Well, so much for the confinement lady. We were truly glad that the confinement period is finally over and we could resume our normal life without the intrusion of a stranger in our home....

Would I consider a confinement lady if we should have another baby (not that we are going to since are are pretty sure that we have enough)? I certainly don't think so. In fact I think I could be a better `confinement lady' after going through two confinement ladies (and one from hell).....

And one last thing....she actually opened and counted her `ang pow' the moment we gave her in front of us!!! The ang pow although has become customary to give at end of her service is but a token of appreciation.....but Mdm L has obviously been led to believe that that form part of her charges and I am absolutely certain that she would question us and ask for more if we have given her something below her expectations...

Confinement ladies are certainly not cheap and they behave as if they are queens the moment the come on board.....
More Pictures on Jeju Island Coming up NEXT!