Sasha Cook: Braised Ginger Spare Ribs with 5 ingredients only)

I suck at cooking and will always be cos I am so lazy to go and find the different ingredients (esp looonnng list) just to make one dish. So that day I found some spare ribs in my fridge. I thought hokay... let's check the recipe book and see what I can make. Wah! Wah! so many ingredients! Nevermind! Check google. wah! wah! the kwai lowe ones are even more ingredients. Okay Give up! So I went to check my fridge instead and found ginger & hoisin sauce. Don't know what is the end result will be like but what the heck? That's the only thing I have :P But I am happy to say I am quite happy with the end result.

So this is what I did:
1. Marinated the spare ribs with finely julienne ginger, ground black pepper, soya sauce and hoisin sauce. Notice that I do not have specific amount for each ingredients? well, that's me. Use your heart to cook! (I dumped everything into a tupperware and shake the fella up and yank it into the fridge for few hours. )
2. Took it out 1 hour before I cook in order for the meat to be room temp.
3. Pan fry the spare ribs first and once its slightly browned...
4. mix some water into the tupperware (with the extra marinate) and pour into the spare ribs. Make sure the water level is enough to cover the spare ribs.

5. Turn the fire to low setting and let it simmer and slowly till the sauce is thicken and the spare ribs are soft enough. If you want thicker sauce, you can thicken the sauce with some corn starch powder mixed with some water.
6. Serve with rice or you can even cook it with Yee Mee (add in at step 4)

Tadaa! My braised ginger spare ribs with hoisin sauce.

DIY: Personalised Birthday Gift - Scrabble Tile Names

November is always the month that I look forward too cos its my birthday month and also my bestie's. Her bday is only 9 days after mine. Since this year she has a new baby and a new house, I thought why not make something for her and her hub too since his birthday is only 4 days away from hers and include her baby into the picture too? So I decided to make a frame with scrabble tiled names of the family, also adapted the idea from pinterest =) What is the point of pinning and never do them right?

I like the scrabble best cos I managed to put their daughter's name in the middle and connect both of their  names together :)

I went shopping for the items that was needed together when I did this gift for JD teacher's gift. I found the frame from ikea and some "light" wood from Daiso. So when I got home, I quickly started to saw the wood into cubes. 3 cm x 3 cm.

After sawing the wood into cubes, I sandpaper them and made the wood cube smooth in order for me to paint the letter and numbers on. Then.... i didn't take the picture of the next step cos....
1. initially I wanted to carve the letters on. But then my tool is not suitable. Failed!
2. I wanted to paint the letters on the cube but my brush is not fine enough. Failed!
3. painted the letters using pencil tip as brush. Failed!
4. Wanted to write the letters using pen but the ink smeared. Failed!

So lastly, I decided to put a layer of celotape on the cube and cut the letters out. Peel the letters out and then brush a layer of paint on it. Voila! As for the numbers, impposible for me to cut the celotape or brush them on. So what to do? Write the number on with ballpoint pen. :) (why never write the letter with the ballpoint pen? cannot... cos it will make the surface jaggered and not smooth. You can only use ballpoint pen for a single stroke letter on wood. er... you know what I mean ah?)

aisay.... didn't take a close shot of the scrabble tiles. This is the closest I took. I have another one but it was blur.

I didn't manage to give it to her before her birthday cos we're all busy with wedding dinners and all. So I gave it to her as her belated birthday gift and also early birthday gift for her husband. They looked happy and pleased (I hope!) and her hub even asked me to sign on it. hahaha oh well.. will be dropping by later at their house to officiate the "art" later. ;)


(UPDATE: lately I have received many comments on this and many also told that I can buy the tiles from some shops and also amazon.com. Thanks! but then I stay in Malaysia and there's hardly any stores here that sells loose tiles like this here and If i were to buy it from amazon, it will take at least 2 weeks for delivery and the charges will cost a bomb (Note 1USD = Rm3.80) But anyway I thank you all for your kind comments and your visit here :) )

Biting my own tongue

Justin has got this "thing" about me telling him that everything that I cannot buy for him is EXPENSIVE.

When he was 2 and just started to talk in sentence..

Me: Justin, can you please pass mami that (i forgot what is that thing)

JT: okay. But wait...*tap tap finger on table*

Me: wait what?

JT: wait for a while. *tap tao finger on table*

Me:....

JT: okay. now you can have it. Its EXPENSIVE already.

Me: :S

So that was when he was 2yrs old. And now that he is 3 years and 2 months old...

SCENE 1: at the bookstore and he picked up a pack of stationaries..

JT: Mami, how much is this?

Me: it's 6.90

JT: *look sad* means expensive. Put it back.

Me: *laugh in my heart* good boy....

SCENE 2:  buying Lightning Mcqueen toy

JT: mami, the lightning mcqueen toy you buy for Jeremy... is it expensive?

Me: yeah. Why?

JT: but why you buy expensive toy for Jeremy wan?

Me: cos Jeremy gotto stay in the hospital that day ma. So buy for him and make him happy la..

JT: er... can you buy for me the lightning mcqueen , not so expensive one?

Me: haha Nope. Cos all also so expensive wan.

JT: can you go find the cheap lightning mcqueen toy?

Me: aiyayaya....

SCENE 3: at shoe store in Midvalley last Sunday

Me: wait wait a min. I need to go and get a new pair of shoes.

JT: but why?

Me: cos all my shoes broken edi. I need to get a pair of shoes.

JT: But! all the shoes here are EXPENSIVE!

Me: Aiyah.. on sale now lah. So not so expensive okay? *try shoes*.. so tell me. what do you think about this shoe? 

JT: Hmmm... it's nice. BUT let me check how much it is first *get down and remove shoes from my leg and looked at the price tag* Read for me. How much is it?

Me: 30 dollar after sale

JT: Means.. it's expensive. Put it back.

Me: -.-''

Ai.....i don't know wanna laugh or cry first cos I felt like I just bit my own tongue.

A Lil' Gift For His Teacher

It's Party Day in his school today and its also the "unofficial last day" to attend school today. So everyone was supposed to bring some food, dress in whatever outfit you want to, go to school without bag and just go crazy today.

His teacher, Teacher C has been teaching him for the past 2 years and Jayden adores her. She won't be teaching him next year so I thought that we should give her something just to say thanks for her patience and guidance for these 2 years.

After viewing pinterest and also Mott's, I decided that maybe this is the right gift for the teacher. So off to Ikea to hunt for the frame and also some crayons and this is the final outcome.

How to do it: Print out the alphabet, arrange the crayons on the alphabet and cut off according to the shapes. I used hot gun glue to attach the crayons on it.

I did the crayons and he did the writing.

He gave this to Teacher C this morning and she was very surprised. She hugged and gave him a kiss and I can see that she was in tears. But my boy was too shy to react, he just stood there like a log. haha

Well, time flies. Next year he'll be in his final year in kindy (finally! after so many years in this kindy since 2 yrs old). Just praying and hoping that his teacher will be as good as Teacher C.

First Visit To The Dentist

Brought kid No.1 to the dentist cos' 2 of his teeth started to grow inward even before the old one went off. Worried that the new teeth will grow very ugly, I brought him to the dentist to ask for opinion. So as soon as we got to the dentist, JD started to nag and scold me saying that he won't let the dentist touch him or let him remove his teeth. Since we went around 3.30pm, we're the only customer at that time and in no time we're in the dentist's treatment room. He refused to go in, made a whole lot of noise and finally I managed to get him into the room but still, he refused to sit down.

Dentist: Come, JD. Come and sit down. Let Dr see what's wrong with your teeth.
JD: Nothing WRONG LAH! Nothing! No need to SEE!
Me: Aiyoh.. JD please lah. Sit down. Just sit down okay?
JD:HAIYAH!

and he went to sit down and both dentist and myself wanna faint. Why?

He sat like this

With his legs up at the head-rest! He did it cos he was angry and scared at the dentist not because he doesn't know how to sit at the chair. Speaking about being defiant!

The dentist eyes went big and he got a shocked. I think this was his first time seeing someone doing this. he went speechless!

And for me, aiyoyoyoyoyoyo I know that he likes to do this at home and once in post office (and his leg actually accidently hit someone's body and got that person pissed like hell) but I have never expected him to do this at the dentist. MY GOD! Paiseh-ness! I don't know wanna laugh first or to cry first seriously! haha

Immediately I asked him to turn around and sit properly. Reluctantly, he sat and then more headache. Dr asked him to open his mouth, he opened it realllly small. Then he said "bigger please" and he add in probably like few mms. "bigger please..." he opened another few mms. "OPEN YOUR MOUTH REALLY BIG JAYDEN!" that's the "call" to indicate 'you better not play a fool anymore or else mami's gona turn into a monster soon!'. So Dr checked and said yeap, the new teeth is coming out but the old one is still very firm and if we were to remove the old one now, he might be in more pain. So we need to wait for a month of observation, hopefully the teeth will fall off by themselves (and can save money, he!he!) and plus Dr said "Cooperation is very important! but looking at your son's condition, I don't think I can do it. If he is not ready and if we were to continue with this, this will traumatize him and make him scared of dentist".

So then dentist checked on my wisdow tooth and told me that it's better for me to go for the operation and remove it before it do more harm to me. But he kept emphasizing to me that I should not bring my kids with on the day of the surgery. And before leaving his wife/nurse said to me "haha your kids very active. I can imagine how tired you are" and the dentist added "Your kids ..are not only active, they are HYPERACTIVE!".

Well, I get that all the time. ;)