Easy guacamole

I've currently into eating avocados. I love the creamy, rich texture that on its own seemed rather tasteless. But it absorbs beautifully the flavours of whatever dressings that goes with it. Of course, the other reason for my enthusiastic eating of said fruit these days is that I would like Faith to eat avocado when she starts weaning. I figured that the more I eat, she might get a taste of it through the milk and hence develop a taste of it herself *grin*.

Since I've been hankering after some not-so-healthy junk food like chips, I thought it would be a good idea to pair some junk food with health food by making an avocado dip to go along with my organic tortilla chips. That ought to balance things out a little.

So, here's my version of guacamole:

Ingredients

2 ripe avocados
1/4 onion, roughly chopped
Juice from about 1/4 of a lemon juice
1 tomato, diced
Salt, to taste

Method

1) Cut and scope avocado into a blender, along with the onions.

2) Squeeze the lemon juice in, add salt and blitz everything until smooth. If you like, you could pulse the blender so that the avocados don't get too mashed up and you have some rough bits for a different texture.

3) Scope pureed mixture into a container that can be refrigerated. Add in the diced tomato and mix well. Refrigerate it and eat with tortilla chips whenever you like *Slurp* :)

Personally, I don't like the strong taste of raw onions, therefore, I only use 1/4 onion. For onion lovers, you could even add in some chopped onions along with the tomatoes at the end for a nice crunch.

Next week, I think I shall make avocado salad. Hmmm.... Yummy!

Final vaccination...

...well, at least for this year. As of yesterday, Faith has gotten her last innoculation. The jabs she has taken include the complusory 6-in-1 vaccination as well as additional jab for pneumococcal, as well as rotavirus. She had her jabs at the 2nd, 3rd and 5th month.

As of now, she's all cleared and "vaccinated" to be able to travel. Yippee!! As a precaution, I've given her fever medication when we went home. The very first time, I didn't and she had fever for 3 days. So, I've wisen up and given her the fever medication from the 2nd vaccination so that she doesn't get any. Cos she doesn't rest or eat well when she has fever and if I could spare her the discomfort, I would rather do so.

Crossing my fingers that she would sail through the next few days without any fever, just like the last time :)

At nearly 5 months...

Its been a while since I've posted on Faith's developments. Physically and emotionally, my baby has grown quite a fair bit... ok, maybe less about the physical development as in she's not grown much in terms of size or weight. But definitely the emotional and also some level of gross and fine motor skills.

For the last few weeks, Faith has occasionally experienced an early onset of stranger anxiety. Usually, that hits babies at about 8-9 months. But we've noticed that she sometimes cry when we leave her with my in-laws or when not so familiar folks or strangers carry her. To help smoothen out some of her anxieties, especially about being left with my in-laws, Louis and I had taken to bringing her to their place after dinner on weeknights to just sit and play while the both of us are in the house. We think it might have helped becos she's mostly alright now. However, at times, she might purse her little lips still as if to start crying. When that happens, my FIL quickly shuffles her downstairs for a while or to the NTUC supermarket to distract her.

On her physical development, Faith's latest feat is to clutch both her feet with her 2 little hands and occasionally, bring one or even both feet up to her mouth to gnaw on them. Its rather funny and amusing, although diaper changing can be a little of a wrestling match as she would stick her two little feet up in the air and I'm struggling to bring them down so that I can fasten the sticky-tapes of the diapers.

I think my little baby is teething or exhibiting signs of teething. I've been trying to feel her upper and lower gums, as well as to gently pry her mouth open just to see if there are any white-ish marks on her gums. So far, it doesn't looks as if any tooth is sprouting soon.

However, for a few nights last week, she hasn't really been sleeping well. While she used to wake up naturally and smile in the mornings, a few times last week, she would be thrashing and flailing her hands about while sleeping. In the afternoons, she would sometimes fuss a lot more than her usual too. She had a one-time diarrhea as well as rashes around her diaper area. And mostly, she likes to stick her hands into her mouth, generating lots of saliva as well. Sometimes, I would let her catch hold of my fingers, where she would draw them into her mouth and start biting hard with her gums. Our paedi thinks it might still be early days for her to actually start teething. So, we'll just have to wait it out and see if any tooth/teeth starts sprouting over the next few weeks.

And the most exciting thing that happened today is that the paedi gave us the go-ahead to start giving some solids to Faith and get her exposed to the different textures of food. Louis and I have just bought her a packet of organic rice cereals over the weekend and finally, we can start feeding her. Even though I'm very very eager to start feeding her tomorrow, I've decided to hold off and wait until this weekend or next Monday to start her on the rice cereals. Why? Becos Louis is away in London this week for a business convention and I would like him to be able to participate by both feeding and watching his little girl take on the next development milestone.

Frankly, Louis and I are absolutely hopeless when it comes to bottle-feeding our girl. Faith is so distracted when Louis feeds her cos he would be singing or rocking her to cajole her to drink and our little one would just be so entranced or she would be busy gurgling back to her daddy (Yeah! She's a regular daddy's girl) that she wouldn't drink. And me... well... you all should know by now why I'm not able to feed Faith. So, feeding her solids would hopefully be a feat that both of us are able to do, preferably, without her spitting out those contents right back at our face *grin*

Faith's now able to hold her neck sturdily while sitting in the activity station (or exersaucer). When we first brought it home and placed her in it, her head would flop forward and she would actually end up sucking the front of the rotatable seat. But now, she's able to sit up fairly decently and hold her neck steady while playing with the toys. Of course her back muscle hasn't development fully yet, so, she's kinda slouching in the seat with a pillow propped behind her back.

Now, I'm just waiting for her to learn to flip from her stomach onto her back. I wrote before that she could do it. Apparently, it was a one-time feat, yet to be repeated again. So, more tummy time is in order :)

Pain a l'ancienne

I've been having consistent, if varied, success with my focaccia-making. With the exception of the book by Beth Henspergn, the 2 other bread recipes I have are meant for bread-machines. Deciding to extend my bread-making repertoire, I eagerly scouted Amazon for bread making books that could make use of my KitchenAid -- I always have good reasons to buy cookbooks.

And so it was that I chanced about the book titled "Bread Baker's Apprentice" by Peter Reinhart. It won the James Beard book award and IACP Cookbook Award -- I have no clue what IACP stands for but I figured it must be something good (kekeke). Its gotten fairly good reviews and most importantly, there are recipes for artisan breads, many of which are European-type breads -- or are all artisan breads from Europe anyways?? After reading through it, I was rather proud of my purchase. The reason being that the author aims to provide a good foundation and explanation on the science of bread-making. What I like is that the author has attached a formula for each recipe providing the percentage component of all the ingredients. Meaning to say that if the recipe calls for a 1-pound bread but you would need to make a 3 1/2-pound bread, you could use the formula to calculate how much of each ingredient would you actually need. I found that really neat.

I've also found little nuggets of useful information that is not explained in a lot of cookbooks. For example, it explains that while the use of commercial yeast is helpful in leavening breads (i.e. make it rise), the maxim in good bread baking is to use the minimum amount of yeast because you do not want the bread to acquire a yeasty taste. Another useful info was that you only knead as long as it takes for the bread dough to form, not any less or more. What is more important is to allow the dough to ferment (or to proof) as that constitutes towards developing about 80% of the final taste of the bread (fyi, the remaining 20% are attributable to factors such as quality of ingredients, oven temperature etc).

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the bread requires at least 2 days to make. The first day is used to make a preferment (known as starter or sponge), before making the bread proper on the 2nd day. Hence, its tough to decide that you want to make any bread spur-of-the-moment, especially if you entertain thoughts of making your own bread for a dinner at home with guests.

Anyways, I decided to make the pain a l'ancienne The author had visited Gosselin in Paris and was given the idea to refrigerate the preferment. The rationale for doing that in gist (since my chemistry was terrible back in school) what that refrigerating the dough retards the action of the yeast, but allow natural sugars to build up within the dough. Hence, when the dough is taken out from the fridge the next day, the return to room temperature will activate the yeast to start digesting the sugar. But becos the dough has produced more sugar after sitting overnight, there's better flavour to the bread.

Now, back to the all important question... how did the bread turn out? Well... it was certainly edible, but far from being good. If you could hear my mom, she kept saying that the crust was sooo haard, blaming it on the flour. Overall, with the exception of the teeth-aching hard crust, the taste of the bread really wasn't too bad. The interior of the bread didn't have that many air-holes, unfortunately.

The lessons learnt were:

1) It was a little tedious having to convert ounce and pounds to the metric system. Thus, when I was making the preferment, I had wrongly read and convert the amount of flour needed. Hence, the flour was rather wet. Took a while of kneading before I reread the quantity and realised my mistake. For ease of reference, am going to paste a conversion chart in the book or pencil in the weight in kilos and grams next to it.

2) Secondly, during the handling of the dough, I might have degassed it a little. Also, while dividing and cutting the dough to form the baguettes, the original dough was a little too long. Hence, transferring the baguettes was difficult as they slipped and slithered. Becos of the size (or length) of a home oven, the baguettes were more like demi-baguettes rather than the store-bought long ones.

3) Slashing the baguettes to form nice splits wasn't as easy as I thought. Some slashes were too deep, while others too shallow that the final output didn't even showed any slashes.

4) The book instructed to put the baguettes into the oven after shaping and transferring to a baking sheet without the need to proof. I felt that this might be a reason why the baguettes didn't spring more in the oven and partly resulted in the lack of airy holes in the interior. The next time, I think I will allow another 10-15 minutes of final proofing in order to allow the dough to relax.

5) Length of time that the baguettes baked in the oven was around 20 minutes. But becos my baguettes were a little skinny, I should have adjusted for that and not left it in the oven for the specified length of time. That was the reason why my bread crust was a little too hard. And when I measure the internal temperature of the bread, it was about 270F instead of the 205F, which was the optimum internal temperature.

6) I was reluctant to sprinkle too much flour on each of the cut baguettes, except for one loaf. However, in the final output, I realised the one loaf that I sprinkled more flour actually turned out more rustic looking. I shall be more liberal with sprinkling flour the next time.

I think I shall have another few more attempts at the pain a l'ancienne. It tastes a little like the baguette au levain that I loved in France, although when I googled the latter, the method was different. While pain a l'ancienne uses commercial yeast, the au levain type of bread relies on wild yeast (i.e. just water and flour, relying on natural air-born yeast to ferment).

Wish me luck!

Buzz buzz buzz... busy as a bee

Haven't posted in a while cos I'm pre-occupied with a few things over the weekend. Ajay, Manisa and Saniya, our old apartment friends in France are here in Singapore for work cum leisure.

Then, I've gotten myself a new book on artisan bread baking... am rather excited to try out one of the breads, mainly pain l'ancienne but am a little tied for time cos most of the breads require about 2 days to make, the first day of which to make either the starter dough, before adding them into the bread mixture the next day. Hmmm... shall reserve some time next week to do it.

Also, am trying to swim twice a week. Desperately trying to shed those extra weight that I put on post-pregnancy, while I was busy stuffing carbo into my face to fill me up. Stupid move! All the carbo certainly made its way to my tummy and thighs now. Urrgghhh!!!!

Shall post more next week... meanwhile, wish me luck with my pain l'ancienne next week :)

I heart blogging

When I first came to know about blogs back in 2004, I wasn't particularly impressed with it. Perhaps it was becos the author was a rather obnoxious individual, writting longwindedly, whinning and complaining about his sentiments of his boss(es) at work. Specificially, he was rather detailed about situation of his dissent, downright describing numberous instances of their arguments.

In 2005, I knew of another handful of friends who had their own blog and I would once in a blue moon visit their site. Finally in 2006, my SIL shared at a family dinner that she has started her own blog. And becos she was posting quite regularly about herself, her baking exploits and the kids, it became a favourite bookmark that I would check every other day as a "reward" or break from the monotony of work. Then, it dawned on me that I should have my very own blog site too so that we could update the extended family of our progress as our soon-to-be little family unit might be expected to travel due to Louis' work (click here to see our very first humble beginnings and posting).

Indeed this blog has served that very purpose and more. More than the extended family, it is a way for friends to get updated about us and Faith. Especially a number of friends from Louis' MBA days that are now scattered all over the world and for one reason or another, our blog has served to update them about our developments, on Faith's entry into this world, our little parenthood trials and tribulations and new happenings in our daily lives.

For me, blogging is an outlet for me to voice my thoughts, preserve my sanity and quite importantly, to maintain my writing skills. You may laugh at the thought of the last, but I kid you not. While I took a one-year hiatus from work to accompany Louis for his MBA studies, English, which had all along been my first (and key) language of communication at work and in life took a nosedive. I forgot how to spell simple words and writting lost its structure -- frankly, IM could be the bane of proper English language use due to its casualness, number of abbreviations like LOL, BRB, TTYL and of course, Singlish. A typical conversation with friends could go...

Friend: Yo!

Eve: Yo!

Friend: Wahh... you now then log on ah?

Eve: Yah lor! Sleeping mah.

Friend: Wah say! So lucky. I got to wake up early today. Y'day, I slept late somemore... went out to "chiong" with my clubbing frens... drank until puke. This morning, really din wan 2 wake up man!

Eve: Serious ah?....

Well... for all the non-Singaporeans reading this, you might be flabbergasted and scratching your head at the thread of sample conversation above. And so you see...its easy to know why my English deteriorated. I'm not trying to pin the blame on anyone, least of all, the friends that I enjoy chatting with using Singlish and these days, the whole gamut of emoticons that peppers all IM communications that Louis finds it hard put to read becos it contains words and emoticons all jumbled up to the uninitiated.

When you are at work, the endless number of emails that you could be writing to your bosses or CEO (necessitating the need to spend an incredible half a day just to write a few paragraphs in an email), potential business clients, responses to public complains etc etc at least ensures that you put more thought into your writing instead of shooting from the mouth. Or how about that strategy paper for a 3-year programme that's supposed to justify your existence in the organisation that will potentially be scrutinised and poked holes by the senior management?

And of course, blogs are also a nouveau way to make friends. Well... you would occassionally click on an unknown link on your friend's blog and return often to read updates, drop an occassional comment or two and initial the start of a new friendship.

Most recently, we've received emails from 2 friends whom we have not contacted for a while. They were most curious to know what had happened since our last communications when they remembered our blog site link. And presto! They got their answers by reading our blog. In fact, one of them remarked that our blog kept her company one night when she couldn't sleep due to an upset stomach :)

So technology does have its many pros and alongside, some cons as well. Well... you've got to take the good with the bad, but for us, the goods have outweighed the bads so far in blogging.

That's why I HEART BLOGGING :)

Another new toy

It used to be that I would long for the weekends while I'm working. Now that I'm a SAHM, I still look forward to the weekends. That's when Louis is home and he would get to bath Faith in the morning, spend some quality time together with our little girl and mostly for us to spend some couple time while Faith gets interaction time with my in-laws.


On Sat morning, after we left Faith with my MIL, we went down to HF's place to borrow her LeapFrog Learn & Groove Activity Station for a few months. Its a pretty cool 5-station stationary activity center, rather like a walker sans the rollers, that babies could play with. And the babies can turn 360 degrees to play with all the 5 activities.


It was really great that HF loaned us the toy as firstly, we weren't too sure if Faith would take to it. Secondly, it eliminates clutter in the house/storeroom cos once Faith gets bored with the toy, we can return it. Thirdly, we definitely saved a lot of money by buying one less item. In fact, I'm starting to like the idea of rented toys very much, especially for big chunky items that once babies grow out of it, becomes a white elephant collecting dust in the house.


We tried putting Faith in it that very night. While her neck muscle is fairly sturdy and she is mostly able to lift her head without flopping, her back muscle hasn't really developed as yet. Hence, when we put her in, she kinda flopped forward. Thankfully, HF and her hubby told us to put a towel in front of her, so that if she flops forward and/or starts gnawing at the material, there's something soft on hand.


For now, Faith seems to be enticed with the microphone device. I would say the toy is fairly interesting, at least for a baby. There's lots of sounds, lights and music to entertain and enthrall a kid. Let's hope she would continue to be entertained by it as she grows, giving us some 15-20 minutes of "spare" time to do some household chores while she plays in it *fingers crossed* :)