One Night in Kuching....

I was in Kuching from end May to mid June (school holidays) with the girls and we stayed at my brother's house. My mum was in JB so she helped to accompany me to bring the girls back to Kuching and hubby went there one week later so that he could enjoy himself and accompany us home.


One night, my brother took out a red wine from my dad's collection for hubby and I to try out. He said if they were good enough, he would use this brand for his wedding at the end of the year. Nothing grand about the brand and the red wine was from Spain (not France or Italy where red wines were supposed to be more well known). To our surprise, the red wine tasted really nice. Smooth with a tinge of sweetness.


Hubby wanted to have some food to bring out the taste better so we raided my dad's cupboard and found a packet of straight dried shrimps. We ate some and finished that bottle of wine.





On the next day, remembering the dried shrimps I went to nearby grocery shops to buy shallots, chillies and lime and used them to marinade a bowl of dried shrimps with a bit of sugar. Hence, we had an extra dish to go with rice that day. I liked this dish as my mum used to prepare this when we were young.

So my dad gave me some of the dried shrimps to bring back to JB but before I could make another round of dried shrimp with marinade, I had 'accidentally' finished eating them all as snack. Whoops!

Tian and Tao's Birthday!

Today is Tian's 4th Birthday and Tao's 2nd Birthday two days later but we celebrated the girls birthday together last Sunday.

I had quite a hard time planning their cakes as I did not want them to share a cake for candle blowing (superstitions?) so I had to find a way to buy a cake for eating and another 'spare' one just for candle blowing (My hubby and his parents do not like sweet stuff so I know I will end up having to finish up 2 cakes and it would be a waste if I was not able to do so). Tian mentioned she wanted princess cartoons on her cake and Tao was into anything Mickey Mouse at the moment so I decided to order a black forest cake with a Mickey Mouse as decoration and I more or less forced the bakery to sell me a sugar/ icing thingy with princess cartoon. Then I bought a normal sponge cake from another bakery, did some chocolate frosting for the sides, sprinkled some colourful sugar rice onto the cake before pasting the cartoon on the top. So I got another cake for Tian according to her request at a cheaper cost and to her satisfaction. Heh!

I cut out their names from coloured A4 paper and it was too tiring so I decided to print the 'Happy Birthday' wordings from computer and cut them out.

Tian's Princess birthday cake. She thought I made the cake for her but in fact I only decorated the sponge cake.


Tao's Mickey Mouse birthday cake.


Jelly made from Dutch Lady strawberry flavoured and chocolate flavoured milk. I wrapped the packet drinks with coloured paper and pasted Disney cartoon stickers and the girls were happy to drink from their favourite cartoons.

'Mee Suah' in red yeast wine chicken soup. Foochow people in my home town practise cooking this for birthdays and we have adapted to that culture.

Tian and Tao getting ready for candle blowing.

My 2 sweet girls: One is 4 years old and another one is going to be 2 in 2 days time. I hope they grow up happy, obedient and healthy.