Yay for baby promotions!

Pottering away as usual at home I received a call to say that I had a large package arrive for me. Intrigued by the rather large box I thought it was the latest thing I had bought on ebay. I've become a rather big fan of ebay however, that's another story altogether.

Instead it was a gift from a baby promotion that I had entered in before Christmas which I completely forgotten about.

As my original preference was unavailable they sent me the alternative which was more expensive, the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Learning Farm. It's currently retailing at the stores for $199.99 so it was nice surprise. Pepe commented that it was the first toy we've actually gotten for Jaeminkins besides the  teddybear from Hamleys.

Jaeminkin's eyes lit up once it had been set up amd his animal friends were ready to play. He is too young to open the gate and crawl through but basically this action triggers the sing-along songs, dancing lights, music, sounds and fun phrases. I was impressed that so much is going on with the veggie shapes to sort, chicken eggs to count plus lots of items to take out and place, flipping, spinning, pressing, sliding and turning discoveries on both sides of the gate.

Actually, I was having too much fun with it that Pepe decided that it needed to be packed away til Jaeminkins was ready to play with it when he's 6 months old, such a party pooper.

We noticed that our living room is starting to look like a Fisher-Price display room as we already have the baby rocker and playgym by the same brand.

We received the Fisher-Price Precious Planet Deluxe Musical Activity playgym as a Christmas present for Jaeminkins from Auntie Chris.

It has an extra-large round mat which offers lots of room for baby to explore with movable toys and a musical teddy that plays an assortment of tunes, giggles and phrases. You can choose up to 20 minutes of continuous music or let the baby activate short musical segments. The three arches make it easy to place baby in just the right spot to enjoy overhead discoveries, tummy time, or sit-up play. It's very easy to pack away as everything folds up inside the mat for portability and storage.

Currently, Jaeminkins either kicks the teddy or kicks the arch which sets the music off. It's amazing to see that he's beginning to figure out 'cause and effect', which is also the case when I step out of sight, he begins to cry but then as soon as I appear he quietens down again. It too hard not to give in once you see a big smile from Jaeminkins.

We also have the Fisher-Price newborn to toddler rocker. Its been great for us as it starts as an newborn seat as you can pull the backing down to make it into a low profile frame to support the baby's head. As Jaeminkins has grown, it has been easy to convert it to an infant seat and add toys for interactive play and also remove the stablising pads to make it a toddler rocker.
The rocker is nifty as it folds down easily, has a built-in handle and is machine washable for those little accidents which there has been a few.

It also has the option of calming vibrations which is suppose to help comfort and soothe the baby, I'm not too sure if it worked for Jaeminkins as it just reminded me of those fat blaster vibrating machines, strange thought, I know.

A recent development has been that Jaeminkins has figured out how to pull on the toy ring which activates the music. I'm still not used to hearing the music all of a sudden that I keep asking Pepe if he's pulled the toy ring and he always replies it wasn't him but Jaeminkins.

Another milestone to note, is that we've stopped swaddling him which has been an easy transition so far. He is too cute as you'll see one of my favourite pictures of him with his arms up sleeping amongst the clouds. I was a little afraid about the transition as we were used to putting him in his Miracle Wrap or rather a strait jacket that secures his hands down his side and ensures Jaeminkins a good night's sleep. I really can't complain as Jaeminkins is pretty good, he's happy to fall asleep in the pram, baby bjorn, car seat but I'm yet to see him fall asleep at his playgym.

At 18 weeks, Jaeminkin's has also discovered the use of his hands and feet and mastered the feat of grabbing his feet with his hands. He's also enjoys sitting up alot more and with all this activity it's enough to tire him out to sleep. Yay! 

Sydney Festival- Name in lights

As a lover of free things, I quickly sourced what events I wanted to see during the Sydney Festival. A few weeks ago we made it out to the Festival First Night with hubby/Pepe and Jaeminkins. At Hyde Park they had psychedelic lights displayed, managed to get some great photos too. The city was buzzing with people and it was such a balmy night.

Hyde Park ablaze with psychedelic lights and St Marys Cathedral backdrop



Love these spacey looking pics

I don't know what other people's thoughts are but I thought the line up for free events this year was disappointing and not as exciting. What do you think?

I haven't been to every Sydney Festival as I've spent a few summers travelling through Asia but I do I remember in 2008 down at the Domain, there was an awesome lineup with Grace Knight, amazing instruments being played, attempts to break the record with the public participating in some choreographed dance routine.

The year before that 2007 was Cracker, an amazing pyrotechnic display of fireworks with music and dancing with about 12000 people at Homebush. I also remember the killer mosquitoes out there too as I got bitten alive.

Sydney Festival 03 opened with 'STICKY' an outdoor theatre performed at the Sydney Opera House forecourt - providing a visual and aural delight to the senses. The show starts with lots of sticky tape pulled across the stage, followed by a giant spider unfolding. This evolves at stages into a bird cage, clock tower, train station and factory.

For the 2011 Sydney Festival, I signed up for JOHN BALDESSARI’S YOUR NAME IN LIGHTS – SYDNEY FESTIVAL. Registering our names was easy and waiting to get our time slot took a few days. The first time slot was 4.04am in the morning which I totally missed and slept through. So I had to sign up again and this time our time slot was 12.31am in the morning. I thought this was doable, so we got dressed, took Jaeminkins with us and managed to get a great parking spot right in front of the Australian Museum facade where it was being displayed. 

Let's just say we saw a display with streaming lines and no names flashing. We waited about 10 minutes before our allocated timeslot and I was thinking, I'm in for it now as I not only dragged my hubby and my baby to see this and was hoping that we could laugh about this later. I even sent an email to the organisers saying I had dragged my lil family out and were disappointed that the display was not working.

Just as we thought it was a no show and we started up the car, the names started to be displayed, we waited a few moments and sure enough our names flashed up, I included a few funnies such as the working title of our baby and added our surname which got a chuckle from my hubby. Jaeminkins shares his name with the current Essendon coach so that was a hoot to see on the light display.

All in all it was a funny night which Jaeminkins has no recollection of as he slept through it all and I'm glad that I dragged my lil family to go see it rather on the webcam that was streaming live. 

Challenge 2- citrus

As part of the cookbook challenge, I thought I'd also challenge myself to cooking with different meats as well. With the theme of citrus for the second challenge, I was thinking along the lines of a Duck a l'orange, a classic French dish in which the duck is roasted and served with an orange sauce. I found a recipe of whole roasted duck with orange that fitted my purpose from the July 2010 issue of Australian Gourmet Traveller by Daniel Southern of Comme Kitchen, Melbourne.

Whole roast duck with orange

Serves 2

Cooking Time Prep time 30 mins, cook 1 hr (plus drying, resting)

Ingredients

1 duck (about 2kg)

2 tbsp olive oil for drizzling

2 oranges

1 tbsp caster sugar

Method

1. Blanch duck in a large saucepan of boiling water (10-15 seconds). Drain well, then place breast-side up on a wire rack lined with baking paper and placed on a tray and refrigerate uncovered until skin is taut and dry (2 days) - [instead of using this method as it was going to take too long I prepared the duck by wiping it dry as possible with kitchen paper and refrigerating for 8 hours to get the same effect.]
2.  Preheat oven to 220C. Transfer duck to a roasting pan, season with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast, basting regularly, until light golden (20-25 minutes), reduce oven to 170C and roast, basting occasionally, until medium to medium-rare and golden on the outside (20-30 minutes). Rest in a warm place (5-10 minutes). [We also removed the excess dripping of duck fat at every 30 min interval to use to cook roast potatoes on the side, so decadent!!]
3. Meanwhile, remove orange rind with a peeler (reserve flesh), then remove pith (discard) from rind. Cut rind into julienne, then blanch (10 seconds). Drain, then repeat process 4 to 5 times until tender. Set aside. Combine sugar and 80ml water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add rind, then cook over low heat until rind is sweet (2-3 minutes). Meanwhile, remove pith (discard) from flesh, cut into segments, set aside.
4. With the help of learning how to carve up duck on YouTube, it was served hot, scattered with orange segments and a little orange rind. Adding a few roasted potatoes cooked in duck fat, they were soooo good!

At the moment, we've discovered watercress as an alternative to rocket for salads. Watercress, avocado with balsamic vinegar and drizzled in olive oil was the perfect accompaniment with the duck.

I'm including a new segment of matching wines to the dish as most of my meals always include a glass of wine. My in house sommelier, Pepe suggests a Pinot from Central Otago region NZ or a Phillip Shaw Pinot Noir from Orange. Having tried wines in both these region, these full-bodied wines have beautiful earthy, plummy flavours and are ideal for game. And for dessert a Botryitis Semillon to offset the tartness of the lemon.

Now for dessert, as I had a craving for something sweet and I totally adore the flavour of lemon, especially the zest. One of the best ways to get my fix is with a sweet tart. The buttery curd is delicious spread on toast with fresh ricotta, or as it appears here, spooned into bite-sized tart shells.

This dessert serves 12 (as I didn't need to cook this many I just halved all the ingredients to make 6 mini lemon tarts)

Lemon Curd (care of Stephanie Alexander - The Cook's companion)

4 egg yolks

3/4 cup caster sugar

60g unsalted butter

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

100ml lemon juice

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar by hand until well combined and pour into a heavy-based non reactive saucepan. Add in butter, two heaped(!!) teaspoons of grated lemon rind and juice. Stirring constantly bring to simmering over a medium-high heat. This will take about five minutes. As soon as it starts to bubble, remove from the heat, continuing to stir for a minute or so. Allow to cool.

Pastry

120g soft butter

100g icing sugar

2 eggs

250g plain flour

Place butter and icing sugar in an electric mixer and beat until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well. Stir in flour by hand until well incorporated and then bring crumbs together to form into a disc. Wrap pastry disc in plastic and refrigerate for a few hours (or freeze for half the time!).

Roll out pastry on a floured surface to a couple of millimetres thickness, and cut into circles. You want the circles to fit into whatever mould you have, in this instance, a mini dipping bowl. My circles were about 6cm in diameter. Press well into the greased holes and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Now blind bake (i.e. lined with paper and filled with rice/beans) at 180C degrees for 7-8 mins, remove paper and rice and bake for a further 2-3 minuted. Take shells from the oven when they are golden and dry. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.

Assembly
Once both parts are cool, spoon curd into shells and flatten top with a spatula or knife. You can serve as is, but if you are handy with and have access to a kitchen blowtorch, sprinkle the top with caster sugar and brulee. Unfortunately I ran out of gas on this occasion, so that's for next time but I did sprinkle the left over cooked orange rind from the duck dish for presentation.

My lil sis' 30th birthday

I had a fantastic day today. Jaeminkins finally slept through the night for 10 hours breaking the pattern of waking in the wee hours which usually left me feeling zonked most days.

My day started with Chris, my sister coming over to hangout and as she wanted to try Opera Kitchen, I decided to treat her to a birthday lunch.

She loved her presents of a purse holder, silk thread necklace with a flower pendant and a rabbit rattle (as her baby is due in the year of the rabbit). However, Circular Quay was fair walk and a half from my place and Chris was not having a bar of it so we caught the bus. I love public transport when it comes on time, is airconditioned and the fact there's dedicated seating for prams and pregnant women which took us door to door to where we needed to go.

Such a gorgeous day to be out and about and the food at Opera Kitchen was equally fantastic. You get to choose from a selection of bakery items at Becasse Bakery, burgers at Charlie & Co by Justin North. Cloudy Bay Fish Co for an assortment of fish and Misschu which gives you a taste of vietnamese food. There is also a Japanese sushi bar, Kenji which is next door that requires a booking but it wasn't that busy when we were there.

Spoilt for choice and it was pretty casual as you join a queue, order from any items from the 4 outlets, take a table number and find a place to sit. Looking around there were people in their business suits, tourists taking a breather, grandmas and grandpas with their gaggle of grandkids, new mums with bubs in tow (me!), girlfriends catching up with glasses of wine and guys hanging out people watching.

I was impressed with the service as it seemed like within minutes our dumplings and glasses of sparkling arrived. Chris also commented on the Will Smith lookalike who was the waiter and when I had another look and asked her if she was for real, she doubted herself and then told me she didn't have her glasses so couldn't really tell. What a crackup, hope we weren't being too raucous.

As always our eyes were too big for our tummies, we ordered entrees of prawn and scallop dumplings and shanghai pork dumplings, then for mains the wagyu & co burger with beetroot relish, pickled gherkin and aged cheddar on toasted brioche bun and the classic fried chicken burger with iceberg, tomato, herb and garlic mayonnaise and of course fries to go with that. Yum!

After all that, we managed to fit in dessert, pistachio and raspberry friand, pear honey frangipane tart, almond croissant and decaf lattes. I know decaf for the breastfeeding and pregnant chicks.

Loving the Tripview ap as it let's you know when the buses, trains, ferries arrive so your not waiting around for ages. Pretty much timed it so we were back at my apartment and then off again to buy baby things for Chris.

We headed off to Broadway shopping centre and it wasn't too long before her basket was overflowing with clothes, wipes, towels, muslins and even the carry bag to carry the items was massive. It was classic to see her dragging this bag along the floor to the parent's room as I needed to feed Jaeminkins. Anyway, I wanted to wish my baby sister, an awesome 30th bday. Love you!

Wollumsum with the family

As part of Jaeminkins 100 day birthday with the extended family, I thought it would be a great idea to introduce my hubby's family to wollumsum.

Wollumsum is a koreanised version of the Vietnamese summer roll. The word wollum means Vietnam and sum means wrap/roll. While the outer wrapper of rice paper remains the same, the filling as well as the dipping sauce are quite different.

It also differs as you build and eat each roll as you go rather than making a bunch of rolls ahead of time and then eating them. I think that this makes the eating process heaps more fun and gives everyone the chance to add vegetables they like and mix it up to find the best combinations as well.

Besides tasting awesome, the best thing about wollumsam is that it's super versatile and you can change it up with the filling of vegetables you like, the mood you are in and with the people you are with. I've been in wollumsum eating competitions where we try different combinations and keep count as to how many we've eaten. Two friends come to mind as I remember the majority of us were out of contention as we were stuffed but these guys kept going and amazing us.

For me the basics and must haves are the rice paper wrapper, rice noodles, meat (I usually use a roast chicken, thinly sliced beef poached and prawns), bean sprouts, mushroom, lettuce, avocado, mint leaves, coriander and lots of sauce with a few bits of chilly. In the picture above, you can see that I love a variety of vegetables. There is an assortment of vegetables that include mushroom, bean sprouts, pineapple, tomato, avocado, carrot, cucumber, red and green capsicum, tofu, broccoli, egg, crab sticks, alfalfa sprouts, apple, lettuce, coriander mint leaves, onion, snowpeas and prawn. This is a pretty big spread of vegetables, is there any other vegetables I'm missing?

I have had many years of wollumsam making and eating under my belt so I’ll share with you how I make it as well as any tips I’ve learnt over the years.

First thing is to wash and cut the vegetables into 5cm lengths and julienne into thin uniform pieces.

Meanwhile cook the thin strips of beef in a pot of water and remove after it is cooked through.

Replace water and cook rice noodles until tender, about 8-10 minutes. Drain, cool and set aside.

For the sauce, I use 2 small red chili peppers sliced including the seeds for that extra chilly hit, 2 tsp of pineapple juice or orange juice (or a pinch of sugar if not using juice), 6 tbsp of fish sauce and a tsp of cold water.

Once you have all the bits and bobs ready, set out on your dining table with some rice paper wrappers as well as plates and lots of napkins for everyone. Also set up a saucepan with some water on a portable gas cooker and heat until just below a simmer or have a bowl with boiled water.

You can make it in whatever fashion you wish. But the way I go about is placing the softened rice paper on the plate, add noodles in the centre with leaving about a centimetre on each side, lots of vegetables (probably one of everything on offer, pour over lots of sauce to let it soak up in the noodles and then attempting to roll the paper and tucking it all in. Let's say my rice paper rolls have been a source of much amusement to my friends and family as they quite gi-normous and they always explode.

Some tips for you in regards to wollumsum

• Don't pre-soak the rice paper wrappers or else they won't stick very well
• Dip the rice paper wrappers for less than a minute if using boiling hot water or else they will turn into a large gluppy mess.
• Check the rice paper wrappers when you buy them and get the one with the least holes and not chipped
• Don’t fill up your roll with too much stuff. I should take my own advice but each to their own, I like them to explode everywhere
• Don't touch the cut up chillies or you may end up with burning lips, or eyes and I can tell you it HURTS.

Another tradition for the 100 day celebrations is the rainbow rice cake (mujigae ddeok). You see why its called rainbow due to the array of colour when you slice through it. This rice cake is made on special occasions like a baby’s 100 day or 1 year old birthday, or a wedding. If you check out Maangchi's website (http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/mujigae-ddeok), making this rice cake takes a lot of effort and time even though there are only a few ingredients. It is rather plain tasting with a hint of sweetness but was a favourite of mine whilst growing up.

We ordered the the rainbow rice cake from Strathfield also known as Koreatown. Let me tell you a funny story though, my mum decided to have a taste test before everyone arrived. Now you would of thought that she would of taken a small portion from the corner but she decided to take a piece from smack bang in the middle. Hmm so for photo opportunities it looked rather odd and then she tried to hide it by cutting up a corner piece and shoving it in to hide that it was missing a piece. Let's say it just made it worse. What do you think, here are the before and after shots.

My sister also bought a sengcreme cake which is a sponge cake with cream and fresh fruit. This is my favourite cake of all time as the sponge is so light and fluffy, I love cream and the fresh fruit incorporated into the cake.

My hubby's dad brought over some sweets from Ablas. Ablas if you don't know is this amazing sweet shop in Granville. I think it has the best baklava in all of Sydney. Check it the weblink below (http://www.ablaspastries.com.au/sweets.htm). The picture shows the sweets with date fillings, soo good.

Jaeminkins was given a hanbok - Korean costume by his uncle in Korea so we dressed him up and took lots of photos. He was rather well behaved and a source of much amusement as his pants were way too long (Harry highpants) and his hat kept falling into his eyes. The things parents put their children through, hey=) I can already hear the tutting.

Thanks for reading and enjoy peeps!