First Time Baking for Celebrate Winston 2nd Birthday

"A mother's love knows no limit. She'll try everything that is best for her children, even it's beyond her ability." ~ Stella Angelita ~

It sounds right for me, and also every mothers in the world. When we talk about our children, it's like nothing impossible. Even when it's really hard, we'll try to learn and do our best to help them. I've been a mother for more than 8 years. During that time, I had learned many new things. All the things I've learned are not for my own sake, but for my children. Without realizing it, I'm not just a housewife. Even though I just stayed at home, I've played many important roles for my family :

Medicine Experts
When in high school, I wasn't a student from science class who learned about physics, science or biology. I was in the social class and just learned about business, history, etc. So I knew nothing about people's sickness, medication, and anything about that. When I got sick, I just took Paracetamol, that's all. And if I didn't get any better, I went to the doctor, asking for prescription medicine. But I didn't know what's inside it, and I didn't care about that, as long as I could get better.

However, since I have kids, I started to learn about the ingredients from the prescription medicine. I need to know what the doctor gave to my children, starts from the uses and the side effects. I also learned little bit about the dosages based on the age and body weight, just in case if there's a mistake on the prescription.

Personal Teacher
As a mom, I have a very important role in my family, especially for my children. For them, I'm a role model. I'm the first person they see, and listen every day. They will follow all the things I do, and do everything I tell. Indirectly, I'm a teacher for them. Even when they started to go to preschool and learn new things like reading, counting, and writing, they still need me as their personal teacher. Well, it's not a big deal for me. I could learned about phonics (though I didn't get it when I was a kid coz I just studied at National School) just in a short time. But, as they growing up, the lessons that they learned at school also get harder. There are some lessons which are new for me because Aurelia goes to school with International Curriculum, and I wasn't. In this case, I need to learn about these new lessons 1 step forward before she gets it from school, and teach her about it.

A cook
It might sounds simple for every woman. Cooking is something that every woman can do, even from young ages. But it's not for me. I never been to the kitchen and cooked (even a simple food - unless it's an instant noodle) until I graduated from High School, and married. I started to learn how to cook by read recipe books, watch TV shows, and try to do it with simple dishes. However, as the children growing up, they asked for other "complicated" delicious dishes. Well, it's my job as a mom to cook it for them, and to be honest, it's kinda hard for me because I'm not really good at cooking. But as people say, nothing that you can't do as a mom, especially if it's for children. Like other problem that I got lately, when Winston became a fussy eater, I need to be creative and learn about what foods toddler like.

Those 3 things are only some of the new things that I learned for the benefit of my child. Nowadays, I started to learn a new things, baking. Actually, Aurelia has been asking for me to bake some cakes / cookies since a long time ago. But baking is one thing that I never "touched" in my whole life. So I just ignored it, until last month. Well, last month was September, and Aurelia knew it was Winston's birthday. She was insisting me to bake a birthday cake for Winston. She got that inspiration from a video, about a sister made a birthday surprise for her little brother, starts from bake a birthday cake, and do some decoration. Watching that video, made Aurelia want to do it for Winston because he also likes to watch that video. He likes when people sing "Happy Birthday song" and give a tasty looking birthday cake. This time I couldn't ignore them so I decided to learn about baking.

I started by looking for a birthday cake recipes, and honestly, they all looks very hard for a beginner like me. Many ingredients needed and step by step to do. I was afraid if it's gonna be failed, so I tried to find the easiest cake recipes, and mixed it with the easiest buttercream frosting recipes. Since Winston loves choclate cake, I decided to make it and mixed it with cream cheese buttercream frosting. Hmmmm. It sounds great and I believed it's gonna be a great combination for a birthday cake. You can see the chocolate cake's recipe here and for the cream cheese buttercream frosting here. They have a lot of good reviews and many people have made it successfully. With those reviews, I was believing that I could make it too.

Aurelia and I learned to make a cake together, and voilaaa.... It's successful! We really made it and the cake taste so good. It was really moist and has a perfect sweetness level. For decorate the cake, I just used some special toys from "Tayo the Little Bus" characters (it's Winston's favorite). And I also put some sprinkles on top to make it colorful. Well, for the first time baking it's not so bad. But I'll try to make it better another time.

Anyway, if you're wondering about that huge "Tayo", actually it's not just a toys. It's a travel kids carrier, which has little wheels so your kids can ride it on. It was Winston's birthday from Ivan, and he loves it. He likes to ride it and that's why I put this little bus on his photos. Once again, "Happy Birthday Winston". I wish you can grow up happily, and always stay healthy.
Love, Mom~~

Cooking Kenyan Food - Beef Pilau - for International Day

Last week, there's International Day event at Aurelia's school. This event held every 2 years. At this moment, every students will bring food and dressed up in traditional costume of the country that has been chosen based on their grade. Beside that, they also will do some activities that has a connection with that country as well.

For Aurelia's grade, they got Kenya. Kenya is a country in Africa. So at that day, Aurelia was wearing Kenya traditional costume. She also brought a face painting equipment for the activities. Beside face painting, there are also another activity such as making a mask and making a necklace with beads. Before they're doing the activites, they have dancing performance, and also presentation about Kenya.

 

About the food, the students being told to bring Kenyan traditional food such as beef pilau, samosa, chapati, mandazi, beef stew, and ugali. Aurelia got beef pilau and samosa. For samosa, it's easy! I just bought the frozen samosa at the grocery store. However, about the beef pilau, it's a "homework" for me. I never heard, never eat, and of course never cook Kenyan food before. So i was googling about beef pilau, and i found out it looks like Briyani rice. I love Briyani rice. Everytime i go to Indian restaurant, Briyani rice is a must ordered dish for me. I love the texture of the rice which use Basmati rice, and it also use a lot of spices which i like the most.

Frozen Samosa by Spring Home

Even though i love Briyani rice, but i never cook it before. So it's really the first experience for me to cook with Basmati rice. I bought the Basmati rice at Lulu Hypermarket, a newly opened hypermaket at BSD City. Lulu Hypermarket is a huge grocery store, based on U.A.E (The United Arab Emirates). So it won't be hard to find Basmati rice at this place.

Note : This recipe is for 7 adult portions.

Ingredients :
- Dried spices (Put them all at the pan, roast it on medium heat to intensify the flavor. Do it until you can smell the spices, about 15 - 20 seconds. After that, blend it until it soft like powder)
4 dried bay leaves
1 tsp cumin
2 cinnamon sticks
6 cardamom pods
1/2 tsp blackpepper
1/3 nutmeg

- Other spices
1 large onion, sliced
5 cloves garlic, chopped
6cm ginger, chopped
8cm turmeric, grated

- Rest of ingredients
3 Tbs cooking oil (i use extra light olive oil)
2 large tomatoes (blended to make a puree, no water added)
2 beef cubes
500g Basmati rice
500g beef (cubed, and boiled until the meat is tender)
2,5 cups of beef stock (i used a beef stock from the water that i used to boiled the beef)
Salt to taste
Bunch of coriander leaves

Beef Stock Cubes from Knorr Malaysia

Directions:
1. Preheat the oil at the pan and put the "powder" dried spices. Cook it for a few seconds.

2. Add onions, cook it for about 5 minutes. And then add other spices such as garlic, ginger, and turmeric. Cook them until fragrant.

3. Put the puree tomatoes and let them cooked until the mixture reduces. At this point, there will be no raw taste of tomatoes anymore.

4. Put the beef at this time, and let it cooked for a while (around 5 minutes)

5. Add the rice and cook it for about 5 minutes to absorb the flavors from the spices.

6. Put the beef stock, and season it with beef sock cubes and salt.

7. Leave it cooked until the rice starts showing at the top, and the beef stocks starts to reduced.

8. With a wooden ladle, lift the rice from the bottom to the top, and vice versa. Do it gently so the rice won't break.

9. Reduced the heat, and wait until the rice cooked perfectly (not too soft) and there's no more stock left.

10. Put them on a plate, and add the coriander leaves on the top.

Cooking beef pilau is not as hard a i thought before. It's easy and it's also taste delicious. In Kenya, the result of cooking pilau be the determinant of whether you're a good cooking. The rice from the good pilau, should be not clumped together. I'm so satisfied with the result of my beef pilau. It's not clumped at all. Why don't you try to make your own pilau, and find out whether you're a good cooking????