The Household COO

Subjecting my son to child labour and making him carry his own go bag seemed too cruel (plus I was worried about affecting his posture with a backpack that was too heavy for him), so I finally bought myself a much sought-after Pet Shop backpack to carry all the things I needed in a go bag…  To be fair, I’d already been dying for an excuse to get another one of these cutesy bags so it didn’t take much convincing.

I bought my backpack from the shop in Midvalley because it has a lot more choices and colours than the one in the Curve.  There were a few options for the backpacks - ranging in size and number of compartments.  One of the main reasons I like the backpacks from the Pet Shop is because their bags come with different compartments.  Rather than having to put everything into one compartment, making it difficult to find things, I can separate his snacks from his toys and his spare clothes.

The backpack cost me RM120, which is a fair price, considering that the main compartment is waterproof and the quality and handiwork is pretty good.  Although I was sorely tempted to go pink, I decided blue would be a more neutral colour that the hubby wouldn’t mind carrying, although the cat and the flowers are still somewhat dubious. 

There were two sizes that I was debating between but I ended up with the bigger one.  Unfortunately, with a bag this big, I end up carrying more than just the essentials just because I have the extra space.  On the up side, it makes for pretty good weight training, and with Gavin in my arms, the weight’s about right for a hiking pack.  Now the only thing missing is an incline…

Tomorrow is Deepavali, a major Hindhu festival also known as the “festival of lights”.  I received the following story in my mailbox from a friend which brought a smile to my face.  I hope you enjoy it, too…

An elderly man in Mumbai calls his son in New York and says, ‘I hate to ruin your day son, but I have to tell you that your mother and I are getting a divorce; 35 years of marriage… and that much misery is enough!’

‘Dad, what are you talking about?’ the son screams.

‘We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer,’ the old man says.

‘We’re sick of each other, and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Hong Kong and tell her!’

Frantic, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone.

‘Like heck they’re getting divorced,’ she shouts, ‘I’ll take care of this.’

She calls Mumbai immediately, and screams at the old man, ‘You are not getting divorced. Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, and we’ll both be there tomorrow. Until then , don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR??’ and she hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife. ‘Okay’, he says, ‘It’s all set. They’re both coming for Deepavali and paying their own airfare!!’

I hope I’m not making a false generalisation, but when I was working, I got the impression that “sour” was a taste a lot of women were fond of (myself being an exception).  I have never liked anything sour and I avoid acrid foods like a child avoids yucky-flavoured medicine.  I was told that once I became pregnant, I would pick up the taste for sour foods because it seemed a lot of pregnant women crave sour foods.  I think it has something to do with the fact that sour flavours can help stave off the nausea from morning sickness.  Well, after being pregnant with my son, I can confirm that I still don’t like sour foods.

But I digress…  If you are at all like me and unable to stomach sour flavours, you may find this tip useful when blending whole fruits for fruit drinks.

Because of their beneficial properties (see below) I like to blend blueberries and raspberries into my juices.  Well, so far I’ve yet to taste a sweet blueberry or raspberry.  I used to add a sweetener to my fruit juices but recently I discovered that if I blend a sufficient quantity of banana or grapes with these berries, the sweetness of the banana and grapes negates the tartness of the berries.

Blueberries are beneficial because they have antibiotic, antiviral and natural aspirin-type properties.

Raspberries have anticancer, antiviral and natural aspirin-type properties. 

In addition to providing sweetness to your fruit mixture, grapes are rich in antioxidants (especially the seeds which can be pulverised in a highspeed blender); they help boost good cholesterol levels and inhibit platelet clumping (which helps prevent blood clot formation within the blood vessels that are responsible for causing blockages).  Red grapes are also have antibacterial and antiviral properties. 

Bananas has antibiotic properties and are great for stomach upsets (great for hubby who suffers from a lot of stomach problems); they also help to strengthen the stomach lining against acid and ulcers. 

So the addition of bananas and grapes are not only a great way of naturally sweetening your juice, but they also provide an additional boost of goodness.

And if you are at all like my hubby - who gets put off anything that looks too healthy, the surest way to get him to consume it is to make it taste good. 

For instance, he came into the kitchen today while I was preparing his juice and he saw the actual contents of what was going inside it and he remarked, “Is that carrot?  Please don’t put it into my juice.”  Then a suspicious look came across his face and he said, “Or have you already been sneaking it in all this time without me knowing?”

To which I replied, “Well, could you taste the carrot?”

Sheepishly he said, “No.”

“So it’s not a problem is it?” I asked.

“Good thing I never saw this before.  This concoction looks far too healthy for me,” was all he had to say after that.

I never eat raw carrots, celery or green apples, but adding them to a fruit mixture of grapes, bananas, and strawberries really does wonders to make it so much more palatable.  If you find the mixture too thick, just add 200ml of water before blending and a handful of ice cubes to chill it.

I had to call up one of those call center service lines today.  Being in a country that is multi-lingual, we are given the choice to select which language we want the customer service (CS) representative to speak in.  Since I can’t even maintain a regular conversation in the national language Bahasa Malayu (BM), I always opt for the English speaking channel. 

So when I rang CS today, I was surprised to find myself unable to understand what the lady was saying to me.  Although I had selected the English line but nothing she said sounded intelligible.  I must have asked her to repeat herself four or five times before I realised she wasn’t speaking in English, but in BM! 

I’m pretty sure I didn’t make the mistake of pressing the wrong channel button because she spoke to me originally in English and then she switched to BM.  Plus I called them on two separate occasions and the same thing happened - the lady would speak to me in English first, then switch to BM.

If you’re going to have CS representatives that can’t speak English properly, and who will switch languages partway through the call, then you had best leave the option of an English speaking CS representative off the list altogether.

I had to call up Streamyx to fix my internet connection as well.  Thankfully, their CS representatives can speak English!  Unfortunately, that’s about all that is better about them.  Check out the conversation that ensued:

Me: I am having problems connecting to the internet.
CSR: What name is the account in?
Me: (it was a business account so I had to tell him the company name) It’s called *company name*.
CSR: Yes?
Me: (I repeat myself)
CSR: Some more?
Me: (thinking to myself) what else is there? (out loud) Sdn Bhd?
CSR: Thank you for verifying your account details.

In case you missed the point, Sdn Bhd is like the equivalent to a Pty Ltd for a business in Australia.  I can’t believe he was waiting for me to add that before he considered my account verified.  I mean, most companies have the suffix Sdn Bhd.  It’s practically a given.

I’ve never liked celery - raw or otherwise.  About the most I’ve ever been willing to tolerate is cooking it in my soup, but I still don’t eat it.  But because celery is purportedly a “cure for gout” - something the hubby suffers from on and off (although you do need to eat about four stalks of celery a day for it to be an effective gout remedy) - I decided to incorporate it into the juice I’ve been blending for him.  To mask the flavour of the celery (although you can still smell it), I blended it with banana, apple, orange, grapes (Red Globe), and strawberries in these proportions:

• one celery stalk
• one medium Montel banana
• one small apple
• one small orange
• about 12 Red Globe grapes with seeds
• five strawberries with their stems
• 150ml of water
• 1 cup of ice cubes

The resulting juice was very palatable.  I’ve discovered that the key to blending pleasant-tasting juice without having to add sugar (because I can’t stomach sour juice) is to make sure I incorporate sufficient quantities of “sweet” fruits, like bananas and grapes to neutralise the acrid tang from an unripe orange or sour strawberries. 

I was also happy to note that based on “risk versus benefits” and “nutrient density” (i.e. vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein per 100 calories), bananas rated under the category of one of the best foods to consume.  I found that particularly interesting since a lot of weight conscious people I know hold the misconception that bananas are very fattening.  I’ve always found that notion perplexing because all fruits (except avocados) are fat free.

Okay, so one stalk of celery mixed in juice that serves four probably isn’t going to be enough to make a huge difference to the hubby’s gout attacks but perhaps it might be just enough to work as a preventative measure (so long as he watches his consumption of purine-rich foods).  Regardless, celery does have some pretty good properties which can only add to the nutrients in my juice.

I’ve also realised that adding about 150ml of water to my juice mixtures help to thin out the juice mixture sufficiently (without diluting the flavour too much) to make it more “drinkable” as the incorporation of the whole fruit (pulp, skin and all) can result in a rather thick mixture.  Blending in ice chills the juice sufficiently to make it more refreshing.

So you see, a healthier diet doesn’t necessarily mean having to eat more unpleasant foods.  There are ways of combining your food so it tastes good as well.  What good news for the hubby…

Over the last few weeks, our internet connection was starting to become so unreliable that my SIL2 and I figured that some of the problems had to be due to our router since even Streamyx couldn’t possibly be THAT bad…  Our suspicions were more of less confirmed when the connection would die after an extended period of use and would resume after we turned off the router to give it a “cooling off” period.  After restarting the router, the connection would resume again only to die later as the router started to heat up again.

Since Aztech had served us pretty well for a year and a half, we decided to stick to the same make and model.  When we brought the router back, I tried to configure it for wireless access around the house but for some strange reason, the router was unable to connect to the internet.  After testing, restarting the router, checking and re-checking my settings, and confirming that Streamyx was functioning with the old router, I concluded that something had to be wrong with the router.

Mind you, I’ve had some pretty bad experience with routers in the past.  The first time I bought a router, I bought a D-Link.  Prior to that, our wireless access had been configured by my brother so I had no clue how the router or the modem worked, or what any of the passwords were.  All I knew was how to turn the devices on and off and somehow, mysteriously and magically, there would be internet connection.

So when I bought the D-Link router and couldn’t get it working, I had no idea whether there was a problem with the router or if there was a problem with my settings.  The Streamyx hotline was no help at all and my brother told me the wireless connection was configured by the technician so I really had no one to ask about how the device worked.

Many trips to the computer shop and consultations with numerous IT-savvy friends later, I finally learned that when you’re configuring a router for a Streamyx connection, you need to select the PPoE setting.  Your IPs are automatic and the DNS is fixed.  The primary DNS is 202.188.0.133 and the secondary DNS is 202.188.1.5.  And that’s it.

I also discovered then that there was a problem with the D-Link router I bought, so I took it back to the shop where they “investigated” the problem and confirmed that the router was dodgy. But here’s the annoying part, they had to send the router to their service center to see if they could fix it for me and in the meantime, I had no router.  It took them a month to come back to me and tell me that the router was one of a bad batch of routers and that they would be replacing it with a new router.

After that experience I swore off D-Link products and that’s how we ended up using Aztech.  Because the computer shop we went to only sold D-Link and Aztech products.  Personally, I would have preferred Netgear or 3Com, having had much more reliable products from them in the past.

But I digress…  Back to the Aztech router we had just purchased.  The hubby took it back to the shop the next day and they, too, couldn’t get it to work.  After a while, they managed to figure out the problem.  Apparently, you needed to restart your computer as well as the router after configuring the settings before it will work.  Hubby also told me I was using the wrong password for our Streamyx connection.

Now this is where it gets really weird…

A few months back, my SIL2 was having problems with her laptop.  For some unknown reason, she couldn’t get the wifi connection working.  Technician after technician from Dell came to change just about every part of her laptop but they still couldn’t get it working.  The technician then had the wise (read: dumb) idea of resetting our router to see if it would work.  Why was it a dumb idea?  Because all the computers in the house could access wifi but my SIL2’s laptop so if the problem was the router, then how could we be accessing the internet?

Anyway, after trying to reconfigure the router, none of our computers could access the internet.  So our brilliant technician had not only failed to resolve my SIL2’s problem, but he had effectively created a new problem for hubby and I because then our computers weren’t able to access the internet either!

The hubby then went to work on the router and managed to get it working.  It seemed that the password for the Streamyx account that I had been using was the wrong one (let’s call it password A so we don’t get confused).  Now I was baffled because I used password A when I configured the router the first time and everything was working fine then.  Since no one had changed the password or fiddled with the router between the time that I had configured it up until the time that the technician reset it, there was no way the password could have been changed.  But when the hubby used a different password - which we’ll call password B - everything worked fine.

Since the internet was working fine, I thought, never mind.  So when I tried to reconfigure our new Aztech router, naturally I used password B since that was the password that had worked for our connection.  But hubby discovered password B no longer worked but password A did!

Now am I missing something here or what?

Whatever the case, we’re now back online with a new router that doesn’t die after it starts to heat up (with the only connection issues being the old Streamyx ones and they somehow seem a lot less annoying than they used to after the recent connection problems we’ve had - isn’t it funny how certain circumstances can put a new spin to your perspective?) so who am I to complain?

Having just started the practice of “whole foods living”, I don’t really know a whole lot about it, but the main benefit lies in the fact that you can absorb more nutrients by eating the whole food than you would if you were to cut away part of it for discard.  Well, after having written it like that, I’m sure you’re thinking, “No s**t, Sherlock!”

But seriously, I used to remove the skin of the apples I ate which contain vitamin A.  Since the bulk of vitamin C sits just below the layer of the skin, it also gets discarded if you remove the skin of your apples.  Not to mention, the skin provides about half dietary fiber in the apple which is something most of us don’t get enough of anyway. 

Likewise, with a lot of other fruits and vegetables.  Most of the time we wouldn’t eat all these extra bits but I find blending them in a cafe-strength blender makes them much more palatable. For instance, I never knew that strawberry leaves contained vitamin C as well as other flavonoids and proanthocyanidins, but you’d never see me eating the tops of the strawberries.  Now that I’m blending them into my fruit juices, I just leave them on.

If you are at all interested in nutrition and vitamins, I’m sure you would have heard of grape-seed extract, which a lot of vitamin companies are now bottling up as a dietary source of antioxidants.  If you don’t know anything about grape seed extract, then you might be interested to know that grape seeds are rich in antioxidants as well as other beneficial health properties. 

I used to swallow the grape seeds whole because I was simply too lazy to remove them, but I never chew them up because they’re bitter.  I’m not sure I would have absorbed much of the antioxidants by swallowing them whole, but blending them into my juice certainly provides a better alternative to taking a grape-seed extract supplement. 

Aside from these obvious benefits of eating whole foods, Vita-Mix has been doing some research on the ability of absorbing vitamins from foods through chewing versus foods that have been blended with a Vita-Mix.  The results are pretty interesting.  It looks like we might be able to absorb more nutrients from the foods we eat by blending them in a high-powered blender as opposed to just chewing them:

“whole foods have it all–but teeth can’t cut through food fiber to deliver all the nutrition trapped inside their cell walls, particularly the nutrient-rich skins and seeds. When whole foods are simply chewed, lots of nutrients are tossed out as inedible or they pass through the body undigested.“

Not that I need this to convince hubby, now that I already have a Vita-Mix, but it’s certainly another reason to blend more fruits and veggies for consumption on a daily basis.

On Friday, it was another religious occasion for my MIL so she assigned cooking duties to me again.  I was supposed to make Cream of Mushroom Soup and Aglio Olio Pasta.

Ordinarily, I would have thought making one experimental dish was already braving it in the face of such critical palates, so to make two experimental dishes was really flying by the seat of my pants.  But since my MIL wanted Aglio OIio, I went in search for a recipe online and found one on Cooks.com which I will never try again.

My MIL thought it was too oily.  I thought it was too bland.  Aglio Olio not really being my pasta of choice when we dine on Italian, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was aiming for so when it came to the taste test.  All I could say was that I thought it should have been tastier.  Perhaps it was missing some chili flakes, too - who knows?  Anyway, if you know of a fool-proof, to-die-for Aglio Olio recipe, please, please drop me a message below.

Since I had been planning to make cream of mushroom soup for some time now, I had already been scouting around for some online recipes - real recipes, not like that list of ingredients that Aje gave me last time.  Anyway, I found something that looked pretty promising on Home Cooking from About.com, which I ended up modifying to the following effect:

Ingredients:

• olive oil (instead of butter, because my MIL wanted to be healthier, but I think butter will be more tasty)
• 2 punnets mushrooms (about 400g)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 medium sweet onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, or to taste
• 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Chopped parsley for garnish

Preparation:

Clean mushrooms with a mushroom brush or damp paper towel. Cut half of the mushrooms into slices. 

In a large saucepan, add some olive oil and saute sliced mushrooms until golden. Remove and reserve sliced mushrooms. Add more olive oil to the same pan and stir fry the onions. 

Add whole mushrooms, onions, chicken stock, cream, flour, salt, nutmeg and pepper to a blender and blend until smooth.  Return mixture to a pot and add in the sliced mushrooms. Simmer, stirring often, until thickened.  Serve.

The Review:

The general consensus was that it tasted good except that it needed more salt.  The hubby also thought it either had too many mushrooms, or not enough cream.  Considering that we increased the quantity of chicken stock, that might explain why he thought it wasn’t creamy enough.  Personally, I thought it turned out quite well - much better than the time I tried to follow Aje’s mushroom soup recipe, anyway.

Some weeks back, I finally picked up enough courage to cook for my in laws again after the first disasterous episode.  Feeling a little more confident in my MIL’s kitchen after cooking for the hubby when my in laws were away on holiday, I decided it was time to give my MIL a break from the kitchen.  My menu this time was:

Steamed Salmon - based on this recipe
ABC Soup
Ginger Sesame Oil Chicken
Stir-fried Cauliflower and Broccoli
Stir-fried Spinach

Aside from the poor portion control with regards to the vegetables (I think I had enough for vegetables two meals), it actually turned out pretty well.  To get a compliment from my MIL about my Ginger Sesame Oil Chicken pretty much says it all, I think.  In the culinary world, that compliment would be the equivalent to an award.

It is also a pretty common understanding in a Chinese family that a lack of criticism is effectively a silent compliment, so when my FIL has nothing to say about the meal, I guess it meant that my cooking had also passed his tastebud test.

My SIL2, who had been given the impression that I couldn’t cook to save my life (I wonder who by…), appeared stunned to discover that I can cook and not indecently either.

Having never really made ABC Soup before, or steamed fish, I was pretty pleased with both of these dishes.  The hubby, of course, had nothing nice to say about the salmon - which I expected since he doesn’t eat Salmon.  One of the great things about having an extended family to cook for is the leeway to make dishes that I like to eat - like steam salmon (something I would be eating all by myself if it were just the hubby and me).

Even if my repertoire of Chinese recipes is still somewhat limited, I am building up a pretty reliable list of recipes that past the tastebud test of some pretty picky eaters.  Now how’s that for an undomestic chef?

Between electrical storms, failing internet connections, a nursing toddler and falling asleep, I haven’t been able to get online much since Monday night which is making me feel positively murderous.  As I ponder over this thought, it makes me wonder how sad I must be when the bulk of my free time revolves around the internet.  Sad to say, without the internet, I would be lost.

I can just see it now… forty years down the track when I’m in one of those retirement homes, I’ll be the cranky old witch who screams at the nursing staff because my internet connection isn’t working.  Then again, maybe by that time there will be more reliable service providers and I won’t have to worry about dead or dying connections.  Then all I’ll have to scream about is for someone to change my diapers and to look for my misplaced teeth.

Hmmm… somehow that thought hasn’t really perked up my day. 

When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of old age.  I could never understand that Chinese desire to live long because I would rather die young than live to a ripe old age decrepit and ailing.  Of course, back then, it was an ignorant assumption of a childish mind to associate old age with senility.  Twenty years and a health science education later, I now know that senility is a disease of the old rather than a natural occurrence that accompanies old age.

Now my fear isn’t of growing old but of growing old with disease.  Although I’m still not particularly anxious about dying young, I would hate to grow old plagued by illness.  My motivation to lead a healthier lifestyle stems not from a desire to live longer but from a desire to grow old gracefully. 

You might be wondering what has spurred such morbid thoughts.  It is the recent news of one of my parents’ friends who has been diagnosed with myeloma.  It wasn’t all that long ago when my aunt discovered she had colon cancer which she tried to fight with chemotherapy only to succumb to the disease after it had metastasised to her spinal column.  Being part of the same group of friends that used to go on holiday together, I am sure they are still recovering from the news of my aunt’s passing.

The irony was that my aunt’s cancer had been present a couple of years back when she first took a colonoscopy to check what was causing her vague but unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms.  Back then, the doctors had missed the cancer due to the obstruction from some unusual anatomy.  By the time they detected the cancer, it was a year later.  My aunt went through surgery to remove the cancer followed by two rounds of chemo because the drugs they used in the first round weren’t working for my aunt.  After the chemo, they did a half body scan to check for presence of cancer cells and pronounced her to be in remission. 

Despite the cessation of chemo, my aunt still had pain in her chest which they said was due to the chemo.  When the pain persisted, they did more scans only to discover that the cancer had spread to her spinal column and it was in a location that was difficult to operate on.  If they operated, there was a 50-50 chance she could end up paralysed in the lower half of her body.  If they didn’t operate, there was still a strong likelihood that she would become paralysed in the lower half of her body.

By that time, my aunt’s hopes for remission had been dashed and she decided she would accept no more treatment except pallitive care to see her through to the end.  At the end, my aunt said that in retrospect she wished she hadn’t opted for the chemo hoping to live longer only to waste the last year of her life being sick from chemo. 

In my aunt’s case, she was very unlucky that the doctors missed the cancer during earlier scans and she was also unlucky because of the location of the cancer spread to her spine.  It’s hard to say that things might have gone differently under slightly different circumstances.  That she was my favourite aunt and a mother to me during the early years of my life has not made her passing any easier - only the usual regrets that I didn’t spend more time with her at the end or that I should have been more supportive.

Towards the end, she was suffering so much she kept asking to go.  To have hoped for her to live longer would have been to wish more suffering upon her.  It is still hard to believe she’s gone when my memories of her are so vivid and alive.  It is always difficult to accept death before we deem it a person’s time to go.  I guess that old adage is a good one to live by: “carpa diem!” because your last day might be sooner than you think.