Author: immrseio

Baking, Food, Recipe

Banana chocolate chip muffins

immrseio


Mrs Eio froze 3 bananas couple of days ago. It’s time to make them into something delicious ~ banana chocolate chip muffins. 

Ingredients: 

Mixture A- 

  • 2 cups of top flour
  • 2 tsp of baking powder
  • 1/3 tsp of salt 
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips 
  • 1/3 cup of sugar
  • 2 tbsp chocolate powder. 

Mixture B- 

  • 2 eggs 
  • 3 Mashed bananas 
  • 1/3 cup of canola oil
  • 1/2 cup of soy milk


Instructions: 

  1. Thawed the frozen bananas briefly. Removed the skin & mashed them. (Add to mixture B). 
  2. Preheat the oven 170 degree c. 
  3. Add mixture B to mixture A. Mixed well. 
  4. Pour the mixtures into 12 muffin cups. (Each cup is 75 percent full. Leave some room for the mixture to rise. ) 
  5. Baked for 23 mins. 

Top flour resulted in muffins with a finer texture. Since there’s more eggs & bananas this time round (wetter mixture), Mrs Eio reduced the amount of oil & sugar, and increase the baking time slightly. The muffins are moist. 

Em’s little hands can’t resist sweet treats. It’s wonderful to have a loyal supporter … 😜 enjoy. 

Baking, Food, Recipe

Lemon chocolate chip muffins

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To finish up the packet of HK flour on Mrs Eio’s shelf, she adjusted her usual muffin recipe for her lemon chocolate chip muffins. The kids love the taste & texture. So here’s the recipe for future “duplications”. Lol. 😂 

Ingredients (to yield 12 big muffins): 

1) Mixture A

  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 cups Hong Kong flour 
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/3 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips

2) Mixture B

  • 1/2 cup nutrisoy milk (reduced sugar) 
  • 1/3 cup canola oil 
  • 3 eggs (beaten)
  •  2 teaspoons of lemon juice with grated lemon skin. 

3) almond nuts (optional for topping)

Preheat oven at 170 degree C. 🆗

Add mixture B to mixture A. Mix together. Add them evenly into the muffin cups. Topped with almond nuts. 

Bake the muffin for 20 mins. ⏳

After 20 min, insert a satay stick into one of the muffins. If the muffins are ready, the stick will come out clean. ✅


Treats for Eio kids for the next few days. 👍🏻😋

Animal-Milk-Protein Free, Food, Good deals/Lobang, Organic, Quinoa

Fried organic tri-color quinoa 

immrseio

三色小小米，百吃不腻！Fried organic tri-color quinoa with olive veg, eggs & fish cake. 

Last min quick preparation with El aft she’s home from school, as the stew ain’t ready for lunch… my little helper helps to crack & beat the eggs. Fried quinoa done in less than 15 min. 😜

Check out Mrs Eio’s previous post on how to cook tricolor quinoa: 

Cooking Tri-Colour Quinoa | I am Mrs Eio

https://immrseio.com/2016/05/16/cooking-tri-colour-quinoa/

Unlike rice, quinoa can be frozen without losing its taste & texture. Mrs Eio’s back-up plans for any 2 meals for these 2 weeks. Save time & energy. 😅

Mrs Eio prefers the taste & texture of tricolor quinoa. Quinoa is high in protein & fiber. Try it! You can get quinoa in our supermarkets. Mrs Eio got her organic tricolour quinoa from The Bento People. http://www.thebentopeople.com

Check out Mrs Eio’s post on The Bento People @ CT hub: https://immrseio.com/2016/05/15/the-bento-people-ct-hub/

Quinoa~ An alternative to having rice or noodles…

Food, Good deals/Lobang

Mrs Eio’s new toy – Philips pressure cooker (6 litres) 

immrseio

After dreaming about having a pressure cooker for nearly a year… Mrs Eio finally bought her new toy – Philips pressure cooker. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Before having this pressure cooker, Mrs Eio used her multi-purpose rice cooker to cook beef stew. She’ll start cooking in the morning & leave it in the rice cooker (“keep warm” mode) so that the beef briskets will be soft & ready to eat by dinner time. 

With Philips pressure cooker, Mrs Eio is amazed that the beef stew is ready to eat in less than an hour! 

First, Mrs Eio used “bake -> vegetable” mode (5 min) to just cook the beef briskets. After this, she adds the vegetables & seasoning, & set the pressure cooker to “stew” mode (30 min). Do note that before the pressure cooker starts cooking for 30 min, it’ll take about 10 min to build up pressure in the pot. So all in all, it’ll take about 45-50 min to cook the stew. Nevertheless, it’s still more energy efficient & time-saving as compared to cooking stew in the rice cooker. 

For best result, to thicken the stew & simmer the vegetables & beef briskets, its best eaten after the stew is left in “warm mode” after an hour or so. 

Just a word of caution when the cooking is done, it’s important to release the pressure before opening the cover! Release the pressure carefully as the steam & some water (minimum) will shoot out from vent.

Mrs Eio loves her new toy as it helps her save lots of time for meal preparations. Eio kids can look forward to more different kinds of stews & soup with help of the pressure cooker & they can now have both beef stew & rice at the same time. 😄

Marriage

Mr & Mrs Eio’s 10th Wedding Anniversary 

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1 John 4:19 ~ “We love because he first loved us.”

2nd Dec 2016 is our 10th Wedding Anniversary. There were many lessons learnt over these years of marriage. We could have let it passed like any other ordinary day but we want to do something special together to enjoy each other’s company, to reflect & be thankful of our many blessings. 

Leave no room for complaints nor any slightest possibility to be upset with our spouse. 

We checked in Hotel Rendezvous for a 2d1n staycation days before our anniversary. Reason: Mr Eio had to go for a work trip to Europe on 3rd dec weekend. To “prevent” myself from even having the slightest possibility of complaining for the rest of the years in our marriage that he didn’t celebrate this special day with me, we decided to have a staycation together. 😜

This is the hotel where we held our wedding banquet 10 years ago. We often come to this hotel for a meal during our wedding anniversaries (some years together with the kids, especially when I was breastfeeding! Lol.)

God truly knows what we need & He never shortchange us. 

When we were at the check-in counter, we were told that we’re upgraded to junior suite & there’s club access. Praise the Lord! I can have as many cups of TWG tea as I desire. Nice ambience, good tea☕️ & light snacks🍰🍮. We didn’t have to stay in the room to reflect, chat & do planning. We are blessed with a nice place to chill out. 

Love • Forgive • Embrace

 1 Peter 4:8~ “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”

I’ve not eaten buffet for a long time. This is one thing I would like to do with Mr Eio as he often comes home telling me how delicious was the buffet🍽 he had for lunch when he’s on course at a hotel etc. I can only imagine & salivate. Over the years,  there are many meals that I don’t even know or remember what I’m eating as I’m busy feeding the kids or getting them to finish their food. He always tells me we should try this & that buffet some days. We did for some but not the other. 

There are bad days when the kids misbehaved 😫& Mr Eio has to work OT or he’s overseas & there’s other things that I need to help him with on top of the household chores. I really wanna cry. Then, when he’s home, he needs to recover from jet lag 😴& kept sleeping in front of me (when I’m so tired), that I felt like throwing in the towel. I become easily offended by his words & the kids actions. I’m no longer loving & kind. Time like this, God’s grace is sufficient for us. Finally, after having sufficient nap, Mr Eio is ready to affirm me & top up my emptied love tank. ❤️️I’m “good-to-go” again. Lol. But before Mr Eio can do anything to top up my love tank, how much patience, forgiveness & last but not least – LOVE that I need to have to embrace them all.

Anyway, for our 10th anniversary, I decided I should stop whining & just booked a seafood buffet dinner. Yes we did! Enjoyed the lobsters, oysters & sashimi.🍣🍤🍗 Yums! Happy. No complaint. 🙌🏻😉

Recharge marriage with 1-1 couple’s time

Good time. Good food. Love this staycation! There’s a good spread for breakfast in Straits Cafe (cafe in Hotel Rendezvous). What I love most is the great companion! Couple’s time is hard to come by after having kids. It takes great effort to make it happen. We can’t have such overnight staycation all the time so we often has supper & shorter time out together after the kids sleep. (The kids sleep at 7.30pm). If Mr Eio don’t have OT, we can have more time together. Communication, acts to show love are all important to recharge the marriage. 

My favorite for breakfast. Liu sha bao (custard buns). 

Thank God for reliable support

Having couple’s time is next to impossible is you don’t have reliable support. Not just any support but reliable ones! 2d1n staycation is already so short, if I still have to keep calling home to check on the kids, I think it’ll be a wasted staycation. I thank God 👏🏻that the kids are well-taken care by my sister. Fun time doing crafts, going Mac Donalds etc. 😌

Continue to appreciate & discover something new about each other.

It’s my 1st time having high tea with Mr Eio. Throughout our 8 years of courtship & 10 years of marriage, we never had a high tea together. Before we head home to embrace our kids, let’s try something new together. Ops! Err… we both agree we’ll not waste money to have high tea together again. More worthwhile for me to have it with my girl friends. Lol. While I’m trying to enjoy every piece of the tarts & cakes… Mr Eio gobbled up all the food & drinks in 3 min! Well, we at least we discover something new about each other. Hahaha. 😄😄 we are done so soon & so that’s all on our staycation. 

Create new experiences & memories


2nd December 2016

We love to eat. Lol. This is one restaurant (Si Chuan Dou Hua) Mr Eio says he wanna bring me to as i’m always fascinated by how they serve tea. We dropped by this restaurant @ tampines hub while the kids are at Bible day camp. Mr Eio took leave since it’s our 10th Wedding Anniversary & he’s traveling the next day. 

Something I realized over the years when he goes for work trips is that he trusts me so much that he don’t even check what I pack into his luggage!!! I’ve to tell him where I put his stuff. Sometime he’ll just asked some simple questions if I put certain essentials into the luggage. Hmm… I joked that I’ll simply not put his under garments in his luggage one of these days. Lol. 

Nice soup, great food. Fragrance Pu-er tea. 

Pass it on! To the future generations. 

When the kids are back home with us, we view our wedding montage together & share with them what God-intended marriage is about. My girl shared that she wanna dressed like me when she gets married. 😘so sweet. 

Pass on what God has given us to our loved ones & the future generations… 

simply because…

We love because He first loved us…

                                                     ~ in His ❤️ 

Baking, Food, Recipe

Banana cake (with melon seeds & chocolate chip)

immrseio


Mrs Eio runs out of bread at home. Thank God for frozen bananas in the fridge & so they baked. 

The texture of this cake is moist yet abit springy. El loves it.

Ingredients 

Mixture A (dry ingredients- mix well together): 

  • 2 cups of cake flour
  • Half cup of sugar
  • 1/3 cup of 
  • 2 tsp of baking powder
  • 1/3 tsp of salt 

Set aside: half cup of melon seeds 

Mixture B (wet ingredients- mix well together): 

  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 cup of canola oil 
  • 1/2 cup of soy milk 
  • 3 frozen bananas (mashed)

Directions: 

  1. Preheat oven at 180 degree C. 
  2. Pour mixture B into mixture A. Mix well. 
  3. Pour the mixture of A& B intothe baking  tin. 
  4. Sprinkle melon seeds onto the mixture in baking tin. 
  5. Bake for 25 mins. 

Done! Enjoy! 

Education, Kids/Children

Stories from an Apple 🍎.

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Getting Eio kids to eat fruits has been easy these days as they can “self-service”.  

Mrs Eio thought of sharing some pointers she taught the kids using an apple. As a SAHM, having a proper sit-down lesson is a luxury. 

Does Mrs Eio has 21st century competencies, PETALS framework, differentiated learning…(all that she learnt from MOE as a school teacher) blah blah blah.. in mind when she teaches Eio kids? 

Nope.

Most of the time, concepts & “lessons” are taught to the kids amidst of preparing meals, laundry, housework, changing bedsheets etc… best part is.. there’s no need for a lesson plan! Haha. 

Em was told to leave the apple on the plate & to observe the change to the apple after an hour. 

Needless to say, the apple turns brown. A natural question he asked is “why?” 

Here comes our 1st learning point:  

1) oxidisation. 

Mrs Eio showed Eio kids this YouTube video to help them better understand the concept. 

(Photo above: browning of an apple after 1 hour. )

Besides sharing on the oxidisation of apple, Mrs Eio also shared another concepts that are related to apple with Eio kids. 

2) Apple is a fruit. Mrs Eio shared with Eio kids how a flower on an apple tree grows into a fruit. 

3) the story of Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity! Wallah!! Apple! 

There are many other stories (concepts) one can teach using an apple. 🍎 

Having shared all the above, Mrs Eio thinks Proper “sit-down” learning & intentional teaching are important so Mrs Eio does set aside time for these.

Well… Learning can take place anywhere, anytime but not just from anybody though. 🤔