the 20th week - last few days to Year of the Rat!

i was actually pretty excited that my baby is now 5month old, growing in me! but i started the week with miserable monday. tuesday 20th, i stayed at home, on mc. slept thru the day to recover from exhaustion. the weather is so hot. gx came home to fetch me to mums for our thng family cny reunion dinner and also its my bro's bdae. althou gx offered to bring the family out for dinner, we settled to have charcoal steamboat at home instead. our family tradition steamboat used since the 70s. its almost or might be even older than me! love the smell of charcoal steamboat. somehow makes you hungry and i feel the food actually taste better. one of my favourite fish and this pomfret is HUGE! but too bad i didnt try it as i am afraid i will waste it.

with the new bigger square table we could have many more people to eat the renioun dinner together! funny thing was even thou i was looking forward to this thng family steamboat, i didnt eat much, not much appetitate, prob i was still feeling sick. my uncle m said, this steamboat is unique, gx couldnt agree more as the funny thing is no one actually can accept the steamboat when they first tried it but as every cny arrives, everyone looks forward to eat it every year. its unique as we have alot of things arranged in the steamboat and let it simmer before eating, almost like a pencai. unique... well, fishmaw, seacucmber, cooked soft long cabbage are pretty normal but we put in homemade ngoh hiang into the soup and for me, the more soup it absorbs the better! i like my ngoh hiang really soggy! fish, abalone and large prawns are other items that we will add when we eat the steamboat.

uncle m, ben and wal was in luck when they popped by cos they got to eat the steamboat too and stayed on to celebrate my bro's bdae. after cny, my favourite weekend checked dress from forever 21 will be kept as its getting too short as my baby is growing! i only buy bottoms from maternity shops, most of my pregnancy clothings are not maternity wear. i need to wear bigger sizes soon cos baby's growing! bro turned 27 and is getting married next year! for us 3 siblings, all of us got married at 28!

wednesday when i got back to work, some collegues just look at me... one even told me i should not have shorten my mc last week leaving my tcher with no sub and she said she heard that my tcher complained. life hasnt been easy this year... sensitive. whatever. i need to learn to ignore and take care of myself and baby. i was really sick. after school met ann to go novena to help her find her costume. dap got off work early so she came to join us. haven't met dap for awhile! thank goodness they were gamed enough to join me to try out a new cafe i know of. when i attended chef daniel's class, he told us about his new little cafe at novena medical centre. its small and i like it cos its so quiet and cosy! while waiting for the claypot rice, we ordered a kaya bun to try. love the bun! very crispy crust and soft inside! love it. the porkchop bun is not like the one i had in macau, this one taste gingery.

the claypot rice smelt good! well as i was told in class, chef orders his salted fish and lam-mei (chinese sausages and other preserved meats) from hk. and its cooked hk style which does not add black sauce. when we looked at the white rice, we tot it mit really need some sauce but when we tried our first spoon, it was nice, every bit of it was very tasty, flavourful. i like it and the lamcheong taste so good! this place opens till 6pm, lucky i called and we made our order early and that helped to cut down our waiting time too.

i looked forward to thursday as the twins are coming back from shanghai! after easa went to get sweet and tidbits and went to mums. they had their first assignment from me! they helped me to put sweets into little red packets for my class kidos. love these papercut gal and boy designs on the angbao! so i prep 11 gals hb for the gals in my class and of cos the boys will receive the boy hb. took home a goodie bag of peanut puff, fruit cake and bbq sliced pork from my mum to my in-laws. at mum place i couldnt wait to try mum's fruit cake! somehow this was one of the things i looked forward to sink my teeth in!

on Friday, some children came in their chinese costumes and we had lion dance in school. but to me as usual, wished the lions put in more effort to move! to me the lions looked pretty restless! had an hour with the kidos on my own. my tcher went for a meeting. they had to finish up their work and i just supervise them and after work they can play in class. then i gave them the angbao at snacktime. they were thrilled. after work, met aunt a who waited for me outside school and we head to woodlands terrace to do our frozen food shopping! i didnt have a long list cos i can;t handle heavy load. i was mainly there to buy the frozen scallops! they didnt have the medium sized so i bought the LARGE ones! they are huge! i intend to keep some to cook for VD day, grilled scallops!

we shopped for 2 whole hours walking from foodedge where they sell sweets and pastry to fassler where we got the seafood and i bought packs of tomato soup! then we went to a dried goods store where i bought dried jackfruit. aunt and ann got lots of different jap chicken bites from a factory that i have not been into before. i didnt buy the chicken bites but bought 3 different kinds of japanese sausages to try. any 3 packets for $10. they say that they use lean meat to make their sausages! went to mum's place to give mum the scallop and she was amazed with the size of it! after dinner we went to the nursery to buy flowers with gx, uncle k and aunt m and of cos with the twins!

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on saturday, i cooked the original flavoured hotdogs for late lunch/tea. not bad and i love that they have little slits on the very long and skinny hotdogs so that it will not curl up! had a very slow start to the day... packed the things in the kitchen, took a rest to update and now... it time to get back to spring cleaning!