Feeding Mommy

Somewhere in mid-February, we had a family gathering-cum-eating in a steamboat restaurant in Bandar Puteri Puchong. Grandpa, Grandma and Little Sprouts' family were there too. Nothing unusual transpired in the eating session except for this.....

Juan Or was eager to do role-reversal. Usually, it was Mommy who fed him, but now he was eager to feed Mommy.

See how he prepared the spoonful of food to be fed to Mommy.....

After scooping them into Mommy's mouth, he patted Mommy's head and said,"Good girl!" ^_^

Celebrating Papa's Birthday at Shogun Restaurant, Sunway Pyramid

Recently in mid-August, Mommy treated Papa to a Japanese buffet lunch for his birthday at Shogun Restaurant in Sunway Pyramid. Why Mommy chose this restaurant? Because the birthday person gets to eat for free, the paying person enjoys a 30% discount since the birthdate day falls on a weekday and children below 6 years old gets to eat for free! So all in all, after adding whatever tax and service charge, Mommy only had to pay RM43.70!

We arrived in Shogun just as soon as it opened at 12.00 pm, so there were not much people yet. This is the ambience....

There were lots of cooked dishes and sushi as well. Well, basically customers are spoilt for choice. There were desserts, drinks, soups and Kings ice-cream too. Anyway, both Papa and Mommy like cooked dishes, so we had soft shell crab, crab, prawn in tempura and other prawn dish style, bamboo lala, cod fish, lala, baby octopus, oyster baked in cheese, some Japanese fish and a whole lot of seafood!

The plus point about Shogun's food is that the seafood served is fresh and the cooking is good! Papa and Mommy had many rounds of servings with each serving being full plate! By the way, the cooked dishes are in various styles - Japanese, Western, Chinese, Malaysian or fusion. However, their shark fin soup is definitely no good! Mommy also took the opportunity to eat a lot of this seaweed and hotate frills which Mommy saw are being sold in Jusco for an expensive price....

As usual, while Papa and Mommy were busying walloping as much as we can, Juan Or was busy playing with the tea and utensils. French fries were offered in the buffet too, however, Juan Or refused to eat or even try Shogun's French fries. So in the end, Juan Or merely drank tea and ate nothing else in Shogun. Luckily, Mommy brought a container of plain pasta as his backup lunch and he finished everything! *Slap forehead*



The creative part of Shogun is that every customer's place mat is not just a paper, but a paper printed with interested facts or jokes for customers to read while eating, that's if customers have run out of topics to talk with each other!

Luckily too, Shogun provides free wifi to 'entertain' customers who have to wait for others to finish eating......just like in the case of Juan Or and Papa having to wait for Mommy to be satisfied with walloping the food! Papa managed to check stock prices and Facebook updates while Juan Or gets to watch snippets of Family Guy cartoon while waiting for Mommy......at least they won't bore themselves to death during the wait.^_^

Overall, we (except for Juan Or) ate till it reached our necks, so Mommy didn't have to cook dinner as we were still feeling full by night time. So the RM43.70 was really well-spent for 2 adults' lunch that spanned till well beyond dinner time! ^_^

Solution for Slow Eaters

Juan Or is a slow eater - more so for food that are not to his fancy such as rice mixed with main course dishes. For every one tea spoonful of soggy rice mixed with vege soup plus finely mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege, it takes him ages to finally swallow the tea spoonful of food in his mouth! Somehow the food stays in his mouth for long - don't know whether he chews the food or not or only chews occasionally, but it sure is annoying for Mommy to have wait for him to finally swallow his food and be ready for the next tea spoonful of food!

Mommy finds it really annoying because Mommy has got loads of housework waiting to be finished - clearing the mess on the dining table, storing leftover food if any, scrap and throw away solid food wastes, washing the dirty plates and utensils, washing the wok, washing the soup pot which usually has hard stains, pack away wet rubbish for Papa to dispose off the next morning, wiping oily stains on the stove if the stains are too obvious, take bath of Juan Or because he's usually very sweaty after having dinner and finally Mommy gets to take bath! Because of this, if the day is getting late, Mommy resorts to juggle both housework and feeding Juan Or at the same time.

Recently, Mommy discovered a solution to get Juan Or to eat fast! Be reminded, however, that what works for Juan Or may not work for your kid. This is the solution......

........use ladies' fingers!! ^_^

Yes, that's right! Mommy would steam three or four pieces of ladies' finger together while cooking rice. Mommy would then chew the ladies' fingers till fine (hey, sounds yucky but it's true - Mommy's mouth is the 'food blender' for Juan Or!), spit them out to mix together with his rice that has already been soaked up with vege soup, mixed with mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege. The chewed ladies' fingers will have sticky mucousy texture, so when mixed with his rice, the whole concoction becomes sticky and mucousy as well! For that, Juan Or eats very quickly! ^_^ Well, whether it's because Juan Or likes the sticky and mucousy texture or because the texture makes it easy for him to swallow his food, Mommy is not exactly sure but hey, ladies' fingers sure work very well to counter his slow-eating habit!

By the way, when eating his favourite French fries and Dahfa fish fillet strips, Juan Or doesn't need any 'additive' to make him eat faster! ^_^

A Working Sunday and Steamboat Buffet at MaChiano's

Just last week Sunday (or first Sunday of July to be exact), Mommy was required to report for duty because it was UCSI University's Convocation Day. So Juan Or and Papa tagged along with Mommy in the office. Papa was busy playing with Internet while Juan Or was busy watching Transformers' DVD cartoon series on Mommy's old laptop. Not to mention too, Juan Or did some 'fooling around' in Mommy's office like this....

 Anyway, we were there as early as 7am due to potential parking problems and left the uni at 12.15pm when the event ended. We headed off to Plaza OUG to have MacDonald's for lunch. At MacDonalds, Papa ordered only one McValue set (Big Mac) just so that our stomachs don't go empty prior to the 'big walloping' session at MaChiano's steamboat buffet later for dinner. After the lunch, we window-shopped at the mall itself and also at Central Supermarket before heading off to Juan Or's paternal grandparents' place for a stopover. Over there, Mommy took the opportunity to have a thorough nap (*Well, Mommy woke up at 3.30am to wash clothes first before going to work!*), Juan Or had his nap as well in his favourite spring cot while Papa chatted all the way with his parents and younger brother.

Finally the time has come for Papa, Juan Or and Mommy to head off to MaChiano's for our steamboat buffet dinner. MaChiano's is situated along Old Klang Road, somewhere opposite an international school and is at the same vicinity as Old Town Kopitiam.

The steamboat buffet fee  is RM28 per person. However, Papa bought online coupons from www.everyday.com.my website that offers RM28 for 2 diners (drinks included), i.e., RM14 only per person! Now that's a deal! The plus thing about this also is it's free for children under 4 years of age and Juan Or fits that condition! ^_^


There we were at MaChiano's  - a table already reserved under Papa's name and with a baby chair prepared.

And here was Juan Or waiting eagerly for Papa to take the foodies for steamboat while Mommy stayed on to take care of Juan Or.

The waiter came to pour two kinds of soup into the steamboat pot - chicken stock soup and tom yam soup.

Now, here's comes the steamboat foodies ready to be thrown into the soup.

Here's the steamboat-ing process!

How's the taste like? Well, both Papa and Mommy found the tom yam soup to be delicious and Papa found the chicken soup to be not as good as the tom yam. Mommy enjoyed it the most because there were the clams seafood that Mommy loves - big lala, bamboo lala and green-shelled mussels! Another of Mommy's favourite are the mushrooms - shitake and grey oyster. Only thing is that the staff did not snip away the bottom end of the shitake's stalk that sometimes still has the woody remnants. There was a barbeque section also, but because it took quite long for your turn to be served, so Papa only managed to get some beef strips and lamb chop barbequed. Papa particularly loved the barbequed lamb chops because the marinate recipe was good! By the way, Mommy ate and ate and ate to get money's worth (*yes, Mommy was eating Papa's share as well!*) while Papa ate just enough to satisfy his taste bud because of his gouty condition. What about Juan Or? Well as expected, he ate only a little because he is not adventurous about trying new food. He only ate the yee mee noodles - that also he played with the yee mee by stringing the noodles all along the wall of the bowl so much so the bowl appeared to have grown hair at one glance! (Sorry, no photos of the 'hairy bowl' because Mommy's hands were too oily and dirty to hold the handphone camera!)

Overall, this steamboat restaurant is a good place to dine in and cheap since we used the special deal online coupon and the ambience is nice too. Parking? It was RM2 since the parking area around the blocks of shops there are managed by one private company.

Juan Or at the Norwegian Food Fair

Yesterday, Papa decided to go and see one Norwegian Food Fair after reading one food blog about it. Guess where is the fair? It's at Empire Shopping Gallery, roughly neighbouring Subang Parade!

We parked at Carrefour Subang (otherwise where else has free parking!?), took a walk in front of Subang Parade and crossed some major corssroads before reaching Empire. Still it was pretty early when we reached there because most of the tenants were not opened yet - still another 10 to 15 minutes' wait before 10am, so we loitered at a bench first while Juan Or played hide-and-seek of sorts with Mommy at one F&B tenant's chairs and table.

Along the way, Mommy caught sight of this interesting tube structure - turned out to the longest indoor slide. But of course to slide in it, you need to reach a certain minimum height, plus pay for the ticket. One notice indicated that the ticket fee is half-price on the 1st of every month, however there's no indication at the ground floor on how much is the ticket price.

When the clock striked 10, we walked over to the Norwegian Food Fair's booth. First and foremost, we were greeted by the hole-in-the-face life-sized picture of a Norwegian couple in traditional costume. So Juan Or and Mommy tried it. Looks funny and odd, huh!

We also posed in front of the Norwegian flag and 'house'.

Then along the way, Juan Or seemed keen to run away to other neighbouring tenants, so Mommy had to chase and bring him back again. Unbeknown to Mommy, Papa had taken a shot of us coming back to the 'true path'.  This shot really made Juan Or and Mommy look like shopping kakis (hats)! ^_^

At the food fair section, the main attraction was the selling of Norwegian frozen seafood such as salmon, cod, blue mackeral, shrimp and crab. Some of these seafood were sold in vacuum-packed marinated form. Mommy remember reading about this Norwegian food fair at The Star Metro section on Saturday (19th March 2011) and the article did mention about the frozen seafood sold at bargain prices. So are they really a bargain? In Mommy's opinion, they are definitely not! For example, a 200g vacuum-packed frozen salmon fillet (non-marinated) costs RM12, i.e., RM60 per kg - that's exorbitant! In comparison, a salmon slice in Tesco costs RM24.90 per kg during promotion and in one TC Boy Warehouse Sale last year, a 700g to 800g piece of imported salmon fillet (frozen, vacuum-packed) costs RM27 only. Other than frozen seafood on sale, there were Norwegian breads and bread premixes for sale too but Mommy didn't take a close look. In one section of the booth, you can see one staff cutting the bread into small pieces. You think they are preparing free samples of the bread for people to try? Nah, you have to buy them to try! Cheh!


Putting aside the food fair, there was also a section in the booth where photos of places, people, scenes and scenaries of Norway are displayed - something like a "To know Norway is to Love Norway" expo kind of thing.

These are some of Juan Or's favourite things....

.....the waterfall     and.....

.....the  choo-choo train!


Before leaving the Norwegian food fair booth, Mommy managed to take some free recipe booklets and leaflets for cooking salmon fish. Yippy, even if Mommy had nothing to buy from the booth, at least there's still something to take and keep for future reference!

Since we still had a lot of time left before lunch time, Papa and Mommy took Juan Or to his favourite place - Toys R'Us! Mommy then took the opportunity to enquire from the customer service counter how much points were collected thus far and to Mommy's delight, it was 814 points and that entitled Mommy to have RM30 worth of vouchers to redeem (RM10 voucher for 250 points)! Woo-hoo!  You may then be thinking that Mommy had spent RM814 previously to buy toys, right? Wrong, Mommy had only spent RM254.50 so far buying toys from Toys R'Us. So how did Mommy do it? Actually Mommy made use of windows of opportunities. One was when Mommy made use of Standard Chartered's credit card cash rebate promotion that gives RM188 rebate upon first swipe of any amount transaction. Second was when Mommy got 3X points when purchasing something from a new Toys R'Us outlet in IOI Mall. The best part was that Mommy made use of those windows of opportunities simultaneously to reap the maximum benefit possible! ^_^

Juan Or had a jolly good time at Toys R'Us. Mommy asked him to pose next to this life-sized Ben10 hero (his current favourite cartoon character), but don't know why, he refused. *Shake head*

Then there's also this Lego corner for children to play.

When we came out from the toy store, Juan Or did not fret to want to stay on unlike in other toy departments in Jusco previously. What does this mean? It simply means he had seen and played to his heart's content already! ^_^


You may then be wondering what Mommy bought using the RM30 voucher? Here it is - the 65th Anniversary celebration edition Thomas train set selling for retail price of RM89.90. Mommy knows this set is pretty expensive and no discounts are given even during Jusco sales. Also, Mommy has never seen this set on sale before in Litt Tak's Warehouse Sale all these years. So this is good opportunity to make use of the vouchers to get it for a cheaper price! Anyway, it's to add to Mommy's collection as well! ^_^

Once back home, this was how Juan Or played with it.....crash, boom, bang.....fall down! If you have watched Thomas and Friends in Mistry Island Rescue before, Juan Or actually wanted to simulate one scene where Diesel unintentionally pushed the jovi logs to the edge of an unfinished track and they all fell into the river.

If you are a train model enthusiast, this 65th Anniversary edition features an interesting passenger coach.....

.....that can be opened up to fit in Sir Topham Hat!

Hehehehe.....another addition to Juan Or and Mommy's choo-choo train collection! ^_^

Trip to Morib and Tanjung Sepat (Part 2)

After Morib Beach, we headed on further down to Tanjung Sepat for lunch. Tanjung Sepat is a small fishing village with a very simple jetty. The jetty has a long passageway with a width just sufficient for a motorcycle to travel on. So if a pedestrian wants to walk there, and if a fisherman's motorcycle happens to pass by, then he/she has to really squeeze to one side.

It was neither low nor high tide  when we were there. Papa took Juan Or to see the tiny crabs crawling on the mud at the low tide section and then to see the sea water at the higher tide part of the beach. 

After that, we headed to Lover Bridge Restaurant for lunch.

As usual, Juan Or would play with and eat ice while waiting for food to arrive.

Before the food had even arrived, his part of the table was already all wet.

Finally the food arrived. The first dish was baby shark cooked in curry-type style.....

.... second dish was sweet potato leaves cooked with garlic and bird's eye chillis, .......

....and the last dish was mantis shrimp cooked with dried chillis.

The baby shark dish was very tasty, the vege dish was good for Mommy but for Papa was so-so only, and the mantis shrimp dish was not good this time. As for Juan Or, he refused to even try any of the dishes save for eating plain white rice (as usual!). And the bill? Papa found it a little more expensive than he expected.

After lunch, we headed back home.