I bought these ham chips last weekend. I was like, er, is this old ham? The lady laughed and told me they’re from the ends of large blocks of ham, entirely safe to eat .

I’ve seen these prepacked ham chips before but never bought them. I notice people zapping them up very quickly because they’re cheaper and great for all sorts of dishes.

Actually it makes sense because when I have leftover ham slices (very seldom though), I cut them up into cubes like these and use them for pizzas and pastas.

See what I made with my ham chips yesterday. Mmm, not bad. My kids are the typical fan guai lo (having non-Asian preferences ). They don’t like rice but this, they will eat .

On school days, I just want to cook something quick before I run out to pick them up from school. No time to think. Just grab and throw into the wok .

If you’re looking for new food ideas and restaurants to try with your kids/family, go check out Foodarrific, my humble food blog. Since my kids are picky eaters, I got their favorite foods there.

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We had this claypot tofu with mushroom and shrimp for dinner last night. I seem to be cooking this quite often because it’s one dish we all unanimously love.

I like using claypots. I can serve straight from the claypot and it keeps the food warm while the kids take their time to come down for dinner.

Actually if you have toddlers who are new to solids, you can feed them just the tofu while everyone else can gobble up the rest. A great family dish, right?

Let’s just say part of the joy of eating out seems to have faded somewhat. Since we were out the whole weekend, I didn’t bother to cook. But some of our favorite restaurants are turning against us, it seems .

Did you know Friday’s now charges for extra barbecue sauce? Yes, rm2 per little bowl, to be exact!! WTH!

They have a new menu too but don’t be fooled when you see the prices are the same for the $39.90 set. The portions and quality of the food has gone way down.

The tables weren’t even wiped clean and I ended up with sticky stuff on my elbow. The place was empty on a weekend night if you can believe it so our free drinks refills were very efficiently topped up. So that was good .

Jom Bali Cafe used to offer an extra bowl of rice free with their nasi lemak. No more! To be fair, I think many restaurants are cutting corners to try and make that extra buck. I read that the 10% service tax is supposed to have been scrapped with effect from July 1, 2008 but I still see it on my bills. What’s up with that?

Looks like I took a blog break, an unintentional one, that is. I couldn’t publish after upgrading to WP2.6 but I didn’t get around to fixing it until now. Well, so much for trying to catch up with technology when you only have 24 hours in a day. Clearly I need more to fit everything in.

I was up at 4:30 a.m. two days last week and still it seems I need more hours in a day. I get the kids off to school, then head for the gym. Okay, yes, I’ve been spending more time at the gym than usual because I’m getting so addicted I just can’t pull myself away .

Then I work at my computer for a hour before I get lunch started. Luckily my kids were raised on eating Western. I can’t imagine if I have to cook up a huge Chinese lunch spread. So it’s mostly sandwiches, lasagna, roast chicken and potatoes, pasta, stuff like that.

Once that’s done, Mom’s taxi goes into service and I’m making anywhere between 10-16 runs in and out of the house in one single afternoon. Some days, I don’t ‘finish work’ till past 8pm. Don’t even ask me what my gas bills are like *rolls eyes*.

And I only have 3 kids. Good thing I wouldn’t let DH talk me into having six *faints!*.

I can’t believe mooncakes are already on sale. In July? Ow, gimme a break, they may as well sell it all year. At any rate, I had to go buy one for an 80-year-old relative who loves the stuff.

Obviously I’m the wrong person for the job. I don’t even eat mooncakes. So when the promoter started fussing around trying to get me to try the different flavors, I gave her the evil eye!

She was shocked and probably a little disgusted too by the looks of it. But then I’m not known as the fan guai lo (politely translated, it means banana or an unChinese Chinese) in the family for nothing.

When she couldn’t get me to sample it, she tried to convince me to buy a whole box of 4. I was like, no, just give me the lotus paste mooncake with the single egg yolk, thanks.

She gave me an exasperated look that I summed up to mean, but everybody buy mooncakes in boxes of 4!! I knew what she was thinking. At this point, I decided to repeat my order and flee the scene before she went into shock again!

What a laid-back weekend! We were out only for a couple of hours yesterday to go on a hamburger binge. We’ve been so hamburger-deprived all last week, you wouldn’t believe! No fast food during the school week because I cook at home.

Since Skye has extra classes after school and I need to drop off her lunchbox, I prefer her to eat a wholesome homemade lunch. She says her classmates’ moms bring them McDonald’s and KFC every day and I’ve only brought her McDonald’s once.

Steev has his lunch at college and I’m constantly on his back to eat more veggies at dinner. My poor baby seems to have lost weight since he started college. But he insists he is eating the same amount except maybe less carb.

Since there’s only Raine and me eating lunch at home most days, I usually whip up something simple like sandwiches, pasta, pies or grilled chicken and potatoes or something. We’re not big fans of rice and Chinese dishes anyways, so I don’t bother cooking up a storm.

During the 2-hour wait for dinner to be served, I had time to remind the kids about our family’s eating-with-strangers policy. When the food comes, take what you want and do NOT go back for seconds, no matter how good the food tastes.

The common practice of everyone diving in with their chopsticks is pretty horrifying. At weddings, the table is mostly made up of complete strangers, people we don’t know from Adam (or Eve) which makes this whole business of saliva-mixing all the more disgusting.

There’s a common spoon which everyone is supposed to use but no one does. It’s faster to just dive in with your chopsticks. God forbid the people who like to lick or suck their chopsticks before plunging them back into the common plate again and again! YUCK!

When the kids were younger, it was even more stressful for me as I had to fill their plates and my own before everyone else dives in for seconds .

Well, we don’t end up eating a lot. Which is okay we’re there to celebrate someone’s wedding, not to stuff our faces like we’ve never eaten good food before and certainly not to embarrass ourselves.

I’ve been cooking up a storm all week. All in an effect to cut cost now that everything’s so expensive. Thankfully my kids didn’t complain. They even said this has been the best week in lunches.

I made chicken pot pie on Monday. The kids loved it so much that they did an encore. So on Tuesday, I was at it again making chicken pie for the second day in a row.

On Wednesday, I made two types of pasta like I usually do. Steev and I prefer spaghetti olio but the girls like spaghetti bolognaise. So I always make both types.

I had some leftover pie filling from Tuesday so that was perfect for another small batch of chicken pies. I also made a tuna pasta for my big eaters.

Today I made pan-fried fish fillet with buttered rice. I’ve never made buttered rice before. It just hit me like a stroke of lightning so I decided to go with it.

What’s on next week’s lunch menu? I don’t know yet . We’ll see.

On the weekend, the kids and I sometimes like to look for new places to eat. So happens Bubba Gump, a restaurant themed after the movie Forrest Gump, opened at the Curve.

We were curious. We were drawn to its unusual decor. We heard they have free iced lemon tea refills. That was enough to make us want to check it out.

We like to try everything once even though we’re not big on shrimp which is their main feature. The ambiance was kinda nice but I can’t say the same for the food or the prices they charge though.

But now that we’ve tried it, we won’t be itching to go in there again whenever we pass by the restaurant. I doubt we’ll be going back there any time soon.

I’ve gone from doing my groceries on the weekend to doing it on Friday instead. I work from home which gives me all the flexibility in the world to shop whenever I want.

So there’s no need to compete with the working folks on weekends. It drives me nuts to stand in checkout lines that don’t seem to move. I really don’t have the time or the patience.

Having said that, I seem to notice more promotions on the weekends to cater to the crowds. They have kiosks set up for you to sample food before you buy. There’s lots more markdowns and choices.

Well, sometimes you have your cake and eat it too, I guess. So I’m going to send the kids off to school tomorrow morning, go to the gym, then try to get my groceries done.