Chinese New Year 2

It's the second day of New Year, and as promised, we're taking Aina to Toys R Us today. Yups, she's been practically chanting in our ear that she wants to go there, and since Babah is free today, might as well get ot over and done with. She's been browsing the Toys R Us catalogue and telling me what she wants "mama beli, baby nak"!!



And so, decked out in her Tesco-bought cheongsam, Babah made her pose for a few pics while I organised stuff to bring and got ready to leave.




The poor thing was even given props for the 'photo shoot'!!! LOL

And her posing session did not end at our front gate, as Babah saw the stage set in the concourse level of the mall, and decided to get Aina to pose there as well!! LOL LOL

We'd arrived IOI Mall a little early, 5mins. to 10:00am to be exact, so we had some time to kill before the store opened. Turned out that the toy store only opened at 10.30am so we went to ACES Hardware to kill time. Aina had fun going through the plastic containers, but she kept them all back where she got them. I bought some seeds to plant, herbs. I chose coriander, sage, dill and marjoram. By the time I finished at the cashier, the toy store had opened its shutters. Aina grinned all the way to the store!! ~LOL

After testing almost all the items at the "Learning" corner, Aina finally steered away only to find the skateboards and scooters section, where she insisted that she wanted a skateboard!! Yup, a SKATEBOARD!! It was a very firm "NO" so Babah steered her towards the "bubbles" area. She finally settled on buying a bubble-blowing battery operated gun which set us back by approx. RM20.00!!! ahahahhahaha.... compared to all the other stuff she asked me to buy in the catalogue, I had no complaints that she ended up with a RM20 toy!!! LOL LOL

I asked her what she wanted for lunch, but she said "No, mama.... tak nak. Balik!" Ok. She was anxious and impatient to try out her new toy. We remembered there was a J.Co there so we bought her donuts, which she happily agreed, while me and Babah had our lunch at Wendy's.

Aina, enjoying her Oreo Donut while we were having our burgers :-)

When we got back, she immediately ransacked her shopping bag to get her toy. Needless to say, she wanted to test it out. And so, Ana took her out back to play since she couldn't possibly blow the bubbles indoors.

a mini 'fight' with Ana resulting in a temper outburst!

She was so engrossed playing, I managed to sneak off upstairs to change and finish Aina's dress which I'd cut out ages ago....

For dinner, since Babah was off to help prepare for tomorrow's event (Mama and Aina decided not to go for fear of spreading germs! Bad enough we were going tomorrow!!) I made a simple dish of fried rice with shrimp and peas. Then, I had the sudden hankering for a bowl of hot soup.

And I managed to get that in 5 mins. flat!! And since I didn't have time to grab my camera or my phone, I had to google this image to accompany the simple recipe :-)

PEA & CORIANDER SOUP
you need:
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 cup hot water
1/2 tsp. chicken stock granules
2 tsp. lemon juice
salt, pepper to taste
a handful of chopped coriander

how to:
place the peas, water, lemon juice and stock granules in a pot and bring up
to boil and season with salt and pepper to taste. as soon as peas are tender,
add in the coriander and turn off heat after 1 minute. process with a hand
blender until desired consistency, and serve hot!

The soup definitely qualifies as comfort food, and now I have something to add to my list of midnight express snacks :-) Honestly, I was inspired by Nigella Lawson whose programme I was watching earlier, only she used fresh pesto in her pea soup. I think you can actually use chinese parsley, spinach or any other personal favourite you like and experiment. This is definitely a satisfying and healthy item to have at hand :-)

We have an event tomorrow, and hopefully my cough would have subsided a bit by then....

Cheers!