Paleo Schmaleo

L-R, top to bottom: hand shredded salted pork, Paleo brownies, 

porridge (look at that inviting egg yolk)

I'm beginning to realise that being a SAHM (and on no-pay leave at that!) is a privilege, and one I should be thankful for instead of constantly plotting my return to work before FBC's first birthday. Now that we've started solids, every evening at about 6pm when I seat him in his el cheapo bouncer and see him reaching out his hands in anticipation, flapping his arms up and down, eyes widening in excitement when I produce the bowl of puree and his small yellow spoon, I feel a small tug at my heart as I think of how I wouldn't be able to experience all this if I was working. (On that note, I wonder how long his enthusiasm towards sweet potatoes and broccoli will last.) 

Then again, even if I go back to work when he's say 8 months old, the excitement of feeding him solids would probably have worn thin. But there will be other more exciting things like crawling, no? 

***

I had one large sweet potato left over from our first week of solids, and didn't quite feel like giving FBC sweet potato again this week (because I discovered that a puree of Packham pears mixed with brown rice cereal is REALLY delicious. Try it.). I'd also made oven baked sweet potato chili fries with limited success earlier this week - they stuck like crazy to the baking sheet, but tasted good nonetheless - and will write about them when sweet potatoes are back on the puree rotation again, if I succeed on my next attempt.

Jon's mum gave me a bottle of coconut oil last night and I also bought a box of organic coconut flour from Mustafa for S$3.50 the last time we went (the brand is Cecil, I think), so what could I do but search for a paleo baked good with sweet potatoes? The first few hits were for paleo brownies, so I made those. And for dinner, I made porridge. Recipes are as follows.

Sweet Potato Brownies (Paleo)

Adapted slightly from Eat Drink Paleo

Ingredients

• 2-3 loosely packed cups grated raw sweet potato (one large-ish sweet potato should do the trick, and you may even have extra, as I did, to steam and add to the broccoli puree you're going to feed one lucky baby)
• 2 eggs (I like this recipe because it doesn't use THAT many eggs, which I understand is uncommon when baking with coconut flour, i.e. such recipes call for upwards of 3 eggs or so)
• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 2 tsp vanilla essence (I also bought mine from Mustafa, the brand is Heilala vanilla. It's a bit on the expensive side but the taste is phenomenal compared to Red Man)
• 3 tbsp raw honey (you can probably use any type of honey, but we had raw honey which I needed to use up; the original recipe called for a third of a cup of honey (5 tbsp + 1 tsp) but I don't really like the taste of honey in baked goods so I cut it down to 3 tbsp. My brownies weren't very sweet though, so use your discretion)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder (I used Hershey's. SAHM, remember? How to use raw cacao powder?)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/2 tbsp coconut flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150C (my oven is fan-forced)
2. Combine sweet potato, eggs, coconut oil, vanilla and raw honey. Mix. 
3. Sift 1/2 cup cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda into above mixture, and fold in.
4. Add coconut flour, and don't overmix. 
5. Bake (I used a 20cm x 20cm tin) for 25-30 minutes.

I thought these tasted pretty good. I was initially hesitant about making them after testing a small batch of cookies (3T coconut flour, 2T coconut oil and 1T raw honey) to see how I liked the taste of coconut flour and oil. The cookies were too coconutty for me, but other bloggers gushed about how the taste of chocolate masks the taste of the coconut wonderfully so I took the plunge with the brownies. I didn't really find that to be the case though. The cocoa muted the coconut taste greatly, but there was a lingering aftertaste of it, albeit not as unpleasant as it was with the cookies. 

Porridge

Do I really need to tell you how to make porridge? This lady probably does it better than I can, anyway. I've used minced pork before, but for a special treat you should really try making hand-shredded salted pork. I used the cut labelled "Lean Pork", available in the meat section of NTUC along with all the other cuts of pork. It takes some planning because it has to sit in the fridge for 1-2 days, but it has a good flavour. For a really special treat, crack a raw egg into a piping hot bowl of porridge, just like they do at the porridge shops. Serve with ground Sarawak white pepper, soy sauce and a drizzle of sesame oil.

If you prefer aggarating, like me, for about a cup of rice (the cup being a standard 235ml cup), I used about 2 litres of water. My mother's recommendation was to "use a bit more than one cup of THAT cup of rice, you know THAT one (I'm not sure where they come from, those cups - but you know which one I'm talking about? If you don't, ask your mother), and fill your thermal pot about two-thirds full of water (my thermal pot is 3 litres)". I used about 4 cups chicken broth and topped up the rest with water, and also added some dried scallops. Marinating the rice with oil and salt is essential to get that nice, thick and creamy texture without the use of rice flour (what? You didn't know that that's what porridge stalls do?).

***

Since I've committed to trying out yoga videos and blogging about them, here are links to the two I did this week: here and here. Enough said. You can see that I'm not really a big fan of yoga.

In other news, woke up early and went for a run last Saturday morning. It feels good being somewhat back in proper running form.

Macaroni and Cheese!

Note: Some changes were made to the recipe for mac and cheese on 26 January 2015 (my aggarationsense of portions, especially with pasta, isn't very good)

L-R, top to bottom:

Bowl with diced butternut squash and carrot/ blended mac and cheese sauce/ mac and cheese post baking/ pot of  braised pork fresh from oven/ piece of pork asking to be eaten

***

One of my pots and a large bowl were tainted with Velveeta yesterday. The horror! I don't think anything THAT processed has ever come out of my kitchen - even our instant noodles are the type without seasoning (Koka brand air-fried) and usually tossed with a mix of soy sauce, black vinegar and sesame oil; the only pop-in-the-oven-straight-from-the-freezer food we've consumed is charcoal grilled Teriyaki chicken (I cannot remember which brand it is). I once bought some Japanese wasbi crispy chicken pieces and so much of it was flour and not chicken that I threw it away (it was on offer). So it doesn't count.

Before I went to sleep last night, I decided that this egregious state of affairs could not remain, and googled "healthy mac and cheese". Unfortunately, as I had earlier defrosted some pork shoulder butt, I also had to google "cooking pork shoulder butt". And upon a survey of my kitchen and fridge this morning, I made the following two things for dinner, after a trip to NTUC and discovering that we were having an impromtu dinner party tomorrow night (quantities are thus to feed 4-5 grown men and one woman on a post-pregnancy diet). 

Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

• Two 500g packs of elbow macaroni (I used Colavita Gomiti, which was on offer - S$4.35 for two packs. For our dinner (the two of us), I used two-thirds or so of a 500g pack (which I found to be a bit much))
• Half a medium smallish butternut squash (I bought a piece which cost S$2.17)
• One carrot (last one in my fridge, the ones you find at NTUC are more or less the same size anyway)
• About 2/3 cup of cilantro skim sour cream (I reprised the hot wings last night - evidently it was not enough for They Who Decided To Eat Velveeta - and made this dip to go along with it. I mixed about a cup of skim sour cream with a bunch of cilantro a.k.a Chinese parsley (act atas only), about three minced garlic cloves, and the juice of half a lemon. You can use normal or skim sour cream, or milk. I used skim sour cream because it was all they had at Phoon Huat when I wanted to make the dip. Value tub some more)
• One onion (I used a yellow one, you can use a red one)
• Some cheese. Now this is entirely up to you and what's in your fridge; I wanted it to be healthier so I used about 30g, maybe less, of Parmesan, and about the same amount of Mozzarella. I also threw in about 10g or so of Cheddar (it was frozen, I couldn't be bothered to chip off a large enough chunk. And yes I freeze my cheese, it keeps longer)
• About three large cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Method

This method yields some baby food

The amount of sauce this recipe yields will be enough for two 500g packs about one and a quarter 500g packs of elbow pasta. If you like your mac and cheese saucy, which I don't, use one pack

1. Peel the skin off the butternut squash. I learnt online that you can do this with a vegetable peeler - the skin looks very tough right, so I initially thought you had to slice it off with a sharp knife and risk cuts. But no, you can do it safely with a vegetable peeler. Take off as much of the white stuff underneath the skin as possible, it's bitter. Remove seeds and pith. Google what to do with the seeds. Dice squash, place in heatproof bowl.
2. Peel carrot. Dice, place in heatproof bowl together with pieces of butternut squash.
3. Put heatproof bowl in a pot large enough to hold it, and fill the pot (not the bowl) with water so it comes about a third of the way up the bowl. Cover the pot, and bring the water to a boil. Let it cook for about 20 minutes or so (the water should have come to a boil and you should have turned down the flame thereafter). Check after 20 minutes that the squash and carrots are soft enough to be pureed. If they're still a bit hard, cook for a while longer. Leave cover on pot, take off the stove, let cool. 
4. Slice the onions, and fry together with the garlic in olive oil. I let them go really brown over low heat, and also salted them really well because I didn't salt the squash and carrot. 
5. Put the squash and carrots into your blender along with whatever water collected in the BOWL. Puree. Set aside three teaspoons or so for your baby, because you have no idea how much he is going to eat. 
6. Add a bit of hot water to the puree to loosen it up, then add the sour cream, onions and garlic, Parmesan and cheddar. Blend until smooth, adding more hot water (in teensy bits) to loosen up as needed. Taste, and add more salt and pepper if needed. 
7. Cook pasta in salted water until slightly underdone - it should be firmer than al dente. It took me the length of one feeding to get this texture, about ten minutes. Please keep testing your pasta for done-ness, everyone's stove is different and I didn't have it on a boil for the whole ten minutes because I had to feed FBC.
8. Add some - not too much, maybe about a third of a cup or so - of pasta water to the sauce in the blender, and blend. Taste. Hopefully it's not too salty (mine wasn't). Drain remaining pasta.
9. Mix sauce with cooked pasta in a baking dish, and top with shredded Mozzarella. Bake at 170C in a fan-forced oven for about 10 minutes, broil for about 5-10 minutes (depending on your broiler strength) or until Mozzarella turns nice and brown. You may need to turn the temperature of your oven up a touch to get that nice brown colour. 

Rum Apple Braised Pork Shoulder Butt

Ingredients

• Four large pieces of pork shoulder butt. I purchased the ones found in the "Meat" section, with the flying pig label. They were all about S$3.70-S$4++ per piece, two were on offer, for quick consumption TODAY. Choose pieces which are a bit fatter, so you can get longer pulled pork "strands" when you push it apart
• One onion, sliced thickly (I used a yellow one, of course you can use a red one, as stated above)
• Two Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into slices (leftover from the last time I made applesauce for baking)
• Three cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1l of apple juice (Ceres was on offer, thankfully. S$4.15 for two cartons)
• 1/2 cup of rum (Myer's Dark, leftover from Christmas fruit cake. You could probably use red or white wine, but the taste would be different)
• Two dried bay leaves
• Three pinches of rosemary (I froze some rosemary leaves. Yes, I believe strongly in the power of the freezer. You could probably just use dried, and had I not used my thyme in my Cajun seasoning mix, I would have used that instead. I would say about a teaspoon of dried herbs).
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a large oven proof pot (used my NTUC redeemed Dutch oven), sear the meat. I used olive oil despite all that's being said about how you shouldn't be doing high heat cooking with it - so I sacrificed some of the caramelisation. You can use rice bran oil (another can of worms there, but I think it's pretty healthy and you can get a really nice crust on the meat). I wish I could tell you for sure that searing is worth the resulting oil spatter - well okay, it probably is and I've never braised meat before without searing it, but it's a pain when you have to mop the kitchen floor yourself and also check intermittently on a baby while you're cooking because oh the horror of tracking oil all over the house. But, yeah, sear it. 
2. Remove meat from pot. Fry onions, slices of apple and garlic until nice and brown. Add about 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. Deglaze pan with rum (or other alcohol), scraping off bits of fond. Add bay leaves. Return meat to pan. Pour in one carton of Ceres apple juice. The recipes I looked up all suggested adding chicken/ beef/ vegetable stock as well, and if you have some homemade stock or aren't averse to store bought (I am, but I'm not judging anybody! Honest), then by all means use maybe 3/4 of the apple juice and about a cup of stock. It would probably give you more depth of flavour. I had some frozen chicken backs but wasn't in the mood to make stock. 
3. Bring the liquid in your pot to a boil. Let it boil for about 5 minutes, then cover, take off flame, and stick pot in a 150C fan-forced oven. I gave it about 2 hours at 150C, then turned up the heat to 170C for 15 minutes or so (because I stuck the mac and cheese in). The meat was tender and easy to pull apart by then.

When I Met You in the Summer

This week would probably have been the week I started work if I hadn't extended my maternity leave. 

My day looked something like this: 

8am: Wake up, feed baby, go back to sleep (me, not FBC. He stayed awake amusing himself in his cot, thankfully).

9.50am: Wake up, decide that I HAVE to do the yoga video I'd planned on doing because I don't have the luxury of going for yoga classes on Monday anymore (and besides, that's something I want to blog about!). Change into sports bra.

10.10am: Realise that if I start the yoga video, it may eat into FBC's next feeding time. Decide to do a load of laundry, then turn on computer for good measure. Realise that computer is in the midst of updating and am not sure how long it will take, so decide to wash and sterilise milk bottles. 

11.05am: Feed FBC.

11.25am: Put FBC down in cot, as he has dropped off to sleep right after feeding (good boy).

11.30am: Start yoga video.

11.40am: Answer door - it is the Home Improvement Scheme people, asking me why I haven't voted yet. Make small talk. Assure them I will vote after lunch. They thank me and apologise for interrupting my morning.

11.45am: Resume yoga video.

12.35pm: Finish yoga video. Famished, so eat leftovers for lunch. Proceed to hang clothes out to dry after lunch. 

1.05pm: Shower. In the middle of shower, hear FBC yelling his little lungs out. Shout back MUMMY IS IN THE SHOWER AND WILL COME SOON! Not sure if he hears or understands, but continue with shower anyway. Feel a bit like a bad mother.

1.15pm: Finish shower, check on FBC. He won't stop crying after being carried, so I deduce that he is hungry.

1.20pm: Feed FBC. 

1.40pm: Exhausted from yoga video, so put FBC into cot and lie down on my bed. Drop off to sleep.

2.10pm or so: Unable to ignore complaining from FBC's cot, as it has progressively increased in volume. Yell BABY MUMMY IS HERE CAN YOU LET MUMMY SLEEP PLEASE. Five minutes later, it becomes clear to me that despite my thinking that my child is a genius, he does not understand what I am saying. 

2.15pm: As am really unable to drown out the sounds of FBC's plaintive yells, mercilessly wrench myself from my bed and wheel FBC's cot into our bedroom. Fall back down on my bed and tell him, Okay baby you can only sleep in mummy and daddy's room because it's the afternoon. Tonight cannot ah. FBC is momentarily silent, pleased that his calls for attention have not gone unheeded.

From 2.15pm-3.05pm I drift in and out of sleep, intermittently waking up, mumbling and cooing at FBC and sticking his pacifier back into his mouth (which he keeps spitting out).

At 3.05pm, I decide that trying to have a nap is fruitless, so I wake up, wheel FBC's cot back to his room, and tell him we are going to the polling station to cast our vote in respect of the Home Improvement Scheme. He notes that I am putting a romper on him, and that I have retrieved the carrier from the kitchen. He smiles beatifically, pleased as punch.

We finally head out at 3.15pm, and after following some "helpful" signs, one of which was stuck to a dustbin and had an arrow pointing straight to the carpark, we find the polling station. I was initially adamant about voting against the scheme because we didn't want our bathroom tiles hacked and kitchen cabinets damaged when they replaced the pipes, but was assured by the HDB officer that we could opt out of that, so could I please vote in favour of the scheme, we really need your support ah, and yah I understand you have a baby, it's really okay don't worry. 

I vote in favour of the scheme, because I am not in favour of hearing anymore spiel.

When I go to opt out of certain aspects of the scheme, the girl at the counter says that FBC is so quiet and well-behaved! I give her a wry smile. She then tells me that my kitchen cabinets may be affected. I feel slightly upset with the first HDB officer. How can you con a woman with a baby?!?! 

I go back to he who told me I could opt out of the works to the pipes to confirm that I really can opt out, and he says, "Never leak right? Then opt out lah. I also opted out in my own estate. I assure you, we will not impose a scheme that will make people unhappy because of the damage it will cause to their S$10,000 renovations". 

My last snarky comment? Yah, because elections are coming right?

I buy a packet of teh-o siu dai bing after our voting experience, and head home. FBC has fallen asleep at this point, and wakes up with a startled cry when I transfer him to his cot. I stick his pacifier in his mouth and he falls asleep, and here I am typing this account of my day. 

***

You can't have your cake and eat it too. You want money, status, a great CV, then you've gotta slug it out and make sacrifices in respect of your personal life. I learnt that early enough in my career. But what happens when you've given up those things, and realise after having a child that it still may not be enough? That the nature of some jobs are just more demanding than others, and it's not enough to make it clear that you are contented not being promoted along with your peers, earning less, all so you can have some semblance of time to yourself AND make it home to see your child at a reasonable hour? 

I've been toying with the idea of switching industries completely, but am feeling apprehensive - no, make that just plain scared. I didn't give much thought back then to where I would apply to after leaving practice, and now that I have time to myself to think about my current job, I find myself less and less enthralled with the legal industry in general. But it's all I've ever known and I feel that I'm a pretty decent lawyer. What will it be like, starting from ground zero? Getting to know a new office-ful of people all over again? Will it really be better?

One of the things which worries me about going back to work is that FBC won't be close to me. Hah, say the more experienced mothers (including mine), you just wait until he is sick, and doesn't want anyone else but mummy to comfort him. It's true though. I have memories of my mother's soothing hand rubbing calamine lotion over my chicken pox spots when I was five or six, numerous memories of her coming into my room and placing a cooling hand on my forehead to check on my temperature throughout my childhood (and beyond!), and once, I must have been eight or nine, when I threw up in the middle of the night and she woke up, changed the sheets, gave me a warm bath and hot water to drink. (My father was the one I turned to when I went through my scared of the dark phase, I would run to their bedroom and force him to come sleep on the roll out bed in my room.) 

I think, no matter who cares for our children while we're at work, they will always be close to us if we love them the best we can (my insecurity whispers, what if it's not enough? But that's a story for another day). 

***

So, on to the yoga video I tried, linked here. The only reason I am doing yoga is because my limbs are terribly stiff post-partum and  my core isn't what it used to be (I believe a strong core is essential to long distance running). I did do some fairly long runs by myself (9+ to 10km or so) uneventfully two months post-partum and some shorter 5km or so runs with the jogging stroller, because I'd suspended my gym membership for two months to force myself to take a break from exercising - obviously that didn't work so well - but decided to give running a rest for a bit when I started gymming again 3 months post-partum. So I've been doing RPM twice a week, yoga/ Body Balance once a week, and swimming if we have time and I'm not too tired. My mother starts BSF soon though, so like I said, I don't have the luxury of going for yoga/ Body Balance at the gym on Mondays anymore.

In preparation for doing yoga at home, I invested in a Manduka LiveOn yoga mat. I felt like an absolute poser fraud when I purchased it, this cheapest of the atas yoga mats available (S$86 from Touch The Toes), but I felt the difference today. (Jon made a lot of fun of said mat, when I read him the eco-friendly you are doing your part to save the earth spiel printed on its label.On my part, I can't believe I just said that "I felt the difference". But that is the truth.)

I won't lie - I only did 45 minutes of the hour long video, because that's when the prelude to inversions started, and the first 30 minutes or so of the video were enough to leave me exhausted (see above). It's fairly easy to follow if you have some yoga experience, because then you can ownself take the options for the advanced poses (which I definitely did). I enjoyed the core work-out bits in the first thirty minutes. There's a dull ache in my pelvic bone when I do side planks (a lot better than before though), so am taking it easy on that front (you can, too! Just put one knee down when it becomes too much to handle). 

I will be trying different levels of yoga videos and will share about them here - I did try the one which Gladys Chung tried out and wrote about in Urban, linked here, and completed it. This one is a lot easier. 

One of my goals for this year is to progress to inversions (just a forearm headstand is enough for me!), but we'll see how that goes given that the person who is going to help me with that is Mr I Was A Pole Vaulter Father of FBC. 

I am still aching, but we have a dinner appointment so I am going to get us ready. Ugh. 

A Place, A Reintroduction

Yep, that’s what Jon said this should be. “A place for people to just, like, hang out. You know?”

I suppose you could call this “a platform for interaction on social media”, or you could just call a spade a spade and recognise that this is Just Another SAHM Blog (Which May or May Not Be Worth Your Time) (“JASB (WYT?)”).

For reasons I will not disclose here (no, I am not pregnant again), it looks like I’m going to be a SAHM for a few months longer than we originally intended. To wit, I’ve extended my no-pay leave to the end of September 2015, but bets are on as to when I will cave and shorten it (HR was suitably surprised. “Seldom do people shorten their NPL, but if you want to, sure!). My mother says April, I say May at the earliest (yes, I have taken to making bets with myself), and you are welcome to have a go as well and suggest prizes for the winner/ s.

In the meantime, though, I have decided to start blogging weekly, and at this address. Posting at a new domain name and/ or changing the title of the blog did cross my mind, but I dismissed the idea for sentimental reasons. Although the archives links don’t reflect it, I actually started this blog sometime in December 2003. You can find my JC to first year university blog self at wherewedream.blogspot.com (I republished almost all of my pre-Jon entries there), but I don’t recommend getting introduced to her. For one, the page is not properly formatted so it’s difficult to read, but more importantly, I was probably a lot more fun and took myself a lot less seriously in real life. Not that I don’t think I did some fairly good writing for an 18 year old Science student, and it IS interesting to see what people were like before you knew them (how much do we really change over time?) but I think I was trying too hard in JC to be an artsy melancholic in tune with the secrets of the universe type (which I don’t think I am), later swinging to the other extreme before settling on a happier middle ground when I met Jon (truth be told, these periods of time are delineated by whoever I was seeing at the time. Evidently, I married the person I knew would encourage me towards becoming the woman God wanted me to be).

What to write about, then? The last post here was more or less an AUGH I AM A NEW PARENT/ breastfeeding rant, fuelled by post-partum hormones and a lack of sleep. Still, it was heartfelt and inspired, so I will write about things which give me the feels in my heart and inspire me – when they do. Which is not often. But I did say weekly updates – and my weeks are filled with exercise, cooking, and… being a wife and mum (I TOLD you this was JASB (WYT?)), so that is what this blog will be about, primarily. Now you can unfollow me on Facebook so you won't see my updates. I won't know if you don't tell me. 

***

I chose the domain name “theventana” when I jumped on the blogging bandwagon all those years ago because I was trying to be cool. In that “yeah I can write well and I get it despite being a Science student, you know” way. The Ventana is the name of the condominium located at 95 Pasir Panjang Hill, and a few days before I started my blog, my father and I drove past a banner advertising it on the way home. I thought it would be suitably ironically cool (does that sentence make sense?) to base my blog on that, and the main header even read “ninety-five pasir panjang hill” for a while (I was obsessed with typing in small letters).

Well, here we are beneath the same blue suburban skies some eleven years, a husband and child later. I try not to think too much about the imprint of myself I have and am leaving behind on social media; there for all time, indelible.

***

My main goal for this year is to run a sub two hour half-marathon, and I’m aiming to do this at the Great Eastern Women’s Run 2015 (the Singapore Run Calendar tells me it’s on 11 November 2015). Jon thinks I shouldn’t push myself too hard because it doesn’t really matter, and I have come to agree. Being competitive does take the fun out of things, and it’s not like I’m some superstar for whom this is a career. Nevertheless, since leaving practice two years ago, I’ve needed an outlet to channel my competitive energies into, and as I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, this is something I want to achieve at least twice, once overseas, before I have my next child. I guess I have about 1-2 years to fulfil that goal, but it would be nice to be able to do it this year, I miss the feelings one gets during and post a hard run. But I promise I won't take myself too seriously here, especially since I don't think it's a very good frame of mind for first-time parents to be in.

Come count down to the run and cook with me, place a bet as to when I will go back to work, and let's get some interacting going.