Your enjoyment fades after taking the next bite and it continues to fade throughout the remainder of your meal.

At one point, eating was driven by the joy of consuming delicious food, savoring the taste of each morsel of food on your plate. The experience is both fun and delectable to the palette.

In the next moment, eating has become a chore, with the mere purpose of finishing your meal instead of eating for the taste of it or fulfilling your hunger cravings.

My husband and I are foodies, we enjoy food, so much so that we center our holidays and travel around cities and places that have an abundance of good restaurants and are known for great food.

In our early twenties after we graduated, due to lack of funds we made tasty homecooked meals, sought out cheap street food, and had the occasional splurge on Japanese sushi or a good steak on anniversaries and birthdays.

As the years passed, and our family income grew, we upgraded our food choices to include higher-end restaurants, cafes, and specialty dessert shops.

However, I noticed that although I had more access to food now, some that were quite unattainable ten years earlier, there grew a new limitation to my satisfaction level when consuming these delicious grubs.

It may partially be because I was now older and had a slower metabolism, but I could not stomach the same amount of food that I used to enjoy ten to fifteen years ago.

Due to my body having adapted to intake smaller portions of food, when I eat now, it would eventually hit a point where I wish I hadn’t ordered the amount of food on our table. You know, the dishes that were ordered when I was feeling hungry.

That meant I had to be careful not to over-order the food on the menu when dining out, and select only meals that we really wanted since we had our limits now.

It was a bummer because I wanted to taste the different food offerings on the menu, when more than one catches my eye.

Because other than nourishment, we are paying for the enjoyment these food bring to us when it tastes so good, the type of food that makes us do a little dance inside and verbalize the words ‘Yummy!’ to those around us.

However, when we eat beyond our satiation point, it can quickly reduce the dining pleasure it used to bring us.

And then we force ourselves to eat it to prevent food waste, because after all we had paid a good money for it, surely we can’t just leave portions of it on our table, uneaten.

Uneaten, unappreciated, sad bits of premium food on a shiny dish.

Or if you lived in Asia, it would be leftover clumps of food on a shiny aluminum platter from an Indian restaurant, or bubbling swirling bits of exotic meat in a large clay pot of soup broth, or remnants of tasty mutton curry on a piece of banana leaf.

So what can we do?

My husband and I now share our meals, sometimes swapping our food over to each other midway through our meal. This applied to desserts too, for example, I would order lemon cake while he ordered chocolate or Tiramisu, and then we shared our bites.

So to make dining out worth your money, don’t over-order and overeat, because after you pass that tipping point when your stomach and body says enough is enough, you will regret your meal choices.

And that is a sad situation for all foodies.

Indecision meets me as I stare through the glass display in front of me at the array of cakes sitting behind it.

Lemon, chocolate, hazelnut, black forest, strawberry, red velvet, and coffee cakes, the restaurant we were in had a good variety of flavors.

Which cake to get? I thought to myself.

You see, I have a sweet tooth and a specific preference for cakes.

However, I can’t binge eat cakes due to weight gain concerns, and these slices of cake aren’t cheap these days.

So at any chance that I get to eat cake, be it my kid’s birthday parties or a special date night out, I would somewhat anguish over which cake to get, and it can take quite a while for me to come to a decision.

In the past my cake selections have had their share of hits and also many misses, making me ponder even harder during the next cake selection. Some cakes look really good but tasted mediocre, as we can’t see inside a cake until we slice into it.

Some turned out unexpectedly good, not being a looker but the filling and texture within were great. Moist, and full of flavor.

And for birthdays, we tend to get a large cake to share together with family and friends. So if that cake turns out to be unappetizing, it’s going to be a whole lot of cake to finish up, unwillingly.

So this time, I changed my cake selection strategy.

It was my youngest daughter’s 3rd birthday, and I decided I would do things differently.

Instead of buying a whole cake, I proposed to my husband that we get slices of cake from different flavors instead.

My kids get to choose some, and the adults get to choose too.

We ended up selecting 6 types of different flavors, even some cake slices with alcohol in them. Those were limited to adults only.

The cakes were sent to our table on a large plate per my request, then I stuck in the candles, arranged the cake slices into a somewhat semi-circle shape in front of my daughter, and we sang happy birthday to her.

Then my girl had her slice of cake of choice, which she ate half of it and was disinterested to consume the rest.

And as for me? I got to sample and eat all 6 cakes and their different flavors, making memories of which were good and which were not for future reference.

I even got a good surprise at the alcoholic cakes which had rum and Kahlua in them. It was good and the adults enjoyed it.

An added plus was that the cost turned out to be cheaper from buying slice cakes instead of a full cake with all the bells and whistles.

This time we didn’t need to finish up a cake at the restaurant or discuss who should take the remainder back home. Especially if it wasn’t a good cake, none of the families were keen on bringing home the uneaten portion of the cake.

I will repeat this strategy at future birthdays. Unless, of course, my kids wanted their own full cake of choice when they get older and have developed their own preferences.

Hope this simple tip helps all the cake lovers out there who are maybe like me, fussy about cakes but also on a budget.

If you know this Chinese dish it usually comes with hand made noodles that comes with fried anchovies or what we call in Malay as ‘Ikan bilis‘. Now, I am a big fan of crispy crunchy deep-fried food, especially anchovies, and this love for all things crispy has carried over to my own kids. I’m not sure is it due to genetics or due to nature where they observed their mummy celebrate every time we are deep frying anchovies at home ( Ah the smell that permeates the air after a session of deep frying anchovies or any fish of that matter, is de-li-cious).

Anyway, back at home as we were eating lunch, my 3 year old ( who is the main foodie out of my 3 kids, for now ), asked if she can have some of my fried ikan bilis. I replied her yes, that she can have some after she has eaten at least half of her chicken rice. I did this because from our experience with her, typically her food eating speed slows down when she has an item of higher taste, interest and value than her current meal, as she will be pretty transfixed with the fried anchovies and will neglect her rice.

But today she asked me something else as she was eating her ikan bilis. She stared at one of the bigger pieces of bilis that I put on her plate and asked me if she could open it up and find out whats inside her ikan bilis.

“Mummy, can I open the head of the ikan bilis, and then the body too. I want to see what’s inside. ” She proceed to pick up the bilis with her fingers and wanted to start breaking it down.

Usually I wouldn’t allow it , as the fried bilis tend to be oily and it would be a mess when she breaks it down with her fingers and then touches her utensils, face and hair. But I stopped myself from denying her this request. Why?

Firstly, because this is how toddlers learn. They learn when they have the curiosity to find out about the world around them, when they observed how things work and analyze what’s inside. I usually encourage the kids to ask why , and how things work or what do they think about what they saw. Even when they are angry, I try to get them to answer, why they feel that way. Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. We help them with the later part.

Secondly, because we were at home and the situation permits it. I had no real reason to deny her from getting messy and exploring her ikan bilis’ anatomy, other than the inconvenience of cleaning her and the table up.

So I said to her, sure , go ahead, and tell us what you find inside the Ikan bilis.

Parenting is part psychology, part trial and error, and a lot of intentionality.

If we want the kids to cultivate the attitude for lifelong learning, to be able to ‘find a way’ when they don’t know how to, and to challenge themselves, the best time to start is when they are young. This is because science has long shown that the best time to start to initiate this mindset is in their early formative years when their development is at its peak Then as parents, we are there to set the environment for this growth and govern our conversations with them to get to where we want them to.

It’s not always easy, and sometimes in these similar scenarios when the outcome turned out worse than our expectations, I blow up ( and I can feel my blood pressure rising, then I calm myself down after), and sometimes I overthink it too much.

But the key thing is to find out what makes the kids thrive in the long term and to apply it in their But despite these challenges, it is important to find out what makes the kids thrive in the long term, and to apply it in their upbringing on purpose. They may thank us later for our intentionality in growing them well.

Happy parenting.

What gives the Lotus Biscoff its special flavor? I checked online and it is actually a caramelized biscuit made with combinations of sugar, cinnamon, and salt among other ingredients. Now cinnamon, is one ingredient I feel is underrated and should be used more often. For the full ingredients you can check here which will bring you to Lotus Biscoff main site.

I first came across the flavor of the Lotus Biscoff at a Spanish frozen yogurt shop in the Aeon Mall in Malacca, famously called Llao Llao ( I heard it’s pronounced Yao Yao). Along with the frozen yoghurt you get to choose toppings on the dessert, and from their many toppings displayed, two items caught my eye. The first is the Lotus caramelized biscuit sauce, and then the Lotus Biscoff biscuit crumble. Both are sold separately as two toppings. The other toppings appeared generic as they were mostly chocolate-based sauces like Nutella, white chocolate, or fruit such as mango and kiwi, strawberry.

So I chose the Lotus toppings, both the caramelized sauce and the cookie crumble. One bite and mmhmm, it was a hit to my taste buds and I am hooked. Since that day, when I order Llao Llao, I will only order it for the Lotus Biscoff flavored toppings, and if the shop ran out of these toppings, I would not buy the froyo (short for frozen yogurt) dessert. Basically, I am eating the frozen yoghurt because of the Lotus toppings that I couldn’t get anywhere else, at least back then.

Now, fast forward to the year 2021, and I was browsing through the aisles in a K Grocer supermarket , and I found this.

I immediately took it up, and it was the actual biscuits that were used for the crumble that for the frozen yoghurt itself. The cost was reasonable, only RM6.90 (for an exotic product) , so purchased it ( and later purchased a few more after it an out). Even when eaten plain, it tasted good, I would say even better than Oreo ( gasps!). Eaten with a cup of coffee or crumble over ice cream, both ways it is delicious. It also has a very delightful crunch to its texture, not overly soft, and not hard at all.

Then, browsing around at Aeon another week, we found this, the Lotus caramelized sauce spread. What? Now we have found both the biscuit crumble, and the biscuit spread , in Melaka? *Happy dance* Cost? RM18 for 400g bottle.

That night at home , we melted the Lotus spread over a low heat in a small pan , and drizzled it over our Butter Brickle Blue Ribbon ice cream ( I did a post on my favorite ice cream brand Blue Ribbon here, do check it out ) . Next we crushed the Lotus biscuit crumble over it and produced below. The taste? Super rich and yummy.

Another way to eat the caramelized sauce is to use it as you would a butter spread. We spread it over cupcakes, muffins, and even cakes like a frosting. Example below where I used the spread over a home backed chocoloate cake my mother in law baked for a family birthday on the weekend.

We also found that Lotus also offer cookies with vanilla filling in the middle, refer below image. The product is called their Lotus Biscoff Sandwich cookie. The kids love it, according to them they like more than Oreo Cookies. The vanilla cream in the middle is actually quite tasty.

Where else have I found the Lotus Biscoff in Melaka? Some of you may know that we have dessert shop called Molten in a popular shopping mall here, situated on the ground floor facing the main road. This shop actually specializes in chocolate desserts, and these desserts comes with higher price tags. We patronized the place last year during me and my husband’s anniversary, and guess what we found? In their menu they offered a crepe with Lotus Biscoff and chocolate sauce combo. The two flavors go well together, and I would definitely recommend this dessert to others if you eat at Molten. It also looks really pretty.

What else can you do with a Lotus? Well, I liked it so much, I started to give it away as presents for birthdays and gifts to others, for example below. Why? Because sharing tasty food and introducing it to others is always a good practice. No?

Okay, I know that maybe for some people, the caramelized spread/sauce can be a tad too sweet. But, I have yet to find a flavor that is similar to or as good as their flavor be it the biscuit or the caramelized sauce spread. Again if you like to check out more products from Lotus Biscoff, I have found their website linked here, but not all of their products are sold in Malaysia. For those that I managed to find in Melaka I have shared above. If you do have information on where else Lotus products can be found, for example in bigger stores in Kuala Lumpur, do drop me a message so I can get my hands on it, preferable their ice cream which I have yet to try.

I will end this post here, do give this snack a try and let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.

Another plus for cooking at home is that we get to have no spend days. What are these you may ask? As it sounds, no spend days are days that we don’t spend any money at all, and it can be useful to practice these once in a while to exercise control over our impulses to buy. If you’re interested to know more, here’s a video on Tedx talk platform on an account by someone who went by a full year without spending money (My No Spend Year | Michelle McGagh | TEDxManchester). More on this on my next blog post.

That being said, when we do choose to spend, we will spend on local small businesses and hawker stalls that could use with the help during lockdown times.

However for this post it will be a sharing on what we ate for lunch while working from home this week, basically a quick run down on what we prepared within 15-30 minutes cook time for two adults.

1. Teriyaki chicken with shrimp noodles and soft boiled eggs
Cook time: 20-25 minutes

The chicken pieces are thawed and marinated the night before in the leftover teriyaki sauce from the last weekend. Boil the shrimp noodles separately for 3 minutes in hot water, drain and set aside. Then fry up cut onions and garlic with bak choy . Combine the cooked noodles into the same pan. Make a space in the middle of the pan to fry up the teriyaki chicken pieces. At the same time, boil 2 eggs (soft boiled) separately. Last part is just to assembled into a bowl, and below is how it looks. Below is the final product.

2. One pan stir fried Lap Cheong with shimeji mushrooms, broccoli and egg
Cook time: 15-20 minutes

This is relatively quick due to every ingredient is cooked in a one pan (except the rice). Cook rice ( we used our Philips Pressure cooker rice mode) early in the morning. During lunch time cut up 2 lap cheong and stir fry in a pan (without oil as the lap cheongs will ooze oil), after that throw in the broccoli and mushrooms into the same pan. Turn off the flame, then throw in a knob of butter and squeeze in half a lemon ( for added flavor kick) and stir together. After transferring the ingredients to the rice bowls, fry 2 eggs in the same pan and place on top of the serving bowls.

3. Rendang chicken with steamed/fried Man Tao
Cook time: 30 mins (with pressure cooker for rendang and buns steamed separately)

I bought a pre-made rendang marinade packet for this recipe, so we did not have to prepare the raw ingredients. In the morning before work began I stir fried the rendang sauce in the pressure cooker then poured in the chicken cutlets, and then added evaporated milk to the mixture, stir to mix and let it cook together. In my case since we have the pressure cooker we set it to chicken mode and it cooked for 15 minutes on its own then keep warm till we are ready to eat at lunch.

Then as the sides I steamed 3 man tao buns, and hubby fried up additional 2 man tao, and voila, lunch is ready. The rendang was a tad salty due to the serving size for was 1.2 KG of chicken and I cooked half of that amount. As for the man taos , we preferred the fried buns over the steamed version due to the crispy outer skin. Apologies for the photo , I am improving my photography skills as we go along.

4. Teriyaki chicken chop with stir fried noodles and vegetables
Cook time: 20 minutes

Again we still had leftover home made teriyaki sauce, so we made teriyaki chicken chop on this day. Chicken chop was bought at RM2.50 a piece from a local supermarket and thawed the night before. We didn’t pre-marinade it this time, instead the chicken chop was fried up in a pan and the sauce poured over the chicken and simmered down to thicken. Separately cook the shrimp noodles and set aside, and then stir fry the carrots and bak choy ( another leftover vegetable in our fridge from the 1st meal to avoid wastage) together. That’s it, place everything in a plate together and enjoy.

5. Curry laksa mamee chef with crabstick and teriyaki chicken
Cook time: 15 mins

At this rate , you can see the teriyaki marinade was used in 4 meals ( one on the weekend for a fish dish, and three meals on the weekdays to use it up), and on this day we fried up balance chicken cutlets with the teriyaki. Then we cooked two instant noodles packet of Mamee Chef Laksa with crabsticks. This was the simplest of the 5 meals we had on that week and the quickest to prepare .

Special mentions and bonus meal
For quick and tasty noodle base I would personally recommend below kamfen noodles, the noodles are thin and has an el dante texture to it after cooking, its natural flavours go well as a base to any meat toppings or seasoning. They have also other flavours eg, egg and scallop flavored noodles. Cost per packet at RM8.90 for 10 pax at Aeon outlets.

Shimeji mushrooms , both the white and the brown types are about RM4 per/packet or they sometimes well in a pack of three for RM11.90

Bonus meal during the weekend? We still had chicken chops in the freezer so husband did fried chicken chop off a new recipe he found from Youtube, and cooked the balance man tao for the kids. Top it off with steamed brocolli and carots drizzled with Kewpie roasted semame salad dressing. Done , as Gordon Ramsay would say.

Hope this post gives you some ideas. On other weeks, our meals will change depending on what we got from our weekly groceries shopping haul (I tend to get when we eat with the kids) and other days we do go out to pack food (especially on weekends to spend more time with the kids). We eat with my in laws for dinner on weekday nights, where either we will pack for the whole family or my mother in law will cook up a meal.

Thanks for reading.

Hubs and I rushed to finish work earlier to leave the house by 6pm, to complete our shopping before the shops close at 8pm, follow by dinner in the car and then rush to get the kids home from grandparents (preferably before their bed time at 9pm).

Today, we choose to go to the Aeon Bandaraya (Jusco), and it was not just a random choice, no no, it was very intentional , in fact it was the furthest from our house compared to the nearer supermarkets ie. Tesco (Lotus) Cheng or NSK, but there was something alluring that made us decided to go there , something that we only managed to find only in this Aeon branch…. it was to seek out the Blue Ribbon ice cream.

When we reached the ice cream aisle, we managed to get THE LAST TUB of available Blue Ribbon. Hidden right at the back , amidst its competitors ( other ice cream of similar price point) Bulla. Out of the way Bulla! I tip toed and reached in to get the last tub. Although it was not my first choice of flavor that I wanted, I’ve had the Butter Brickle flavor before and it was good too (for the Butter Brickle flavor, its recommended to eat with Reese peanut butter chips for added boost of tasty).

For more information on their variety of flavors you can refer it here , but I’ve personally tried two of their flavors and my recommendation will be to go for their Peanut Butter Brownie flavor, photo below (taken from their website).

Taste
The taste is rich, and the brownie bits are found in fudgy like goodness in the ice cream, and the peanut butter, mmm-hmm, slightly sticky but blends well with the smoothness of the ice cream. It has become my favorite peanut butter /choco combo ice cream, ever (till I find another that can top this).

Pricing
How we found this ice-cream was from a post by a Facebook financial writer blogger Ringgit Oh Ringgit (linked here) when she shared a review of ice cream cost per-100ml-of-ice-cream by Feisal Kamil. Blue Ribbon sits only one level more expensive than Nestle Cremeria in terms of price. So if you are looking for an ice cream brand that is more premium but cost lower than say Haagan Daaz and Kapati ( till this day I can’t bring myself to buy a tub of Haagen), this ice cream may be for you.

Packaging
Just to give a mention here, typically ice cream packaging is of no particular interest to most but I want to say I support cardboard-packed ice cream more than plastic container packed ice cream. It’s more sustainable and cleaner for the environment to use paper packaging versus plastic, although it could be also that paper/cardboard packed ice creams will generally be pricier but in my position, I will favor the more sustainable packed foods.

So that’s it, if you are in larger cities I believe you have more variety but in smaller ‘towns’ like M_ _ _ _ a, we have to pick and choose but I ain’t complaining.

What’s my favorite ice cream flavor? Chocolate mint, and for this flavor there is another ice cream brand that is top in my books, for that I will share in a separate post.