Prepared with much love...

This started when I informed my mum that I was in labour on 4th September. They justttt touched down from San Francisco and took a cab from Subang Jaya to return to Muar. Because of early labour, the confinement lady I hired could not come until 2 weeks later. 

So... I gave Anne the list of herbs & food to purchase to make confinement food like red dates tea etc.. she spent RM240 and bought all ingredients in Muar before driving to Subang. They were at the hospital when I pushed Jasmine out of my womb and greeted me before going home.. that was 12am.... 

And the next morning... I have a very very healthy and delicious lunch brought to me all the way from the 71's kitchen. :)  Imagine soup packed in hot water flask, dishes packed in stainless steel stacked up containers... chopsticks, spoon, bowl, red dates drink all in a huge basket... All these represent mother and sister's love. :) 

My mum is not just a good cook, but hardworking and passionate. She has a recipe book which is actually a red Great Eastern Diary where she cut & glued on printed recipes of various confinement food. She started googling and printed out the recipes in May when she thought she may become the back up confinement lady should I fail to hire one. God knows she was going to be the official confinement lady, haha..  Not just that, during the 2 weeks here, whenever she's free she would be googling new recipes too. True passion.

Salted vegetable pork.

Mum couldn't forget about this dish because she overcooked. Joshua and Anne had to eat this for few days that week. She doesn't cook much so she doesn't know how to estimate how much to cook. :D

Papaya fish soup! To help me boost milk supply! How thoughtful is my mum...

3 fishes was used to boil this soup and apparently she threw all the 3 fishes into the rubbish bin! Anne was shocked and said it was a waste.. that made me mum felt guilty. :(  Sorry mama.. but this soup was truly delicious!! It was thick and tasty.

My favourite vegetable - 帝王苗  They know there are only few vege that I eat.. so I'm really grateful throughout the confinement period they had limited choices of vege to cook. :P

I was all the time asked to eat my food while they are hot, especially the soup. I honestly was feeling awkward being served like a big boss, hehehe...

When I'm back at home, my mum tried to serve me small meals in my room. Her version of confinement is - stay in the room & all food will be served in the room. So here she prepared red wine pork slices with an egg and place in front of me on top of a stool while I was breastfeeding. :) She wanted me to immediately eat it after Jasmine finish latching on. :D

This is breakfast - red wine chicken mee sua.

My mum uses all kampong chicken and kampong chicken eggs. They are generally more expensive... but the chicken was very hard.... reason being they run more thus has more muscle than fats, haha.

Steam fish. If not wrong this is 昌鱼。 Look at how my mum likes to serve food in all kinds of colour? She will purposely buy chili and slice into small pieces to sprinkle on top = garnishing. Mind you all those chili slices will be picked out right after we started eating, they sacrificed only for garnishing. Haha.

 

There you see a vege and a bowl of soup. I have special chicken essence plus herbs soup prepared for me morning, noon and night. And then sometimes my mum will boil another soup for general consumption, so most meals I have 2 kinds of soup.

Another papaya fish soup!

These are ALL PURE GINGER. She grind 1kg of bentong ginger using electric blender... and squeeze the juice out....

Into this pot, and boil. 

Then she add in few dashes of rice wine.... 

And pour into a pail, prepare a bathing station in the back bathroom = my ginger bath. She initially wanted me to sit in the red pail on the pink stool and just pour those ginger water on my body... and soak my feet in it. But the pail was simply too big for me to sit in there, so I ended up just standing in the red pail and pour the ginger juice onto my body using a cup.

Mum added more rice wine before I close the door. This is such an expensive bath!!

Steam cod fish....... so yummy.......

Curry sting ray. Even my mum was surprise this was quite delicious! Haha.. usually the chef would not like her own food, but this one is exception.

These are chicken residue from double boiled chicken essence soup everyday. Joshua & Anne was thinking of creative ways to eat these chicken at every meal. Because one day there will be one chicken used for double boil, be it black or kampong chicken.

Red wine chicken again. :)

Brocolli & capsicum. I'm being honest - I only take the capsicum, hehe.

This is the chicken residue from double boiling.. Anne removed the bones & cooked them with korean curry powder. Hehe.

Special omelete just for me. :)

Steam tofu. 

Red wine fried omelette. This is a very fu chow dish, my mum learnt this from my grandma. According to my mum, my grandpa likes to ask grandma to cook this whenever he feels the dishes on the table doesn't suit his appetite. @.@ 

Vinegar pork... with a lot of vinegar reduced.. I love this dish so much because there are so much fats and skin.. hahhahaa.

Fried glass noodle as breakfast. :)

More curry fish. :)

Kampong chicken soup. I finished the soup but the chicken was always too much.

This is DOM ginger chicken... It was my tea break meal. Mum followed a recipe online and prepared this with kampong chicken, blended ginger juice and DOM. 

I had a very hard time finishing it because the ginger was too spicy and I dislike the taste of DOM. 

I really appreciate my mum's effort in doing all these, this actually requires a lot a lot of work, but I really couldn't finish the ginger DOM paste. :( Sorry mummy...

Coconut chicken soup! So cute right! When I saw this in the recipe book I thought no way she's going to make this, but I was wrong.

Anne and my mum bought the coconut at the market for about RM1.20. The soup is actually very sweet, sweetness came from the coconut. :)

Because this was so special, mum prepared this twice. I really salute her!

Pork slices cooked in red wine again. :) Yummy yummy.

I love beans, french beans, crispy long beans, just not the old soft long beans.. hehe..

This is 十全大补汤. It was served at breakfast.

Western breakfast - tuna french sandwiches. So nicely and neatly done!

Mum tells story again :  My dad used to be president of the St. Andrew Old Boys Association and there was this Brother Robert who used to be principal of these old boys.. it's like an alumni club. So they were coming for a meeting at the office, my mum was planning to cook for these people, she asked Brother Robert, what does he eat? He said "everything but the 4 legged" So she filled a casserole pyrex dishware with these kind of sandwiches and served. Brother Robert saw and thought it was all for him, he put the pyrex in front of him and ate it all.....

Needless to say, these doesn't just look great, they taste great too!

Another steam fish.. :) I told my mum I prefer steam cod fish more than this fish... hehehe...

Another 十全大补汤。

Red capsicum & carrot.

Sliced pork with ginger slices.

Another herbal chicken double boiled soup.

Porridge! My mum knows I don't take these spring onions but she still put it in for garnishing purpose! Haha..

Here, after lunch one day my mum was still busy in the kitchen, I wonder what she was doing..

She was frying rice... with ginger slices.

Yes, the uncooked rice. She followed a recipe online and prepared these for me to make rice drink. Simply put a table spoon of the rice in a cup and fill with hot water. Drink after 15 minutes. :D

Porkkk.... very yummy pork.

Steam fish. This fishes comes in different colours and the white one is the most expensive and best to be steamed. It's really good, I love the soup!

Groundnuts soup. Best!

My kind of vege, haha.. the beans!

Siamese pork dish..

To be eaten like korean style - wrapped in lettuces!

It's really delicious my mum even repeated this once when we were in Muar one long weekend. Evelyn liked it a lot and wanted to learn how to make this dish. :D

You can see grind peanuts on top, that was Anne's doing. She roasted the peanuts before grinding them. 

Another vinegar pork, back by popular demand. Haha..

We still had leftover peanuts from the siamese korean dish, so I suggested to Anne to make toasts with banana & peanut on top. She also prepared salad with dressing mix with pine-nuts. :D

Another chicken soup served at breakfast. :)

Dinner - my soup was always served kosong, the chicken will be kept in for 2nd round of double boiling. :)

This is steamed herbal chicken. Very very nice, especially the soup.. my mum repeated this dish for my brother one day in Muar and both of them really enjoyed it. :D

This is fried tofu!! My mum kept on thinking of creative ways of cooking, she avoid repeating dishes.. and this was pure innovation! She added waterchestnut and carrots and I dont know what else hahaha.. it's crispy and light tasting! :D Those 2 apples were just for decor purpose, suggested by my mum hahaha..

Another yummy fish. :D

Another herbal chicken soup. ;) I was really pampered.

Red date drinks. Mum prepared about 3 times for me. :) She insisted on adding ginger into the drink which made it spicy... :(

Chicken soup with garnishing.. haha mum even tried not to serve chicken soup in the same colour. -_-

Easier breakfast - french toast with bananas. :)

My very common tea break meal - hot coca with crackers. My mum even opened up the biscuits from the packaging and served on a mini plate. -_- This is like better than hotel services. 

My mum purposely bought 3 packs of pure cocoa powder from Jaya Grocer, because she remember my grandma drank a lot of cocoa during her confinement. So I drank at least 2 cups of cocoa everyday. My mum will make a cup of cocoa at about 5am and bring to my room - either with egg broken into the cocoa itself or have a separate half boiled egg. I would be required to eat them immediately if I'm not breastfeeding. If I'm breastfeeding, mum will take a small stool and sit next to me chatting with me while observing little Jasmine having her breakfast. :) After I'm done, she would "steal" little Jasmine away so I can have a good rest... when Jasmine's hungry again, she will bring her up. :) Hehehe... do I have the best mum or what?? 

Porridge with oyster and scallops. That coriander was also just for garnishing. Those scallops were specially purchased in an expensive groceries shop in SS15. None of u think it was necessary to buy the scallops but my mum was alone when she bought it! Aihs. 

This was quite popular as breakfast - 油条 and the dan lain lain which I dont know the names. Hehe.

Such complete breakfast - oyster scallop porridge with the fried stuffs, accompanied by chicken double boiled soup! :D

A closed up of my soup. ;)

Another papaya soup, this time with pork. :D

More of what's in the soup. :) 

Yellow capsicum with button mushrooms.

Ginger fried rice! It's so awesome!!

Dinner with my mum. Just the 2 of us that night. :) Simple and great.

My mum's fried rice was fried with plenty of either spring onion or coriander.. I can't remember haha..

This was hers. ;)

This is how the double boiled happened. :D  According to my mum, the small pot was purchased while my dad was still with us, used to boil soup for him in office. :)

The big pot was purchased specifically for double boiling. They bought in Carefour for less than RM30, yeay!!

Fried noodles at breakfast!

Look at how my mum arranged the sliced egg.. perfectionist. -_-

Here... guess what's my mum boiling?

It's GINGER again! @.@

Joshua helped to pour out... this is 2nd round of ginger bath.

Steam fish again! Always ginger ginger in my food... because of confinement. Haha.

Another red wine egg.. :)

One of our dinner spreads.

Pork balls! Mum knows I like pork balls in one of the shop in Muar, so she tried to make. :) Thank you mama!!

Corn soup. These corns are from Carefour, Anne loves it, I just drank the soup, hehe.

Steam fish goodness...

One of  my special double boiled soup again.

Fried mee hoon at breakfast and again, with double boiled soup. :) 

Basically, most of the great food I eat, Joshua ate too. :) My mum thinks he works hard too, taking care of little Jasmine. Haha... our official confinement lady who came in 3rd week, couldn't cook as great as my mum! My mum served me with much more goodness that I think no one else can compare. :)

There were many more dishes that was not captured.. we were so excited to eat we forgot to take pictures of them! :)