Baking Soda

Recently, I bought a pack of baking soda.... a big pack. I can't use all, so if anyone wants to have half of it (for free), please let me know.

It's organic, ya..
Expiry date - 30 Oct 2009.

Tempted

Air Asia's latest promotion.. book from 12-16 Nov 2008. Travel period - 22 Jun - 24 Oct 2009. Free seats and no fuel surcharge this time.

As usual, I like to randomly check if I could book free flights both ways. In this promotion, I clicked on Hanoi as my preferred destination departing LCCT-KL on the 13th Sept 2009, leaving Hanoi for KL on the 16th Sept 2009.

Take a look at how much it costs -

Return trip to Hanoi for only RM133. So cheap!!!!! But I didn't go any further from this screen. Sigh... too far ahead to plan. :(

3rd Breadmaker Machine

I'm beginning to feel fed-up (pity you guys too :)) about blogging on the Kenwood BM350 breadmaker machine but I just got to tell you this -

The salesman came yesterday and replaced the 2nd machine with the 3rd one. Mom tried making all kinds of bread - plain, seeded, cinnamon & raisins, potato and wholemeal.

All was good except for the wholemeal which looks like this -

The picture above shows 2 loaves of wholemeal bread. The bread on the left looks completely out of shape and hard as a rock while the one on the right looks weird but is edible. I'm going to have some for breakfast tomorrow morning since nobody wants to eat them. :)

Era walk

So this is Era Walk. It's a new place to hang out... well, not that new because it was open since... 1 or 2 years ago??!! Not sure.

According to my sister, this place comes alive during the weekend but when I was there 3 days ago, it wasn't so crowded. Probably because it was still early.... to some. It was 9.30pm, so that's debatable. :)

2nd Breadmaker Machine

On Friday, the Kenwood salesman came to my mom's house and tested the breadmaker machine (Kenwood BM350). This is the 2nd machine and my mom was hopeful. The salesman checked how she measured the ingredients and taught her how to fill the bread tin. It took 3-4 hours to bake a bread and the salesman said that he would return later.

When the bread was ready, my mother was so happy. The bread's shape was right. But when the salesman saw it, he wasn't happy. He said the bread should have risen higher. And when they tasted it.... it was dry and not so nice to eat.

He then asked my mom to try a few more times over the weekend and he would come back on Monday to replace a new machine for her if she was not satisfied.

Over the weekend, my mom tried 7 times. The wholemeal loaves were not good at all. Inedible. The white bread and multi-seeded ones were good but they didn't rise as high as they should have.

This is the 6th bread she made so far with the 2nd machine. Fresh out of the machine, it looks good and smells heavenly.

The kneader always gets stuck and we have to dig it out.

The bread texture is good and the top is always flaky. But it doesn't look right. The shape is not there. My mom is thinking of sending the 2nd machine back and hopefully the 3rd machine would be perfect.

Busy with crafts for VBA

Vacation Bible Adventure (VBA) is approaching... Dec 1st and 2nd to be exact. This year's theme is "Kingdom of the Son" and it's going to be in a safari setting.

My job is simple... but tedious. I'm in charge of crafts. Having no good ideas whatsoever, I googled and found some interesting crafts under this website.

Two samples here - a hippo and a half-done tiger.

The hippo and a good-natured tiger. This is one of the crafts the children are going to do this VBA. The older kids get the tiger and the younger ones, the hippo. We have about 50 kids 8 years and younger and I don't think they would be able to handle the scissors. So imagine... I have to cut out 4 legs X 50, 50 "tails", 50 "heads" and 50 "bodies". And this is only craft No. 1.

Busy, busy, busy.....

Ant In The Sky

Yesterday, Minch, Rach and I met Sze-En in Pasar Malam. We said hi and started a conversation with her when suddenly she pointed to the sky and exclaimed, "Look at the ant". (As usual her eyes are everywhere except at the person she is talking to). We turned around and looked up in the sky.

We saw this 4-legged "ant" flying. Hmm.... someone must tell her that all insects have 6 legs. Anyway, if it weren't for Sze-En, we wouldn't have spotted this flying creature. Clearly the vendor knew where to display his merchandise for a certain crowd to notice. :)