nutella mochi - sticky, tricky, but oh so yummy!

I've been wanting to make mochi for ages and because my trusty 'simple recipes' cookbook has a recipe for mochi, we decided to take the plunge and try it this weekend. The only problem was it suggested using red beans for the filling, which I didn't think the babies would care for, and so I went ahead and switched it to a Nutella filling. We followed this recipe and also tips for handling the Nutella from this recipe.

Bobo and I prepared the Nutella yesterday, thinking that we'd make the mochi in the evening, but we didn't end up having enough time. By 'preparing' I just mean that we put little blobs of nutella on a tupperware lid to freeze so they'd be easier to put into the mochi. We got that tip from the second recipe mentioned above, and it proved to be a very useful tip because we found out warm mochi is already pretty hard to handle!

Today we mixed together the ingredients for the mochi. There were just three - the glutinous rice flour, the sugar, and the coconut milk. Oh, and some water - because our mixture was too thick at first. 

When it looked about right, we poured the mixture into a greased dish and put it into the steamer. 

The recipe said thirty minutes, but because our dish is quite wide and our steamer quite powerful, it only took us ten minutes (we did the chopstick test, and it came out clean). 

Then we were ready to work with the mochi - I tried it by myself first because I didn't want the kids burning their hands, and found it a little warm to the touch, but managed to quickly make four proper mochi with the frozen Nutella blobs. After it had cooled down a bit I gave each child a little piece of mochi and they tried to flatten it so they could add the Nutella blob. This proved very tricky because the mochi is so very sticky!!!! Our hands were a grand mess. I decided to take a a bite of the sticky mess on my hands and realized it was delicious!! My husband took a reluctant bite and said, in surprise, 'Oh...they're good.' 

The children loved them too, and were so happy with the runny Nutella filling! 

a walk down memory lane

Growing up, I attended a tiny international school in Kowloon City. I was there from Grades 1-12. I learned so much in those years, and I loved that school so very much. So, even though it's been nearly twenty years (!!!!) since I graduated from high school, I still get warm fuzzies whenever I see the little white building that used to house our school. It has since moved to a much larger and grander campus in the New Territories.

Can you see it? There it is, between the trees. I don't go to Kowloon City very often these days; it's not where we live or work. Today, though, we took a special trip to Kowloon City to pick up a gift for my uncle, whose birthday we're celebrating tomorrow night. I wanted to go to Kowloon City Plaza, a mall I went to on a daily basis back in high school, and shop at the department store there. A lot of the old hangouts are gone, of course - the CD shop, the big ParknShop where the more frugal students often purchased $10 bowls of rice with cha siu, and even the Pizza Hut isn't where it used to be - and the mall has been revamped and looks considerably brighter and more attractive than it used to. 

It felt funny going to 'KCP' as a grown woman, with my children! But there we were. We played at the playground at Carpenter Road Park, which is the proper name for the park behind the mall, and I told the children that I used to walk through this park almost every day. 

The playground itself is not terribly impressive; but it does have a larger than usual number of swings (6 in total), and the slides are pretty quick/steep! The children enjoyed themselves very much.  

Of course, you should also visit the Kowloon City Walled City Park, which is beautiful, and is right beside this play area. It has a lot of lovely traditional Chinese architecture and was the location we chose for our family pictures last year. I'll share some pics of that side of the park next time! We didn't have time to play there today as the sun was setting and I still had shopping to do! 

mango pudding

I have a great cookbook at home called Simple Recipes. The author is Christine Ho, whose blog (https://www.christinesrecipes.com/) has a lot of the same recipes. When I was newly married, I used to love looking through that cookbook for dinner ideas. It's the best kind of cookbook - each recipe only calls for a couple of ingredients, but the results are always pretty good.

I was looking through it again yesterday, as we have a long weekend in Hong Kong, and I wanted to do something fun with the babies. Her mango pudding recipe only calls for seven ingredients, but two of them are water (hot and room temperature) and one of them is optional (an egg). Talk about easy! So, we decided to make mango pudding and it turned out to be very fun, very easy, and very delicious! It was easy enough that even Wawa (2) could help and have fun with the recipe.

free family fun: old lei yue mun stone quarry

Last Saturday we visited the Lei Yue Mun stone quarry for the second time. I love it because it is a beautiful, interesting place that is actually very close to where we live. It's only a 10-minute taxi ride to Lei Yue Mun, which is now known for their seafood restaurants, and from there, a 30-minute or so walk to the quarry itself.

After arriving at the entrance of Lei Yue Mun, you'll walk along a route that looks like this:

Walking towards the seafood restaurants

And then you'll see the seafood restaurants (there are lots of them - keep going until you stop seeing them!):

The first of many seafood restaurants

One of the restaurants has a private pier! It's very pretty:

If you keep going, you'll see more and more beautiful views:

and flowers (and lots of papaya trees), too:

You'll reach Tin Hau Temple, and walk through that. You're getting pretty close by this point, and soon you'll see this sign: 

Then, just up ahead, you'll see another sign, this one leading into a very narrow walkway: 

                                               

Keep walking for another five minutes, or so, and you're there! It's a beautiful place. Bobo had dinosaurs in his backpack, so the children quickly got to work building their own miniature quarry for the dinosaurs to play in. 

We were there on an extremely sunny day, so we could only stay for about twenty minutes before heading back. The children enjoyed grape popsicles as we meandered through the seafood stalls once more. After a quick lunch, we stopped by the Lei Yue Mun Public Library, which is bright and spacious, and has quite a big children's area. 

One reminder for families wanting to check out the stone quarry: it is not a terribly easily walk for little ones! It's short, just 30 minutes or so, but there isn't much shade at all, and the last little part before you finally get there is pretty rocky! I think it's totally worth it, though. I love the quarry! :) 

pattern power!

One of the television programmes the babies enjoy is Umizoomi. It's targeted at very young children (I'd say maybe 2-3s) and introduces simple math concepts like shapes, patterns, and numbers while the characters overcome various challenges using their 'mighty mighty math powers'! One of the characters is Millie, and her special power is patterns. She's always saying 'Pattern Power!'

Today Bobo and I did an art project using Millie's mighty math power! Bobo has been working on his drawing skills lately, and he has been especially interested in sea creatures like jelly fish, sea turtles, and octopuses, so we did an ocean scene.

We started out by choosing five tubes of paint that fit our theme. Bobo decided on the order that he liked, and we labeled them with numbers (1-5) in that order. Then, I helped Bobo draw lots of lines on a sheet of paper. I wish I had made them thicker! Bobo's paintbrush was too thick to fit within my lines comfortably, but we managed alright in the end. I numbered them from 1-5, like I had done with the paint:

Getting started!

Bobo began filling in all the '1' lines with paint from the first tube...

Filling in the '1's 

and all the '2's with paint from the second...

and the '2's

until we had quite a pretty pattern of lines for the sea. 

Nearly done!

While it was drying, he drew the sea creatures. He decided on turtles - one big mama turtle and one teeny tiny baby turtle: 

Bobo's masterpiece

I really love it! :)

saturday morning art

I love weekends! I'm a working mama, and during the week there's a lot of missing the kids, wondering how they're doing, and calling them on whatsapp video chat. It's gotten better, but I always used to feel guilty at work being away from the kids, and guilty at home being away from my work. I'm still learning to strike a good balance, but it helps to remember that doing fulfilling work that I enjoy and having my own interests makes me a better mama for my children.

But, back to weekends. Saturday mornings are perfect for art projects and activities because we're not rushing to church like we are on Sundays, and nobody is falling asleep or getting grumpy as kids sometimes do in the afternoons.

This morning, the children were playing with their toys - Bobo, two airplanes from his latest favorite show, Super Wings, and Wawa, her favorite pup from the Paw Patrol - when I suggested we do some art together. They were all for it, but made their intentions clear from the start: Bobo would be drawing Jett and Dizzy from Super Wings, and Wawa, Skye from the Paw Patrol. So we took out our paints, palettes, rollers, and pencil crayons, and got started. 

The children enjoyed using the rollers to create backgrounds for their scenes - Bobo used blue to make a sky for his planes, and Wawa used green to make some grass for Skye to play on. 

Painting the backgrounds

It was an incredibly sunny morning, so it only took a short while for the backgrounds to dry.

Paintings drying in the sun

As they were drying, the children worked on drawing their chosen characters, but this was when things proved a little trickier. In the past I would sometimes do the outline of the characters or animals Bobo wanted in dots so he could connect them, but today I wanted him to try drawing his planes by himself. He struggled initially, and felt discouraged, but when we started seeing the shapes (here's an oval, Bobo! and the eyes are circles, see?) he became more confident because he loves and is an expert at shapes! By this point we had lost Wawa - she had become bored with her Skye picture, and had abandoned it. 

We decided to switch gears. I gave Wawa a page of Peppa Pig stickers (her other special favorite character) and she covered her grass with them, making a 'Peppa Party' scene, which she was very pleased with. 

Wawa's Peppa Party

Bobo finished his two drawings with increasing confidence, was so proud of the final product that he picked out a place of honor for it on our wall, and asked to hang it up immediately.

Isn't it amazing?

This morning's art time taught me a few important lessons:
1) it's healthy for children to face challenges now and again, because overcoming them is a worthwhile and amazing thing, and
2) it's okay to switch the plan sometimes, and allow the babies to just enjoy themselves rather than insisting on sticking with the 'original plan'.

Happy painting! Happy learning and growing!

JELL-O play - perfect for 4-year-olds!

Bobo doesn't always need a nap in the afternoon anymore, and so while Wawa is napping, sometimes we can enjoy a special 'big kid' activity. When I saw these Jell-o play sets on sale at ParknShop downstairs (normally $48 a box, but now buy one get one free) I thought they might be perfect for Bobo. And they were!

Jell-o play with Bobo

We got two sets - a beach-themed set with fish gummies and a dirt-themed set with worms and snails, but as I had suspected, he immediately went for the dirt! :) 

All you need in addition to the jell-o set is three cups of cold milk. 

To make the Jell-o cups, Bobo did the following:

1) read the labels on the packages - there were two, a pudding package and a dirt crumbs package, and he enjoyed the challenge of choosing the right one at the right time

2) poured the pudding powder into the mixing bowl 

3) read the instructions to see how many cups of milk we needed (3) 

4) very carefully poured the milk from the carton into a cup and from the cup into the mixing bowl 

5) mixed the pudding mix for a good two minutes (we worked together on this one!)

6) tried out the pudding (Bobo's verdict: mmmm!!! it's good, mama!!!) 

7) spooned the pudding into cups 

8) added the crumbs (lots and lots of crumbs) 

9) added the insect gummies (two worms and a snail) 

I found the whole process to be very age-appropriate and fun for Bobo, who is four. I could see how much he enjoyed being able to read and follow the simple instructions and to create something yummy by himself. He loved being able to control the amount of dirt crumbs and the number and color of worms. 

He was proud of the dirt he had made and declared it good! It was very sweet though, so he couldn't have too much of it (a very good thing!).  He was so happy to be able to share his little dirt creation with his daddy when he came home from work, too. 

my favorite time of the year

Beautiful lantern display

I love holidays and celebrations. Here in Hong Kong, we celebrate a little of everything, with public holidays for celebrations like Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Buddha's Birthday; for honoring ancestors like Ching Ming and Chung Yeung; for the establishment of the People's Republic of China and the city as a special administrative region; for two new years (January 1, and the first three days in the lunar calendar); for traditional Chinese holidays like Dragon Boat Festival and so on.

Some of our mooncakes from this year. See Bobo's fish on the right? :)

You may be surprised to learn that my favorite celebration of the year is the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. The public holiday is always the day after the actual Mid-Autumn Festival, because the celebrations always take place at night. Lots of places let their employees leave a few hours early so they can enjoy the holiday, even though it's not required of them by law. I like this so much - it reminds me that our fast-paced, efficiency-driven city can be generous and kind, too.

Bobo and Wawa enjoying the lanterns 

The moon is always full on Mid-Autumn Festival, and for Chinese people, the circular shape of a full moon is symbolic of family and togetherness. Families gather for a hearty celebratory meal and for mooncakes. There are lots of different kinds, including: the traditional ones filled with lotus paste and egg yolks, the 'snowy' mooncakes with various mochi and ice-cream-like fillings (including durian!), and my recent favorite - the fantastically indulgent custard mooncakes with their tasty 'lava' fillings.

Bobo came home from kindergarten on Mid-Autumn with two fish-shaped snowy mooncakes that he had made at school. We were so proud of him and enjoyed the lumpy little fish very much! It was also festive and fun to buy fruit (usually big moon-like crystal pears, and starfruit, for the stars in the sky!) for our relatives prior to the holiday.

My  rabbit lantern! Thanks, mom!

Children look forward to the holiday not because of the mooncakes, but because of the lanterns! Bobo and Wawa were both asked to bring a lantern to school on the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival so they could enjoy the holiday with their classmates at school. In the past, kids mostly played with inflatable lanterns that lit up and played horrible tinny music (we have many such lanterns in our home). I noticed that this year, more children were carrying paper lanterns, perhaps out of their parents'/schools' concern for the environment.  This year, my mom bought me my own lantern, a traditional rabbit lantern with wooden wheels. I love it and will be saving it for next year's mid-autumn, too.

There's always a lovely little Mid-Autumn carnival at the park downstairs, with games and free food (popcorn, red bean pudding, and more mooncakes). A stage is set up in the middle of the park, with people singing Chinese opera and playing traditional Chinese tunes. It's lots of fun. People love to take pictures of the moon, but it's very difficult to get a good shot with a camera phone (I've tried many times!).

It's also one of my favorite times of the year because nine Mid-Autumns ago, my then boyfriend proposed to me, marking the beginning of our engagement and our life together. So, for me, Mid-Autumn is a very special time of year - a time for celebrating the joy of family, togetherness, and love.

an art experiment: color mixing with kids

We've been doing a lot of painting lately! We recently got some new painting tools (rollers with different shapes and sizes, etc.) which has gotten the kids more interested in experimenting with art.

Today, we did an 'art experiment' and started out with a question: how many colors can we make out of the primary colors blue, red, and yellow? We started out by mixing blue with red - and were pleased to find that it made a pretty dark purple. The children loved the 'magic' of making new colors. Their predictions of what color we'd get out of the original two were often wildly off the mark (brown! green!) but this added to the level of fun and discovery for them.

We followed the same process with red and yellow, and yellow and blue. By this point the children had gotten six colors out of our original three, and were feeling pretty pleased. When they looked at their sketchbooks though, we found that we had gotten a bonus 7th color where the colors had mixed together: brown!

For really little children, color mixing is still something magical and amazing - try it today!

free family fun: kwun tong road safety town

Today was our second time visiting the Kwun Tong Road Safety Town. 'Road safety towns' are actually little government playgrounds with miniature road features like traffic lights, crosswalks, and road signs; they are run by the Leisure and Cultures Services Department  and there are four in total in Hong Kong. You can fun more information on where they are located here. They are closed to the public on weekdays (kindergartens like to book them for school visits- more on this below) but free and open to the public on weekends.

Kwun Tong Road Safety Town

I first learned about them after Bobo went on a field trip the Kwun Tong Road Safety Town with his kindergarten class. His class got to ride little tricycles and listen to a police officer tell them about the importance of road safety.

The first time we visited as a family, we didn't know we had to/could bring our own tricycles, so we just enjoyed the little park on foot. The second time, we knew better and brought the children's trikes and had even more fun pretending to be drivers and pedestrians. When we arrived today, Bobo excitedly said 'Mama and Baba, you be the people and we'll be the drivers!' 

the traffic lights work!

The park is adorable - tiny functional versions of everything you'd normally see on a road in Hong Kong. The traffic lights change colors, and the crosswalk buttons 'beep' and speed up the wait for pedestrians just as they would at a real crosswalk. It's all delightfully realistic, just tiny!! This is the shortest crosswalk, ever:

Red means stop

Beep!

There is a flyover, a subway, a parking lot - and the best part is, it's perfectly safe for children to explore because there are no cars (or people - it was completely empty both times we visited)! 

Miniature parking lot 

Enjoying the park together

On the two days that we've been there, the park was completely empty. This is a shame, as it is a wonderful place for little kids to learn about road safety and just have fun.

For families who want to visit, here are our tips: 

1) it's quite a small park; plan on staying for no more than an hour or so

2) bring your sun gear! there aren't too many shady areas and it gets hot fast

3) bring your tricycles. the park is intended for very young children; bikes (even with training wheels) aren't allowed 

4) there is a big shopping mall (Sau Mau Ping Shopping Centre) with lots of food options across the street

5) there are no MTR stations nearby, so your best bet may be to do as we did and take a taxi! The Chinese name is 秀茂坪道交通安全城

Kwun Tong Road Safety Town is one of my favorite places to go with the children. I can't wait to go back again when it's a bit cooler. I hope your family enjoys it as much as we did! 

   

Hong Kong family photographers - our top picks

We love to take pictures! I've always struggled between enjoying the good times and trying desperately to document them so I won't forget them. This was especially true when the babies were in the newborn stage - I was always afraid that once those special moments were over, I'd lose them. But I didn't want to miss out on the actual moments either! And so the struggle continues. It's a little better these days - sometimes I jot down the funny, poignant things they say at the end of the day instead of capturing them in the moment, and this helps me savor both the moment and the memory.

But back to pictures. We generally try to take family photos with a professional photographer once a year, and so far, we've had three different family photographers. Here are our experiences them.

1. Ringo Chau Productions

Value for money: 5/5  $1200 for a two-hour shoot; all the edited soft copies provided. Amazing value!
Family-friendly: 3/5 Fine for pregnancy pics, but perhaps not great for family photos involving young children, as he didn't have an assistant (we have found this to be essential for getting fidgety little ones to smile/look at the camera in family photos).
Aesthetic appeal: 4.5/5 I love the dreamy feel of these photos - looking back at them four years later, I still love them.
Overall impressions: 4/5
Ringo was our wedding photographer, so during my first pregnancy, we immediately thought of him and contacted him when we wanted to take pregnancy pictures. We found Ringo to be efficient and professional; he took so many beautiful pictures for us. He came to meet us in our home/the beach and park downstairs, so this was perfect when I was so big! I really love these pictures; I think Ringo did an amazing job of capturing how in love I felt with both my husband and my baby in those final weeks leading up to the birth.



2. Diva Photo 
Value for money: 3/5  $980 for a 1.5-hour shoot; 10 edited soft copies provided.
Family-friendly: 3.5/5 I feel a bit conflicted about this because we took our photos in Diva's studio, which was clean and bright, so it should have been a very family friendly affair. But perhaps we just aren't studio types, because Bobo (then 1.5) was sort of grumpy and bored, and we only managed to get one picture of him smiling!
Aesthetic appeal: 3.5/5 I think the pictures from this shoot are okay - my Wawa bump is featured prominently, and we got a few family photos, but I think we all look a bit wooden. I guess there's a limit to how much we can do within four walls with a sleepy toddler. This is the only time we've done a studio shoot - we've learned they aren't really for us!
Overall impressions: 3/5
I picked Diva mainly because their studio is near our home (I was at the time, again, very big) and because I knew there would be an assistant helping us keep Bobo's eyes on the camera, but she wasn't as skilled/dedicated to her post as we had hoped. It was an inexpensive option, but with only 10 photos for $980, I think there are better options out there. The experience was only average for us.

3. KPdio
Value for money: 5/5  $1499 for a one-hour shoot; all the edited soft copies provided. They even surprised us with a one-minute video of the photo shoot, which we absolutely adore. Really good value, especially considering a team of three (one photographer, one assistant, and one videographer) came to take care of us.
Family-friendly: 5/5 Excellent! Patrick, the photographer was so professional and fun throughout the shoot, and his assistant, Terry, was so good with the kids. They both seemed to be enjoying their work, which made the whole experience fun for us and for our babies too. You can tell from all our smiles! They also were wonderful at taking pictures of the grandparents and the babies.
Aesthetic appeal: 4.5/5 We love how natural these pictures are - not a whole lot of editing, as far as I can tell, but that's part of why we like them. Patrick does an amazing job of just capturing the hugs and smiles as they are. I love how proud of the kids we look in these pictures! Also, Patrick managed to make our very ordinary, run-of-the-mill park look almost magical with his photography skills.
Overall impressions: 4.5/5
We love KPdio so much we've had two photoshoots with them! We first learned about them from a friend, who posted beautiful family photos taken in KPdio's studio. We're not studio-types, remember, so we asked if we could do pictures in our our home and the park downstairs for the first shoot, and in a lovely Chinese-style park in Kowloon City for the second. In fact, we can't wait to book a third shoot with them this fall.

So, mamas and babas, there you have it! Three Hong Kong family photographers (but of course, they also do all kinds of other pictures, wedding photography in particular) that we've tried. Who's your favorite?