So I finally broke down and bought a coffee machine.  I chose this machine – mainly because I wanted to support our downtown business – so instead of buying it from Zellers or Walmart  - I bought it from Sandy’s Gift store at downtown – Main Street.  And like any downtown store – you can expect good service and they know exactly what they are selling and when stock are coming in.

The Keurig Coffee machine was $119 + tax (the government wants their share of course) but it comes with a sample box of coffee – of 18 different kind of coffee – and a cup of tea too.  We had also bought a few sample cups to try.

The Keurig Coffee Machine uses – what they called a K- Cup and it’s very simple to use – because chloe makes my coffee now.  So if my 7 yrs old can press a few buttons and make me coffee everyday – so can you.  So far I’ve tried a few of the K-cup and enjoyed most of them – and you will be getting some reviews on the flavor I’ve tried.  The coffee machine has an auto off button and you don’t have to leave the machine on – if you are done with it.  Making another cup of coffee is easy to heat – and it doesn’t take long to heat the water at all.   Is it worth paying so much for the machine – I say yes! because now I can have hot chocolate or coffee anytime I want – I don’t have to think of going to Tim’s to get my coffee anymore – although I still go and get timbits for Chloe and a Cinnamon frosted bun for PB.  Definitely worth buying if you have an office full of people who drinks coffee – or a household of more than 1 person drinking hot drinks.

So it’s the weekend again and another Jamie’s 30 Minute meals for everyone.  Today -  Jamie creates a spaghetti alla puttanesca with crunchy salad, garlic bread, and silky chocolate ganache in just 30 minutes.  Enjoy and have a great weekend.

We had pizza night with the girls on Saturday and this two boxes was what was left of what we had ordered.  We had the Hawaiian Chicken BBQ pizza and another 2 with pepperoni, mushrooms and bacon bits – and 2 orders of garlic fingers and another 2 orders of cinna-strips.   The kids loved the cinna-strips and finished that first and one of the daughter of a girlfriend – who has acne refused to eat any pizza because she said it makes her acne flare up and that it leaves a even more apparent mark on her acne when she eats pizza.  I’ve never heard about that before – but the girl had legit fear – so we didn’t pushed it – lucky for us – one of my girlfriend who works at the hospital, she recommended that the teenager use a acne scar removal together with avoiding the food that might make her acne flare up -  and by going together – she would have better results.  I’m just glad that I never was plagued with acne even when I was a teenager – and I’m hoping Chloe won’t have any of that trouble too – since PB never had acne when he was a teenager.   But our Pizza night was a blast – and the kids had fun at our basement.

I had Kuay Teow soup for lunch!!!  now if only i had some fish balls with them – it would have been perfect would it – hahahah!!  yup but beggars cannot be choosers – and it was a really nice surprised because the Zhu’s don’t usually have Kuay Teow – so it was rare.   I had this for lunch – a change from my egg roll and wanton soup.   And I had read in my  colon cleanse reviews how important it is to eat light before your colon cleansing – or wait – maybe it was my best friend who told me that.  So yes! if you are doing colon cleansing – which is really good – it’s like detoxing your body.

And you all know how much i love my veggies – and I have been eating shrimp these days – because meat just seems too much for me.  So I have broccoli and shrimp instead of beef.

What better food to have – before colon cleansing your body right?

It wasn’t me ! it was the bak chang’s fault – that caused me to have a sleepless night last night.  You see Mr Zhu from the Chinese restaurant brought some freshly made bak chang to PB before he closed the store and seeing that it was still warm – I had to eat them – after all, it had been a  long time since I ate them.  So happily I stuffed my face with one – and lo and behold – I knew that I had too much to eat.   I couldn’t sleep well last night and kept waking up – luckily now I know – else I would be needing sleep aid to help me to sleep.  As for PB – no problem with his sleep at all – as soon as his head touches the pillow – off he goes to dreamland – never mind if there was WWWIII – or there is going to be a snowstorm or earthquake – he will still sleep.  How I wished I was like him.

I’ve never eaten a hamburger lunch in a restaurant for the longest time – because I’ve always thought it was a waste of good money – but having faith in Peg’s family restaurant down on Main Street – I ordered a  swiss mushroom burger with a side Caesar.   The burger was huge as you can see here and it was the yummiest burger I’ve had in a long, long time!  worth every penny i paid for it and it’s not expensive at all.   I could eat this everyday – but then  how to lose belly fat like that right?

Choe had her special fish and chips without the batter – they are awfully sweet right?

Look at my yummy burger with caramelized onions – my favorite.

Oh did I tell you – I never eat the top side of my burger bun?  If i did – i won’t be able to finish my burger.  As it is – I couldn’t finished my salad.

And the ice cream flavor was birthday ice cream.  Yums!  and PB had the same of course – chicken cordon bleu.

We have been having guests at our home from out of town and we were quite pleased to find these at our local grocery store and bought some to entertain our guests during the weekend.  We had a house full and we entertained till quite late on the weekend – poor chloe went to bed at 11.30pm last night and got up at  7.30am this morning – poor kid! even I had dark circles on both eyes – so does PB – although he said it wasn’t dark circles.  Now I need to  get rid of dark circles before I go for my Tri-county cultural festival this Saturday.

Our guests were quite impressed with the design of the gourmet cupcakes – but truth be told – as per them – the cupcakes were like any fluffy cupcakes with fancier dressing on top.  For $2.99, I’ll have to say they are quite expensive – the kids didn’t finished the whole cupcakes – in fact one took a bite and said he didn’t quite like it and left it on the table for the entire evening.

I think they have 29 different kind and flavor for the cupcakes – and if they were smaller and cheaper – it wouldn’t be so bad to buy them again – when I am entertaining friends.

Like I said – it is very pretty but I would like to host some tea parties for Chloe’s friend – but definitely wouldn’t be with these cupcakes – if they are so expensive and huge.

We were invited for a business luncheon a few weeks ago by some people from out of town who was in our town for some tech jobs interview.   An investor actually was in this town to see if it was feasible to have a certain kind of tech factory in this small town.  And yes – they were people that we know – and had asked our opinion on a few things – so they wanted to thank us for our help.   I haven’t gone for this kind of business lunch for a long time – and it was refreshing to talk to the PHP developer and Information Technology Associate  – and of course my old friend – an engineer from back home.   Guess where we brought them for a business lunch?

You know when you can’t get Asian food as easily as you can get them back home – you kinda loved stuff and make do – when you find something similar.  I’ve tried Chinese Dumplings from another brand – for the longest time – and found out that M & M’s  a local frozen good store has them too.  So like any foodie – I had to give it a try and guess what?  I fell in love with it – because this Chicken Dumpling has veggies in them.  I don’t fry them now – I steamed my chicken dumplings – that way – it’s healthier.  They make lovely snacks and evening supper when you are hungry at night and don’t want to have too much to eat.  Steaming them are pretty easy – because I have a cool steaming machine – and it only takes 10 mins – from frozen state.

On Valentine’s Day morning – we received a mail addressed to Chloe – came a long way from Singapore – I knew Chloe would be excited about it when she got back from school.  Chloe loves receiving mail for her in the mailbox – she always complained that only PB and I get mails – hahahha!! silly gal !  in which PB replied that she could have all his mails and pay the bills as well – for most of the mails addressed to PB are bills.

The Ang Pow came from Singapore – from Chloe’s Kai Mah (godma) Lina.  She always send Chloe an ang pow every year – so thoughtful.

New money ! chloe said! hahah!

Thank you Lina ! we appreciate your thoughtfulness and your love for Chloe.  We haven’t posted the Christmas presents from you yet – because I’m using a new laptop from Christmas and not used to the program – because I can’t get paint shop pro to load onto the new laptop.  As you can see the fonts are different in this new program – because it’s different and I so not used to it.  But I will post up the presents pictures really soon.

My Hum Choy Tofu soup from a few days ago – tasted so awesome – I have to give myself a pat on the shoulder.  I just realised that the soup was so tasty because of one reason.  What is it?  I’m going to let you all take a good guess – the person who gives the right answer – a little surprise coming you way.   Anyone can take part in this quiz – but only one guess per person now.

Love hot dogs !  but I don’t get to eat it so often – because as we all know – it’s not that healthy – but when you wake up in the morning and there is no sandwich meat nor chicken salad – what do you do?  look for hot dogs and fried it up in the pan – and serve them for breakkie of course.   But I still loved the A&W tuesday coney dogs – anyone had that recently?

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!  so did you all enjoy your day?  PB and I do not celebrate Valentine’s Day due to personal reasons but we did get out our audio video cables and moved our LCD tv from the basement to the bedroom and watched a movie together.  He also got me a card and a teddy bear  – a small ornament type – which was very sweet – as I wasn’t expecting it.  As for Chloe and her school – her grammie helped to make cookies for everyone – heart shaped ones and we bought some of these cupcakes for the teachers and various chocolate goodies for the kids.  But overall, we had a quiet evening – nothing spectacular and if you know PB – you would know that he can hook wires around the house like a pro technician – trust him to wire up all sorts of audio and video cables just about anywhere in our home.

A blogging friend told me about Jamie’s 30 minute meals and how she was trying it out the other day – and I do love Jamie Oliver from UK very much.  I used to watch his cooking shows all the time – when I was pregnant with Chloe.  Anyhow, while shopping for some security cameras for the store – I found the book but also found the online version of it.  So here is the first episode of Season 2 – i hope you all enjoy it.

Why security cameras for the store?  we already have some – but lately – we have kids coming in all the time and kissing and hugging at our store – like we are invisible.  Showing affection is great – but come on!!!! get a room!!!  so anyhow – I told the kids that kissing at our store will cost them $5 and that i reserve the right to put their kissing footage on our website – so there – I went out to get some more cameras – to catch them in action at the corner of our store.  hahahahah!!!  have a great weekend everyone!

Chocolate candied apples – looks so yummy!  but I wonder if Chloe’s teachers will like it or not?  very pretty for Valentine’s Day right?  and pretty unique to me.

Everything looks so yummy ! i’m torn in between getting so many things – what would you like if you were Chloe’s teachers?

While I cannot celebrate my chinese new year with my family and friends from home – a group of parents from here with half chinese kids like my own – Chloe – gets together and have Chinese New Year dinner.  The kids are all dressed up in red and Chinese cheong sam and exchange ang pows and presents.  They bring so much joy to me in helping me keep our Chinese tradition alive in such a faraway land.

This is Zoe and she is such a happy and joyful girl – she eats a lot of chinese food and loves it.  I wished my chloe was more like that.

We also have Sarah, Jasmine, Zoe and Shaleigh with us – we are missing Kylie – maybe she will join us next year – together with Yen, Jervin, Jessica and the Baby J.  Where is Chloe?  she was being very naughty that day and refused to take pictures and being a brat.  She is not often this way when we are out for dinner or lunch – so we were a bit taken a back when she behaved so badly.  But the rest of the girls – they were wonderful and ate all their food and was behaving so well.

Well, here is chloe finally – agreeing to let me take a picture – after I promised her some chocolate.  I didn’t take pictures of the food – because Chloe was being so bad.  But Mr Zhu made us some special fish and seafood and tofu soup.  Next year – we will have “Yu Sheng” and I will ask for chinese mushroom in advance – and I will make some chinese tong sui too.  We were also very happy to have a friend from Korea joined us with her Canadian hubby. They actually own their own business just down the road from us.   Our Korean friend is very pretty – if you saw her – you would think she is a Korean movie star.  Again i had forgotten to take pictures – but next year – I promised to do so.

Of course, we have dear Sarah here – she has come a long way – and I think she has come to like me – and quite familiar with me now.  I love her so much – because I met Sarah before she came to Canada.  PB did join us – even though you don’t see him in the photos.  Thanks to Kim for setting the dinner up and Gerald and Adele for starting this tradition.

Meet feisty Jasmine – the girl who never cries even when she falls down or get bumped around  – she is such a wonderful kid !  I tell yer this girl is going to go places.

Valentine’s Day is next week and for Chloe’s school – they usually asked that we exchange Valentine’s card – we can bring treats for the kids if we want.  I had intended to get someone to make special cupcakes for the children and the teachers – but they were at $2.50 a piece and for about 30 people – that comes up to quite a bit of money that I cannot justify in spending on cupcakes.  So we found some Valentine’s brownies in the local supermarket and they were really good.   But Chloe’s grammie will be making some heart shaped cookies too – so I might not even have to get these for the kids at school.  What do you send to school with your kids for Valentine’s Day treat for the kids in school?

Gong Hei Fatt Choy from Chloe to everyone who drop in this blog everyday – wishing everyone a healthy Chinese New year and a prosperous one.

Here we have Chloe lining up all the “ang pow” – getting ready for our Chinese New Year dinneer – with friends from here – who have children from China.

This has become our little tradition now – and of course – we called her Kai Mah first thing in the morning when we got to the store.  We tried calling Auntie Barb – but there was no answer – bummer!  Hope everyone is having a great new year.  We gave out a few “ang pows” and Chloe received many too!  it’s too cute!

PS :  A big thank you to Jen from Passion4food – for sending these lovely angpows to Chloe.

So we had a storm the other day and even the Zhu’s at the New Century Restaurant wasn’t opened for business – but we of course were – and Chloe didn’t have school.  So Jessy’s Pizza came to the rescue – thank God they were opened.  Why? because our other favorite places were not opened too *alamak* and we die – die also won’t eat at the other 2  crazy places – boycott mati mati!   So Chloe and PB had their fish and chips – and the fish was really good this time too – and even I loved the chips!!  it was definitely yummy.  I had the chicken burger – see how huge it was – only took them 10 mins – and they were really nice.

Really huge piece of chicken inside – the next time I will ask for more vegies – but it was yums!! in fact it was so yummy – we ordered again during the weekend.