Domestic goddess? Moi?

Here in my new life... i imagined a simple life filled with baby, husband, housework, cooking and... well... everything else in between. The other women i've met or know of here, are what i would simply describe as "domestic goddesses" (even if they themselves don't think they are). They cook, they bake, they quilt, they plant, they sow, they harvest, they do housework, they take care of children and still managed to look fantastic. The blogs i read are filled with recipes... arts and crafts... gardening tips... tips for caring of children... with happy pictures of happy family.

I think i have a lot to live up to...
and i worry that i am probably going to fail rather miserably.

Do i like to bake?
Do i like to cook?
Well.. i guess i do like to eat...

Do i like to quilt? Make crafts? Garden?
Hmmmmm.....

Do i like taking care of kids?
It used to be my job.

Do i like doing housework?
It will take a rare individual who actually enjoys housework but it does bug me if things are messy. Still.. i can close one eye or two...

I think people who look at me leaving my respected job as a psychologist, leaving my comfortable life with a domestic helper, for a place like Melbourne with my family and 6 pieces of luggage must think that i am all set to be a stay-at-home-mom cum domestic 'divinity' (perhaps goddess is just abit too much). Here's the dips... i have no freaking clue. So far, i am just making it up as i go along. I doubt i will quilt or garden (wilk seems interested). I may cook or bake occasionally but i wont be surprise if my buns come out rock hard. Wilk will probably still find my cooking a little 'off' compared to what he would like. As for housework.. i think the one eye/two eye close policy will probably still stand.

I wouldn't be a psychologist to my baby but just another average mom... making do with commercial cereals or throw everything into the pot meal if i'm feeling lazy or spent too much time online playing bejewelled blitz on facebook. I will play with her but i will also feel harrassed enough to leave her on her own while i struggle to complete the housework or cooking. Wilk will probably not find me a better 'wife' compared to our lives in Spore cos i am still going around in my tattered t-shirts and grumbling at him whenever he fuss with the garden or take too much time in the kitchen or computer. We will still go out as a family... but probably not as often as we thought we would. At least not till baby is older.

So... a domestic life yes. If you can call it that. But like everyone else... we are just surviving and learning that happiness is in the little things, in everyday non-perfect lives, with what we have. Goddess? I think i am just human.. and it's enough for me... for now.

OH! Wanton mee!

So.. the other day we made wantons... Got the wanton skins from the same asian grocer we got the soyabeans.

Mince pork, shitake mushroom... No water chestnuts so we substituted with carrots. End result is we need abit more seasoning and less pork mince. We had enough filling to make wantons for 20 pax instead of just 3 (me, wilk and my bro). Made about 8 wantons for each person and leftover mince was used to make a sort of meat pancake.. well to be precise, 3 big meat pancakes since raw stuff should never be re-freezed.

With the wanton, we had noodles and caixin in soup... wish we had some char sieu but hey, at least we had the wantons! Still have alot of wanton skins left.. am thinking if i could use them to make sieu mais.. hmmm if not i guess its fried wantons.. I love fried wantons. Wilk not so much but oh well.. there are enough wanton skins to go around. Any more suggestions what to do with the wanton skins?

Milking... the soyabean

This can be considered our first home 'project'... making soyabean milk.

Things that we usually take for granted back home can be downright expensive. A small cup of soyabean milk, we found, was AUD$2 at Boxhill's food court compared to S$0.80 a big packet from wet market back home. We are resigned to the fact that some things are going to be comparatively more expensive here but we are certainly trying not to be held ransom by it whenever we feel like having some 'home comforts'. Hence, "Project Soyabean".

So a bag of raw soyabeans and 10stalks of cut pandan leaves (or what the locals called screw pine leaves), wilk embarked on his mission to obtain a home-brewed soyabean milk, with my little trusty U-Like blender. I got the U-Like blender from Singapore from one of my motherhood forums' spree, with the sole purpose of pureering Avery's food and it came with an attachment for extracting soyabean milk. So there we go... all geared up to start.

So armed with a recipe printed from one of my blog links, we set off on our great quest for soyabean milk. First we soaked 300g of beans. But before that... a interesting problem. How do we tell how much is 300g of beans from a 1kg bag? Wilk suggested splitting the whole bag into 10 exact portions and then soak 3 of it. We debated about it for a while before decided that Wilk should just get a cooking weighing scale from the warehouse shop (it is like a mustafa in electronic goods) around the corner. So a weighing scale and soaked-bean night later, we were ready to make the soyabean milk.

First, the blending. The attachment was filled up to 3/4 with beans and boiling water then blended twice over, with one change of water. So far so good, till second round of beans when the motor of the blender suddenly stopped working. Apparently it had overheated and the motor automatically turns off. This happened twice and each time we had to wait 15 mins for the motor to cool down before we can resume blending. With 300g of beans, that was 4 change of beans, twice with cut pandan leaves inside.

Step two, once the beans were blended, the milk was poured through a sieve. To sieved out the powdery residue from the blended milk, we were supposed to pour it through a muslim cloth or coffee filter. Since we did not have either and couldn't find them in the Coles supermarket nearby... we used a clean baby nappy (folded in quarters) instead, thanks to a suggestion from Angela (we had dinner the other night and mentioned our intention to make soyabean milk). Worked really well and soon we had a nappy-ful of soyabean residue, and a pot full of smooth creamy soyabean milk.

Step three, cooking the milk with pandan leaves. This is relatively simple. Just boiling the milk in low heat with bunches of pandan leaves (scored and bundled) for 15-20mins then sugar is added to taste. After that, we are done. So far the 300g of beans yield about 1.5litre of soyabean milk which we painstakingly poured using a ladle into an empty 2litre juice carton which we had saved for the purpose. We also kept some unsugared portion for Avery. After all we ought to share the fruits of our labour with those we love right? All in all, that's 2 hours for 1.5litre of soyabean milk, now left cooling on our countertop, soon to be put into the fridge. And the taste... MmMmmm pretty good but i think we could perhaps hold back a little on the pandan.

Side note: We should have saved the soyabean pulp. Wilk remarked that it looked pretty 'edible' but he had already trashed it by the time i googled for it's uses. Apparently it is called okara and is pretty nutritious, used in many vegetarian dishes. There are also okara recipes online. Darn! Perhaps next time. I think we could probably add some pepper, salt.. fry it etc.. think will taste like tofu perhaps! Aiya.. wasted.

Well... there will probably be more "projects", esp now that we have a weighing scale (cant be just making soyabean milk right?). I think baking may be in order since we have a working oven. Time to look for interesting recipes online again.

Melbourne dreaming...

Time wheezed and here we are, family of 3 in Melbourne.

First, let's just go through what we had to do before we go on to the whole emotional feeling stuff...

Arrived on the 6th and since then, we have been cleaning and settling... and cleaning.. and well, more cleaning. We are staying at the condo my dad bought 12 years ago when my brother was studying here. It is not very big, 3 bedrooms/2 baths with a small kitchen & living/dining. Still, more than adequate for a family of 3. Since the place had been rented out to tenants for the last year, there were definitely quite a number of things to clean & sort out, starting from the kitchen. We also threw out a number of stuff which was unusable, which then necessitate us getting new things such as pots and pans. Thankfully, the apartment also came with an old car, left by my brother, which again, thankfully started on my first try (dad was in melb and changed the car battery back in March).

So for the first week, we were out everyday to get 'stuff'.. from groceries (QV market, Coles, Woolworths, Asian supermarket in Richmond) to cot mattress/baby stuff (Target, Myers, Baby Bunting at Hampstead rd). And everywhere that we went, baby was sure to go. Since there is no longer any more 'babysitter' available on hand, Avery goes where we go, including to Uni Melb when Wilk had to go do his enrolment. Did managed to get a evening 'off' and 3 of us had a nice dinner down at Docklands. The other nice thing about this condo is the location. We are just around the corner from QV market and the condo is just next to the CBD. 15mins walk away is Docklands & Southern Cross station where there are factory outlets etc. The free city circle tram is just outside though we have not used it yet. With the car, we have been going further afield such as to Ikea in Richmond (to pick up some furniture for baby and ourselves) and Footscray. We also went to Bawlyn to meet up with our friend who help us get a baby cot for Avery.

I guess it is so far so good. Appliances in the condo are working, so is the central heating (took us a while to figure it out) and we had started to cook dinner over the last few nights once the kitchen is cleaned out and stocked up. The only thing missing is a usable rice cooker (the old one was all scrapped inside with the teflon falling off so didn't think we should continue to use it) so we had been eating pasta, porridge and noodles for staple over simple dishes that we put together. Would be great to do more complicated stuff once we get the oven/grill cleaned and stock up on more stuff beyond the essentials. However, baby's been getting a great menu from the fresh veggies and fruits we have here. She is on to two meals of cereal a day and that's accompanied with 2 other side dishes (so far avocado, pumpkin, banana, apple, pear, potato, carrot). Actually looking forward to making more stuff for her because she is such a great little eater.
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Okie.. taking a breath...
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Frankly.. i have not tried to think about how i feel about all these. The move is a big thing for me.. our family and in order to concentrate on helping baby and us to settle in, i have just push any possible emotional baggage behind my mind. Wilk said that i am being an emotional ostrich (i.e. sticking head in the sand) but i think it had help me focus on what needs to be done without being caught up in fear, insecurity, apprehension and sadness. And by the time i have time to look at those feelings, i will be already living the 'Melbourne life'. So far, it had worked for me. Even now, thinking back on the departure, i do feel sadness about leaving things and people i am familiar with behind, but because things have stablize pretty much here, i am not seized by fear of the 'unknown'.

One think i know for certainty, i couldnt have done it without Wilk beside me, each step of the way. It is like the days when we were back in London, except we are so much older now and with a baby. He took charge of the heavy stuff like putting together the furniture and the sorting out the appliances etc so that i can concentrate on the baby. The best thing is, once the chores are done, we both have time to play and interact with the baby. I think that's the best thing that's happening right now and both of us are witnessing her growth together as it happens, instead of hearing it from other caregivers if we were back at work. I feels immensely satisfied that we had managed settling her into a nice routine on our own esp in the first few days when things were topsy turvy. Really, if we could do all that, there is nothing we couldn't do together as a family. With me and wilk working as a team and avery thriving despite all the swine flu thing flying around in Melbourne and being alone here on our own, I think we will do pretty okie...