Mum's Crumbs: General Tso's Chicken

So I know I overthink everything. And I do mean everything. I over analyse every little nitty gritty thing that I say or read to my toddler, every toy I buy him and every behaviour I want to instil in him. I do this so much that I end up feeling like the most terrible parent in the world, despite the fact that I try to maximise every minute he spends awake so that he is always learning or having fun or DOING something, anything. I don't want to leave a single moment in the day unfulfilled. So during one of my bouts of super-analysis, I realised I would like to start building on his favourite foods list. I was never a food loving kid, yet I distinctly remember the smell of chicken pie fresh from the oven in all it's puff pastry and bechamel-ish glory. I crave the familiar waft arising from my mum's beef and potato curry with rice and yoghurt salad. All this rambling is making me hungry. So I will end this here on a devilish note saying, I want to create those memories for my son. So that one day his wife's cooking has trouble living up to the taste of mum's homemade such-and-such ;) Haha!

This is where I am starting. 

General Tso's Chicken:

(Adapted from: Appetite for China) 

Serves 4 hearty appetites as a main entrée

What You'll Need:

2 boneless chicken breasts cubed into 1-inch squares

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (I've found this to be the best non-alcoholic alternative to rice wine / sherry)

2 cups cornstarch

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

Vegetable oil for deep frying

1 teaspoon dried crushed red chilli flakes (or less if your kids are fussy spice-shunners) 

4 cloves garlic, crushed

White sesame seeds for garnish

Chopped spring onions for garnish (the greens from about 4-5 stalks)

Marinade:

3 tablespoons soy sauce

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

4 egg whites

Sauce:

3/4 cup chicken stock

5 tablespoons tomato paste

3 tablespoons rice vinegar

3 teaspoons hoisin sauce (I just use packaged stir-fry hoisin sauce off the shelf of a regular grocery store)

3 teaspoons chilli paste (or to taste)

3-4 teaspoons sesame oil (I swear by this stuff - do not skip!)

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cornstarch

What You'll Do:

1. In a large bowl, combine the ingredients for the marinade, beating furiously with a whisk or fork for a minute. Add the cubed chicken to the marinade and let it sit for 15 - 30 mins (depending on how impatient you are)
2. In another bowl, combine the ingredients for the sauce. My tip: I like to prepare the chicken stock in a mug and add the cornstarch directly to it while it's steaming hot to dissolve it. I then I add this to the rest of the sauce ingredients. Whatever way you do it, make sure the sugar has dissolved. Set aside.
3. In a wok or other deep pan, pour the oil for deep frying and put it on the stove on a medium-low setting to heat up while you prepare the chicken.
4. In a tray or large baking tin, combine the 2 cups of cornstarch with the salt and pepper. Get your hands dirty and place the chicken in the cornstarch mix, a handful at a time. Coat each piece with the mixture, shake off excess and like up on one side of the tray. I prefer to use a tray rather than a bowl (like in the original recipe) because that always leaves me with sticky, soggy, unimpressively coated chicken.
5. Line another tray with paper towels.
6. After a few handfuls of chicken have been cornstarched, your oil will have heated up nicely. Pop the prepared chicken into the oil and deep fry, tossing often for about 4-5 mins until nice and goldeny-browny on the outside. While these are frying, prepare another batch. Remove the cooked chicken with a slotted spoon and drain on the paper towels. You should be done in about 3-4 batches. If your kids are as impatient as mine is (and whose kids aren't), you can offer them some of the warm chicken 'nuggets' you've just prepared. They're a hit in my house even without the sauce!
7. Drain out the oil in another container, leaving a mere tablespoon in the wok, as you won't be needing the rest. Add the garlic and red chilli flakes to the oil and smush around for only about 30 seconds until it starts dancing around.
8. Pour the prepared sauce mixture and mix nicely for just a minute. Without letting it get too thick (and you can add a couple of tablespoons of water if you think it has), add the chicken to the sauce and stir until everything is coated and suitably sticky.
9. I like my food a little saucy, so I take the wok off the heat about a minute after the chicken's gone in.
10. Pour into a glass serving dish and top with a general splatter of sesame seeds and spring onions. Serve with boiled rice, sticky or plain!

As my son would say at this point, 'Tadaaaa!'. There you have it. General Tso's chicken. So worth the deep frying trouble. 

The Difference Between Boys and Girls

Raising a boy is such an adventure. Okay, I'm compelled to scratch that; partly because raising any human being is in itself an indescribably enlightening, adventurous experience - and also because I'm slightly afraid of offending all the Mummies with girls. You just don't mess with Mums... Mums are scary people, I tells you *shudder*. Not so long ago, I was the fairly meek, tolerant, step-all-over-me-why-don't-you? type. And then I became a Mum and I hulkified... godzillafied... avengerfied even.

Is this a form of ADD or what? What was I saying? Oh yeah. Raising a boy is so interesting. I'm the youngest of 4 siblings, only 1 of whom is a boy and one 11 years my elder at that. Every day with my little man is a refreshing insight into the mind of a tiny member of the male species! I hate to disappoint everyone, but it really isn't all that different... yet ('wait till those hormones come into play', I can hear you think). Like everyone else out there, I've heard all the old wives tales of how boys do everything later than girls. I've read all the articles trying to justify why this is so and I've also admittedly pushed my poor little munchkin to his limits on occasion to prove the world wrong ('Walk, you lazy, little bum... WALK! No?? Drop and give me twenty!!'). But it's just not true, I tell ya. What they did get right in all those books, forums and tales is that every child is unique. Mine walked late, but has a vocabulary that takes after his Mum *ahem*.. No surprises there. 

Why not push them, I say... Boys, girls, whatever. We didn't get this far in life by making excuses, did we? Well, ok, some of us did. And the ones that didn't, slacked off too sometimes. But mostly, we got here because our parents pushed us to be the best we could be. Our Mums didn't go through 9 months of carrying us inside, indescribable pain to bring us out in the world, so many years of putting up with our tantrums and torturous teenage years just to watch us make excuses for all we can't do and be. They didn't bail us out of undoubtedly humiliating situations, spend so much hard-earned money and sacrifice the better part of their lives just to see that the fruit of their labour is in fact just a vegetable. Even vegetables these days are injected with God-knows-what to make them nicer to look at, smarter, healthier and more likely to get somewhere in the world (ok, not smarter, but you get the point). That was possibly one of the lamest examples I've ever given. Someone kill me now.

I don't have a girl, but this is what I feel the difference is so far: Boys are a little less sure of themselves, a little more reckless, a little less manipulative, a little less sensitive, a little less in-tune with their emotions, a lot more stubborn and A LOT louder. 

Wow. 

Now that I've put down those thoughts, I'm sensing the difference between boys and girls at this age however subtle, when put into retrospect, does seem to perfectly magnify as they get older, doesn't it? 

P.S. Sorry, I haven't mentioned fathers in there somewhere whilst listing the countless sacrifices Mums make for their kids. No discredit to the dads, but if I'd done that, I might as well have called this the Diary of a Faddy Daddy ;) 

Toddler Chow - The Miracle Diet

I recently read this amazingly accurate article entitled The Toddler Diet, having followed the link from an equally awesome Mommy blog on What To Expect, called My Little Monkeys (Whew! That's a lot of citation). 


I too, like these Mums, have tried many excruciatingly horrible diets along with the occasional better-tasting ones that are just as ineffective. I've tried a vegetable soup diet, that results in you spending the better part of your day and night in the toilet flushing liquids out of your system like a tap. That obviously didn't work out too well for me-with-the-over-active-bladder. It also left me smelling like an onion (yes, an onion) because when you're consuming so much vegetable soup and little else, you tend to pee, poo and sweat onions. Yuck, that got too grossly graphic too quickly. I've also tried a grilled food, protein diet, where you end up spending ridiculous amounts of money and effort into purchasing eggs (SO many eggs), discarding most of their yolks along with filling up your freezer with what would otherwise be a year's supply of chicken breasts. 


And then I took a moment to step back and admire my toddler's effortlessly lean frame. At 21 months, he eats the strangest, most fattening things, yet somehow manages to stay slim with oodles of energy to spare, resulting in him never wanting or needing to sleep on time! It's actually quite miraculous. Read on to see if you can shed some pounds the Zy-way...

Day 1

Breakfast: 

Milk and one fried egg, one piece of toast with butter - Eat the whole egg, whist rejecting the toast halfway through and asking instead for some raisins. Take 2 raisins and balance them carefully on a bottle of honey requested from the dinner table as a substitute toy. Take 2 more raisins and insert them carefully into catcher-bib, then remove bib and empty it's day old contents + new raisins onto the floor from the side of the high chair. 

Snack: 

A handful of cheerios. Carefully 'fork' and consume the cheerios using a blunt colour pencil from the sofa where Mummy hid it behind other things.

Lunch:

A whole bottle of baby juice and steamed vegetables. Sift through the vegetables. Be careful to eat only the corn and broccoli, smushing the green beans and carrots and using a spoon to catapult them onto the floor whilst aiming for Mum. Gulp a few sips of juice in feigned thirst to deflect unwanted-vegetable offerings.

Snack:

Two stale bread sticks from under the sofa and two beads from scarf. Stash any remains back under the sofa for emergency hunger pangs at a later date. 

Dinner:

Anything Mum and Dad are eating, with any juice they are drinking. Take two bites and then decide you don't like it so Mum can make you something new. Spit everything out - let Mum feed it back to you - repeat. 

Day 2

Breakfast:

Milk and stale, leftover toast from yesterday and 2 boiled eggs. Insist on trying the toast, then act disgusted and throw on floor. Eat egg with fingers whilst smushing it on your bib and leave exactly half for tomorrow.

Snack:

A bite of mum's one and only lipstick, washed down with a sip of Dad's aftershave. Throw up if the taste is not as agreeable as you expected it to be.

Lunch:

Stale bread stick remains from under the sofa. Two bites of crayons (any colour) and a colour pencil nib.

Snack 2:

Half an apple. Chew until there is nothing but pulp left, then smear pulp on living room rug and sofas. Repeat with all slices and attempt to hide the evidence with shreds of tissue paper.

Dinner:

Mixed vegetable rice. Attempt to stab rice with fork and throw a tantrum when it doesn't. Refuse to drink water and wake up in the middle of the night thirsty.

Day 3

Breakfast: 

Milk and two pancakes. Request syrup, then ask for the pancakes to be replaced with plain ones. Pour a little syrup onto high chair tray and rub into your hair with hands. When full, tear pancakes into little pieces and stuff into cup holder. 

Snack:

Baby gingerbread men. Put some in a bowl and chomp heads off only. Then throw the rest of the packet into the trash. Take a few tastes of deodorant and wash down with water.

Lunch:

Two bites of any sandwich. Reject the rest and eat cheerios instead. Retrieve rejected sandwich and try again. Reject and repeat until snack time.

Snack:

Retrieve half-pack of gingerbread men from trash and eat legs only. If any have fallen out of the packet and landed on other trash, retrieve and eat those too. 

Dinner:

Four fish fingers and a handful of chips with juice. Give juice priority whilst pretending to eat fish and spitting it into catcher bib when no one is watching. Demand more chips when they are finished and throw a tantrum. Eat more cheerios. These are small enough to fit in your ears if you try very hard.

Repeat this 3-day diet until desired results are achieved - or until you find yourself in the A&E wishing you had passed on the lipstick and/or aftershave and/or deodorant!

Illnesses and the Joys of Curing Them

After a blissful (?) year, I can't say I have been the unluckiest Mum in the world. I've successfully managed to steer my little one clear of  diaper rashes, common colds (minus the odd sniffles now and then) and all the other dreaded diseases that so many infants and toddlers pick up in their first 2 years. That's 21 months of health and happiness..... along with crying, wailing, tantrums, embarrassing-poopy-incidents-in-public and all that jazz. 

Imagine my dismay when I walked into my bedroom and saw him holding a bottle of open aftershave having apparently licked it, or sipped it (I can only assume) with a mischievous grin on his face. But like any Super-Mum (admit it, you think you're one too, just like me *grin*), I calmly explained how dangerous it was and put him down for a nap. However, at some point during his baby-slumber, he transformed into something of a wailing monster and woke up only to throw up all over himself and me and I rushed him to the A&E (like any Super-Mum who just realised she isn't so Super after all would do). I proceeded to explain to the nurses that he had sipped some aftershave ('that's a first!', they said, followed by 'Issey Miyake? Good choice!' *wink* to my husband) and had vomited and become feverish and to my absolute horror (read: humiliation), I was told that he had NOT in fact had a sip, and was actually suffering from tonsillitis. Out the drain went my entire Super-Mum theory and took with it my diagnosis, sponsored by Google :/ I will never believe you again, Google. You have bitterly disappointed me. 

The moral of this rather long story/rant is: God works in mysterious ways. Had I not caught Zyer with that blasted aftershave, I would have blamed everything on teething (as usual) and let it get dreadfully worse before I finally decided to show him to a doctor, at which point he would presumably have been prescribed with antibiotics and I shudder to think what that would have been like for the two of us. 

So I'm not Super-Mum - *sheepish smile* - and neither are you.

Oh, Hell! Of course we are!! We continue to wing it, and Google everything small and big we know nothing about (and we know very little, it has to be admitted). We cure fevers through soaked strips of cloth, warm baths, lots of Ibuprofen and TLC. We kiss the bruises, koochikoo those tiny emotional traumas, and hug away the tears and the fears. And we continue to be amazing.

God works in mysterious ways....... through those itty-bitty terrors, and through us.

Introduction Extraordinaire

To start my new bloggy project, I'd like to introduce myself as a 27-year old, first-time, proud Mummy of a 1 year old son who goes by the name of Zyer. I am a Marketing professional and having taken a year off work to give time to my little one, I've finally decided to leave employment for the time being until I can bring myself to distance myself for even a moment from my pride and joy.


Scratch that. 


How I should be introducing myself is with a forewarning that anything I say or do on this blog should be regarded as strictly unprofessional and will more often than not prove to be utter nonsense that may or may not be a figment of my ill-devised imagination in the form of strategies in raising a gorgeous little son who should (after all my efforts) grow up to be a good man, hopefully - *fingers crossed* 


So that's it then. 


Meet the Scrummy Mummy who doesn't really have a clue what she's doing but believes that there must be at least a little substance to her day-to-day psychoanalysis of a toddler's thought-process and behaviour. I'm raising my baby on gut instinct, some patience and a whole lotta love and I hope that I can help you do the same...... or at least amuse you enough to make the challenging journey of bringing up another human being just that little bit more enjoyable and interesting.