For those who saw my Facebook status, you all should know what cooking experiments took place over the weekend. It all started on Thursday night when my dear husband and I decided to have a quiet evening watching a movie ( since the TV is bought, Alex has banned us from the cinema). We watched Julie & Julia, a story about Julia Child, a celebrated American cook and blogger Julie Powell who attempted Julia’s recipes. Anyway, he was thoroughly impressed with the fact that Julie could cook with such ease all Julia’s recipes and decided that I could do the same!

Therefore since this Friday was Awal Muharam, had some time, went grocery shopping and attempted my first French cooking, Boeuf Bourguignon. Since I didn’t actually have Julia Child’s recipe book, which I so intend to get, I googled for the recipe. This is the link to the recipe. I halved all the ingredients since I am only planning to feed four.

To my surprise, most of the ingredients were very easily available. I bought the cheapest red wine I could find, a 2008 Australian wine which was selling for RM29.90! The only thing that I could find was actually the beef bouillon. Probably the only place that is probably selling it could be Bangsar Grocer’s but am too lazy to drive all the way there just to get that!

Alex was also working on Friday, therefore I was back at my parents’ place cooking this out. Sorry to say, I didn’t have my camera with me, thus no pictures. But overall verdict was: It tasted like GOULASH!

On Sunday, I’ve decided to make some of those wonderful-looking Salted Pistachio Brittle seen on this blog. Simple enough to make. Sugar, syrup, butter and nuts! The unfortunate part however was that the pistachios are very expensive over here! Mine looked exactly like the one on the blog. So proud of them!

This week’s class was entirely on the subject of feeding your own baby.  A fellow participant commented: Human Milk for the Human Baby. Me likey this very much.

A few things that I’ve learnt which I find very useful: -

1. Proper Latch-On: One of the more frequent excuses I heard among the folks who gave up breastfeeding is “No Milk!” Since I have no prior experience myself, the instructor did enlightened us that the main reason for this is that the baby did not latch on properly thus regardless of how much sucking he/she did, there is no milk coming out. Two problems will occur. Firstly, mother’s nipples will be so sore, she’ll be afraid to let her baby suckle on them. Second, the baby himself/herself will be terrified since this source is not satisfying his/her hunger.

2. Signalling: This part is quite a no-brainer. You demand more from your body, your body will know how to react accordingly to meet the demand and vice-versa.  Although as simple as it sounds, I guess, discipline is a major issue here.

3. Poop Chart: This, Alex and I especially like. Like most concerned friends and relatives, they will go ” You sure ah, your baby getting enough milk from you?  No need formulakah?” The instructor shared with us how to gauge whether your baby is feeding enough. Check the outlet. What comes in, must go out!  lol

Lastly, would like to share a video on the amazing baby’s first journey to getting his/her first meal. I want to do just that when Mini Diong comes!

Had the 1st of the 4 ante natal class I’ve signed up. Rather tiring session. The first 2.5 hours were mainly classroom learning type of session with the final 30 mins we learnt how to do some light exercises for preggies.

Probably due to the fact that my mother is a trained midwife, most of what the instructor wanted to teach,  I have already some knowledge on that thus making the class slightly on the boring side for me. But of course there are still new things to learn, as always.  More on the people management side, I guess. All in all, the session was enjoyable but tiring. Look forward to the rest of the 3 sessions.