A Simple Meal Cooked by 3

We had a simple meal this evening. Chloe helped to make her fish patties.

Her mum used canned tuna chunks and mashed potatoes to make the patties. Chloe dipped them into the beaten egg and rolled them in breadcrumbs before her mum did the frying.



I’m not good at frying patties because either the fire is too hot and they get so brown as if they had a dark suntan or the patties crumble and don’t turn out nice and round.

I did a simple steamed white taufoo. My daughter likes taufoo to be steamed because it’s healthier than stir frying it in bean paste. ( tau chneow ) I made a simple sauce of sesame oil, dark soya sauce and oyster sauce mixed with some water and drizzled it over the taufoo so that it wouldn’t be dry. It was cooked in the microwave for 3 minutes and then I topped it with some fried baby anchovies. However I forgot to garnish it with spring onions!


Another variation is to top it with dried sambal prawn but my daughter doesn’t like dried prawn. I personally prefer it topped with dried sambal prawn because it tastes nicer and is a little spicy. The dried prawn is soaked to soften it a bit and then ground with dried chillies and a couple of small onions. A bit of tamarind juice is added for flavor. This mixture is then fried until it is fragrant and slightly dry.

My daughter then stir-fried the vegetable (choi sum or mustard leaves) with sliced fish roll. We didn’t have any soup today as I didn’t have the time to boil it. Had to rush to the service centre to get back my new notebook which had been giving me problems.


Three generations of a family cooking a meal together makes good bonding and gives us a lot of satisfaction,

After dinner, Chloe and Stephen take turns to wipe the table and to make sure that the windows are shut and locked with the curtains drawn for the night. It is hard to believe that a decade has gone by so quickly. When they came home to live with us, they were just babies, Stephen a one-year old toddler and Chloe a couple of months old.

I have the greatest pleasure of seeing them grow and become independent little adults who help out at home. Chloe loves her grandfather very much and gets annoyed with grandma when she nags grandpa who tends to be absent-minded and leaves the fan on or the tap running. My grandchildren give me rainbow days especially when I hear them singing away together with a song of their choice on YouTube. In fact Chloe was the one who introduced me to YouTube!