Happy Mother's Day, from Baby Sumo

To all mummies, Happy Mother's Day to you! Hope you get showered with love and affection on this special day.

For recipe of the above butter cake, please visit this link.

If you enjoyed reading my posts, LIKE me on Facebook! You can also follow me on Instagram (@babysumo) for more photo updates or Dayre for daily updates. Thanks :)

Cooking Made Easy, with Prego

Pasta is definitely a staple ingredient in our home. Mention pasta for dinner, and you will see our kids eyes light up in happiness. All the better for mummy, as pasta is one of the easiest things to cook in the kitchen.

With pasta sauces easily available these days, making pasta at home is made even easier and more convenient. Prego sauces are one of our favorites as they are deliciously thick and rich, perfectly balanced in taste, and can be prepared in 3-easy steps (as easy as 1.2.3).

A couple of weekends ago, with a little bit of teamwork from Hubby and BabySumoKids, we prepared two pasta dishes for our whole family in under 20 minutes. Hubby and Baby C made a macaroni dish using the Prego Cheese and Herb sauce, while Baby D and I formed another team to make a pasta dish using the new Cheesy Alfredo Sauce.

Prego sauces are Halal certified by Jakim and usually come in cans or jars (small 350g or large 680g). Each can or jar of sauce comes with a cooking suggestion at the back of the can which I found to be very helpful - ie it tells you which type of pasta as well as meat / seafood / vegetable goes best with the sauce. The kids helped measure out the pasta and with some supervision, they can also help stir the sauces ... yes, pasta preparation can be a great bonding activity with your kids and time well-spent learning and having fun together as a family.

The new pasta sauces from Prego - Cheesy Alredo, Chicken Mushroom and Black Pepper

BabySumoKids love helping out in the kitchen

Hubby had no problems at all with his macaroni preparation and it came together beautifully. To cook, simply saute the chicken chunks, until they are cooked through, then pour the sauce over the chicken, loosening slightly with some water, and then simmering for 5 minutes. Then, add the macaroni to it and voila! As you can see, cooking pasta with Prego sauce is very easy indeed! If Hubby can do it, you can do it too.

Similarly, the Cheesy Alfredo Pasta was easy and quick to put together. I first sauteed the king prawns in some olive oil and once they are cooked, take them off the heat and set aside. Using the same pan, saute the minced garlic and add the Cheesy Alfredo Sauce, some water and simmer for 5 minutes. The recipe suggests adding extra lime juice to the sauce, however I found the sauce to be flavourful and tangy enough, so I omitted this step. Toss the spaghetti in the cooked sauce and top with freshly chopped basil and cooked prawns. Not only did it look great, it tasted fantastic too.

Thank you Hubby and kids for helping cook this delicious pasta meal for both mummy and Grandma :) (and the rest of the family)

We also tried out two more of Prego's new sauces, launched in March this year - the Chicken Mushroom and Black Pepper. Again, we followed the simple instructions at the back of the can and prepared these two delicious pasta dishes for dinner.

Our kids especially enjoyed the fusilli with creamy Chicken Mushroom sauce. To cook, simply saute the chicken chunks, set aside once cooked. Then, saute the sliced white button mushrooms, add the sauce and simmer for 5 minutes, then finally add in the cooked fusilli. So easy!

Fettucine with black pepper sauce

We really love the creaminess of Prego sauces, which is why we have used them in the past and will continue using them in the future. :)

CONTEST!

For Mother's Day this year, Prego will be running a Mother's Day Contest in conjunction with the celebration. Husbands and kids over 16 years old can join in this contest and win a special gift for their beloved mom/wife.

All you need to do is to Whatsapp to Prego (at 017-811 6477) a short video (less than 60s) of yourself telling your mother how much you LOVE and APPRECIATE her by 13/5/17 10am. Make a pledge that you will cook a Prego Pasta meal for her on Mother's Day.

You'd be able to treat your mum to a homecooked pasta meal as well as be in the running to win prizes worth up to RM1,000.  Contest ends 15/5/17 at 2pm, so hurry and join now!

For more information on the contest, please visit Prego Malaysia Facebook Page.

(Note: Contest date has been extended... please visit Prego Malaysia FB page for more details)

*This is a sponsored post. 




If you enjoyed reading my posts, LIKE me on Facebook! You can also follow me on Instagram (@babysumo) for more photo updates or Dayre for daily updates. Thanks :)

Mother's Day Eve Dinner @ Prego, The Westin KL

It's all too easy to take mothers for granted. Mother's Day is coming up this weekend, presenting all of us with the perfect opportunity to let our mother's know how thankful we are for their love and sacrifices throughout the years.

Every mum, including me, loves being pampered and showered with love, especially on Mother's Day. This year, you can beat the crowd and treat your mum to a delicious 3-course dinner at Prego, The Westin Kuala Lumpur on Mother's Day Eve.  

Our meal got off to a delightful start, with a trio of appetizers - featuring scallop, jumbo shrimp and arancini. The scallop was obviously my favorite, pan seared and served with honey Dijon and creamy avocado. The Jumbo shrimp was light and fresh, served with Japanese cucumber and chilli lime mayonnaise, redolent of one of my favorite appetizers, prawn cocktail.  The risotto ball aka arancini was the most Italian element on the plate - it was stuffed with beef bolognese and was wonderfully warm and crisp. Loved the plating too - so vibrant, made extra gorgeous with edible flowers.

I was thrilled to see Wagyu Oyster Blade on the menu, it is one of my favorite cuts of steak. For their Mother's Day Eve menu, the chefs at Prego have specially selected a cut with a marbling score 6. Both presentation and execution was faultless - the steak was perfectly cooked to a medium doneness with a lovely char. The steak is accompanied with zucchini flower stuffed with truffle mash potato, as well as locally sourced garden baby vegetables and natural beef jus. Amazing flavours, I loved this dish. 

End the meal with a divine Grandmother's baked chocolate tart served with fresh berries and homemade vanilla bean ice cream.  This dessert was nicely balanced, not too sweet; chocolate and ice cream are a winning combination to complete this celebratory dinner.  

Whatever you decide to do to celebrate Mother's Day this year, don't forget to give your mum a big hug.

The 3-course Mother's Day Eve set dinner is available on 13 May 2017 only (6.30pm to 10.30pm) and is priced at RM195 nett per person. For reservations, please call 03-2773-8338.

Location: Prego, The Westin Kuala Lumpur, 199 Jalan Bukit Bintang, 55100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Tel: 03- 2773 8338

GPS Coordinates: 3.14779, 101.714569


If you enjoyed reading my posts, LIKE me on Facebook! You can also follow me on Instagram (@babysumo) for more photo updates or Dayre for daily updates. Thanks :)

A Gift of Love: OGAWA Master Drive

When we first moved into our new home, one of the items we purchased was an entry-level massage chair. Recently, we've been considering if we should upgrade and get a more advanced massage chair which can give us the full body massage experience at home.

Massage chairs can be a huge investment, in order to find out which one suits your needs best it is advisable to go out and do some market research. We tried three brands recently and the one that impressed us the most during our "test drive" was the OGAWA Master Drive, the new flagship massage chair from OGAWA.

1. The design / appearance

One of the most important criteria for us when choosing a massage chair other than the features is its appearance. Our home interior is pretty minimalist, so the chosen one needs to look sleek, modern and blend in with the rest of our interior.

All 3 brands that we tried looked modern with a futuristic, edgy feel to them. Out of the 3, only OGAWA comes in four different colours while the competitor brands only come with one colour option.

2. Functionality / Best Massage Experience

We both enjoy the experience of going to a spa and having a 1-2 hour full body massage with soothing music and pleasant personal service, however the convenience of having a mechanical masseuse ever present at home capable of performing warming, deep tissue, pressure point focused, stretching and numerous massage types is also very appealing.

The OGAWA Master Drive is brought to life by cutting edge Japanese technology, and is an extremely accurate massage chair that precisely targets your acupuncture points - from head-to-toe, including your knees - for optimal energy restoration through human-like full-body massages.  As soon as you turn on the machine, it will do a full body scan using its precision sensors to analyse different body shapes and sizes and adjust the intensity level of the massage accordingly.

To control the massage chair, OGAWA's controller is the most modern - a 7-inch touch-screen tablet which is simple to navigate. OGAWA comes with 22 massage programs, and each program comes with a short description to tell the user what the massage entails. We found the descriptions useful (we didn't have to keep referring back to the sales person to ask what each program is supposed to do). Some of the programs available on OGAWA Master Drive are: Master's Choice, Sensei, Deep tissue massage, Circulation, Shape n Tone, Balinese, Chinese, Thai, Shiatsu, Swedish, Kneading, Tapping and more.

You can also customise your massage area, as well as adjust the strength to your preference

Built-in manual 

OGAWA also comes with a M Drive Navigator, a feature exclusive only to Master Drive. A master control that allows you to conveniently control the intensity and massage programs without disrupting your massage experience.

Massage chair technology has advanced somewhat in recent years, the enhanced 135 cm L-shaped track within the OGAWA Master Drive gives wider coverage and reaches more points, for a more pleasurable experience.  Invigorating neck, shoulder, back and lower back massage, with heat, is available via the L-Track coverage. Lower leg and feet massage are facilitated within the "footrest' portion of the chair, which comes with sole massage rollers as well as airbags. OGAWA is also the 1st in Malaysia with knee coverage, an area which is often neglected. Treat your knees to much needed care with strategically-fitted thermal airbags. Another attractive use for the OGAWA Master Drive is simply to give your body a rest from the rigours of daily life by "resting" in a zero-gravity position to redistribute your weight across the body, reduce pressure on your spine and relieve muscle tension.

OGAWA Master Drive is equipped with the high-performance A.R.M. microprocessor, which can respond quickly and accurately adjust massages to your commands.

OGAWA Master Drive is also the first of its kind to provide deep tissue, spine-focused, human-like massages. It has 4D M Spa rollers which have the ability to protrude 120mm deep and converge 40mm apart to accurately massage the spine and specific acupunctural points. 

I personally enjoy medium-pressure when I go to the spa, and after testing all three brands, I find OGAWA's pressure suits me best (observation based on first program selected by the salesperson at each brand's outlet).

All 3 brands of massage chair that we tried come with heat function. However, OGAWA seems to give out the most comfortable level of heat as the heat comes directly from the massage rollers, so it will follow wherever the massage goes, hence it feels like you are getting a warm hand massage. The heat will stimulate blood flow in your body and helps your body relax even more.

All three brands come with music therapy, for extra relaxation. One of the competitor brand also comes with a negative ioniser while OGAWA comes with light therapy. User can choose from 7 modes which can help uplift moods, increase metabolism and promote detoxification.

Major benefits we agreed upon when comparing the OGAWA Master Drive to competitor offerings were that the OGAWA Master Drive offered the most human-like experience, offered the best sound and lighting effects to aid relaxation and overall massage enjoyment, offered the most user-friendly control panel, and was the most aesthetically pleasing massage chair currently on the market.



3. Price

Price is usually one of the deciding factors when purchasing a massage chair. All 3 brands cost upward of RM20K, with OGAWA being the most reasonably priced; with their Parents’ Day promotion you can now own it at RM18,699. OGAWA and another brand offer two years warranty, while another competitor offers only one.

In conclusion, our brief forage into the world of massage chairs resulted in us agreeing that the OGAWA Master Drive would be our massage chair of choice.  With Mother's Day coming soon, maybe, just maybe we can justify the expenditure and invest in our bodies well-being, ironing out all our aches and pains in the comfort of our home.

For more product information on the OGAWA Master Drive, please visit the OGAWA website here.



If you enjoyed reading my posts, LIKE me on Facebook! You can also follow me on Instagram (@babysumo) for more photo updates or Dayre for daily updates. Thanks :)

Nana's Green Tea, The Gardens Mall, KL

I've always been curious as to what they serve in Nana's Green Tea as we would often walk past the shop and there would be a long queue outside. To our surprise, they do a really affordable set meals, whereby you can choose 1 main dish + 1 drink for RM21.90 nett (available weekdays 10am to 7pm, as well as weekends 10am - 5pm) - the menu comprises of 18 main items to choose from and 11 drink choices. 

Our drinks - mummy's matcha latte (matcha green tea with milk and sugar), Baby D's hoji latte (hoji roasted green tea with milk and sugar), and Hubby's cafe latte. I enjoyed the matcha latte a lot. The drinks are normally priced at RM11.50.

I went for the salmon don, which comes with generous thick slices of salmon sashimi, served over warm millet rice, and garnished with nori (seaweed), spring onions, sesame seeds, pea sprouts and pickled ginger and a blob of wasabi on the side. An appetizing dressing is also served in a mini jug, which you can pour over the rice. All the mains come with a miso soup, but I found it to be slightly on the watery side though.

Hubby's chicken katsu curry, again served with warm millet rice. I tried some of the curry sauce and it was good. The chicken cutlet itself looks a bit red, however Hubby said it's cooked thoroughly upon trying it so we're not too sure why the meat is that colour.

I will remember this day because it is the first time Baby D independently picked a dish from the food menu he wants to eat. And he ate most of it. So proud of him! He ordered the tori soboro don, millet rice topped with marinated minced chicken and Japanese style poached egg. I did try some of the meat and it was pretty flavorful. 

Set Meal Menu, available every day of the week

Pork-free.

Opening times: 10am to 10pm daily.

Price: Total bill RM65.70

Location: Nana's Green Tea, Lot 231A, Lower Ground Floor, The Gardens Mall, Mid Valley City, Lingkaran Syed Putra, 59200 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel:03-2386 6036


If you enjoyed reading my posts, LIKE me on Facebook! You can also follow me on Instagram (@babysumo) for more photo updates or Dayre for daily updates. Thanks :)