It was a breakfast of family favourites!

Regular readers have seen Mum’s pork rice porridge before, complete with pork ribs and little pork meatballs.

My little nieces Ruby and Zoe love rice porridge. Their mum Ange served them up a bowl each, complete with meatballs.

I garnished my rice porridge with a drizzle of soy sauce and sesame oil, a sprinkling of fried garlic and chopped fresh spring onion, and of course, yow char kwai (fried sticks of dough, also called Chinese crullers).

I seem to be constantly showing you I’m just like a little kid! My nieces ate their porridge in cute bowls – I ate mine with a cute spoon, which made it even more enjoyable. It’s my favourite spoon, with a picture on it of a little Chinese boy playing ping-pong.

Mum also made siew mai (steamed pork dumplings).

Mum apologised as she placed the dish of the siew mai on the table – they were sort of stuck together. We had to use a spoon to prise them apart, but they were delicious! I ate at least half a dozen – I’d have greedily eaten my way through the whole dish if there was no one else to share with. They were deluxe siew mai filled with pork mince, finely diced Chinese mushrooms, crunchy water chestnuts and topped with sweet carrot.

The best part about the siew mai was the water chestnut – the crunch feels so good, it’s addictive. I just kept craving more crunch.

Zoe enjoyed eating from two bowls, one bowl for rice porridge and one for siew mai and everything else. I love watching her eat. She reminds me of me. :)

My brother made pancakes. He’s cooked pancakes at the last few family breakfasts, which is fantastic as we all love pancakes. I could eat pancakes two or three times a week and not be sick of them.

Oh, pancakes and maple syrup.

I’ve taken to scrunching up my pancakes, pouring the maple syrup over the top, then eating them.

Smoked salmon is another family favourite. Jac especially loves it on fresh bread with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and cracked black pepper.

Jac and I made a fruit salad with watermelon, rockmelon, orange, apple, strawberry and paw paw (papaya). We garnished it with a kiwi fruit and freshly picked mint leaves from our garden.

To go with the fruit salad, we brought a tub of vanilla creme yoghurt. As you can see in the photo below, Jac smothered her fruit in the creamy yoghurt.

The September birthday cake was Mum’s homemade orange cake, which has been one of my favourite cakes ever since I was a child. When we were kids, my older sisters and I often helped bake orange cake on weekends. My favourite jobs were squeezing the juice from the oranges (not grating the orange peel, I was prone to grating my fingers), beating the egg whites until my arm was sore to get those stiff peaks, and helping cream the butter and sugar (but not until my sisters had done the initial hard work getting the butter to a soft consistency).

We thought the little girls would be too full for anything else after all that food, but they had other ideas. The girls love crackers and plain biscuits and they know their grandfather always has some around. It was the first time they ever ate milk arrowroot biscuits. Ruby was delighted and enjoyed running around showing everyone her milk arrowroot biccie – almost as much as she enjoyed eating it! I like milk arrowroot biscuits, especially as an afternoon snack, spread with butter. So simple but so good.