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The last time we wrote, all of us had been busy preparing for the Wonderladies breakfast. It has been an enriching experience for all of us and our actions today will benefit the Hospis Malaysia patients for a long time to come.

(Setting up the table early in the morning)

I have certainly learnt a lot – in making carrot muffins, I’ve certainly pushed myself despite all the odds of having never baked a muffin. That’s what TLC’s Promise Me is all about. Making you grow as a person from within and that process of discovery is far sweeter than all the muffins combined!

Whilst it’s about us fulfilling wishes of the less fortunate, did you know that the hand that gives is the hand that receives twice as much. I can tell you without doubt that the campaign has given us all a newfound sense of inspiration – in that there is a wealth of kindness out there, just waiting to be tapped.

(What a huge spread!)

We certainly brought out the heavy artillery and made a crazy amount of food for the charity breakfast (9th August 2010) in the lobby of HP Towers. It was very much a one day event and we had the support of two very kind friends, Jen and Melissa. They decided to weigh in to produce a huge amount of cupcakes, muffins and brownies for us – so much so there was no more space on the table for all our goodies.  All it took was a phone call and they baked for us. That is the power of true friendship and willingness to help the less fortunate in our society.

(Melissa, Jen and Julia Chong with the muffins, cupcakes and brownies)

Sales were definitely brisk and we had quite a lot of familiar faces supporting us. We were aiming to get as close as possible to our target of RM800 but it turned out that we over-exceeded it. Within 4 hours, we grossed about RM1400 and it was absolutely unbelievable. We should be able to pick up an extra nebulizer for Hospis Malaysia!

(Jen’s pro cupcakes – check out the individual packaging!)

(The affordable egg sandwiches were the first to go!)

(Myself with Joe D’Silva and Jen – Thanks Joe for buying a huge lot of goodies from us!)

Its been a wonderful journey and once again we are deeply grateful to all those folks out there who have supported us. Looking forward to TLC Promise Me Season 2 next year!

-        Jonathan Teoh on behalf of the Wonderladies Team

After several brainstorming session with wonderladies’ members and I’m offereing to bake home made delicious chicken pie. Is been a while I never did any baking due to lack of equipment at my current place. Erm.. gotta dig back my recipe & baking skills which had been abandoned [:p] Nevertheless, I’m confident it will be nice from see, touch & taste.. haha..

Before kick off for the baking session, many thanks to GK to offer us her kitchen for us to mess up to complete the job!

I need to get all the ingredients for the chicken pie

(partial of the ingredients…)

While I’m preparing the dough, notice that from normally preparing a big tart and individual tart is different. The difference is amount of ingredients used, time consumption & kneading method. To complete to baking fast, I’ve prepared the dough a night before the baking session.

For pastry – flour, butter, eggs & water.

For creamy chicken filling – dice chicken, mushroom, mix peas/ carrots, milk, cream & seasoning.

I’ve taken about 4 hours to complete 24 pies! Finally… *phew*

( Freshly baked chicken pie from oven)

Stay tune, more story on actual Charity Breakfast morning….

I never thought I would be asked to participate in my own campaign! I thought that as the leader of the TLC Promise Me campaign, I would be automatically absolved of ground work as I was busy juggling all the back-end work. There really wasn’t much room for negotiation as I had all the ladies ganging up on me and TLC is about 85% women-dominated!

Next thing they asked, what can I make? Errr, I’m pretty useless as a baker and I’ve never done catering before. I don’t know what possessed me to say “carrot muffin” because I have never made it before in my life and certainly have never used my home oven (pretty useless remember!)

At the back of my mind, I knew I had to do something audacious that would match the spirit of TLC Promise Me, where we push youths to go the distance and grow within from their experiences in this campaign. What the general public didn’t know was that when TLC Promise Me was still a concept, I had to pitch to folks like Mukhtar Hussain (CEO of HSBC), Ung Su Ling (Head of CIMB Foundation), Jasmin Begum (Microsoft Corp Comm), Margaret Lim and team (Chairperson of Aegis Media), Datin Sri Bettina Khan (BRDB) and right up to Dato Sri Shahrizat (Minister of Women, Family and Community Development).

My point is that if I could find a way to work with these guys, I should be able to stare down a tray of 40 carrot muffins and make it happen! So I bought all the ingredients and compared recipes off the net. Eventually I settled on this one (http://www.joyofbaking.com/CarrotCake.html)

After a long Sunday, I managed to produce those muffins! Some tips offered to me for future baking were,

• To use half shortening and half butter for the icing otherwise it will melt too easily in this tropical weather
• Do not overbeat your eggs. Too fast and too long on the electric whisk will affect your batter
• Do not use fresh supermarket carrots. Leave the carrots out in the open for a few days and let them dry out a bit. This will make your batter a lot lighter.
• Once you have made your batter, bake immediately. The batter will become heavier the longer you leave it.

I was later told that the muffins exceed the benchmark of the Suanson carrot cakes (which was a huge compliment) but I was still worried that people may not buy it since it may look a bit amateurish compared to the pro muffins / cupcakes out there.

Do stay tuned and find out whether I managed to sell off those carrot muffins at RM4 a pop at the Wonderladies + 2 charity breakfast!

-Jonathan Teoh

After brainstorming, wonderladies+2 had decided to give our theme event as “Charity Breakfast”. And we will organize it on 9^th Aug, from 8.00am – 10.00am. It’s seems like we have very limited time to prepare everything and get things done in a week time. Therefore, we have to well plan our time and delegate the work for individual. As our team name is “wonder ladies”, we always believed that we can make it and “die die” we must do it. Because we knew this is something very meaningful after we took up the Promise Me pledge.

Here is the check list to show how we started:-

1. E-Leaflet

Our “Charity Breakfast” e-leaflet is created by one of our creative team member in a very short period of time. After Girlie saw it, immediately she gave the comment like this:  “Wow….This looks really good. Hope the public won’t be disappointed when they see us on 9^th Aug as “most” of us do not have the hour glass figure, ha! ha!” ….(=.=)”

2. Email

We started email blast our campaign and e-leaflet to tenants at HP towers. And never forget to our neighbor’s building, like Manulife, RE, MBSB and etc…We wish to create the awareness to as many people as we can and hope that they can come and support us on Monday and raise the fund.

3. Promise Me Bunting

Then we started to think on top of that, what else can we do and make more people aware on our Charity Breakfast?? Ohh…suddenly a genius idea from one of our team member, she suggested we should put a Promise Me bunting near to HP lift lobby. It catches more eyes to take a look to our campaign. And, I would like to thank to the HP Management Building for being very supportive of our campaign.

4. Paper Bag

Also, we would like to thank to San Francisco Coffee House, who willing to sponsor us the 100 pcs of paper bags for our Charity Breakfast.

5. Pre-Order

One of the great things to share is before the Charity Breakfast, we have received the pre-order. This is something motivate us to move on. And, getting excited to look forward our event on Monday.

Stay tuned………….. more to share with our cooking session!!!! J

Girlie Says

Hi, a few of us have been following the stories from Promise Me and felt a bit disconnected just reading it. So why not do something? All of us have never blogged before and we thought this is a good way to start. And why not, for a good cause? JJ

First thing that came to mind is a name for the team. In the car on the way out for lunch, one of us asked, “What to call our team ah?”

Another one throw out, “Who is the most popular group now?’”

Answer, “Wonder Girls”  *yeah* (Wonder Girls is the latest Korean 5 girls pop group who entered the American market,  whereby their first single Nobody became the first song by a Korean group to enter the Billboard Hot 100. How is that for a trivia)

You know the lyrics I want Nobody,Nobody but you! I want Nobody Nobody but you! That ‘s all I can do, ha, ha.

Wonder Girls seem a bit young and childish (Sorry MS,  the young one in the group but definitely not childish *:p*) so, came the classier name, we hope, Won…der.. Ladies….

How to raise funds collectively, and the simplest was to make breakfast and sell it to people in the same office building. Or maybe also the next office block(s)

Questions:

• What to sell?
• How many of each?
• What price to charge?
• When to do so?
• Write to building management to get the space FOC
• Who to make what, what to buy and where to do so, etc, etc

Wah…what looks like a simple idea is more complex than we thought. And guess what, even as simple as egg sandwich, we were debating what size of eggs to buy, Omega 3 or non Omega 3,

(what’s the difference? Egg is egg, isn’t the taste the same?)

whether it should be Guardenia bread , High 5, or Mighty White?

(sorry..la.. im loyal to gardenia…)

We even bought some that we like from the mini market at the office to check what they have in it and how much they charge. How to ensure it is not soggy and still fresh if we were to make it the night before, etc, etc. Boy, did we have fun just talking and exploring something as mundane as making egg sandwich, ha, ha.

I won’t go into the debate on the tuna sandwich (in oil or water, add lime? celery? Or onions, etc, etc) Phew

Hey, ladies +2, take over and continue from here…..