At the behest of a former colleague who shall be known as NG, I am posting
more pictures of Daniel. Since the beginning of April, the little squirt has
taken a liking to standing and walking. Of course, he's not able to stand
or walk on his own, which means that mommy, daddy or any able-bodied human
who happens to be nearby will have to help him get around. It's been tiring,
but on balance, it's still a great joy to see your son so excited about being
on the move. 
Today,
he decided he didn't want to sit in his playpen - he wanted to stand in it.
So, for half an hour, we watched bemused as the ascender of his little head
peeped out above the playpen. He was having a whale of a time - standing,
babbling (as he usually does these days "ah...baba... ah... pa ba ba
ma...oh..eebaba") and smiling. And then, when he got tired, he simply
let go of the playpen and dropped back down into a sitting position and continued
playing quietly by himself. What an angel!
I wonder when he will be able to stand with no hand support? Hmm
I wanted to share another easy recipe which surprised me with its "not-too-strong alcoholic" tastiness. Drunken chicken with black fungus, made with Chinese glutinous rice wine (Shaoxing Hua Tiao Jiu), has a light alcohol tinge with a warm full homecooked taste. I adapted it from the bilingual edition of "Hawkers' Fare Simplified" - replaced the ginger with garlic (as not a fan of ginger and didn't want the dish to be too "heaty") and added dark soya sauce to mask the "naked white" chicken colour, which I abhor. The claypot is not essential - cooking this dish in a small pot would do fine too! ^__^ Enjoy!
Drunken chicken
1tb sesame oil
3 cloves garlic
400-500g chicken, cut into small pieces
50g dried black fungus
100ml warm water
2tb dark soya sauce
3tb Chinese glutinous rice wine (Shaoxing Hua Tiao Jiu)
1tb oyster sauce
1tb light soya sauce
1ts sugar
1. Soak the dried black fungus in hot water till soft, about 10 mins. Remove the stems if any. Mix the dark soya sauce with the chicken pieces and set aside.
2. Using medium fire, heat sesame oil in claypot or small pot till sizzling slightly. Add garlic and stir till fragrant. Then, add chicken pieces skin side down. Brown for a minute, turn over the pieces and add the black fungus.
3. Pour in the warm water, the rice wine, oyster sauce, light soya sauce and sugar. Stir to mix everything thoroughly, then cover and bring to boil before lowering the heat and simmering for 10 mins. Keep stirring while simmering so that gravy thickens slightly. Serve hot!
In our recent visit to a friend's house, Daniel got to try his hand at playing the keys! He really loved banging away - I thought getting one of these "cheapo" keyboards is such a good idea as it gives kids a chance to bang away without the parent worrying about the keyboards spoiling. Presenting, Daniel the virtuoso pianist: ^__^
In view of Good Friday and Easter, I thought I'd share some writings from J I Packer, a beloved Christian writer, theologian and professor, who shares where joy comes from. Happy Easter!
"The knowledge of one's saving relationship to Christ can bring unquenchable joy into believing hearts, and this is something that only Christians can ever understand. "Rejoice in the Lord" means rejoice in being Christ's, in having Christ's Father as your Father, in being right with God the Father and an heir of his glory through Christ's mediation, and in possessing salvation and eternal life as Christ's gift. We are to let joy flow from this source. How will that happen? Through the fulfilling of a four-source formula.
The first source of joy is the awareness that one is loved...The measure of love, human and divine, is how much it gives, and by this standard the love of God is immeasurable because both the greatness of the gift and the cost of giving it are beyond our power to grasp. All human parallels fall short; all comparisons are inadequate.
Humbled and awed, Christians should bask daily in the awareness of God's overwhelming, incomparable love.
The second source of joy is the acceptance of one's situation as good. Christians can do this everywhere and always because they know that circumstances and experiences, pleasant and unpleasant alike, are planned out for them by their loving heavenly Father as part of their preparation for glory. "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Rom 8:28)
Joy's third source is possession of something worth possessing. Here, too, the Christian is supremely well placed (as we can see in Philippians 3). To paraphrase Paul (in Philippians): "I have lost a great deal but I have gained more. What I have gained is something supremely worth having, something that is glorious and that will grow; broaden, deepen, and become richer to all eternity, namely, an ongoing love relationship with Jesus Christ the Saviour. The more I have of it, the more I want of it; thus it establishes itself as the biggest and most valued thing in my life." This is Paul's emphasis and his words will find an echo in every healthy Christian heart.
Gratitude for this amazing grace prompts the Christian to say, with Paul: "I have Christ. I know Christ. I love Christ. He is the pearl of great price. He is all I want. I am the happiest of human beings, for I am his and he is mine forever, and I will cheerfully let anything go in order to hold on to him and enjoy the full fruits of his love."
The fourst source of joy is to give something worth giving. Christ sends believers into the world to be his witnesses and when they share their knowledge of Christ with others, they know they are giving them the one things that is supremely worth giving and is, in addition, desperately needed.
Christians sometimes find themselves wondering whether their lives are worthwhile, whether they are doing anything that is worth doing. They are sometimes concerned about frittering away previous time and opportunities, wondering whether the serious concerns of adult existence in Christ's service have not slipped through their fingers. Sometimes these feelings are justified; Christians sometimes really are wasting their lives, and there is no joy in that. But Christians who invest time, effort, ingenuity, initiatives, and prayer in spreading the gospel and helping build the faith of others do not feel this kind of self-doubt. They have no reason to do so. In a dying world, surrounded by fascinating fellow mortals who because of their sins face a lost eternity, nothing is so well worth doing as sharing the Good News about Jesus and the salvation he gives.
Coffee lovers in Singapore will want to take note of this new cafe that opened very recently. Wiener Kaffeehaus is run by an Austrian who is such a fanatic about coffee, he roasts his own beans at the back of his shophouse-cafe along Neil Road. Stop by for a drink, and he or any of the friendly service staff will gladly give you a tour of the cafe's roasting machinery and coffee boutique and explain to you with great enthusiasm the coffee roasting process. I'm not really a coffee-drinker, but I was fascinated and impressed by the array of coffee beans the cafe roasts on the spot, the roasting process and the difference between the various coffee beans. Husband, who bought some freshly roasted beans (which they also ground on the spot for us!), said it was excellent coffee - you can taste the freshness. Wiener Kaffeehaus also serves hearty Austrian food. I tried the gulash - it was above average though nothing to shout about. I think the coffee rocks though! Check out their website for more details.
When S came over a while ago, she mentioned having roast chicken for lunch. I immediately thought about a fantastic roast chicken a friend of mine made when I visited her in the U.S. some years back. After gobbling it all down and licking my fingers clean, my friend revealed that she had roasted the chook with nothing more than sea salt and olive oil. That's it? I intoned incredulously. Yup. She shrugged sheepishly. That's it. I never quite believed her, until tempted by the memory of that amazing roast chicken, and egged on by S's mention of roast chicken, I started reading up on roast chicken recipes. I was surprised to find that both the classic The Joy Of Cooking and the minimalist Neil Perry's The Food I Love contained roast chicken recipes prescribing salt and oil/butter as the sole seasonings for the perfect roast chicken. Intrigued, I tried it out last week and was amazed at the results. So amazed, that I roasted up another chicken yesterday, just to make sure I wasn't dreaming - the chicken was delicious - brown & crispy skin and so moist and tender was the meat (including the breast), it tasted just like the tender morsels of chicken rice chicken! Unbelievable. Maybe I'm the last person on earth to have discovered perfect roast chicken, but just in case I'm not ^__^, I thought I'd share my adapted recipe here. It's actually very common and can be found on Epicurious too - click here for Thomas Keller's version. Keller gives an excellent explanation of the dish and there are loads of reviews of the dish which you can peruse to pick up tips on how to improve the dish. In my adapted recipe, I actually omit the oil/butter, following Keller's explanation.
Simple roast chicken (adapted from Joy of Cooking, Neil Perrt & Thomas Keller)
(Sorry there is no picture! :()
1 tb sea salt *
1 whole chicken, about 1.4kg or 3 lb
1 - 2 whole unpeeled bulbs of garlic (optional)
1. Pre-heat oven at 190 degrees. Remove the head and legs of chicken. Wash the chicken and pat it dry inside and out.**
2. (optional) Stuff the chicken with the garlic bulbs. ***
3. Truss the chicken. ****
4. Cover the chicken with sea salt all round. Place chicken on shallow baking tray, breast meat facing down and roast in middle of oven for 55 minutes. ***** Let the chicken rest for a short period before serving it. Enjoy!
* Don't use a heaped tablespoon of salt. Just a flat tablespoon or slightly less will do. The salt makes the skin crispy and helps to keep the moisture in, but too much will make the skin too salty!
** Make the chicken as dry as humanly possible! Don't even think of saving on the disposable kitchen towels - the drier the better! Thomas Keller has a good explanation on why this should be. Click here for his explanation.
*** The garlic is for garlic lovers like me. You'll get lovely roasted garlic as the end product!
**** I truss the chicken BEFORE spreading the sea salt because being an amateur truss-er, if I salt the chicken FIRST, I'll rub off the salt during the trussing process. Ha. Trussing the chicken may sound intimidating, but all you need is string and the ability to tie double knots! Trussing the chicken basically means to use string to pull the tips of the drumsticks tightly together and also to pull the tips of the wings as close to the body of the chicken as possible so that they hug the body. Trussing helps makes the roasting more even.
***** A 1.5 kg chicken will take 55 minutes; 1.6kg chicken - 1 hour; 1.8 kg, 65-70 minutes. And yes, you read correctly, there is NO NEED to flip the chicken halfway through! Just dump the chook in and 55 minutes or so later, voila! The perfect roast chicken! I kid you not!
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* Einstein Never Used Flash Cards - How Our
Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize less
* The Bible
* Love & Respect by Dr Emerson Eggerichs
* What to Expect When You're Expecting
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