I have just enough time to sneak in one last entry before 2007 dawns upon us. We just returned from a 9-day road trip to So Cal. We drove through the unparalleled beauty of the Central California coast, stopping at Carmel, Cambria, Moonstone Beach, Santa Barbara, and finally resting at Long Beach to visit friends & spend Christmas there.
More pictures will be on my flickr account soon. But for now, here's a video & a pic. The video shows Daniel & Daddy chillin' along Santa Barabara beach, where we made a stop for lunch and I photoshopped a pic from the same lunch.
It was probably one of the best lunches we had. And the tail end of our trip wasn't that great actually, since Daniel fell sick, followed by myself, and then Husband. We all caught some virus that made us throw up a lot. Needless to say, we're glad to be home now, and recovering.
Look out for more pics on flickr!
This Christmas, I decided to bake some cranberry white chocolate & oatmeal cookies for neigbours & friends. The recipe can be found here, though I'd like to suggest one change - the cookies should be baked at 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) and for only 10 minutes. When removed from the oven, they may still be slightly soft, but they firm up when cool and this will ensure a crunchy outside with a soft chewy inside.
We just completed our move to a larger apartment to prepare for our second kid's arrival. And to christen our new home, I purchased a beautiful fiber optic Christmas tree from Goodwill for all of $4.50 USD! I love looking at the twinkling lights - and it makes our home so cosy!
Blessed Christmas to all!
After a rather long bout of lacklustre foodblogging, you could say that I'm starting to get on a roll again. Note: I never stopped cooking - I just stopped experimenting with new dishes. Reason: a 15 month old creature named Daniel & a 27 week old squidge named Benjamin (yes we have a name!) Try taking care of an active toddler while being pregnant at the same time and see if you have enough mental space to think up new recipes!
Well, perhaps because Husband is now busily studying for his finals, and because my a cappella concert is over, I finally have more quiet personal time to start thinking of new dishes - and during one of my bouts of daydreaming, I came across two easy recipes from Saveur which I instantly knew would work. Hoisin pork ribs. *DROOL* The recipe: (a slightly adapted version from Saveur's) 1 pound (400-450g) of pork ribs (in America, Chinese supermarkets cut the ribs crosswise, through the bone. But any cut will do methinks, so long as it's got more meat than bone!) marinated in 4tb hoisin sauce, 2tb light soya sauce, 2tb vegetable oil & 2tb minced garlic; then, grilled (in America, they call it "broiled") on the top shelf of the oven, at the oven's maximum temperature - 8 minutes per side (or until cooked through, with little flecks of yummy burnt bits)
The complement to this meaty dish was the deliciously pungent Garlic Noodles. OK, I am absolutely in love with this dish. It is the absolute kicker of the month - say it with me: GARLIC NOODLES. *YUMS*. Now why didn't I think of that before? To make: (once again, a slightly adapted version from Saveur's - you guessed it, I added much more garlic!) mince an entire bulb of garlic and saute in hot oil till brown and fragrant (even slightly burnt is good methinks!) While doing this, cook 2 portions of Taiwanese noodles, i.e., enough for Husband & myself, in boiling water (Taiwanese noodles is white, the kind used for Zha Jiang Mian) and drain. Add immediately to the pungent garlic and stir thoroughly. Mix in 2ts light soy sauce and 1ts oyster sauce. Thrown in 4tb chopped spring onions. Serve immediately. Enjoy this amazing dish! I can still taste the garlic in my mouth - lovely!
So Daniel is 15 months now. And his awareness & intelligence has really grown. Pardon me while I go on and on about what must seem pretty elementary stuff - I guess I'm still in the "you mean my son actually has a brain?" stage cos a very short while ago, Daniel was still this semi-immobile squidge "ackk"-ing away in the corner of our eyes. *Enter Loud And Mobile Daniel Front & Centre*. Here are some memorable encounters with the little tyke just from the past week:
1. Daniel walks into our bedroom, points at Husband & yells repeatedly, "Da Da! Da Da! Da Da!"
This is significant because: It's the first evidence that he knows that "Da Da" refers to his daddy.
The next day, Daniel walks into our bedroom in the afternoon and points to the same spot in the bed where Husband lay the day before. "Da Da! Da Da?" He says, gesticulating with his hands as if to ask, "Where?"
2. Husband brings Daniel to my a cappella group's Christmas concert. We hide him way up in the balcony so that he won't "disturb" people. But everytime I'm on stage (which is pretty much throughout the entire 1h 30 min concert), Daniel yells, "Ma Ma! Ma Ma! EEEEOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOW!!!" and claps frantically.
This is significant because: It proves he knows who I am! (FINALLY!) Plus, he has darn good eye sight man! I mean, I must be like 2cm tall from way back in the balcony. You go Dan!
3. I'm showing Daniel pictures in a book. On one page with many different pictures, I ask him, "Daniel, where's the grape? Where's the grape?" I'm expecting him to point to the grape but instead he walks away. So I think he's lost interest. But then he returns with a half-eaten grape in his hand! It had been lying around on the floor and he picked it up and passed it to me.
This is significant because: A) He must have walked passed the grape earlier and remembered that it was there. B) He knew it was called a grape. C) He understood my question and obediently answered it by giving me a grape!
As important as how and what you cook, is how you pair dishes together to form a nice, balanced meal. I was particularly pleased with my food pairing for dinner a few nights ago - not only because both dishes were easy to whip up, but also because they complemented each other well. What did I cook? Grilled hoisin salmon and dashi bean salad, served with steamed rice. For the salmon, it was as easy-peasey as slabbing on hoisin sauce on a salmon fillet and grilling it for 8 minutes. And the dashi bean salad, something I made from memory (the ever creative SY once made it for all of us), was created by chucking the beans in boiling water till green and cooked, then mixing with 1tb sugar, 1tb soya, 1tb mirin, 1/2 cup dashi, 1ts sesame oil and roasted sesame seeds. There's something about salmon and green beans that go particularly well together, methinks. The deep sweet hoisin sauce was the perfect complement to the pink slightly undercooked and thus soft-and-not-too-jelat salmon meat, which contrasted in texture and taste with the still-crunchy and bright green beans, which were softened by the sweet-salty-and slightly nutty taste of the dressing. Yums!
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