Stuck With The Soup

The past many weeks here have been extremely hot and humid and I could not help thanking our air-conditioning system that has been behaving well and giving us the the comfort that we need around the house. It is so hot that the two bags of chocolate chips that I bought last week, have melted and clumped into one bar. I am yet to decide what to do with them. Cooking and baking make me sweat like mad as if I went to sauna. An unpleasant one!

We had two dark and cooler mornings in the past two days. In fact, it rained this morning and yesterday too. Naturally I thought soup would be good for our dinner. Of course. I defrosted my minced pork as I was making pork ball soup with bamboo shoots. One of my favorites.

By 11AM, the sun started to shine and it just got hotter and hotter. But I refused to alter my plan, I just could not be bothered to think of something else to cook. I will turn the air-con down low, really low, when we have the soup. Just pretend we are down south, like in New Zealand, it's almost winter down there..... and enjoy the meal.

Popovers For The Breakfast Eater ...

I like the fact that one of my kids are a true breakfast eater, a big one. Being a believer in "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" myself, I would do whatever I can to support that. She likes hot breakfast and that is fine by me. Even though that only means that I need to get up earlier to fix something hot for her. That's what a mother is for. (Hmmm.... I just got a nomination of 2009 mother of the year?)

My youngest is just a half breakfast eater, most of the time she has no clue what she wants and she ends up having nothing, because she does not like most of easily prepared breakfast like cereal or toast or eggs. She settles with going to school without breakfast. However, something with cheese is more likely to bring out her appetite.

After an evening batch of popovers, she came up a bright idea that I should prepare some popovers for her on Monday morning. I said to her that it took a while to prepare them. She replied no, they didn't. That's true, they didn't take too long on Sunday evening when we prepared them. See, it's WE. She helped.

So are you going to be up by 5:45 to help me prepare them? Of course not! Well, I said, "We'll see how things are tomorrow."

The whole night I had a horrible sleep and each time I woke up, I thought of those popovers. Dang! I woke up way too many times to count. What a nightmare. Of course I ended up waking up at 5:45 Am, when the alarm went off and prepared a hot breakfast for my regular customer and started preparing the popovers by myself. The problem was they had to be ready by 6:45-6:50, as the princess needed to walk to the bus stop around 7:05. Tick tock-tick tock. Indeed, not so much time.

Love conquers everything, or almost everything, I guess. Waking up early, which for some people is not that early, is not a big deal. I used silicon cup cake cases this time and the results were of course different than those made using the metal popover pans. They are good too, they popped, holey and topped with cheese.

Honey, She Shrunk The Apple!

Early in April, one of my dear daughters cleaned up some parts of her room and dug out her Christmas stocking. (Yes, you read it correctly, Christmas stocking!!!) Almost like an archeological finding, she discovered a dehydrated fruit above.

Upon looking at the label attached to the fruit, we realized that it was an apple. It has shrunk to around an inch. Interesting isn't it?

Just For Fun...

Funnnn..... Watch your neck!

¡puǝʞǝǝʍ ʇɐǝɹƃ ɐ pɐɥ ǝuoʎɹǝʌǝ ǝdoɥ ı ˙˙˙˙˙ɯɯɥ ˙ɟɟnʇs unɟ sıɥʇ ƃuıʇsǝʇ puɐ pǝɹoq ɯɐ ı

How do you like reading upside down?

Thai Fried Chicken

It's almost like chicken week this week. Except for today, as usual, Friday is the non-meat day for us. I surrendered myself to the easiest way out - cooking chicken - chicken is widely accepted in this house. Yesterday, we had chicken again. This time it was Thai Fried Chicken. I watched an old Martha Stewart program that featured this recipe and started googling the recipes and compared them to the one on Martha's. The result is my own version, as usual. It has a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The usual Thai ingredients were used, fish sauce, ginger, brown sugar and pepper, plus hours of marinating the chicken. And I only used chicken wings... Yum...

Braised Chicken In Coconut Milk

I went to the kitchen the good aroma from one of our neighbor's kitchen spread into our kitchen. I told myself that I had to cook what I thought I smell. I never confirmed what it was for sure, but the smell led me into cooking this Braised Chicken In Coconut Milk, an Indonesian dish famously called Opor Ayam. I like this dish, a lot.

Mini Mac & Cheese

Preparing meals becomes a lot easier when one of the kids could specify what they actually want. Just like adults, sometimes they do not know what they want to eat. We do want to eat but we run out of ideas of what to eat. So it was such a major help when someone who came back from an 8-day trip said,"Just prepare Mac & Cheese...." That's not a demanding suggestion at all.....

See... communication does help. I am happy that a tween, by age category, could identify what see wants. More often that not, when I ask the other family members what they want for dinner, I got some sort of no answer. A reply of "I don't know.." or " I will eat whatever you cook..." or DH's classic answer " Don't cook tonight, go and have a rest...." is not really helpful, because in the end, we all need and want to eat. We will be hungry by whatever time it will be. Even if I don't cook, we still need to eat something and what would that be?

With these Mini Mac & Cheese, I also prepared garlic bread and Baby Arugula Salad with homemade blue cheese dressing. Good meal.

Strawberry Galette

Strawberries seem to be back in town, they are available in many supermarkets around and there are plenty to choose from. Of course they all are imported, mostly from the USA, some from New Zealand and Australia as well as South Korea. I got quite a bit of them myself. We froze some of them to make some strawberry slush. Some have been made into strawberries ice cream. The last batch that I bought, was baked yesterday for our dessert, Strawberry Galette.

Sweet & Sour Fish

My sous chef was back last night. Yay....

I had a Friday without my sous-chef and needed to prepare a simple entree for the two that were at home. The fish fillet that I bought in the morning was cut into small pieces and seasoned with salt. I put the pieces in a plastic bag and mixed them with a couple tablespoon of corn flour and left them for a while in the fridge until I was ready to fry. My sweet and sour sauce was a mix of several different chili sauce that I had plus tomato ketchup. I added water and sugar to my preference and thickened the sauce using a mix of cornflour and water. Done.

Getting Footwear On Saturday

It was Saturday and we had a plan to go out and look for some footwear to complement my girl's party outfit. Of course, I wanted to check out the kitchen section to see some stuff too. And there we were, we saw a sign that said "20% off on regular priced items". Great. To the toiletries and got some toothbrushes and face wash. To the kitchen sections, and I ended up getting stuff that I do not really need but made me happy, although it may be for a short while. Among them, more ramekins..... Hurray!

We did get some footwear. By we, I meant me and my daughter.

Oven Baked Chicken

There are times when we just need something simple to prepare and to eat, especially when there are only three people to feed. As much as we eat, we still can't eat too much and I don't want to waste complicated effort to prepare some little dish. I had three halves of chicken breast that I have pounded the day before that need to be used before they turn nasty so I thought I just oven-bake them. I first seasoned the breast with salt and pepper and then coated them with flour. I beat two eggs to dip the coated breast and coated them again flour mixture. The flour mixture that I have prepared had all sort of seasonings including salt, pepper, dried parsley and a few other things. Pan fry the chicken with a little bit of oil and to the oven they go. In a flash, dinner was ready.

Not Returned Yet...

The chef is officially bored. With the man of the house being away too, she can't really cook as much as she wants to. The only two to be fed have been hardly home. The food inventory has been very slow moving, it's bad business like current state of our economy.

There were some brioche dough that needed clearing up, so I just popped it in with cheese (again) as the filling and had some of it for breakfast. The rest is waiting around to be consumed....

I was wrong. The normalcy has not quite returned yet and I should have known it. I know that each time one or two of my kids are away on school trip for many days, things are substantially different around the house. It's not that any of them are noisy, in fact they all tend to be be on the quieter side. But somehow, even when one is away, the house is simply not the same.

Saying Goodbye...

Normalcy returned, as two kids started school and one is being away for a school related conference. Works are piling up high as I have been setting them aside in the corner for a little while. It looks like they are due for attention.

This term will go very fast if not faster than any other terms. I know that time is time, it doesn't go fast or slow, it goes at its pace. It just feels faster than expected, I should say. Tons of planning needed as long holiday is approaching and many plans have been made by at least one particular kid, a legal adult now, who is going to college this Fall. Just yesterday, she was still a cute toddler.

This month, sadly, we had to say goodbye to our dear Land Cruiser that has taken us places so well, over the past nine years. She is missed... we hope her new owner treats her well.

Miss Her Already...

We took her to the airport and and left her with her group there after she checked in, hugged and kissed, and passed the immigration counter and waved goodbye for I don't know how many times.... and I miss her already. That was just a couple of hours ago.

She is now somewhere up there, on the plane heading to Melbourne and then to Tasmania for a Junior Conference. Sounds cool, huh? I am certain she'll have a great time there, although I am missing her here. Things are always different when one or two kids are away for a few days.

She is a "jet-setter" indeed. Last month she went to Malaysia and Cambodia. This month she is going to Melbourne and Tasmania. Next month, she will be traveling to Pulau Tioman, Malaysia and in June, July and August she will be heading to some two to three countries. How fortunate can a girl be?

I miss her..

Leaving

Finally we arrived at the final hours prior to leaving Siem Reap. The airport is small, but quite nice and clean. We waited at the business lounge, which was also quite small but not bad. They offered limited selection of snacks and drinks and I had my cappuccino there.



We had to walk to the plane and we were able to take picture of the sign board. we have been to many airport but were never able to do so.

The sunset behind the plane, which actually was a Vietnam Airlines' , made the picture look stunning, IMO. We took a sister carrier of Singapore Airlines, Silk Air. We're going home.

Til the next trip!

Last Lunch In Siam Reap

Our flight was 6:20 PM, we had plenty of time to kill after we checked out from our hotel. But first, we had our lunch at the restaurant of the hotel and had our picks from the menu. We love their fish cakes for appetizer, they were made thinner than we normally have in any other (Thai) restaurants, quite delicious.

Miss K had her pasta with Carbonara sauce, which was well cleaned up.

Yours truly had a plate of Pad Thai, that she could not finish, even with the help from the others.

The gentleman had his pasta with Alfredo chicken sauce, which appeared to be well liked.

For dessert, Miss K had a scoop of ice cream served on sliced apples with some cinnamon and sugar, which I thought was a bit too sweet and unattractive. It was, however, presented prettily.

More Pics From Siem Reap

An ice cream-bakery-cafe place in Old Market area - Psar Chaa.

One of the common souvenir shops in the Old Market Area, selling scarfs, wallets, key-chains, bags, etc.

From the street outside Angkor Wat.


One of the souvenir kiosk near of of the temples.






The above pictures are from The Jungle Temple - Ta Prohm.


View of The Terrace of the Elephants.