Comforting....

We still have tons of rice noodles that are gifted to us. I don't cook rice noodles often enough to lower our inventory at steady rate. This week, however, I cooked fried rice noodles twice. This time, I had shrimp and sliced fish cake in it, with also generous amount of julienned carrots and thinly sliced cabbage. It rained heavily this afternoon and I felt great to have this type of food that I grew up with for lunch.

We Will Be Well Fed...

My mother in law cares about us deeply, no doubt about that. She is a very kind and generous lady. When she gives us things, she gives them in an outrageous amount. Always. Much more than we could possibly need. I don't think she has trouble remembering how she has given to us. God bless her, this 80-something year old lady has a very sharp mind and healthy body.

She likes to give us rice noodles that come in a huge 2.5kg bag. We have never been able to finish up one bag on our own so far. We constantly give some of them away to help reducing the inventory in a speedy manner. This time, we were way behind again. Or maybe the supply just comes too soon. We still had some, despite our efforts to give some away and we got a big bag in December. That has not been used yet and we got another 2.5 kg again after a visit to her house for Chinese New Year today. We now have enough rice noodles or many years to come.

So why don't we say no or tell her that we still have some? Because that has been done it did not work. We failed miserably. Life is a lot simpler with her by taking what she gives. The rice noodles do not cost much, but we know how much the joy that she experiences by giving and we, simply accepting. It is priceless. There it is. Loads of rice noodles!

All In One Bowl!

I really-really want to bake more cookies and cakes, but we just have too much food around. We still have cookies and brownies as well. We should work on finishing them first before we get into more baking.

Over the weekend, we baked some cut-out Christmas cookies and we still have quite a bit left. My little one baked brownies at school and brought home most of them. I am trying not to excessively stack up food around the house unnecessarily, irregardless the reason. I have sent away a couple jars of cookies, baked one loaf of panettone for my niece and nephew in Jakarta too. We have not been very good eaters, which is good and bad. Good, because that means that everyone of us has a good control of what he/she eats. Bad, because when one stops eating, one does stop eating and the foods, no matter how tempting they are, will be left alone.

Anyway, I had fried rice noodles for lunch yesterday. It was Friday, no-meat day for me. I mixed some cabbage, carrots and sliced spring onions in there. They should be quite healthy, I got my important daily needs one bowl!

08-08-08

After traveling 137,000 kilometers through 130 cities in 130 days, the sacred flame finally arrived at Beijing 101 Middle School today. The countdown to Beijing Olympic Games ended and the games officially will be open tonight. I am now counting down the days for school to start, 10 more days!! I am looking forward to seeing swimming, it will be so exciting to see 41-year old Dara Torres making an attempt to snatch 50m freestyle gold and maybe break a new world record. Yay for women in the 40s!! She is so fantastic!



Thanks to my M-I-L's recent delivery, our dry rice noodles stock has gone up to nearly 5kg from previously half of those. Around March she send a 2.5kg bag of rice noodles, which we used up probably just 1/4 of it. In June, prior to our trip, we received another 2.5kg. We shipped off the older bag to others and kept the new one and left for one-month trip.

So now, in less than three weeks upon our return, again we got another 2.5 kg. She loves us so much! I wonder why DH couldn't explain to her that we still have so much of it. My guess would be that it's a lot easier to just take it and go and worry about passing it on to someone else later as typically the case. Yes, they definitely will find a new place soon.

So here is my effort to use up the rice noodles: fried noodles with eggs, carrot, cabbage and green onions! Now we have around maybe around 4.8 kg to go!