Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Lunch & Dinner

31st Oct (Tue)

With the extra rice I cooked in the morning, I did a sukiyaki pork for lil' one and finished the last remaining teriyaki chicken in the packet for her dinner.

1st Nov (Wed)

The sukiyaki pork that was too salty for lil’ one’s last night dinner is used to cook her lunch - sukiyaki pork udon. I simply added water to dilute the “sauce” and added a little dashi stock to it - really “two dots”

An explanation on why the sukiyaki is too saltish - it’s not the usual brand I use. I can’t seem to find that brand now. And it was the one I sent over to che-che! That brand costs USD$26.99 for that bottle in Walmart. Siao! 

See I have proof. I no bluff!

#donotwastefood#

Taste yummy. Really like eating in a restaurant. First time she finished all her udon. I'm beginning to suspect I'm a better cook for japanese food than chinese.   


SEK FAN (DINNER)
Sent her to school and then came back home to prepare dinner. 

I’m  trying to cook soup but it sounds like Ms Thermie is struggling with the ๐Ÿ– ๐Ÿฆด. ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿคฃ. I think I better cook it over ๐Ÿ”ฅ.


Rice n veggie cooked before I got the message for early dismissal from her. But she Aricia Ting won’t eat veggies at all 
☹️
 so gave her some shiitake mushrooms instead.


At least the soup looks ok. Only lil’ one had to say it tastes different. That becoz the stalls put rock sugar and possibly MSG.



This recipe requires one to fry the fish first before preparing the sauce and then mix fry them. So I only managed to fry the fish, covered the pan and ran out of the house. Came back to continue frying fish with sauce.
Like that also can 
๐Ÿ˜‚
.
I reduced the sauces to 1tbsp each. 
Verdict : Not bad not bad, this recipe is a keeper.


Broccoli with fresh shitake mushroom

Steamed egg tofu.
3 + 1 soup dinner is served


I tried dishing out her dinner in this prisoner plate. Quite a good idea, it's like back to the toddler days.  


7th Nov (Tue)

Cheated on dinner today. I was too lazy to cook anything. She ends school early on Tuesdays this term and I feel I need the time to laze and do nothing; no way I was going to slave myself in the kitchen. Haha! So asked hubby to pack dishes back. Maybe next week ah-nia will feel like it will cook dinner? When I get out from the wrong side of the bed.     

8th Nov (Wed)

Her lunch consist of : ToriQ chicken which I had pre-marinated and portioned out for cooking whenever I need. And the onsen egg which is not onsen but hard-boiled coz she don't like onsen eggs. Che-che likes onsen eggs. You see these two girls troublesome or not?!

I left a mess behind as I left the kitchen to send her to school. Left behind the oily mess for heating up the toriQ which splattered oil on me ๐Ÿ˜ข. 


Dinner

Wanted to cook lotus roots soup but blur me remembered to buy lotus roots the day before but forgot about pork bones. Thankfully I have some dumplings which I had wrapped before and I thought I shall just cook normal chicken soup as we have chicken broth that is expiring soon.

Used Marion's Kitchen Wonton Soup recipe which tastes like the soup served in those wanton noodles stall. This is halved portion.   

I was looking back at the recipes which I bookmarked in my handphone notes and recalled I probably cooked an eggplant dish before. Turns out it is Ma Po Eggplant in Garlic Sauce. Link to recipe is HERE. 

My dish (then. Cooked on 5th Dec 2021) looked like this as I did some adjustment to the recipe significantly the sambal oelek and vinegar


Spice and Pan's Super Easy Braised Eggplant in Garlic Sauce w/ Minced Meat ้ฑผ้ฆ™่Œ„ๅญ Chinese Brinjal with Pork Recipe is really easy to cook. Note : I omitted the black vinegar as lil' one doesn't like vinegar


Dinner is easy lazy, I topped up with CP's honey chicken which I popped into the oven.  

At 4.25pm, I finished assembling the food for lil' one and got ready to leave home. Every day like that.. sometimes siao siao teacher dismiss them early; sometimes on the dot. So for the next 3 years I will be living my life on standby. 
Trying this dish plate out for the first time, I think I put too little hot water between the metal plate and pink cover. Dish wasn't hot even less than half an hour later.  


Honey chicken all shredded for her.


Our journey usually takes 17-20 mins or maybe more, so every minute is precious. She's a slow eater so ...... eat while on the go. 

15th Nov (Wed) 
I surrender  ๐Ÿณ️ , didn’t cook for her lunch 

Dinner
Something simple. The cut lotus root, I didn’t realise, expired on 8th! It has a shorter lifespan than (maybe) the huge uncut ones? We can't finish that also lah!  I bought the prepack cut lotus  on the 7th and I don’t mind spending a little more $$ on this pack of cut lotus root as it prevents wastage especially in my household’s cooking schedule.


Lil’ one’s purple colour soup. I added some scallops for sweetness and this time I only boiled less than a litre of water. Hopefully no wastage. 

Ginger Pork with scallion. This is a repeat recipe (which I used to say it tastes like Restaurant 121’s slice pork & cooked during CB - 23/4/20)
I couldn’t find ไบ”่Šฑ่‚‰ which is the shoulder butt, so got the hind leg part. So what I learnt is shoulder butt has more fats and hind leg is leaner.  

Kailan with mushroom

Packed this out for lil' one to eat some in the car. 

21st Nov (Tue)
Only cooked rice and hubby packed dishes home. Lazy day!

22nd Nov (Wed)
Feeling so lazy to cook just coz she ends school at 3pm. So just cooked soup and hubby packed fried rice for dinner. The lotus roots, tho I froze it, had a faint smell so it means it’s better that I batch boil the soup and then remove the lotus root and portion it for another meal. Deal! That sounds like a good (and lazy) idea, anything to make my job easier the second time but they don’t like to repeat the dishes that frequent. Sigh.....

Now I get an idea what is the ideal amount of water to put and how many pieces of pork bones if I'm cooking a small portion, no wastage.

Prepared this easiest - 6 eggs this time round 


29th Nov (Wed) 
Did a quick check on what’s in the superbly messy kitchen and found 2 bags of opened satay. Sigh… That’s the problem when nobody checks and just keep opening packs and packs of the same thing. Decided to clear one bag and the fish tofu for dinner, freezer still looks nowhere closer to tidiness. 

Lunch 
Lunch was her requested soba but ran out of soba (BUT a lot of udon) in the dry pantry. Cooking was much faster this round as I didn’t have to boil the egg, I used the “onsen egg” that I had prepared days earlier. 
Didn’t take any photos coz was rushed for time as I needed to clear the kitchen while she eats n I send her to school after that. 

๐ŸฒDinner

First attempt in chicken feet, for the man only. My hair stood when I held the raw feet even with a food glove. How can people eat chicken feet and pig trotters? No thank you but l'd rather take collagen powder.

Thank goodness only 3 toes and 1 claw x 8 pcs (very difficult to find chicken feet, I went to so many NTUCs and CS to find. And when I found it, it was left with the last pack). Yet again it's just so disgusting to chop the nail part off, I was doing the countdown "1-2-3-4" n mumbled to self "thank goodness only 8 pieces ๐Ÿ˜‚ " I wanted to turn my head away but I didn't want to add my fingers tz/ into the dish.

Braised in pot for a short while before I transferred into the slow cooker.

Recipe is a keeper but the next time I cook I'll cook more (good luck to myself counting 1-2-3-4), and add lesser chilli so mom can eat, it's her favourite.




Meal prep was relatively easy, I cooked the chicken feet first. Left to pick lil’ one and then continued to cook the rests. Took lesser time as 2 dishes are ready meals ๐Ÿ˜ฌ. If only all meal preparation are like this so relaxing. No soup today as I didn’t have any more ingredients apart from the soup bones. This is what I face when I don’t meal plan at all. 

Recipe for chicken feet : https://redhousespice.com/chicken-feet/
Took this coz there are lazy steps, firstly I didn’t have to deep fry the chicken feet and do a cold bath after that for all the other recipes I checked. 
Tweaks : 
1) It was a small pack of 8 chicken feet so I think only 200+g??
2) 4 dried chilli for braising which I used 9g of sliced dried chilli as the packet was already opened. 
Amendments to make the next time I prepare this : 
1) definitely should put lesser water. I put 400ml thinking that after being in a slow cooker, the water will get lesser but no… I think I would prefer a thicker saucy type? 
2) lesser dried chilli. 


8th Dec (Fri)
It’s been days since I last cooked. With the convenience of finding food (and not to mention we’re spoilt for choice) easily in Singapore, somehow I don’t miss cooking ๐Ÿ˜œ. But there’s an urgency to clear some ingredients in the fridge and freezer so ่€ๅจ˜้œ€่ฆไธ‹ๆ‰‹ ๐Ÿ‘ฉ‍๐Ÿณ 

Dinner 
1) ่€้ป„็“œๆฑค๐Ÿฅฃ in a small pot, all my pork bones have been portioned out before freezing. So clever! But I really feel like cooking a huge pot then freeze it for another day’s meal. I’m left with another half of the old cucumber so will need to cook it soon. 

2) French bean with chilli doubanjiang. Initially I wanted to cook ๅ››ๅญฃ่ฑ† style but I was lazy to re-pack the new-still-in-styrofoam-tray mince pork ๐Ÿ˜‚. As I was cooking this dish, I thought maybe adding chai poh will make it nice but I don’t have any at home, maybe next time. 

3) Ginger pork with scallion (last cooked this on 15th Nov. The portioned meat was left outside the boxes so it’s within sight. 

4) Honey soy Chicken. 
Used this recipe : 

Ingredients

  • ½ cup soy sauce
  • 6 tablespoons honey (I used Kumamoto’s expensive honey) 
  • 3 tablespoons rice vinegar (I used the keto compliant rice vinegar)
  • 3 tablespoons rice wine (such as Shaoxing) or mirin or dry sherry (I used Shaoxing) 
  • 3 garlic cloves minced (I used the pre-minced garlic so it was based on estimate) 
  • 1 tablespoon minced ginger (eyeball the amount) 
  • 1 teaspoon sriracha (See Note 1) (i omitted this)
  • 2-3 pounds chicken breasts or thighs(See Note 2) (not applicable to the amt I was cooking)
Dishes for dinner tonight

I used the clean marinade, didn’t pour all into marinating the chicken joints. 1/2 cup of soy + the rests does add up the volume, definitely more than enough for 11 joints. 
Clean marinade - heated over fire and thickened with corn starch. Didn’t pour over the chicken just incase lil’ one wanted more chicken. 

Lil’ one’s share coz she prefers to sit on the dining table. I simply don’t understand why hubby likes to sit at the coffee table, so low …. why have a dining table then? 

Lil’ one has egg tofu which looks really weird without the mince pork. But since egg tofu is going to expire on 23rd Dec, I decided to quickly finish it.

Lil’ one didn’t like the chicken, she gagged on the smell of Shaoxing wine ๐Ÿคฃ. Noticed that the man also didn’t particularly like ginger scallion pork dish most times too. Hmm…
She prefers the honey chicken from CP and asked me to replicate the taste. Eh….she thinks so highly of her mom


Read the E-E-E’s, artificial honey flavour … Ever wonder what we put inside our body? 


No need to buy anymore proteins. Will probably need to get vegetables, I think I will only cook another 1-2x before our holiday.


13th Dec (Wed)

Clearing out the green beans and newly purchased brinjal, cleared the other half of the old cucumber. 
Not many dishes tonight coz I have lots of ironing to do. 

Old cucumber soup, basil chicken, fried veggies with chilli doubanjiang

Is this my last cook for the year? Haha! Why am I so lazy?
 







   


No comments: