Moments in My Life

Some days I am just too lazy make a proper lunch for ourselves (me and my son). So some tortilla, pizza sauce, cheese and whatever you can find in your refridgerator will come in handy. We bought the pizza sauce from Trader Joe’s and it is definitely something you want to keep in your pantry. It is very delicious, but don’t use too much as it may be too salty. Two to three table spoon per tortilla is more than enough.

My son loves to sprinkle the cheese on it.

That particular day, we had some button mushrooms and ham so I quickly sliced them up and sprinkled on top of the cheese.

Pop it into the oven at 350 degree until the cheese melted. Turn off the oven and turn on the broiler for about 3-5 minutes to brown the cheese. Here’s the pizza we had for lunch that day. We made two. One for him and one for me.

Just a note to myself so that I remember to visit Pat & Oscar’s Restaurant on Mother’s Day May 9th to get a Free Kid’s Meal with an order for an Adult Meal $5 and up.

Brandon always like Pat & Oscar’s Restaurant and we often visit.  What we like to eat?  Marinara sauce pasta for Brandon.  BBQ Baby back ribs.  Their pizza is good too.  But do remember to order their garlic bread which we love very much.  They usually will give you a piece while you are waiting in line to order your food. 

After I dropped Brandon off at his pre-school, I went to Torrance Farmer’s Market.  Then only I went to pick up my free Subway Breakfast Muffin (Free Breakfast Muffin from 7am to 11am) at the outlet near Walmart on 190th St. 

There was a line, but not that long.  The Subway girl was telling us the line moved very quickly and it should not be too long of a wait.

It took me 10 minutes. I ordered their Sausage Breakfast Muffin. They also gave out free coffee with muffin. I took it home and wanted to save it for lunch. It was only 10:30am then. But the muffin was too tempting so I ate it! It was good and I will definitely go back for it again. At $2.00 a piece, is an OK price.

Our trip is coming up soon.  We will be flying on Eva Air.  This has been my regular airline to fly with when I travel to Malaysia.  I have accumulated enough miles for an upgrade from Taipei to KL from economy to Premium Laurel Class (Business Class).  It requires 15,000 miles for an upgrade.  Even Brandon had enough miles after his last flight to KL, he has a little bit over 15K miles on his account.  So both of us will be flying in style from TPE to KL, which has a flight time of 4 hours 45 minutes.  We were given a choice to pick our own meal online before the flight and I hope they are good.

We will be having these as our main course:

Panfried Salmon Fillet Toped with Light Curry Cream Sauce
Accompaniment:
• Our deep-sea salmon is rich in healthy oils like the Omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA served with light curry sauce. Let you engohighly nutritious meal that is as good for you as it tastes.

Din Tai Fung Stewed Beef Shank with Noodle Soup
Accompaniment:
• Stir Fried Preserved Vegetable

Are the pictures making you hungry? They sure did to me. My stomach was growling as I was typing this and posting the pictures up.

Hubby had made reservation at The Lawry’s Steakhouse and presented the dinner for two to me on Christmas morning. Surprisingly to me, he even arranged the babysitting service with my SIL for that evening without me knowing it. He said that it would be a nice way to celebrate our 10th year wedding anniversary. He likes prime rib. I do too but I didn’t want to over eat. I heard they have different cut of prime rib (24oz, 16oz) and saw some pictures of the dish and side dishes at Yelp. The food was supposely good but the pictures don’t look too appertizing to me, especially the side dishes. That’s the reason I suggested to Hubby to cancel the reservation. Of course, he was disappointed. But yet we still made the night out to a nearby Japanese Yakitori Restaurant - Shin Sen Gumi (Torrance).

We arrived at 5:30pm, it was just a 5 minute drive from our home. But the place was not opened yet. So we drove around and came back at 6pm and it was almost filled with customers. We asked to be seated by the bar. We were given an order list, and we checked what we wanted. We picked all those non-regular stuff which we don’t eat at home. Hubby also ordered a plate of yellowtail sashimi.

The chefs are very friendly indeed. Two of them were busy yakitori-ing (grilling) the customers’ orders behind the bar (see picture below). The hot green tea we ordered was great idea with the raining weather outside. We were really warm. I even took out my jacket. This place is small and it was full very soon after we were seated.

Everything was very good. Unexpectedly, I was very full after the meal. I was actually quite done with my meal when they served the 4th or 5th stick. But Hubby had ordered so much and amazingly we finished everything.

Now are you ready to see what we had (without Brandon with us)??

Here goes …

We were all done by the time it was 7pm and we got back to my IL’s place around 7:15pm to pick up Brandon. He was good, and playing with his Lego toys my SIL got him for Christmas. So total time we left him there with my IL was 1 hour 45 mins. We may try it for longer the next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!! We’ll be having dinner at MIL’s house tonite. So I thought I will bring some dessert over for the dinner.

I was into a mood in making dessert/snack/pastries lately. Today I made Kuih Lapis. Bought a box of flour mix - Kruathip Coconut Layer Cake (Kuih Lapis). From the picture of the box, the dessert looks very delicious. I checked out the method and it was not difficult to make at all. The package has a mixture of rice flour, tapioca flour, vanilla powder and sugar. It is a product from Thailand. All I need to add is 230ml of coconut milk. I also bought a new bottle of pandan paste/flavoring/coloring. The price for the box of flour is $0.99 and the pandan paste is $0.99.

Ingredients

Two bowls of mixture - one pandan and one normal white

Steaming the pandan layer

Pandan Kuih Lapis / Coconut Layer Cake

Verdict: It is very easy to follow the instruction and I was able to finish all the steps in 30 minutes. The package didn’t indicate what size of pan we should use for steaming. I used a 9″ baking pan and could only manage very tightly to get 4 layers. The texture is not as smooth as seen on the picture in the box. The taste is OK, it is chewy, unlike the 9 layers kuih we used to eat in Malaysia. I wonder if I should add more coconut milk to it next time to make the texture smoother. May be I will try making this kuih recipe from scratch if I have the time.

A packet of ‘Bak Kut Teh’ (BKT) was going to expire soon, so I planned ahead to make this special dish for Tuesday dinner. A few ingredients were missing and I had to drive out to get them on Tuesday afternoon when my MIL was over here playing with Brandon. I bought the enoki mushrooms, pork neck bones and ‘tau fu pok’. It was a whole afternoon affair making this soup. As soon as my son napped, I started the cooking.

First I prepared a small pot of boiling water for the Chinese mushrooms to soak. The pork meat (pork sirloin) was cut up the day before and stored in the refridgerator. I boiled a big pot of water to blanch the meat and bones. While the water was boiling, I peeled up a lot of garlics. Then I took them out and put all in a clean bowl of water. And with that, I started boiling another big pot of water for the soup base. I cleaned up the pork bones and meat of any impurities and set them aside.

When the big pot of water started boiling, I added the pork bones and meat into it. Of course, I also threw in the 2 packets of Bak Kut Teh soup base as well as the 1 whole peeled garlic. Next in the cleaned mushroom with the stem cut. I added some dark soy sauce, light soy sauce and salt. When it boiled, I turned the heat to simmer.

Brandon woke up from his nap at around this time. I turned on the DVD to keep him busy. As the BKT is simmering, I prepared the enoki mushrooms, lettuce and ‘tau fu pok’. Again, a pot of boiling water is needed and I blanched all of them in the sequence. As for the ‘tau fu pok’, my intention was to get rid some of the oil by soaking them in the hot water. On the side, I also made blanched broccoli for Brandon, just in case if he chose not to eat the lettuce. The rice was in the cooker cooking at this time.

Wonderful smell of BKT was filling up my kitchen. Yummy! I was getting hungry too. The soup base was alot and I knew we couldn’t finish it in one meal, so I set up another smaller pot and put in all the side ingredients - enoki mushrooms, lettuces and ‘tau fu pok’ and scooped half of the soup base plus the meat into this smaller pot. Once this small pot came to a boil, I turn off the heat and it was ready to serve!

Brandon loves this soup a lot and he finished up every single grain of rice in his plate and even asked for a second bowl of the soup. As I was helping him to finish up his dinner, Hubby was washing up the dishes. Yes, he always finishes FIRST during our meal. I told him to wash everything except for the big pot of soup base as that needed to be cool down before storing.

After Brandon finished his dinner, I went into the kitchen to scoop out the meat and bones of the BKT for storage. As the soup was still hot (not warm), I left the soup in the big pot to fasten the cooling process for both, the soup and the meat. Then I took out a bowl of udon soup that was inside the refridgerator to throw away and also to make room for my BKT. I told Hubby, “This throw away,” passing him the bowl. Then I went to the living room with Brandon as I was still chatting with Hubby over the little window that opened up from the living room to the kitchen.

After a minute or two, I came back inside the kitchen area and I saw the big pot of BKT soup base was no longer on the stove! Of course I was shocked! I went bizzare! I asked him, “What was in your thought when you poured away the HOT soup? Why? Why? Why did you throw it away?” Hey come on, is not that he didn’t know. The soup was still hot and you don’t usually just chuck hot water down the drain like that. And he said during dinner that he likes the soup BEST! And I really wonder what was going on in his mind when he threw out the whole pot of soup that he likes? The leftover could have save me an afternoon of hard work preparing dinner as I can just reheat it and add more enoki mushrooms, lettuce and ‘tau fu pok’. But now with it gone … aiyo … I have to slave myself again for dinner tonite. I was crying and laughing at the same time … really! I just don’t get it why he threw away the soup. He replied me, “I am stupid mar.” That didn’t help to soothe down the fire in me.

And with all this craziness was going on in the kitchen, Brandon thought it was funny and he kept running with me laughing about his Mommy and Daddy craziness. It was his laughter that cool down the fire in me.

And this is not the first time ever he did something like that.

Living in a foreign country is not easy, especially when comes to food.  I do miss having nice warm soup noodle for breakfast or roti canai or nasi lemak.  But we have to get to do with what we can get here.  Usually Brandon and I only eat bread with peanut butter and jelly for breakfast.  Sometimes I will eat cereal and milk, sometimes toast up frozen waffles and spread them with butter and top with some syrup.  But today, we got some warm delicious home prepared Steamed BBQ Port Rice Noodle (Char Siew Cheung Fun) as our Sunday brunch. 

We were at Chinatown yesterday and I bought a small piece of BBQ pork (Char siew).  I also bought a box of flat rice noodle, no cut.  I left the rice noodle on the counter top but refrigerated the BBQ pork in a container. 

After we came home from our morning errand this morning, I started to prepare our brunch. I took out the BBQ pork and diced it to smaller pieces. Then I opened up the box of flat rice noodle. I slowly separated two layers of the noodles and placed it on a big plate.

Spread some BBQ pork on the noodles in the center and then fold the rice noodle up from the bottom once, and then from top to down once.

Set it aside to the plate.

Heat up a wok with some water to steam the noodles for about 5 to 8 minutes.

I made my own soy sauce with some sugar and sweetened dark soy sauce. The amount of seasoning is up to your liking.

Wah lah … our brunch - BBQ PORK RICE NOODLE (Char Siew Cheung Fun).

You will need: Tilapia, slices of ginger, slices of garlic, green onions, tomato (optional) salt and white pepper.

I bought a swimming Tilapia this morning and steamed it for our lunch and ate it with rice.

The Tilapia was cleaned out with the fins and tail off at the market. At 99 Ranch Market, swimming/live Tilapia sells at $3.99/lb. The fish I got was slightly over a pound, a little over $4.

When I came home, I rinsed it with tap water again to remove whatever stuck to it. I pat it dry with paper towel. Then I put two light cut on each side of the fish to open up the meat slightly for cooking. Next, I sprinkled some salt and white pepper and pat the seaoning down with my hand.

While I was preparing the steps above, I had a wok with water boiling. I spread the sliced gingers, garlics, green onions and tomatoes all over the fish, underneath and the top as well. Whatever were left, I put all on the sides.

When the water is boiling, I put the plate with the fish into the wok. I cooked it for 8 minutes with medium heat. After 8 minutes, I turned off the heat but left the lid on until serving.

Here is a picture of the steamed Tilapia. Easy, healthy and delicious too!