Sunny side up

It should have been just a simple breakfast of grilled portobello mushrooms and toast. But then L got creative with the Chinese New Year mandarins.

The starburst effect was very nice on a Monday when I was trying to pysch myself up to getting in to work after a weekend off. The Chinese New Year holidays are over.

(Yes, the paper napkin was stolen from where it says.)

Confucius would probably have said it

Fortune cookies aren't really part of Chinese New Year, let alone Chinese, but our neighbours gave us a box for the New Year. This was my fortune, and I suppose it should work for the year ahead.

"To succeed, we must first believe that we can."

Home cooked

Nothing says welcome home like breakfast at dinner time.

Tea time

... with the cute new doggy mug

Day off

... with cup cakes. Bought, not made. I'd never be able to do anything like this in a  million years.

'Atas' chips

Cheese and onion is so hoi polloi when you can have cheddar ... and mature cheddar at that.

Traditional breakfast

... at a non-breakfast hour. L bought me soon kueh.

Balanced meal

Protein, carbo, veg -- all groups in the food pyramid met.

Breakfast

A bowl of cornflakes isn't worth a picture,
but my pretty new cup and saucer is.

Monday night comfort dinner

Pasta with meatballs and homemade tomato sauce. L was too lazy to skin the tomatoes and grate the cheese (the yellow lumps loosely crumbled on top) but it tasted good anyway.

Breakfast at dinner time

There's something holidayish about having toast, sausage and eggs at an hour that's way later than brekkie time. 

Back to normal programming

The festive curries have come to an end, it's back to L's "patchwork" cooking. Tonight's dinner was meatball soup, made with all sorts of things chucked into the stock pot -- carrots, celery, gingko nuts and even a pork knuckle. It came together nice and meatily, and there's enough soup to last a day or two. It should be good with vermicelli rice noodles tomorrow.

Hari Raya is not over yet

More curry, dhal and biryani rice from the neighbours,

Eating all day

Breakfast

Mutton curry, chicken and sambal prawns from the neighbour's Hari Raya celebration.

Les roasted a chicken for dinner. That sausagey thing is a whole carrot wrapped in a bacon rasher and roasted with the chicken.

Saturday night dinner

Beef stew. Oxtail in Les's bowl, chunks of chuck tender in mine because I don't like fiddly bony bits of meat.

I had mine over ketupat, steamed cakes of pressed rice, left over from a Ramadan break-fast curry meal given to us by a neighbour. She cooked up a storm on the afternoon of the last day of Ramadan, and came over with the food before sundown because she wanted to share with us the specialities that they were having for their last break-fast. We felt more honoured than being invited over for Hari Raya, this was so much more intimate and family-like.

Back to posting food pix

Went off my feed for almost 3 weeks when I was ill. Good way to lose weight, I guess. Equally good to come back eating when L has a chicken in the oven. He's a "let's see what we have in the fridge" sort of cook. Hence chicken stuffed with a lemon, and drizzled with more lemon, and draped with bacon rashers, then shoved into the oven to roast. Not found in any recipe book, but hey, that's OK. It was tangy and anything with bacon can't be bad. It had the dogs sitting under the table, patiently waiting.

Baking today

Might as well, the house is clean, the husband is cooking dinner tonight, there's nothing else to do.

Staying in on Saturday night

Udon in chicken and mushroom clear broth is reason enough. The bowl is so full of stuff, betcha you can't even see the udon.

Breakfast at 4pm

Bread and eggs, so it's breakfasty stuff. There's a fancy name for it, but I've long forgotten. I call it bread and egg muffin. You shape a slice of bread into a muffin pan, pour beaten egg into the hollow and stick it in the oven till it sets. Nice change from the usual toast.

In case of emergency

Last weekend, I ran out of chocolate. So in the course of this week, L helped me to build up a stash. I'm hoping it's a crescendo to Mother's Day.