Hospital day January 19, 2010

This skin rash has been going on the 4th week, it doesn’t seems to go away… So we decided to come to the hospital for doctors appointment. Let’s just hope Molly will get better after this…poor baby

Cream Sauce Mushroom & Chicken Penne Ziti Rigate January 4, 2010

You can say this is a left-over recipe I came up with or you can think of it as a hearty-old-style-pasta that you can easily cook it at home. My baby loved it, with all the veggies I put into the pasta; she ate them all!

I can’t imagine toddlers picking out veggies when they eat, its just not healthy!

To Molly: Always eat your veggies, baby!

It’s very simple and I had fun just julienne all the ingredients along the proccess.

Any left over chicken and any kind of mushroom mixture will do the trick!

My ingredients are as follow: 2 & 1/2 servings

3 Big cloves of garlic (minced) about 25g

25g Sweet bell pepper green (julienned) It’s about 1/4 of a bell pepper

25 Sweet bell pepper red(julienned) It’s about 1/4 of a bell pepper

25 Spring onion (julienned) It’s about the same portion with the peppers

150g Mixed mushrooms (I used 3 different kind of mushrooms but I can’t remember their names >///<)

25g Bacon (julienned) Aprently my baby doesn’t like the plain mushroom smell of the pasta so I added the bacon for her, just to cover the mushroom taste a bit and yet still taste very much creamed mushroom the entire dish

For seasoning:

Some sea salt

Some chicken stock powder

Freshly grounded black pepper

Italian all spices for pasta

PS. Be gentle with the seasoning! As you may have already known that the chicken stock powder can be relevantly strong in taste!

The rest will be just like good old stir frying lesson I learned from my grams…

With just a table spoon of oil, you could extract all these simply by frying the bacon in your pan! When the bacon is slightly golden, add minced garlic and stir until it smells garlicky!

PS. Burnt garlic is not likely to be a tasty ingredient, let along the entire dish will be destroyed.

Then add in the mushrooms follow by peppers.

Taste the peppers when it’s semi softened, add in the cream to thicken the sauce, perhaps if you don’t mind, add the butter afterwards.

Pour in the penne ziti rigate and stir it well to coat all that sauces and flavor, while doing so, add in the last ingredient, the spring onions for garnishing.

Molly doesn’t like the taste of the spring onion raw, so without mushing it down by cooking, I added it when it’s almost served while stirring the sauce and the pasta.

Jiang jiang!

There!

She always finish her dish every time I cook it.

…she gets plenty of exercises all day every day so I am not too worried about her diet…lol

…neither do mine…loooooooooool

Hope you, whoever is ready my cooking diary, would find yourself cooking for toddlers isn’t something pain-in-the-brain but fun!

Christmas Dinner Closure : What a disaster!?

So the morning was bright and shine, warm and such welcoming on the day of Christmas, except for the fact that I got my PMS kicked in, the night before, didn’t wake up until like 2PM in the afternoon…

Yeah…I so did not planned for this…

>///<

@2PM

Got up  and got all freshen up with my baby, headed toward my kitchen to make  cookies as I planned the first thing on my task list, although it was nearly 8 hours late for that.

@3:00PM

Oh well, by accidentally mistaken the cinnamon powder with ginger powder which instead of sieving  the ginger powder into the dough I ended up sieving cinnamon powder into the dough which of course it was a failure…such hurry did me no good at all..

@4PM

Started all over again…(Too much of cinnamon scent was not smelling good at all. >///< I guess I didn’t like cinnamon that much.)

Duh~ It’s ginger bread cookies not “cinnamon bread cookies”!

@6:15PM

Second trial of ginger bread cookies were a successes, and that went into the oven to bake.

Hurry! The chicken must go in!

So I tossed the bones removed chicken thighs into the oven and set it to roast for an hour.

@6:30PM

Started off on preparing the menus ingredients for fruit salad, roasted chicken, traditional meat sauce pasta and all-mushroom pasta for my dad and aunties whom are veggies. sadly there was no time for deserts…thank God the cookies turned out just OK.

@7:00PM

First two guests arrived, my cousin and her friend Kevin.

(The salad was nearly done but was short for 1 ingredient; the apple which wasn’t peeled at that time)

15 minutes later my friend and her brother with his wife and their daughter arrived as well, barely ready to serve the fruit salad.

Oh! My chicken! As I was serving the roasted chicken, the meat sauce was ready as well as the pasta.

7:30PM

My parents showed up with my aunties (veggies) and I was no where close to finishing up the all-mushroom sauce for their veggie-pasta! So they had to wait and the results  were everyone is eating somewhere in my house and they weren’t all together…

!Isn’t the Christmas dinner supposed to be gathered around and to eat on a table!?

Guess that didn’t happen in my house…

Oh and the pumpkin soup…total disaster, too much water and completely forgot about the potatoes…

>///<

Christmas dinner…was a total disaster this year…

My first Christmas dinner in Taiwan……

I can only hope the next year I will make it better!

…perhaps not many people next year…

…pfeeew! I only have 2 burners! and one mid sized oven…

!OMG! December 24, 2009

Yeah…OMG!!!!!

Last minute shopping I CAN NOT find any store that sells lasagna sheet…

(Completely melt down)

Menu is done, and now I don’t have lasagna…

WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO FIND THAT DARN LASAGNA!?

…great…

Think, Julian think!

…What should I make to compliment the chicken!?

…thinking…

Maybe the traditional meat sauce pasta will do…?

(Keep my fingers crossed!)

All vegie or 1/2 vegie!?

…”your aunts are all coming to dinner”…

First thing I woke up this morning, my dad called and dropped a bomb on me for Christmas dinner…

So that adds up to 15 people including me and two kids.

So the debate begun…

…”Make the dinner entirely vegie-friendly”…demanded by my father, and of course it will not be doable…

!Because all my friends are NOT vegies!

…”Why not!?”…questioned by my father with the wondering face looking at me…he supposed making other people eat vegie is something rather easy than difficult to do without knowing the fact that the chicken will be gone, the lasagna will be gone and so many other tasty dishes…

I honestly think my friend will be able to make it a meal without meat, as much as I know they are all pretty much like me, love a good chicken, roasted in honey mustard sauce and backed from teh oven with some warm hearty pumpkin soup and because my vegi families don’t eat onions and garlic so those will be gone if I changed the menu to all-vegie at last minute…

…”I’ll do vegies and others”…I said to my father, and I can see now how busy and terrified myself is tomorrow…screaming and cooking…

Dear God, please help me to do this right and get through this safe and sound!

>///<

…Thank God none of my family or friends would ever read English blogs…so I am safe here…

Aaaaaah~

(Screaming!)

Da X’mas dinner menu at last

I can practically feel the oozing sound of my brain is complaining of over worked…

It’s now 4:24am her in Taiwan, almost Thursday morning.

Finally I finished the menu at last…

two plates of entrees

one soup

one salad

two side dishes (One of them vegie)

two main course (my dad and my aunts are veggies…)

one desert

and cookies for to go

This should be enough right!?

…7 course meal…

…All have to be prepared, cooked, served by myself…

…

(running around the house and screaming…)

Yeah~ Keep’em coming! Counting down 30 hours and 45 minutes

Jesus Christ! I am not even done with my menu and already there are two of my aunts will be joining us and a friend with her brother, sister in law and her niece are all coming as well…

WHERE IS MY CHRISTMAS DINNER MENU!?

>///<

Should I prepare a full course meal or keep it simple!?

There’s so much to do and to think and so little time left…

X’mas Dinner Countingdown 32 hours & 22minutes

Almost 2 days before Christmas, I’ve decided to invite not just my parents over for the dinner but also my friends who would love a crowded, heartwarming meal with me and my baby. Of course, a little price to pay is to bring my little baby daughter something in exchange for food…lol

Originally I have invited 4 people which was my parents, my little brother, and my cousin. Ever since my cousin’s friend Kevin ate at my house last weekend for Molly’s birthday dinner, he was in love with my cooking I supposed…

“Oh, let me see if I can come with you to the dinner party…” when my cousin told him about coming to my house for Christmas dinner party again without even inviting him…

So she told me, I laughed of course, didn’t know my food was that much of a luring thing to him. We all know young people these days are, working out maybe 3 or more days a week and eat healthy food and try their best to stay fit. I must say, my Christmas dinner is no way any close to the healthy food! Not even a bit close! That apply to all my favorite recipes!

So Kevin was added onto my guests list, up to 7 total, including myself and baby Molly.

C’mon! It’s Christmas! Nobody is going to tell me to cook healthy this day!

Although the date I set for dinner is rather odd since the traditional Christmas dinner is normally set on the Christmas eve which I have changed to Christmas day evening. Oh well, they all have to work on Christmas eve, except for me, so it’s only fair I set it on Christmas day evening in order for everyone to be able to make it.

While I am writing this blog entry, it’s 31 hours and 15minutes till the dinner…

Until then, there’s shopping, cleaning, preparing and so much more to do in as little as one day…

So much of a day, after my shopping and arranging, there’s not much of time to put up decorations and prebake some of the bits and bobs I decided to have on my menu…nagging…

CHRISTMAS DINNER OR NO CHRISTMAS DINNER!? December 23, 2009

Just yesterday, I’ve decided to do something rather unusual for me and it’s something I used do every year during the time when I was living in the states…Christmas Dinner!

I used to do it with my friends since my parents weren’t able to come and I wasn’t able to go home neither; friends would be the people who I invite to Christmas dinners.

Why was it so unusual!? Because in Taiwan, Christmas is just not some holiday you gathered around with your family and friends at your house or at a place where is hosted by s sweet lady friend of yours, or s lovely guy friend who can cook, or your mom’s, with delicious food, good wine or Champaign and some good laughs. Here in Taiwan, it’s either you go to the church and join a bunch of people singing holy songs, say the prayer, then have a hearty meal that served at the church, or you simply go party with your friends or love ones. Families!? We only get to see them on Chinese New Year holidays once a year…

It’s sad that people here in Taiwan don’t know the real meaning of Christmas besides the story where Jesus was born at this date and a true meaning of a good old Christmas dinner with your family and friends is about, but rather spend the time drinking and dancing in clubs.

Except for those religious Christians and Catholics.

Although the decoration is hung all over the place where I live, a little town in size of a Solvang, Santa Barbara, CA. I remember those days where I got to drive around the town cruising and just enjoin the scent of snowy winter (not every year I must say but I do that in several different places), the essence of Christmas decorations and that good old spirits of Christmas is what truly is about.

So for my little daughter Molly, since she’s grown old enough to memorize things and events, I supposed it is a good year that I start this Christmas dinner tradition and make that our own. So be it! Anyone who’s reading this, please pray for me that I don’t mess up… >///<

Or is there any one!?

Still, I’ll keep my own fingers crossed!

Go! Julian, go! (Does me cheering for myself helps!?)

Cereal became the cheereo!? November 23, 2009

How often and how well does sugar fills up a person’s depression with happiness? As always, I supposed…
But, how about cereal become the cheereo in terms of “cheering” purpose, to a child, especially a toddler…

Mine gets all better on cereal then sugar…weird. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t like sweets!? Cuz cereal box usually comes with a toy…Oh, that figures…<div class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 650px"

How in the world that Molly loves him so much and wanting to become him!?