A bit of here and there

It is still hot.

As forcasted, this year's summer is indeed hot and long. Aircon sales and electricity bills are almost double that of last year's, it seems.

"it seems" cos i don't watch the news as often as before. The TV used to be on most of the day, but these days, i try to create a mini relax room at home with the TV off, some soft music and a bit of air con.

J says he noticed we turn on the air con very often this year.

Yes i am home almost all day! last year, whenever it was sizzling hot outside, i would chill out at malls. Now that i have a lil one with me, i can't be taking to the malls as and when i like. I wished i could though. i wish i could nurse as openly as we did in Cairns. But sadly, the asian community is always more reserved in this area. even nursing rooms here are privately cubicled. so instead of craving the mall, i switch on the air con and try to complete the things i had always wanted to started doing. like pasting up the photos in my scrapbook and gorging on the books sitting on the shelf waiting for me.

I try to lessen the stress of being in the sauna-like kitchen by making dinners really simple.

So here's what have been dancing on our dining tables for the past few days.

Iwashi, kimchi and potatoes in a pan

Iwashi, being a sardine-like fish means the bones are edible. so i didn't have to stand at the sink all day long plucking out bones.

This was lunch on one of the hot weekend afternoon.

Chilled somen with tomatoes, zucchinni and okra with a garlic based dressing, drizzled with fresh yummy limes from the farmers'.

Some evenings, i cheat with sauces and frozen burger patties.

just toss in ingredients and sauce, and we get dinner in no time.

like,

squid ink pasta paella

with freshly plucked basil leaves from the garden

Maguro burger loco moco don with shimeji teriyaki sauce

The frozen maguro burger we get at the supermart is really yummy and convenient for days i just feel like doing button-cooking. (cooking with the microwavey)

cantonese claypot rice

with the sauce i got from SG

tossed in some dried cuttle fish and fried onions lastly which made it taste quite similar to the real thing.

Beef rendang

again, with sauce i bought from SG.

except that the sauce really lacked body cos it was just liquid, and i remember rendang as something filled with ground up spices so we get a chunky rough meat sauce.

i simmered in lots of chopped up myoga ginger and onions, and some 100g of mashed pumpkin.

which gave the sauce some body.

I made a large batch of it, and had it with udon the next day.

Tada~ Rendang udon. Goooooooood.

Now i wished we could ta pao rendang home as easily here.

Some evenings, i get down to preparing normal meals without cheating.

Which means getting down to making dish by dish.

sukiyaki don, which i crave once in a while

salad with home made tofu cream (simply made by blending silk tofu with miso and noodle shoyu)

simply stir fried green capsicums.

i love the japanese green peppers. their skins are so thin, and flesh really tender and sweet. you don't really have to do much seasoning with them in a stir fry.

Oh, and cooking claypot rice and rendang, i started missing home. No no, Mum's place.

Gosh, home is here, yet i get homesick, erm no, singapore sick, once in a while.

pheeeeeee- as you can see, i get a bit of identity confusion on some days. going to the immigration bureau every time just does this this to me; makes me feel so foreigner, then induces a bout of homesickness, no no i-miss-singapore sickness.

i wished i could just drop by on a weekend.

have some yong tao foo in the day, and mum's tao yu bah in the evening, then come home.

ok, i managed to cure my yong tao foo craving though.

since kangkong is so in season, i just had to have some yong tao foo sauce to go with it!!!

with a bit of experiments with the stock of sauces at home, i found that it is so simple!!!

just mix the japanese creamy sesame sauce and my singapore bought black sauce!!!

then close my eyes and pretend the sauce is that nice red sweet sauce i always like.

I have this for lunch pretty often.

whenever i get some yummy kangkong from the farmers mart, i really cannot resist. they don't sell this everyday, so each time i see it, i get all excited.

Sometimes, we have it for dinner

with just sesame sauce, so that my husband doesn't think i am weirdo mixing black sauce and sesame sauce.

I know i overdo on my summer vegetables sometimes, which cools our bodies a lot.

So i try and make up with a ginger/leek/sesame oil combination at times.

I tried mixing grated ginger, leeks, seasme oil, korean chilli flakes, shoyu and sesame seeds for our sauce on tofu one evening. It was nice!

On days i don't feel like having plain rice, sushi rice always helps us finish up a whole lot of rice cos it is sweet.

I made inari sushi one night

with chawanmushi and miso soup
Edamame and sakura prawns inari sushi

we finished this really quickly.

I am still persevering through nursing the little one even at night. the powder milk in the cupboard is always tempting, but he just wouldn't take the bottle.

i wish that log sleeping next to me would MOVE and get his butt out of bed whenever the lil one cries at night. but that idiot claims he can't hear.

why do men develop this selective hearing syndrome when they have their wedding bands on?