Merry Christmas 2011

 

 Decided to cook a Christmas dinner because well, commitments.

Our Christmas ended up to be a two day feast. This is one of it and another was the following day at my elder sisters house. She had her in-laws over and we had fun.

But preparing this dinner was not easy task. :\

My grocery list for stuff we don't have includes the following.

Had to buy them early because nothing is open during Christmas day.

2 small brown onions, halved, finely chopped
55g (1/3 cup) unsalted pistachio kernels, finely chopped
245g (3 1/2 cups) fresh breadcrumbs (made from day-old bread)
2 eggs, lightly whisked
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh continental parsley
    250g dried maccheroni pasta (see note)

1 1/5kg Chicken
    4 cooked chicken drumsticks
    100g baby spinach leaves
    300ml light thickened cream

4 strips bacon
1 bunch of chives
sour cream
    3/4 cup semi-dried tomatoes
    1 1/2 cups grated parmesan cheese
    1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
 2 cups (500ml) thickened cream
    1 x 250g packet Arnott’s Choc Ripple biscuits
    Raspberries or seasonal berries to decorate

(probably my longest grocery list every)

 

According to Sam, it rains every Christmas lol and so this year it hailed while we were prepping. 

Hailing is really quite common here.

 Nearing the end it was so messy. -_- couldn't stand the clutter.

 Stuffing at its second stage. I like how the cranberry makes it look so colourful. 

 I'm super crazy over sun dried tomatoes.So good.

I usually put whatever I want inside it. Left over roast chicken, sun dried tomatoes, bacon, whatever you like really.

 We had a lot of problems with the stuffing because we didn't have a food processor to chop up the bread to make breadcrumbs. So we resorted to a variety of measures.

 Using a microplane and scissors.

At first I thought we wouldn't succeed because of the amount of ingredients we had to chop, dice, peel, wash, and cook looked so overwhelming. Thank goodness we prevailed at the end.

Looking forward to this sort of challenge again. well not so soon.

1 too many

5 times??

that's just effing too many times in a day.
my goodness.
It's record breaking but for sure it will never be repeated again anytime soon.

Letting yourself go

So I've been sieving through some of my old posts recently to look for old pictures and guess what.. I'm so disgusted at myself. -___-

I have literally let myself GO, I've turned into a chubby ball, no I'm not even proportionately round like a ball. I'm LUMPY. I have lumps of fats distributed to random areas that do not look attractive at ALL.

I totally blame myself for getting so comfortable. I stopped taking care of myself to care for others. I have to quickly fix this shit before it becomes permanent otherwise I'll hate myself forever.

It's not like I didn't see this weight gain coming but I think it's about time that I go back to normal. Back to my normal portion and not a Nick sized portion. I cannot compete with you man.

iPod Nano 7th Gen

 

time to go digital.

got it couple days ago as a birthday present,

super belated birthday present.

I'm not really a fan of d i g i t a l and battery powered watches to be honest but this and my running watch is an exception. It might even take over as my running watch. I was worried at first that the nano would look like a monster on my arm but it actually fits nicely and together with the strap it's still super lightweight.Shocking.

 My name is engraved on it. It's SO tiny.

 Wonder if people buy second hand engraved iPods.

Few faces that I like. They have 18 in total.

Really liking it so far, like the various faces and how lightweight it is.

Now I don't have to carry around my phone to listen to songs while I'm jogging.

Hope in the future they upgrade it to retina display and quicker sleep/wake response time.

it wud be so awesome.

Happay

Go karted.

what surprised me was when i got back from the gym.

Nick had already gotten ready his backpack filled with buns, biscuits and even energy drinks. I thought it was kinda cute, mama syndrome scared no food. 

coz we were going to be out the whole day that day.

Lindt cake and Brunetti profiterole tower.

The tower is supposed to feed 10. LOL assuming that each person got 2. glutton

Overall I loved the day, eventho it was so tiring at the end of it.

Take Away

So the weeks before our exams. I was super lazy to cook.
So we basically survived on take away food.

To save money we usually hunt for cheap makan like closing hour sales when food goes cheap.

Instead of paying like 8 bucks or 10 bucks per-meal we got off with 5 boxes for just $27!

Ranges from $3.50-$6.00 epic.

The above had stuff like lamb rogan josh, red curry, massaman beef curry, black bean beef, green curry. 

Only drawback is that I get fat.

This wasn't cheap makan finds but shows how we depend on take away -_-.

Compared to the cheap find above this is $45.. the horror.

Half a chicken for $3.00 bucks epic. Quater for $1.80.

Thank god exams are over and im back to cooking again. typing this post made me feel grossed out.

I thought I was sure but now my answer is I really don't know.

my mouth can tell you things you want to hear. my head thinks otherwise.

doesn't mean i'm lonely when i'm alone. o_O

catch ball

I'm planning on getting a pair of baseball gloves and couple of baseballs.

Something about playing catch that makes the little kid in me happy. I practically used to play 'catch' with myself if no one is around... that's if you count throwing something up in the air and catching it again to be 'catch' worthy. I used shuttlecocks, basketballs, tennis balls, ping pong balls, bottles, pens, sticks, rocks... so fun! God I sound like a sad kid. But in all seriousness, who needs video games when you can be outside doing something and breathing fresh air.

argh

... but boys they're all the same, they've innately inherited social marketing skills to lure the innocent and naive.