Two dinners

Two of the dinners we shared with family and friends this month at our house...



Earlier in the month, ex-work-colleagues-turned-friends G and N came over for a simple lunch. This year was very difficult for N being a empty-nester (youngest leaving home for uni) and going through a separation/divorce. We hoped a small lunch would get N out of the house and made her feel a little better.

Menu: Shallow fried mixed seafood (fish, prawns and calamari- N is a vegetarian but eats seafood), mango salad, cabbage salad, homemade Hungarian salami (made by G, yummy!),home-grown tomatoes (hand-picked by G that moring), curry puffs (curtesy of N), olives, bread and crackers.

We all had too much to eat. The stroll to the nearby park after lunch(it was around 5pm by then)was a nice and relaxing way to end the day.



Chinese New Year's Eve dinner with in-laws.
Menu: Fried rice with carrots and eggs, veges (brocolli and cauliflower), pork spare ribs (american ribs marinated in bbq sauce), beans with bacons, coconut prawns.

I didn't cook a whole fish as is the tradition (whole 'fish' symbolise having more than enough for the new year) because I didn't have fish in the fridge. The inclusion of spare ribs wasn't very chinese either, but the ribs were very popular with in-laws, husband and kids, so who cares!

Holiday swimming lessons

Lara did school holiday swimming lessons for the last two weeks. The lessons took place in the big school Lara will go to this year, so she got used to going to school (to swim) every day!



Lara can't swim yet but she has improved a lot and is very close to be able to swim by herself. Her water confidence increased dramatically in a very short space of time, most importantly, she enjoyed the lessons very much. I'm going back to work so she won't be able to continue the lessons for long. I try not to set up too many after-school activities for Lara but I have to keep swimming lessons now that she's so close to be able to swim! One of the resolutions that is on my list (for 2 years?) is to swim reguarly myself. Hopefully, I'll be able to find a pool to do that this year.

Too old to skate

I took Lara and her friend Annie ice-skating on Monday. I have skated regularly for a couple of years when I was younger and thought skating was like riding a bike - you never forget how to do it. Lara had done a couple of skating lessons so I thought it would be fun to go around with her as a holiday treat. It was harder than I thoguht looking after two kids who can't skate when I'm quite rusty myself. On top of that, I forgot that I'm a lot older now.

Lara was crying (her friend was faster than her so I tried to stay between them but I was too far for comfort for Lara) and in a haste to get to her, I fell down bottom first. Luckily, I didn't break anything and I was still able to walk, I got up with a sore bottom and continued skating. But by the time we finished and walked to the car park (I also managed to get a pair of school shoes with Lara afterwards so I guess the pain was not too bad), it hurt a lot more. That night I couldn't get up from a sitting-down position without some efforts and had to take pain-killers. I really worried I would wake up unable to walk, who will look after Sam then? Fortunately, the pain subsided the next day.

I forget that I am on longer the young 18 year old who could just get up from a fall, my older bones don't handle it too well. Maybe skating is not a great idea after all?

Baked & stuffed pumpkin

Every Christmas, I like to try to make something new, something a little special and different. Simon find this strange and couldn't believe I do this at stressful times like x'mas. I don't know why but doing a new dish makes the dinner more intresting for me and I often try new things on people. Not all things I did came out great of course. This year my experiment was the stuffed pumpkin (Jamie Olive's Hamilton pumpkin in one of his earlier cookbooks).



I cut the pumpkin in half, scooped out the flesh(this took me about an hour of hard work!!), fried the onions and mushrooms, roasted the pine nuts, ground spices, mixed the rice in and put everything together the day before x'mas. Luckily I did it the day before because it was quite a lot of work. It smelt beautiful after baking for 1and a quarter hours on x'mas day. I left it out to rest for some time. Initally I thought the hard bits were the spices then I realised it was uncooked rice! Most of the rice was well cooked. I don't believe cooking longer would make any difference. In fact, I think the pumpkin was overcooked as the colour was very dull and texture very soft (I didn't weight the pumpkin, my pumpkin possibly was smaller than the recipe's). I think the uncooked rice was due to uneven moisture even though the book says not to worry about rice not being cooked as the mostiure in the pumpkin will keep the rice moist. It was editable and most of the rice was alright. But any amount of hard rice every so often still ruined the dish. It was not a great sucess like I hoped it would be.



I would not try this dish again in a hurry. It was too much work for someone with two little kids like me. But will I try something else new next x'mas? The bet is I probably will!