Vigin/Maiden attempts

I attempted a few firsts in a span of 2 weeks! Boy, I think these injections of excitement give healthy adrenaline to my bod and brain.

1. First attempt cooking Ramen

I suspect that my family (yes, children inclusive) love for Ramen starts from watching Japan hour. The travelogue is always full of wonderful soup base with noodles that has that amazing texture. When we visited Japan last year, we had our share of excellent Ramen with bad ones. Yes, bad ones exists. At least for me. If the noodles has that alkaline taste, which will also affect the soup, it's bad. The other ingredients will not matter anymore.

Then inspiration hits me when I saw a book on Hokkaido (left around by my sisIL since she's heading there this month). But instead of char siew ramen, I did prepared their all time fav - fried breaded pork chop with Hokkaido inspired Ramen.

.Runny egg with hard boil white - it's an art

.fresh sweet corn at the side

. soup base - pork bone, chicken bone, corn core and sea salt

.add a small slice of butter

Most of you know how to make pork chop. But for me, a perfect pork chop comes with these little tricks...

. set the breaded pork chop aside for 10 mins before frying

. the vegetable oil must be very hot

. since I use frozen pork slice, I will drip the pork dry before using.

2. I did a brave act on my own - met blogger Karen and did the DTKC...

There is always this urge to go out there to see that "blue, blue sky" instead of facing my "lemon tree" inside of me. However, I've been rather selfish - always tagging someone along. If not my sister, it'd be my family. Quite terrible, eh. It's just that I've always wanted my kids to be a bit more sociable.

Anyways, this time, it's gotta be just moi.... erm, I did try to chio my sis but it wasn't successful :P

I had imagined it to be awkward and lonely. But as it turns out, it was pretty alright. Karen was really nice (and pretty - needless to say) and it was a great event to witness.

Pretty and very slim KAren posing the DTKC at Indochine

Since I was with no one I really knew, I went off early and met Kingsley on the way at the exit. What a nice surprise.

3. I stormed up 3 supper dishes in one hour!

There are several recipes I kept from various people. To whip up the dishes will mean that my family will grow fat in no time. So, when the Wans couldn't open their home for BS, I volunteered to host the BS since they could jolly well be my tasters (aka GP).

Initial worries of needing to spend too long a time on preparing and cooking diminished. I spent only an hour! What a treat!

Nigella's lime cheesecake. 3 boxes of Philly cream cheese in here! I love this!

Mee suah kueh - with chinese mushroom, red pepper, carrot, mince pork, prawn, garlic and large onion

Brazillian chicken drums..

I managed to take the pics of the leftovers since I was zipping around for other errands after doing up the supper. Oh, I am still thinking of my next cheesecake project.

Nigella taught me that leftovers does not neccessarily mean that my food wasn't up to mark. Whenever she does her show, she will always go to fridge in the night and dig her leftovers. This is just one subtle message I learn from her cook show and for that she tops my list on learning how to bake and cook.

There are just so many things happening and so much work at work too. God is good all the time!