Baked on 19/06/10

My husband and our daughter made flapjacks that day. He had never made them in his life, but he was inspired to make them after watching a cooking programme. My husband and our daughter both had fun making them together. When we visited my father-in-law on Father's Day, everybody there tried a piece and loved it!

Baked on 01/06/10

Whenever we have enough bread crusts, we make bread pudding!

Dinner on 29/05/10

Menu: Fish and chips

We spent our time cleaning around the house in the afternoon, and my husband treated us to fish and chips for dinner :) As you might not know, if you don't live here in the UK, we put malt vinegar on fish and chips. I found it unusual to start with, but now, I'm used to having it - actually, I love the combination!

Lunch on 9/05/10

Menu: Welsh rarebit

My husband made Welsh rarebit for lunch that day. He put on cheese, chopped onions and tomatoes on toast and grilled it. WE sprinkled some Worcester sauce to taste. It was really nice.

By the way, how come it's called Welsh rarebit? What does rarebit mean anyway? Any ideas? Rarebit sounds like rabbit, but is it something to do with rabbit at all? It hasn't got rabbit meat on though.

Lunch on 01/05/10

It's been more than a month since I last updated this blog, and I was glad/surprised to know that I now have a follower!!! Thank you so much, Antonio! You are the first one! It's getting harder and harder for me to find time to update my three blogs regularly, but there are always things I want to write about. It's really nice to know somebody does stop by here and read my articles. I always appreciate it when I get comments :) Anyway, when I do update my blogs these days, it's always late at night, so excuse my mistakes. When I'm tired and sleepy, I tend to make mistakes, especially when writing in English, which is my second language.

Back to the subject, on the 1st of May, I went out for walk with my husband and our daughter. The weather was lovely, and we enjoyed our walk. On the way back home, I was telling my husband about my obsession to have a fry-up at a local cafe. I wasn't thinking about a fancy cafe - more like a down-to-earth sort of cafe. Normally, I can go anywhere by myself, but there are a few places I don't have the guts to go by myself. This sort of cafe is one of them. It might be because these cafes are too British. You don't normally see Asian people there from my experience. I feel that I stand out in an awkward way in that kind of environment. Anyway, my husband said,

"Let's have something to eat at our local cafe of your choice then."

So, I picked one and we went inside.

My husband was queuing and came back to the table. I thought "Oh, I was going to choose which fry-up I'm going to have," but he said "you have to be quick in this kind of place." Not sure if it's Japanese/Okinawan thing or just me, but it always takes me a while to decide what to have at restaurants. Knowing what I'm like, my husband ordered one of the fry-ups for me.

When my food turned up, I was disappointed.

"Where are my mushrooms? Hash browns?"

On the plate, there were two eggs, one sausage, salty bacon and beans. Of course, it came with a cuppa and toast.

I was struggling to finish towards the end and ended up leaving some.
I liked the atmosphere though. These kind of cafes remind me of Shokudo (食堂) back home. I will tell you what shokudo is when I get time.

I like having fry-ups every now and then, but I thought home-made was the best.

I don't have an obsession with fry-ups anymore - well, for a while.


*Again, sorry for any mistakes I might've made here. I'm getting sleepy.

Hot Cross Buns

It's Good Friday today! Yesterday, I made Hot Cross Buns for the first time. Actually they are egg & diary free. I made them for my daughter who has food allergies. They don't look too bad, do they? I know they are not perfect, but my husband was very impressed with them! We all enjoyed home-made Hot Cross Buns :)

Happy Easter!!!

Dinner on 21/02/10

Menu: Sunday roast!! (roast beef, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sage & onion stuffing, Yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables)

Traditionally, here in England, they have Sunday roast. I quite like the idea of having simple dinners during the week, and have something special on Sundays. I do love roast dinner!!! Actually it's my favourite British food :) I enjoy any type of roast meat except for lamb - sorry, baby sheep. I'm not too keen on your taste. My friends and family back home would ask me what British food is like, and the first thing I mention is roast dinner. Unfortunately, British food has a bad reputation over there. I think it's because British food tastes the best when cooked at home, in my opinion. Most tourists don't have a chance to try out British home cooking unless they have a friend to cook for them. I always love down-to-earth type of food rather than fancy food. Of course, it's nice to have fancy food every now and then, but I would get bored if I have it too often, and it wouldn't be so special. My favourite food has always been my mum's cooking.

I didn't cook this dinner, by the way - my husband did. I enjoy cooking, but I'm not good at cooking roast dinner... I'm not good at cooking under pressure, to be honest. With roast, everything has to be perfect, it seems. It doesn't matter so much if the meat is ready before anything else, as it can be wrapped up in foil. However, other things such as roast potatoes & parsnips and Yorkshire pudding have to be ready right before the dinner being served. Beforehand, meat has to be carved nicely, and vegetables have to be cooked. Not to forget, gravy sauce as well! To me, it's absolutely madness. My husband doesn't seem to mind cooking roast, so I always leave it to him. Maybe I will learn to cook roast one day.

Dessert on 03/07/08

Golden Syrup Sponge pudding

This is one of our favourite puddings! My husband is good at making it. It seems to be easy to make using a microwave. When we want something after dinner, that's something he would make as long as we have the right ingredients.

Baked on 26/06/08

This is a Dundee cake which I baked for my husband's grandfather's funeral. Apparently, he used to bake this cake quite a lot, and he was telling me about it as well. When I last saw him at the hospital, I asked him for this recipe, and he told me which recipe book to look for. I told him that I would bake this cake for my next visit, but sadly it didn't happen. So I decided to bake this cake (well actually I baked two!) for his funeral. That's something everybody in the family remember - his Dundee cake - and I wanted to give it a go. I was a bit nervous as I had never tried this cake in my life. The cakes came out really nice, and everybody enjoyed them.

Baked on 22/05/08

We made apple turnovers. I made the filling with apples, sultanas, raisins, sugar, cinnamon and vanila extract. My husband took care of the rest. We prefered using puff pastry though. We gave one to his grandfather who was in the hospital. He said he would eat it next morning for breakfast. Hope he liked it.

Dinner on 15/05/08

Menu: cottage pie

It wasn't my best, but I love this which is one of the classic British dishes!

Dinner on 20/04/08

Menu: Sunday roast

My husband treated us a lovely Sunday roast at his parents'. He's good at cooking Sunday roast; whereas I'm quite useless when it comes to cooking roast dinner. It's quite stressful to think that everything has to be perfectly planned well. I'm not good at cooking under pressure.

Anyway, it was a lovely dinner, and everyone of us enjoyed it.

By the way, most of my friends would be surprised to know that I now eat beef. I had been a vegetarian for nearly eight years (well I hadn't had beef for ten years), and when I was pregnant with my daughter, suddenly I thought "I want beef." then I started eating beef. My husband couldn't believe his eyes while I was eating a beef burger for the first time in ten years.

I eat meat every now and then, but not a huge amount every single day.

This was the desert on the night - I didn't have it though. Everybody seemsed to have enjoyed it.

Dinner on 17/12/08

Menu: roast pork with apple, roast vegetables, sauteed potatoes, steamed broccoli

As I couldn't/still can't use a knife yesterday, I asked my husband to help me in the kitchen.

I might have mentioned it before - about my condition - here, but I've been suffering from DeQuervain's syndrome for over a month. I've been using a wrist splint which helps for this condition, but having a 3-year-old active girl doesn't help me get better. It was getting better, but she hurt my wrist, and got better a bit, and yesterday morning, an accident happened. I was in bed trying to get up. My hand was up in the air with my elbow on the bed. And then, suddenly my daughter sat back on my hand, and all her weight got on my wrist!! Ouch!! I couldn't move or talk and just curled up in pain for a while. Anyway, I haven't been able to use my right hand much since yesterday morning, so that's why I asked my husband for help in the kitchen.

Anyway, we had sliced pork to use, and I suggested to roast it. We also had lots of apples, and an idea came into my mind. Well, the combination of pork & apple isn't something new, but I just got excited thinking it would be great.

On the pork, we sprinkled some olive oil, black pepper, rosemary, crushed garlic and sliced apples on top and roast it. For the roast vegetables, we used parsnips, carrots and leek, and sprinkled some olive oil, sage and thyme.

Oh my God, the dinner was sooooo good. I was very impressed with the result.

For a pudding, we had treacle sponge pudding and custard. We didn't make the pudding - it was in a tin and by Heinz. It wasn't too bad.

Dinner on 26/01/08

I'm uploading some old photos now.






On that day, we went to a local butcher and bought some stew beef... and made......

Beef and ale pie!

It was really nice!