My 1st Meal

Tadah! Here we are, after two-and-a-half hours of preparation and cooking, me still in my office wear, he so zonked he doesn't even know where the camera is.

... And here is a close-up...

In this next picture, the very burnt chicken wing was my tester wing. Other people would've used a bread crumb instead. But that's Ms Coddled for you. Half of the batch you see here were undercooked to varying degrees, and The Boyfriend somehow ate all of those.

And these is the dish I had the most problems with. First, I marinated the prawns in the sauce meant to be drizzled over the dish. Then, while frying the prawns, The Boyfriend noticed that they were drying up very quickly. Are you sure you're supposed to do it this way, he asks. I reply, yes, Alicia (my colleague and provider of recipe and cooking tips) said so. When do you pour the sauce in, he pursues. When the prawns are cooked, I say. Then he says, "I'd better pour some water into the sauce."

But clever me heard, "sumathing pour sumathing sumathing the sauce." And woo! In goes the whole thing, and let me tell you, grayish-pink prawns swimming in brown goo does not a pretty sight make.

He panics, I panic, and it took another 7 minutes or so before the prawns decided to curl up and blush in defeat. Here is the result:

Alicia will be very disappointed to see that I didn't arrange the broccoli neatly in a ring around the prawns. But by then, I didn't care. It was 9.30pm, for goodness' frigging sake.

P/S In case you were wondering, the soup was the best dish. No surprise there, it doesn't take an award-winning chef to throw in a few pieces of pork and lotus root and boil them in water.

P/P/S In case you were also wondering, no the food didn't taste horrid. (Disappointed now, aren't you?) In fact they were rather yummy, with the exception of the omelette, which was the first dish cooked and hence had to suffer the ignominy of my inexperience in front of the wok. (The Boyfriend actually had to come to my rescue, taking over for a few minutes. Oh, the disgrace of it all.) It was overcooked and, by the time we sat down to eat, hard and very cold indeed.

We've Turned Three!

Yesterday, The Boyfriend and I quietly wrapped up our third year as an item. A few simple sms-es exclaiming "Happy 3rd Anniversary!", a phone call, and that was it. But still, happy I was.

Okay to be truthful, we did our celebrating on Sunday 'cause he couldn't manage to take leave, but that was also a quiet, laidback affair. We'd intended to go visit the Sungei Buloh Nature Reserve that morning, but at 6:30am our eyes decided to do our weary bodies a favour and told us (him, rather. I just grunted and fell back asleep) that the skies were threateningly dark, and lo and behold, the next time we stirred, it was 11:00am. Woo hoo!

So we brunched together, after which we went back to our respective homes and scrambled to do some preparation of the last-minute variety of our prezzies for each other. I spent something like 3 hours putting together a menu of the meal I'm going to whip up for him next Friday, while he spent an hour ironing his clothes. Did I say we? Ok, it was just me doing the last-min preps.

But not without reason, okay?. Check out his prezzies!

And I like my presents too!

Not forgetting our lovely dinner at this French cafe off Little India (North Sturdee Road, I should think) called, well, The French Stall.

Looking yummy is this Roast Leg of Duck.

That's the best picture I got, which does no justice at all to the dish, but my chicken thighs tasted good too.

The only problem? No way am I ever going to get even remotely near The French Stall's standard with my cooking.

Yep, very quiet, very simple and very laidback. But still I felt blessed, contented and yes, happy.