grocery shopping and dinner

Oh ... must recite my interesting grocery shopping with andy. Its somewhat exaggerated, but the conversations was something like ...

Andy : Oei, what vege you want to cook?
Mua : Er, anything lor. All vege can eat mah.
Andy : [Exasperated look] Okay ... You want towkay? can?
Mua : Okie, just throw it into the cart
Andy: What other vege?
Mua : This thing looks familiar. Cabbage rite?
Andy : [Exasperted look] No, thats lettuce.
Mua : [Spots some other vege that says cabbage] Oh well, we take this cabbage then
Andy : [Exasperated look] Thats americian cabbage. You dunno how to cook one.
Mua : [Blur] Er ... you choose lah ...
Andy : [Exasperated look, turns to wanyun for help]

Then at the cheese section

Andy: Oei, what kind of cheese do you want?
Mua : Erm, any kind lor. Cheese is cheese rite?
Andy: [Exasparated look] No ... There are many different kinds of cheese.
Mua: Oh is it ... i only know the Kraft triangular cheese and cube cheese ...
Andy : What you want to do with the cheese?
Mua : Er, eat it lor. The rest taste the same rite?
Andy : [Exasparated look] Aiyah, you eat crackers with cheese lah. Come, i help you pick. This two, which one you want?
Mua : Er, whats the difference? Just take the larger one lor
Andy: [Exasparated look] ... You need me to get crackers too?
Mus : Erm, yea ... :)

Then we went to choose meat. Kennth and I are meat eaters, hence this is our staple.
Andy : Come, take meat.
Mua : Wah, so many kinds, how to choose xia?
Andy : Okay, i tell you. This whole chicken is good for cooking soup, which i will do tonight
(Calvin mentally strikes it off his list. Good decision, considering the copious amount of stuff that went into the chicken soup.).
Andy : This chicken breast is good for frying.
Mua : [Hmz, that seems similar to the chicken fillet at home. Can deal with it] Lets take 2.
Andy : This is ground pork.
Mua : [Yea, another thing that looks familiar] Lets take 2.
Andy: This is beef. very easy to prepare. You just slice it, then marinate it with soy sauce, salt, pepper, (Calvin zones out ... ) ... Understand?
Mua : Erm, yea ... Lets take 1. [Must save face, must preend to understand how to prepare. Can always throw away later]

Andy: You still want tofu right? Okay i go pick for you. You go pick up ice cream.
[I think Andy understands its generally not a good idea to give me choices in a supermarket]
Calvin : Yea, ice cream. Something that i understand.

Andy says hes going to bring us grocery shopping at Chinatown sometime soon... I remember grocery shopping back when i was young was so much easier. Cos all i needed was to follow my mum/grandma, carry stuff and act cute to the shopkeepers ('Ah, guai guai' aka good boy) They would always order 'Kiam de tao gua si teh' cos my bro likes salted beancurd... Then if i need breakfast, we would get my wonderful Lor Mee with the thick kind of sauce, which sadly is hard to find nowadays. Alternatively, there was peanut cake. I love the ends of the peanut cake, so we will often wait for them to make a new one, then i take the ends :)

Yea, so i somewhat have a craving for curry. Well, craving is not exactly the word, just that i sortof missed it. So, was playing MJ yest, then i asked 'Er, how do you make curry ah?' Xiaodong was like 'Very easy. You got the paste right? Just ... (a whole load of instructions) then add the condensed milk. You got condensed milk?' ' [Yea, dun have] No. So i guess cannot nmake curry [Phew, no need to remember that entire list]' ... And today kenneth went to buy condensed milk so that he can make his milo dinosaur and teh si. damn.




Dinner was much better today... I realize that despite being a mathematician, my powers of estimation and agaration are quite terrible when it comes to food... Have been cooking too much food for the past 2 days. Oh well, i've gotten down to eating 1 meal a day, aka dinner. Cos when i wake up, its too late for lunch, and id just grab biscuits or something. The late into the night, or early in the morning, when the sun has risen, id eat another biscuit if im hungry, then go to sleep... I love lazing in.


Kenneth was like 'Lets cook noodles tonight' so i pulled out the tanghoon. Asked andy what can i add to it, he said mushroom. Asked what kind, then he picked for me. Told me that i needed to soak it first. 'And remember to add salt, cos tanghoon very bland.' So i took out like 6-7 mushrooms, then wanyun came along. 'Aiyoh, so few ah, i one person can eat all of those leh.' So i took out a few more, by which time there wasnt much left, so just poured out the rest of the packet.

Started cooking dinner, threw the mushroom and meatballs into the pot to cook. Then andy came along, saw the dry packet of tanghoon on the table. 'Aiyoh, the tanghoon must soak in water first one leh you know?' [Eh, no one told me ... lol] Raided the cupborad, so the tanghoon had meatballs, tofu and seaweed added to it. Took out chicken stock, olive oil to add flavouring. Took out the big bottle of salt, but guess what, forgot to add it. (halfway thru dinner, kenneth ran to the kitchen to get soy sauce cos the noodles too bland) Oh well, there was alot of ingredients in it, was quite good actually. And theres quite a bit of leftover, we both ate until very full. Oh well, that would be lunch for someday then.

After the apparantly easy omelett yesterday, decided to repeat it, but added onions and mushrooms. Took the bigger saucepan, cos i learnt that 4 eggs was too much for the small saucepan. Mixed the onions with the egg, decided to fry the mushrooms later. Threw the mixture in, and it was happily cooking. But apparantly the onion FLOATS to the top, hence doesnt cook. So i had to flip the omelett over. Now, its a bigger frying pan, wasnt as easy as yerterday, ended up with folding the omelett on itself. Thought to myself, oh well, not that bad ... can use the other half of the pan to fry mushroom. Then as i tried to pour everything into the plate, the omelett decided to spontaneously disintegrate. All the onions fell out. so i was WTF. Let me just smash up the omelett so that it would appear like 1 dish ... Moral of the day? use 3 eggs and the small frying pan.

Ah, the chicken breast was much better today. Took out that chunk of chicken breast, knew it was too much. So theres the age old problem of : Too much meat, how to separate? You see, frozen meat cannot be separated with anything short of a chainsaw... Marinated the meat with honey teriyaki sauce (bought) threw it into the fridge for half an hour as per instuctions. Then threw (gently placed) andrew's wok into a cardboard box (this is what i attribute my success to) and just used the frying pan. How do you tell when a piece of meat is cooked? There was this logic about stabbing the meat with a fork, then if it comes off easily its cooked. But i think that i stabbed the meat so many times that after a while, it was shredded chicken. Oh well, chicken tasted quite good though :)

Yea, so dinner was alright. And kenneth is washing up now. Though i think he shd be done by now (theres a dishwasher) Think i ate too much liao ... oh well, time to sleep it off. nitez