Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum

There IS a tune to those five "dums". I do apologise for your not being able to hear what I'm hearing, which is the sound FBC's musical inchworm produces when you press its nose. 

***

There is only one word to describe Chinese New Year with a five-month old: Exhausting. On 初一, we set off from home at about 8.20am and only got back around 10.20pm. And this was after reunion dinners on the Saturday before (i.e. Valentine's Day), and Tuesday and Wednesday. It took me about three days to recover fully. 

Still, I suppose it could have been worse. I was pregnant last Chinese New Year, and the fatigue was of a whole different nature. At least this year I was able to eat properly without feeling nauseous after every other bite. And thank God for the lovely, cool weather. 

***

I've been thinking a lot about being pregnant (again) in the past few days. Not that I want to start trying for another one anytime soon, as you know I have some things I want to achieve before that. Neither is it because anyone asked me when we were having our next child (my zombie-like demeanour and willingness to hand over FBC to any willing relative/ family friend, and oh were they willing! must have been clear warning signals). 

It's just that I signed up for The Kitchn's Freezer Cure, and although I haven't been keeping strictly to the schedule, I've unearthed a container full of an unidentifiable orangey-red mass which looks like frozen tomato sauce from my freezer. It's currently defrosting in the fridge, so I guess we'll find out what it really is soon. I couldn't remember freezing any tomato sauce from our Valentine's Day dinner, so I figured the sauce (or whatever it is) had to date back to when I was pregnant and went off tomatoes. Which got me thinking about how much I like tomatoes and how anything with tomato in it made me throw up when I was pregnant, which was very sad. Tomatoes (paste, canned) add such a lovely depth of flavour to braises and pasta sauces, and my homemade ketchup was so delicious, what with the tang of apple cider vinegar and all. I simply can't imagine going another 9-10 months without tomatoes. And who will cook FBC's meals if the simple act of making cheese toast makes me feel nauseous?!

I really should stop thinking about these things, lest I think myself into not having another child. 

In line with the spirit of clearing out the fridge and freezer, I also decided to finally cook the leftover somen noodles I bought when I was pregnant, ate one portion of (they are nicely bundled per portion and there were two left), then stuck in the fridge because I couldn't bear to look at them after cooking that one portion in some soup made with instant dashi, MSG free and heavily diluted. 

If it's not already evident, I hate wasting food. My mum was big on finishing leftovers, and there was a period of time she would count the number of stalks of kailan she cooked just to make sure that: (1) we all got enough; and (2) there would be no leftovers.

Which brings me to last night's dinner. I had attempted these healthy caramel apples from Kitchen Simplicity when we got home from Wednesday's reunion dinner for a healthy snack to eat in between visits, but had failed to get the caramel to the runny consistency required. I'm not sure what went wrong - did I over-boil the honey, even though the recipe says to bring the honey to a rolling boil? Was it because I used Adam's natural peanut butter, which has no added oils? (If you look at the comments section, one angry reader complains that the brand of peanut butter the recipe author uses contains all sorts of bad oils. Which may actually give a runnier peanut butter when heated, as opposed to a peanut butter made only from peanuts and a touch of salt)

I managed to coat some apple slices with the "caramel", but didn't feel much like bringing them out, so we ate them immediately. However, I'm not overly fond of the taste of cooked honey, so I ended up with about 2 1/2 tablespoons of a peanut butter and honey "caramel" which I didn't feel like putting on any more apples. Thankfully I had had the foresight to not add vanilla to it so all was not lost - I asked Google for marinades with peanut butter and honey, and because I had some miso in - you guessed it! - the freezer, I added miso as a search term.

Last night's dinner

Together with the heng chye stems I ended up with after using the leaves make heng chye and apple puree for FBC, and the somen noodles mentioned above, this was last night's dinner. The recipe for the chicken marinade is as follows:

Peanut Butter Honey Miso Chicken Marinade

Adapted from Epicurious

• About 2 1/2 tbsp of a peanut butter honey mix. Do note that I cooked down 6 tbsp of honey and 4 tbsp of natural peanut butter, so if you are making this not as a result of a failed experiment with "healthy caramel", I would say to go with about 2 tbsp of natural peanut butter and 1/2 a tbsp of honey. You can always add more honey if it's not sweet enough for you. And yes, I know it seems a bit counter-intuitive to use less honey than peanut butter when the "healthy caramel" used more honey than peanut butter, but the honey cooked down so much when it hit the pan that I think this is a more accurate aggaration 
• 2 tbsp miso (there are many different types of miso. Sunday Life! ran a feature on the different types yesterday... But I still have no idea which type of miso I'm using. It's the relatively inexpensive one, and is a pale brown and has a picture of a little girl on the front. I'm too lazy to take a picture of it. Perhaps it is shiro miso? In any event, taste a bit of it to see how salty it is and how much you would like to use. Again, err on the side of caution and start with less)
• 4 tbsp soy sauce (which is really why you should start with less miso)
• 4 cloves garlic, grated (if you scored a head of garlic with large cloves feel free to use 2 or 3)
• Half a thumb of ginger, peeled and grated finely

Taste the marinade as you go, if you feel that it's not sweet enough from the honey (not all honey is created equal) you may wish to add more honey, or 1-2 tsp of brown sugar or mirin to round out the flavours. 

I marinated a mix of  6 chicken drumsticks and 2 thighs in a Ziploc bag for around 9-10 hours (stuck them in at about 9am before we left for church, and cooked them around 7pm), then baked them for about 40 minutes at 170C (fan forced), turning on the broiler for another 10 minutes or so.

You can let your chicken marinate for slightly longer, say 12 hours, but from experience with other soy sauce and miso recipes the chicken does tend to get rather salty if you go any longer than that. If you find your chicken getting too brown - miso tends to burn easily - you can cover your chicken with foil and continue baking, or just reduce the temperature slightly. 

***

The new yoga video I tried this week was so incredibly boring I didn't bother saving the URL. I did a video I tried before, so I won't post the link again. 

No timings from last week's run because I was still recovering from Chinese New Year during the same and so decided not to go hard, but I think my form isn't too shoddy. No more pelvic bone aches during side planks either.