That song has absolutely no relevance to anything in my life right now (I don't know any Cecilias, therefore my heart cannot be broken by anyone named Cecilia), but it is 10.56pm on a work night (GASP!) and it was also the very last track to RPM 67, so - nope, still irrelevant, but I'm trying to keep with a theme here.
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I decided that I had to blog about my first week of work because I managed to cook dinner on my first day of work (1 October, Thursday) and from the Sunday which followed that (4 October) to the Thursday after (8 October). Yes, I wanted (needed!) to hao lian, but I must also give credit to our new family member, whom I purchased with some Robinsons' vouchers I found lying around on the study table.
A cousin of our new family member, who looks exactly like him
Credit to random website which came up on Google
This was what I cooked. The menu for the work week starting on 5 October was inspired by The Kitchn's roast chicken meal plan.
1 October: Slow-Cooker Vietnamese Roast Chicken from A Year of Slow Cooking. The night before, which was also my last night of no-pay leave (when I should have been vegetating in front of the TV for the last time), I stuck a layer of sliced onions in the bottom of the slow cooker insert, put about 8 or 9 small to medium sized Sakura skinless chicken thighs on top of those in a single layer, then poured the marinade over them. I stuck the entire insert into the fridge, and at 3pm that afternoon I sent my mother a message and told her to stick the insert into the slow cooker on "Low". When I got back around 6.45pm the chicken was lovely and tender and had that nice caramelised fish sauce aftertaste.
We went out for dinner on 2 October. One of the things I missed the most about working was anticipating going out to town on Friday night. Since we didn't have cell group, we went to Vivo City where we proceeded to eat a bit too much, but we HAD to get llao llao to celebrate my return to work.
On 4 October, I roasted a chicken (seasoned it with just salt and pepper). Now, the NTUC fish counter aunties who can cut up the chicken for you and discard all the yucky bits like the head and feet never seem to understand me when I say "butterfly" (I have to pronounce it with a distinctly auntie accent, viz., bah-terh-fly). After having the chicken cut open at the breast bone and the chicken cut in two with the backbone still attached, I took to asking for the feet and head to be cut off and thrown away, and only the backbone removed but returned with the beheaded and de-feeted chicken... which came back to me with the backbone removed and cut in half.
It actually does make a difference when roasting the chicken, to have it intact and not in two halves - the breast meat doesn't get as dry when the chicken is whole, but since the butcher service saves me from spraying my sink with chicken germs, I can't complain. Anyhow, so I roasted my two chicken halves, and we ate most of one half for dinner along with some roasted broccoli and cous cous. I saved the chicken bones.
On 5 October, I took the drumstick and thigh and chicken wing off the half chicken, shredded the breast meat, cooked some 2.5 minute soba (I threw in some thinly sliced kailan when the water first came to a boil and let that cook for a bit), and added the shredded chicken towards the end to warm it through. The soba cooking water was really tasty so we drank it after dinner, but dinner was essentially soba with chicken and kailan, and I stirred in some ginger scallion sauce (plenty of recipes out there, it got trendy after David Chang included a recipe for it in his Momofuku cookbook). All chicken bones were saved, together with the drumstick, thigh and chicken wing.
On 6 October I made Niku Miso don with an almost hard-boiled egg (each). There are also plenty of recipes on the Internet which you can adapt to your liking, I just fried up some minced onion, garlic and ginger (you can grate it so you don't really see it after it's cooked), then added a tray of minced pork. After the pork was cooked through (you may need to add a touch of water), I set aside some for FBC before adding a sauce comprising soy sauce, miso paste, mirin and cooking sake in a 2:3:1.5:2ish ratio. Err, just taste as you go, miso pastes come in different levels of saltiness. After the sauce thickened I drizzled some sesame oil over it all, placed thinly sliced kailan on top, lowered the heat and covered the pot so the kailan would wilt in the residual heat. We ate this with rice.
On 7 October I finally got round to making slow-cooker chicken stock! Again there are plenty of iterations of this out there (I think it started trending after Smitten Kitchen published a recipe for it). I just stuck all the chicken bones from my 4 October roast chicken and some chicken bones from another roast chicken which I had frozen into my slow cooker along with a sliced onion, about 3 small cloves of garlic, two bay leaves and half a carrot, roughly chopped. I used around 8 cups of water, which I think was too much. I cooked it on Low for about 12 hours, and it tasted a bit diluted to me when I got home so I took the lid off the slow cooker and turned it to High for a while. The evaporation did help to give it a more concentrated flavour, but I ended up adding about a tablespoon of tomato paste along with salt and pepper to give the stock more body. I also added in the remaining chicken parts I had saved, skin and all, so that helped the flavour as well. We ate this with mini fusilli and the remaining chicken parts, and some blanched broccoli.
On 8 October I Googled recipes for baked salmon, found this recipe from Natasha's Kitchen, decided parsley was too expensive - one box would cost almost the same as a coffeeshop meal - and so headed out to the mini-mart opposite our place when I got home, bought some stalks of coriander to use in lieu of the parsley, and some potatoes, and had dinner ready by 8.20pm. I was quite pleased with this achievement, and clean-up was minimal. Alright, I know not everyone will agree with that but there was just the bowl I used to mix the vinaigrette-like marinade in, the pot for the mashed potatoes, the potato masher, and my plate and utensils. Jon came back late so he had to eat from the mashed potato pot.
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Let's see how long this cooking thing lasts. Next week is pork week; tomorrow's dinner sits in the slow cooker insert in the fridge, waiting to be put into the slow cooker tomorrow morning.
It also helps that my new workplace is about a 15-20 minute bus ride from my house, and we are going to buy a bicycle so I can cycle to work via the park connector. I am thankful to God for this posting, which literally materialised out of thin air when I was bopping up and down outside Kim's Family Restaurant at Lorong Kilat during an early Mother's Day celebration with Jon's family, trying to get a sick FBC to sleep.
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Having finished haolian-ing, I have a thought that I want to share, which is the primary reason I have stayed up so late writing this (really!) although FBC is running a slight temperature and I really should go to bed because I forsook a nap in the afternoon to continue rereading American Gods.
Now and then, although FBC is already over a year old, I feel bad that I stopped breastfeeding so early. The bad feelings are mostly a combination of guilt and fear that I have disadvantaged him in some way; I was relieved when he started walking around the same time as other babies of the same age, and he also doesn't show any signs of obesity or being developmentally slow. It's all in my head, I know, but it's hard not to compare, to worry.
But whenever I start working myself up about this, I remember the circumstances leading up to FBC's conception and birth; after everything Jon and I had gone through the year before, what was the point in continuing if our relationship was deteriorating because of someone who was meant to (and did, and still does) bring us so much joy, who was a clear sign of God's faithfulness in our lives? What did it matter, so long as he was well-fed, happy and healthy?
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Going back to work has been S. H. I. O. K. I know why I didn't go back earlier, but I'm still going to say it anyway: WHY DIDN'T I GO BACK EARLIER?
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