The love in cooking

I love to cook. But I don't love to cook for myself.

Which got me thinking....

Cooking is an act of love for me.

My friend (who is a therapist, but not mine!) told me about 'love languages'. Apparently it's pretty common that when a couple is going through a tough time they are not tuned into one another's love language.

There are 5 love languages :

Words of affirmation

"I love you!"


Quality time



Receiving gifts



Acts of service



Physical touch



Being in tune with a partner's (or family member's, or close friend's) love language can help you appreciate when they are doing something out of love for you, EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT WHAT YOU YOURSELF MIGHT DO AS AN EXPRESSION OF LOVE.

I know that when I cook for Matt he sees it as a love language and it makes him feel good that I want to do it for him. Even Joshua, who sometimes must hate the healthy stuff I make him eat, has voiced the fact that he likes that I like cooking for him. He too sees it as my way of expressing love.

However, I do not expect Josh and/or Matt to cook for ME as a sign of love. They have their own way of 'talking'; Matt is great at making me feel so beautiful and special by the things he says to me and by verbally acknowledging things I do. He also lets me know I'm not crazy, even when I think I am!

Joshua, well he's a 12 year old boy, but every now and again he draws a picture for me; the last one was a pink sonic the hedgehog character.

I don't really know where I'm going with this blog, maybe I just want to nudge people to think about what language THEY are putting out and what are other people 'saying' to you that you may not be appreciating?

We rarely use plain and simple English to show someone we care, but we often give other signs. So look for it in others actions and let them know that you see it.

If I cook for you, well it's a sign of love..... unless I'm trying to poison you, but I haven't done that in a while ;)

The trend continues...

.... I didn't cook anything on Saturday either!

We went back to the chinese restaurant for lunch as I really couldn't wait to try the chinese herbal duck noodle soup.

BUT THEY DON'T MAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!

So I had the Roasted Duck Noodle soup instead.



It was good, but no where near as good as the Pho I had the day before.

Matt had steamed flounder with ginger and scallions. He had a lot of fun eating it.







Then in the evening we went to Ryan and Julia's house for dinner. I had grilled southwestern tilapia, Matt had seared ahi tuna steak, Ryan and Julia had bacon wrapped steaks. We all had side salad and potato salad. For desert I brought some of the steamed egg custard buns from the restaurant.





Maybe I'll cook next weekend????

The best laid plans.....

..... so yeah, my whole "I'm going to cook all meals but one this weekend" thing didn't exactly work.

It all began last night.... We have packed up our king size bed and set up a queen size one in our room as it makes the room look more spacious for potential buyers. Now, on the king size bed I had rights to TWO THIRDS of it and Matt had to keep to his third.

IT'S THE LAW IN THE BARCOMB HOUSEHOLD PEOPLE!!!!

This queen size bed is just not big enough for the both of us and so when matt is home over the weekends I find it really REALLY hard to fall asleep. I got about 5 hours last night and so this morning when I was due to go grocery shopping for my menu I was wayyy too tired and went back to bed BY MYSELF to have a nap.

Therefore, for lunch we ended up going downtown to Jazz, a cajun restaurant that Matt loves. I had 2 pounds of crawfish, which is great for my PCOS diet, but I couldn't resist a side of cheesy grits, and boy were they cheesy! Mmmm.....




The crawfish were hot, spicy and cooked to perfection. I love crawfish, but it doesn't seem like you really have a good meal with them unless you order about 4 pounds worth of it, as there is only about 12oz of actual meat in that weight.

Matt opted for the blackened shrimp with seasoned veggies and dirty rice.



After coming back from downtown we took Penny to the dog park. She is used to going into the 'all dog' area as we used to take her and Bentley there. But the last couple of times she hasn't ventured more than a couple feet away from us and snapped at any dog that came close.
So tonight we took her into the 'small dog' area (less than 35 pounds) and she was off straight away and didn't snap once! She did get a little rambunctious with a boston terrier and starting the playful snapping, but we took her home as she might have been getting too excited.

We didn't get back from the dog park till nearly 7pm, which was then too late for me to go grocery shopping for dinner.

DARN!

So instead we went to my favorite place to eat at the moment, Gold Mountain Chinese Restaurant.

I ordered the pHo Ta'i which is a red beef noodle soup from Vietnam.





Ooooh it was so yummy! Next time I'm going to order the chinese herbal duck noodle soup. I'm already looking forward to it.

I must remember next time to wear some summer clothes. The restaurant is very small and always very busy, so it gets rather hot in there.
Then put a bowl of steaming pho in front of me and allow me to wash it down with Jasmine tea and I will perform "Menopause Monologues" for you free of charge, but please bring extra napkins for my comfort!

Matt, who is on a meat free diet, ordered a variety of dim sum and I got to sample them all.

He had:

Salt and Pepper Shrimp, with head. It took me a second to figure out what kind of head they were talking about on the menu. I must have been hungry.

Chinese cabbage with black bean sauce. But let's face it, it's basically the stalks of broccoli after all the good stuff has been cut off ;)



On the left is curry squid, again it was so succulent and not at all rubbery. On the right are steamed shrimp dumplings, of which the seasoning was a lovely blend of fragrant yet subtle.

Vietnamese shrimp spring rolls.



Pan fried turnip cakes. Not too keen on these, they were very fatty and didn't really have much flavor to them. We both took a bite and left the rest uneaten.

But onto the most interesting part of the dim sum tonight: "Steamed Egg custard bun"

Matt was the first to try a bite of these odd looking buns and was surprised to find that they were sweet. At first we thought that it was steamed egg in a sweet dough ball. But then Matt, the clever one of us, determined that it was in fact custard inside a dough ball that only LOOKS like an egg!!! Genius!!!!

Seriously, we were on the last one when he declared this! They were super scrumptious, whatever they are, and would be something I'd like to look up how to make so that I can take them to a party some time.

Until next time, and as always, don't forget to kiss YOUR cook..... unless you're eating at a restaurant.... that could get a little awkard..... and maybe even end up in an arrest..... so just thank them kindly instead...... unless they are attractive... then try and get away with a little kiss ;)

Weekend goals

Dear Reader(s?)

I want to share this weekends goal with you.

I aim to cook all but ONE meal this weekend when Matt is home.

I aim to blog about EACH meal, so get ready to hear my thoughts on a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. Beware, excitement may occur from reading over the next couple of days!

Cooking for one SUCKS and so I'm going to make sure that I get to cook when Matt is home rather than go out to eat.

Oooops

I made home made vegetable soup with cheese and marmite twists for dinner tonight. BUT I forgot to take photos!!! :(

The soup was the best veg soup I've had in forever!

It had potato, onion, carrot, broccoli and cauliflower in it and was seasoned with oregano, rosemary, garlic powder and chili flakes. It was put through the blender on 'chop' mode, which meant there were still small chunks in it, but they were all soft.

The soup reminded me somewhat of a soup I had on December 27th 2010. I remember it well because I was suffering from the night before (boxing day night; it's the biggest night out in Ireland) and I was weary as to whether I could hold anything down. But my Mummy made a soup that I believe had veggies, lentils and some ham in it. It was just the right thing I needed and ever since then I have held it as the best soup EVER.

The twists were made by spreading marmite on a sheet of puff pastry, adding shredded cheese and then folded over into a sandwich. The 'sandwich' was then cut into thin strips and twisted into... well... twists!
However, they untwisted during their cooking time and so I want to try them again but with a savoury scone recipe.

I am going to have left over soup for lunch tomorrow and will take a photo of it then :)

Dim Sum and Then Some

Tonight Matt and I visited our local chinese restaurant, Gold Mountain. We have been there before but have never gone back as, in my opinion, they did not offer anything out of the ordinary from the standard american-chinese restaurant.

This evening I read a review online about their dim sum and how you had to ask for the menu as it was not given with the 'american-chinese' food. The review also wrote how they serve Pho <3

So off we went! I was all ready to ask for the dim sum menu, but found that they had already added it (and the pho) to the back of the original menu.

Dim sum means 'to touch the heart' and according to wikipedia (which is NEVER wrong) it's origins are found in the tea houses along the silk route in china and is now popularly linked to 'yum cha', drinking tea. Apparently it took a while for the tea houses to start selling food with their tea as it was believed, in that day, that to combine tea and food would lead to excessive weight gain. As time went on people began to understand the digestive properties of tea, and so tea and dim sum were then combined.

First we started with some steamed prawn dumplings, which looked remarkably like jellyfish, and curry squid.



Next was some roast duck. This was delicious, especially the crispy fatty skin, but there were a lot of bones to pick around and I don't really like doing that.



Then we tried some CHICKEN FEET!!



It was very bizarre spitting out chicken phalanges, but well worth it for the flavour of the sauce in combination with the texture of the 'meat' which is basically skin and tendon. Matt was rather wary of trying it but he did in the end, yet commented on how there wasn't much to eat on it. But it was fun to try!!!

Time for a drink of tea. 'yum cha' everyone!



O.K. now on to sticky rice and chicken wrapped in lotus leaves.
This was my favourite part of the meal.
Unwrapping the lotus leaves released a cloud of fragrant steam formed by the combination of the cooked chicken and the tannins of the leaf. Both Matt and I commented on the scent at the same time!
The sticky rice was great, but the chicken inside was awesome!
It was some chicken and mushroom mix and I think there was some egg in there too and also a small amount of some kind of sauce. It was the sauce that was rich tasting and when taken with the rice and the leaf scent it resulted in a very satisfying mouth full. I shall definitely get that again in the future. At the same time as this Matt also had some spare ribs.


Here is a view of the opened lotus leaves



Finally we had fried seaweed wrapped shrimp roll. Again this dish did not disappoint, the batter was light and didn't smother the delicate tastes of the shrimp and seaweed.



All of these dishes led to one happy customer who will be returning in the near future to sample more of the dim sum dishes and the Pho too!! Time for some more 'yum cha'.



And thank you to Matt, for taking the photos and trying the chicken feet :)

Who says there has to be milk in cheese?

ME!!!

So, part of my new PCOS diet is to cut out dairy. A friend of mine is also on this diet for the same reason and she told me that she has been trying veggie cheese. The next time I went grocery shopping I saw some veggie cheese slices and put them in my shopping basket.
I used them to accompany a tuna and egg sandwich.


I tried a bite of the 'cheese' (cheddar flavoured) by itself and it tasted of nothing.... until the after taste came and then I had to rinse my mouth out with water. On the actual sandwich I couldn't taste it at all and so there was really no point to adding it in the first place. I shall still try some of the grated 'cheeses' out there too, but my expectations are not great.

And here's a thing; are they really any good for you? The current trend in thought is that the less processed food the better. Grains and pulses have been processed so they don't resemble their natural form at all. This, in turn, has led to and increase in obesity and other health problems due to people eating highly processed (high salt, sugar and fat) diets. Switching to a whole food diet, the experts say, will help to maintain a healthy weight, ease digestive problems, reduce chances of cancer..... the list goes on.

So what about these 'cheese' slices? Sure they are made from vegetables (actually its soy based), but they neither look, taste or smell like any vegetable I've ever come across. And the list on the back isn't too promising either; sorbic acid, carotenal, canola oil, rice starch. Part of the problem with the modern processed diet is that it exacerbates the PCOS caused by insulin insensitivity by unloading lots of simple sugars into the body at one go. It may well be that eliminating dairy from my diet is an important aspect of managing my PCOS, but are the substitutes actually any good, or am I returning to the world of processing in a disguised form?

Todays lunch was a much better success, I made seafood Pho.


Pho cubes sent from vietnam were dissolved in hot water with ginger. I then added some bean sprouts and bamboo shoots. The seafood mix, which was cooked inside the pho water, included squid, octopus, shrimp and white fish. This soup was added to bowls that contained some ramen noodles, sliced red pepper and sliced green onions. A little bit of hot cock sauce was added at the table and then came the best part, eating it all up. A great source of protein and only a few noodles. In fact, I didn't even need to eat my noodles as I was full from the seafood and vegetables.