Weather's getting better, warmer, and going outdoors so much more tolerable! Snowing has stopped for about a week now. Although last week there was a snowstorm. Temp range is around 0 - 12 deg Celsius now. So I let kids out when it is sunny. They enjoyed it so much and it makes things easier for me at home. When they burn up their energy running outside, they somehow don't give me so much trouble indoors.

They're seen here playing with a second-hand car a church friend gave us. And ds1 is sweetly pushing ds2 all around the church carpark.

8 Mar

Yesterday I decided to clear the fridge of some remaining veg so I fried some rice. I fried some extra for dh to bring over to the friends who just had the baby. I used gan3 lan3 cai4 (olive veg) to fry it too, and dried shitake mushrooms brought from Singapore. As well as the other veg and some pork. Asked dh to mention that the black strands are olive veg cos they may not be used to such things and may think it is disgusting.

Ds2 is very fussy about food. If he likes something, eg bak kwa or chicken wing, he will eat a lot, far too much in my opinion. But he will totally reject other foods, like peas, and broccoli. I often cook broccoli cos dh and I like it, and it's the cheapest veg here. Ds1 tolerates it well too. But I have tried for months to get ds2 to eat it and he just will not.

Yesterday's fried rice had peas too, which he never took. I discovered he will eat everything as long as it is lumped together with other stuff he likes in the rice! :-) So today I decided to do baked rice.

This kind of thing helps me get rid of all the leftover stuff in the fridge too. So I dumped some pork, chicken, corn, carrot, broccoli, mushroom, onions into the rice and microwaved it. I microwaved instead of baked it cos my toaster oven is too small for the casserole. And I need enough rice to cover both lunch and dinner. Don't want to cook twice.

I also added some chicken soup I boiled with chicken bones that I froze sometime ago. So it's got a chicken rice taste too.

ds2 was able to eat all of the broccoli, corn and carrot. And he ate a lot. So sometimes I'll do this to get him to eat more variety of veg I guess. But other days, cooking separate dishes is still less time consuming. For this, it is the endless chopping that takes up a lot of time. If the stuff is not chopped finely then the rice cannot cook evenly... not so nice to eat also, I guess. So imagine all the diff ingredients that has to be chopped...

I had some leftover Parmesan cheese and just tried sprinkling it on the rice after ds and I had lunch. then microwaved it again. That made the rice seem more like baked rice in the restaurants, very sticky and cheesy, but more salty and cannot keep well, cos it hardens when left to stand. That won't do if I need it for dinner again?

I must try the rice wrap another day. I just bought the wrap from a Viet supermarket. :-) Can't wait.