Hot Pot 火窝

Yesterday we celebrated Chinese New Year by throwing a little food party with some friends.

We had hot pot. Our hot pot lunch-dinner was quite a success. Yes, the party started around 14:00ish, and we only finished eating around 18:00! The husband reckons that this would have made the French people proud of us. Haha...

The shopping in China Town the day before we had our hot pot was a scary experience. It was a mad rush in China Town grocery shops as it was Saturday and it was Chinese New Year's Eve. Everyone just crammed into the shops, and the queues went from the back of the shop to the front of it - where the tills were. No kidding!

The cooking started around 10:00 yesterday morning. The soup base is the most important thing to have for hot pot. The DDA used the ingredients below to brew the stock:

1. chicken
   
2. 2-3 water chestnuts (马蹄)
   
3. white carrot
   
4. 10-12 dried shiitake mushrooms (香菇)
   
5. 1 can straw mushrooms (草菇)
   
6. 8-9 dried red dates

The dessert was next to be prepared when the soup stock was left boiling. The DDA came up with a new recipe as she had more than enough water chestnuts to use. So she made green bean soup (綠豆沙) with tapioca pearls and chopped up water chestnuts. Since it's a sweet soup, lots of rock sugar too!

So when things were all prepared, the table was laid out with a modest amount of food on it:

1. marinated meat
   
2. marinated chicken
   
3. home made meatballs
   
4. home made dumplings (饺子)
   
5. codfish
   
6. prawns (unfortunately these were frozen, so they didn't taste any good)
   
7. fishballs (潮州鱼丸)
   
8. crab balls
   
9. chikuwa (竹輪)
   
10. chinese leaf (黃牙白)
    
11. chinese spinach (波菜)
    
12. enoki mushrooms (金针菇)
    
13. oyster mushrooms (鲍鱼菇)

We don't have the luxury of an electric hot pot appliance, so the good old rice cooker was put to use. It did the job as everyone was fed and we were just chatting in between waiting for the food to boil.

The one thing that the DDA had totally forgotten when the guests arrived & the eating commenced was snap pictures of the setting! Oh well... maybe the next hot pot meal then?

Happy Chinese New Year to all!!!

[Afterthought]
The DDA misses her family during this festive season, she also misses the hot pot reunion dinners her mum makes.

Hot Pot grocery list

DDA and the Finn is planning a hot pot feast with friends come 29th January - Chinese New Year. Below the DDA has come up with a list of ingredients for the hot pot.

Grocery List

1. chicken & chickeen carcass for the soup base
   
2. minced pork meat
   
3. fish
   
4. fishballs (潮州鱼丸)
   
5. water chestnuts (马蹄)
   
6. various Chinese vegetables - (chinese leaf 黃牙白, 唐生菜, chinese spinach 波菜)
   
7. various mushrooms - (enoki mushrooms 金针菇, straw mushrooms 草菇, fresh shiitake mushrooms 香菇)
   
8. tofu (豆腐)
   
9. dumpling skins (饺子皮)

Hmm... is that all that can be used for hot pot? What else should be added?

DDA and höpöhöpö

Back in London, life goes on. The Christmas holiday now seems a distance gone past. When was it again? Just last year December.

Do you think that when a person is ill, the food that he/she cooks becomes poor too? What I mean is, the quality of the food, the taste, the texture... the overall outcome. The DDA believes this theory, because she found the food she made for the past few weeks have been poor in quality.

It's just a muse. Yet another of the DDA's 'höpöhöpö' muse (Höpöhöpö is nonsense in Finnish).

The husband has finally caught the cold virus from the DDA who has been ill for the past 3 weeks and gradually recovering. Feeling guilty because the virus has passed on to the husband, the DDA attempts to make nutritious Chinese soups to soothe the body.

She's catching up on finding good food recipes that makes healthy eating. We live in a city filled with stress the moment you step out of the door. Perhaps not as stressful as Hong Kong, but still the stress is lying around the corner waiting to pounce. So we have to make an attempt at healthy living. Healthy living = healthy eating + lots of höpöhöpö. One can not take life too seriously sometimes, it does make unnecessary stress on the body and soul.

DDA likes Google. Google is cool. OK... that is an understatement. Google is super cool! Has this been mentioned in this blog already? Do you know that Google comes in many languages, even Suomi? (Oh, yes, Suomi means Finnish)

DDA's current reads:

1. Watching the English - Kate Fox
2. Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynn Truss
3. How to have a Beautiful Mind - Edward de Bono
4. The Portable Door - Tom Holt

It does look like the DDA is a little too enthusiastic about her reading ability. Seriously, she can't possibly read all that at the same time. She's got her eye on another... maybe she should focus on finishing what she's got herself halfway through. Then again, she soaked up 'Like Water for Choclate' by Laura Esquivel in a mere 1 week when she got it for Christmas!

Chinese New Year is around the corner. Next week Sunday - 29.01.06 will be the first day of the Chinese New Year. The DDA and the Finn plans to make hot pot (火窝) at home. 8 days and counting down!!!

New Year Resolution

It's a brand new year. Time for some new resolutions too? Oh definitely.

Definition of New Year's Resolution on google:
A New Year resolution is a commitment that an individual makes to a project or a habit, often a lifestyle change that is generally interpreted as advantageous. The name comes from the fact that these commitments normally go into effect on New Year's Day and remain until the set goal has been achieved, although many resolutions go unachieved & are often broken fairly shortly after they are set.

I know that it is slightly belated now to come up with some since it is already 7 days into 2006. But there's always this expression - better late than never.

So I shall start... but where do I start? To start on something, you would naturally try to refer to some past sample as reference. So I thought of a 2005 resolution list. I tried to trawl through some old note pads I keep, I tried to trawl through some digital files I have to capture my thoughts, but I couldn't find a 2005 list!

How is that possible? I have a 2003 and 2004 list. Why not a 2005 list? How bizarre!

Then I tried to make sense of the 2 past lists and saw a pattern evolve in the form of a series of actions in 2005. Coincidence or thought put into action? I am still thinking as I have not concluded. There were some actions on both old lists which were similar. I am thinking maybe in 2005 I was in fact busy implementing those resolutions that I just didn't need one?

So if I have yet a conclusion, what do I have in mind?

I think I'd still like to come up with a 2006 list despite that I can't conclude on the missing 2005 list, thus find myself a little stuck with drawing up a 2006 list due to the missing 2005 list.

So, perhaps I shall start with a new approach. It's based on a method called 'storyboarding' - I read this from a blog post by a spiritual gardener named Solomon. His post can be found here - posted as 'Storyboarding your life '. It is a method of visualising your future, 'planning' if you may call it, which then should be transformed into action. I thought this might be an interesting method to come up with a new year's resolution instead of the usual list.

Right then, I should start fresh on the drawing board. Less distracting musing, more action!

New Year Countdown

After a Spanish Christmas in Benalmádena, we returned to the U.K. to spend a quiet New Year's Eve and simple countdown to welcome the New Year.

The initial plan was to head out to the central - Westminster - to watch fireworks and countdown near the Big Ben. When we heard the news that there might be tube strike, the idea was thrown out of the window. We decided we wouldn't want to stay out in the cold whilst figuring how to find our way home if there was a tube strike on New Year's Eve - New Year. That would have been a nightmare!

The plus side to this change of decision was we stayed home and went online. Friends from Hong Kong came on MSN to chat, and we had a web chat whilst they had their count down. Of course we joined them in the count down & toasted to a fun filled New Year. We also managed to take a group photo with them.

If you inspect in further detail, you will see us there virtually! Cool or what?

The only thing that prevented me from a timely update of this blog was that I fell ill the day after New Year's. I suspect it's a cold bug that's hanging around the public transports of London. Yes, must be. I noticed that the moment I hop on the underground, I hear someone either coughing or sniffing. Looks like the flu jab that I had a little before Christmas didn't help at all. Duh!!! So much for immunization.