this is turning into a mediocre food blog

Trying to be more healthy has quite a few advantages.... I make more balanced, nutritious (according to a very biased source, delicious) meals. Home-made meals makes your wallet heavier (if you want to tip, you can tip me), and you eat more with less calories or consequences, because they are not deep fried or full of sodium. Hooray for cooking at home.

Made some grilled chicken drumstick and my favorite type of pasta (fettuccine) yesterday (or was it Tuesday?), tossed in the drumstick juice, sun-dried tomato and parsley. And yeah that is corn on the obligatory afterthought (salad, veggies, etc.). Corn makes everything so much more awesomer. To this day I refuse to acknowledge the "shepherd's pies" that are made without corn.

garlic spicy pork

new and improved

Made some yummy dinner last night. V's favorite dish from back when he was a wee disciple of Waterloo, from this dingy Chinese restaurant. He had insisted that I try this magical dish and drove me there twice in hopes of getting his nostalgia dish. Twice we went and twice they were closed... anyhow, I finally got to try it last week. Typical fast food Chinese stuff, pork was a bit dry but the flavor was good (a tad salty, being typical fast food Chinese).

Anyhow, that challenge was accepted! I thought I could reproduce it with a few improvements so I tried making it last night... and tadaaaa. It was pretty darn good! I had used a better cut of meat so it was yummier.

with fried rice and afterthought vegs

Anyhow here's the recipe for those who want to make it, it's really a simple 4 step process.

1 - Marinate cubes of pork tenderloin in salt, sugar, pepper, garlic powder, crushed garlic, soy sauce, bit of lemon juice, chili powder, for > 20 minutes

2 - Coat in flour (2/3) and corn starch (1/3)

3 - Pan fry with slices of garlic and crushed chilis till golden brown

4 - Garnish with green onions and feast!!!

when you don't want the weekend to ever end.

Ding Tai Fung, working out, golfing, Harry Potter 7 and great weather, great company - it seemed like 12000 things got done this weekend.

Weekends are awesome when you wake up early enough to enjoy more of it!

the curse of the black thumb may have been lifted

My parents both have green thumbs. My dad grew up in a farming family and growing plants and food comes naturally to him - when do you need to water plants, how deep do you sow the seeds and what kind of food they need. Do you plant these in the shades or in the sun, when and how to fertilize. My mom could have grown up on a farm. Any half-dying plant that she adopts eventually start astronomical growth and producing flowers and fruits and seeds, some of which develop gigantism.

Apparently the green thumb is not genetic, as me and my sister have the legendary ability to reverse my mom's process on very resilient plants. Personally, I think my sister still had some tint of leftover greenness in her thumb. On my end? I'm pretty sure the exceptional ability to kill a cactus and those bamboo things that grow in any type of environment would have made me a witch in another era.

But here's a chance for my reputation to be saved!! A year ago, I had attempted to plant herbs from those herbal mini-kits so that I don't have to buy an entire bunch of parsley and basil that supermarket sell to giant Italian villages. It was sadly, a fail - a few weak-ass sprouts well, sprouted, and they almost died as soon as they sprouted. Not even an epic fail, it was more a whimper and sputtering out fail. My dad's diagnose was that I didn't water and I didn't fertilize. So basically, it wasn't my fault. Effing high maintenance bitchy herbs.

So this year I water. I fertilize. Have them get sun. Over the entire summer. I even play piano for the goddamn plants and don't swear around them and flip them over every 2 hours so they don't get bed sores. AND I MADE IT HAPPEN. Ladies and gentlemen brace yourselves. This is a jungle compared to what it was last year. I had even gotten enough to yes, yes dare I say - cook with.

We got Thai basil on the left side and some Italian parsley on the right hand side. In the back of this vast and extremely dense forest of abundance we have some mint and cilantro. "Oh my dear modern day Demeter, what are those things on the upper left corner, amongst the bountiful bush of basil," you ask.

These purple things, my little grasshopper, are the reasons why there were Adam and Eve and the big bang. Flowers, my dear. Flowers.

I think this constitutes overwhelming evidence contrary to the claim that my thumb is unable to grow organic things. And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.