Hello appetite !

One sure fire way of getting my finicky little Baby Ben to eat is to say in all earnestness

'Do you want Kitty (from Hello Kitty fame) to like you?'

to which her reply is a resounding nod

I continue to plow away

'If you want Kitty to love you you should eat more of this (this being whatever it is I am in the process of spoon feeding her) and then she will be your friend and play with you'

Her appetite is whetted at the mention of Hello Kitty and the irony of it all has not escaped me.

She eats until her hunger has been sated.

Hello Kitty's power is appreciated by me until the day Baby Ben is old enough to nag me to buy her Hello Kitty merchandise to which my reply will be Hello Kitty is a fad and she is everybody's friend not just yours so you need to find a friend who is more unique and special than that insidiously infectious kitty.

Cheesy halt

My overzealous and over exposure to cheese has waned my desire to eat it altogether.
Respite from dairy and cheese is quite impossible as there are too many tempting and ridiculously cheap bargains that I find too good to resist and pass up.

I must limit my shopping expeditions and bargain hunting ventures in order to curb this crazy accumulation of cheeses. One major reason is that other than Shrek and I the children are not consumers of fromages. They refuse steadfastly to eat anything other than Beurkkkk Ba-ba-by-bel or in the case of Baby Taz La vache qui rit (which is Shrek's worst nightmare).

Henceforth Shrek and I (especially me) have to finish off all cheese that I buy on a whim.

Creaming the ice !

After having spent the best part of over a year sitting idly in the corner of my kitchen my 'sorbetière' ou 'machine à glace', ice cream maker was put to its intended use for the very first time today. It marked the first ever batch of ice cream. It was a rather positive experience and I am sure that there will be many follow up home made ice creams and sorbets with a wide array of varying ingredients. I will definitely test out many recipes I have been dying to try and maybe will even come up with my own unique signature flavour .

The first leap has been overcome. The batch was a resounding success I might add and was a very heartening first effort.

It is a chocolate flavoured ice cream with undertones of coffee forever etched as a first successful batch.

Weekly menu plan

Here are descriptions of what we had for our meals last week complete with pictures.

Monday lunch : sautée spinach, pork roast with abricot glaze and gratin


Monday night : my creation which was a great success
pizza cum tarte with leeks, bacon, onions, tomato and mozzarella topping.



Tuesday night : Shrek's rice with pan-fried Perche du Nil and button mushrooms

Wednesday lunch : Mac 'n cheese
Wednesday dinner : Pasta soup (either with alphabet pasta or Macaronis) an easy peasy meal to whip up that is always a big hit with my kids

Thursday lunch : left-over pizza
Thursday dinner : tomates Mozzarella and smoked salmon




Friday lunch : pan-fried Basa fillets, zucchini sautée and rice
dessert meringues and double crème de Gruyère.
Friday dinner : Vietnamese crab vermicelli soup with tomato broth aka bun rieu

Saturday lunch : tête marbré and pizza (store bought)
dessert Tiramisu





Saturday dinner : rice with roast chicken drumsticks à la Shrek (was dry and salty)
dessert gatêau aux amandes, crème vanille

Sunday brunch :picnic with smoked salmon, brioche sucrée au beurre, apples, seedless grapes, prunes, chips

Sunday dinner : penne avec sauce à la crème aux champignons de Paris
dessert assortiment of cheeses, yoghurts and left over tiramisu

Shrekkie wonder

Shrek's idea of a nutritious meal consists of a single popsicle for breakfast which is what Baby Taz has been getting the past few mornings.


Shrek has a very intimate notion of nutrition and so it goes without saying that he feeds the children very high energy food for breakfast.

If it was left up to Shrek the children will be lucky to have two decent meals a week. Real deal meals are the fillers and spoilers for awesome chocolate, ice cream, chips and snackables and junk. I am partly to blame because I do buy the stuff but I feed them proper food first and then they get the occasional treats and sweets as a reward for dessert or just to break up the routine a little.

I crave fresh fruits and Asian staples...
Maybe it is time for a change of scenery.

Baby Taz's questionable ancestry

Baby Taz's overly enthusiastic consumption of Italian food such as risotto, pasta points to evidence of possible Italian lineage. I wonder if he has any hidden Italian heritage, on second thoughts maybe Italian food is just accessible and easy to like and palatable when one is undiscerning and at the tender age of almost 2 years.
He wolfs down pasta with consequence but I do hope that he will in time appreciate the much more complex Vietnamese cuisine.

Making fish tasty

According to the wise and sage Petit Suisse one can render fish enjoyable for children's consumption simply by covering it with breadcrumbs and deep-frying it. This can be narrowed down to 'fish sticks' or 'bâtonnets de poissons'.


He learned this clever trick from his school canteen.
I am so relieved that my children are eating healthy and nutritious meals at their canteen. I have such confidence and absolute trust in their cuisine.

(my tongue firmly in cheek)

Yoghurt overload

We are frankly fed up with having so much yoghurt...it leaves us sated and blasé because 'absence really does make the heart grow fonder'...so how can we miss it if it hasn't left us for the past two weeks?

Greedy gluttonous has led Shrek's judgment astray when he decided to overgorge our family with superfluous/surplus purchase of Perle de Lait et al. Too much of a good thing can be an anomaly.

I still love you for trying to fill our stomachs Shrek !

i am going on a loop

My personal culinary triumphs and disastrous flops in the kitchen juxtaposed.

Triumphs:

My always scrumptious and impossibly moist carrot cakes. My attemps have been most satisfying and I have successfully modified the recipe to my liking with a few of my personal touches I am rather proud of. Although the last carrot cake I baked was more than two years ago for Lil Miss N's birthday carrot cake is still one of my favourite if not my favourite cake to bake and eat. I just have not been in the baking mood lately and I have a convection oven with limited capacity and function.

My very first but highly successful attempt at a 'tourte aux marrons' or 'chestnut cake'. It was moist, melt-in-your-mouth and wonderfully chestnutty.

My wontons which can be boiled and eaten in a soup/broth, deep-fried or oven-baked.

My chicken drumsticks- which I bake for a lower cholesterol version or deep-fry when I am hankering and craving oily goodness. It is a big hit with my kids.

My cream of carrot/velouté with a ginger and sweet potato twist. It is rather flavourful and with a touch of cream can do no wrong.

My version of Vietnamese pork paste (cha) which I pan fry using no oil and a Tefal anti-adhesive frying pan. The trick lies in the marinade.

My bo luc lac-shaking beef which I add just a hint of satay to.

My bun rieu- tomato based broth with crab.

My tiramisu sans œufs leaves people wanting more (mainly Petit Suisse, Lil Miss N, Baby Taz and Shrek of course)

My Vietnamese beef noodle soup is a real hit in my household. They always ask for more in my household.

My strawberry/mixed berries friands.

Any type of egg-drop soup with aparagus and crab, quail eggs, surimi/mock seafood sticks etc or any ingredients I fancy/have on hand.

My Vietnamese sandwich : banh mi with varying meats such as char siu, roast chicken, pâté, pickled condiments-carrots and daikons, coriander.


Now onto the flops
I have had quite a number of misadventures with egg whites. The first few times involved me having tainted the whisks with a tiny bit of yolk and the whites refused to rise and glisten like glossy peaks the way most recipes call for. Needless to say it frustrated me to no end. I had to abandon a few gâteau recettes because the egg whites failed to behave and cooperate.

I once made chocolate mousse and instead of sugar or what I thought was sugar added a teaspoon of MSG and subsequently salt. I will never live that one down. It was horrible.

I made the mistake of attempting to roll spring rolls while Petit Suisse was a wee baby- four months or thereabouts. He did not know I was in the middle of doing something important and as it was the year where heatwaves swept through Europe and left my mum mistaking Geneva for a typical Sydney summer it meant that the filling that was taken in and out of the fridge due to Petit Suisse's interruptions meant that I secured a sure way to poison Shrek's fragile stomach. I think that this experience traumatised me and I have not made more attempts since that disaster to make spring rolls and vow only to make them when the children are nowhere in sight. This is partly why there are lots of recipes that I am dying to try which I think will be part of my repertoire or signature dishes that I have to postpone and put off until I can have several uninterrupted and tranquil hours to kill without the fear of being hindered by demanding kids.

A few times I put too little baking powder/baking soda into a cake batter and the end result was miserable globs of barely edible baked good.

That is all I can remember for now. Only the outstandingly remarkable or unforgettable can make the list because it would be endless to include everything.

The growing list of inedibles

I have discovered yet again another chalky cheese to add to my list. This time it is a Tessinois cheese by the name of Lati. Avoid it at all costs.

Another malediction is the unfathomably horrible apple variety drumrolls 'Pommes (Canada) Reinnettes' It is simply gross. Eat it at your own peril. It was barely palatable when juiced using the centrifugeuse/Solis juice extractor and normally any fruit or veggie is rendered rather delectable when passed through the juicer. The resulting juice resembled an ugly coloured 'liquid caca'. Needless to say that I have been traumatised for life by the Pomme Reinnette and will never dare to buy this variety again. It would serve as a great case against all apples. It has my vote for worst apple/fruit variety.

Cottage cheese

I still do not get what the deal with cottage cheese is. People seem to praise it for its comparatively low-fat content and a good substitute for the evil decadent hence rich hence good cheeses such as cream cheese, double cream cheese. It is supposedly reeked with health benefits. I on the other hand find it bland and as tasty as chalk. I have used it a few times in 'Gratins' once in gratin Dauphinois and another time in a pasta bake or pâtes gratiné with near-disastrous results.

Chalk it up to another overrated food. I would rather deprive myself of dairy products altogether than to endure eating chalky and bland cheese with no character whatsoever. Call me finicky but I give cottage cheese thumbs down, it's better left alone.

ewww

Sour

I have a weakness for all things creamy such as butter, cream, double cream and so on...but I do have a particular weakness for sourcream and will happily indulge by dousing it over numerous things.

Shrek the croquer des endives

Shrek is a 'croquer des endives'. He will voluntarily nibble on this delish head of endive like one would crunch and munch on a lollipop. Shrek is indeed an onionhead with a penchance for crunchy salad.

It is one of the more herbivorous side of Shrek albeit sensitive.