Saturday
I had a good day yesterday. I got up nice and early, fed the babies and then squeezed myself three oranges’ worth of fresh juice. I’ve been buying 3 kg bags of Gingin navel oranges for $4.99 and making fresh orange juice every morning. It just tastes so much better than any bottled juice, even Nudie juice, which I’ve become quite addicted to.
I walked down to the deli at a quarter to 8am to get the newspaper. Unusually, the deli was closed, and so I decided then and there to walk to the next closest deli which was another ten minutes’ walk in the opposite direction. It’s going to be a horrendous summer for flies. They were constantly in my face and seemed intent on going up my nose. When I got home my Mum had sent an email to my siblings and me inviting us over for dinner. She was cooking up a pot of pea and ham soup and frying up a batch of char kway teow. Mum said she and Dad would drive me home afterwards, if I wanted to come over (for those who don’t already know, I don’t drive – that’s another story for another day). That sounded pretty good to me, but then I had another idea – I rang Mum and asked whether she might have a spare hour in the afternoon to take me shopping for a microwave and juicer. As regular readers will know, I have been planning to buy a new microwave and juicer while Jac is away. My problem was not getting to the shops nor choosing the appliances, but getting the stuff home. I can lift the boxes but of course not carry them all the way home on foot. Anyway, Mum said that would be fine, and so I went to their house in the afternoon so we’d have time to go to the shops.
We went to The Good Guys, which has pretty good prices. If you pay with cash you get further discount off the ticket price. So anyway, armed with my little diagrams and measurements of the wall bracket and the old microwave, Jac’s measuring tape and the number of a particular Panasonic model to check out, it was easy peasy. This is our new microwave (the site says 1000 watts, but the actual microwave is 1100 watts).
The juicer was even easier – I knew the exact one Jac’s been drooling over for ages.
I felt very happy with the prices I paid; ticket price for the microwave was $209; I paid a cash price of $189. The Ticket price for the juicer was $199 and the cash price was $184. And there were more bonuses – I got a redemption form for a current Panasonic promotion to get three free Women’s Weekly cook books, and when I paid for it all the cashier handed me a little box of Guylian Chocolate Sea Shells.
The new microwave works great. This morning, I took the old one off the wall bracket, gave it a good clean and packed it away (all ready for you, Juji, when you need it ;-)). It’s in the garage now in the new microwave’s box. The new microwave is deeper than the old one, so I had to raid Jac’s toolbox in the garage to find an allen key to lengthen the brackets with. Because the microwave bracket is a little too high for short-arse me I had to stand on a chair to get the old microwave off (lots of careful knee-bending!), to adjust the brackets and then to get the new microwave on. But it all was easy enough to do.
Jac knows I was going microwave shopping with my parents, but I didn’t mention the juicer. It’s still sitting there in the box. It will be Jac’s welcome home surprise pressie. So don’t any of you tell her! ;-)
I just heated up some leftovers and they were piping hot after 2 and a half minutes. I’ll have to be careful and remember this new microwave is a lot more powerful than the old one (I think the old one was just 600 watts)…I can see myself nuking food to
death until I adjust!
So… food. When I got to my folks’ house around quarter to 2 yesterday they were about to have lunch. Mum invited me to join them. They had bought a couple of boxes of nasi lemak, and Mum had just fried up some omelette with onions, opened a tin of tomato sauce sardines and chopped up extra cucumber. Mum also zapped a piece of leftover Nandos chicken in the microwave, and so with all the extras, there was plenty of food for three people. It all went very well and was damned tasty. Normally, Mum and Dad have lunch much earlier but they were running late yesterday, which was lucky for me!
In the end it was just Mum, Dad, Juji, Juji’s boyfriend and me for dinner. By the time we had dinner, I was starving. The pea and ham soup was beautiful, with lovely chunks of meat in it. The kitchen smelled wonderful – the soup had been cooking all day. We ate it with buttered slices of Pane Di Casa from Baker’s Delight. I have a leftover portion in my fridge. I can’t wait!
Mum cooked the char kway teow out on the wok burner on the barbie. In this photo, she’s frying the chilli and pork together.
And here, she’s added the taugeh (mung brean sprouts) and is stirring it all through.
The char kway teow served at the table, complete with the tasty brown crusty fried bits scraped off the back of the spatula. I love those bits.
My plate, round one. We all had some soup and some char kway teow (Juji just had soup and loads of bread). It’s surprising how well char kway teow goes with a starter course of pea and ham soup!
