One main dish... and many thereafters!

It has been some time since the family of the Three Musketeers came to our home for dinner. Little Nining likes to swim at our swimming pool. With no dinner invitation forthcoming, the resourceful little girl tried to hint to me recently that a visit to our home was long overdue. She chatted with me about nothing in particular and in between, she slipped in words such as "your home", "swimming", etc. Needless to say, I caught the hint. *grin*

Da had to work today. By the time he came home and we went to our favourite coffee shop at Jalan Tua Kong for lunch, it was about 3 pm. One of the stallholders at the coffee shop smiled when she saw us and informed us that earlier in the day, my mother had eaten her lunch at the coffee shop. The stallholder must have wondered why we went for lunch in batches.

If you ever eat at this coffee shop, I would recommend their beef fried rice and their chicken fried rice. You can request the stallholder to fry the rice with sambal if you prefer.

Da and I had just started eating our lunch when the stallholder (whose stall we had patronised) came by our table carrying a plate of stir-fried green leafy vegetables. It was "on the house"! My family and I are regulars at the coffee shop and this is the first time that we have received a complimentary side dish. This is indeed the favour of the Lord! We are blessed everywhere we go.

Earlier today, I had bought a thick slice of pumpkin from a convenience store near our home. I debated what to do with the pumpkin and decided to bake some pumpkin cookies and a pumpkin butter cake.

My colleague had recently taken orders from the rest of us for sausages, bacon, ham, etc. As I had ordered some cheese sausages, I baked some sausage rolls. The sausage rolls are so easy to make that Da's and my three godchildren (whose ages range from 5 to 9) had no difficulty making them when they came to our home for a baking session on 17 June 2009.

I decided to keep dinner simple - one main dish only. Mind you, this is a big challenge for me because those who know me will tell you that I do not know when to stop. Anyone who eats at our home leaves with a very full stomach. Recently, my family and I had our dinner at Pasta Mania at Parkway Parade. My brother (LG) had ordered cabonara with linguine noodles. That gave me an idea. I decided to cook some linguine noodles and cook a large pot of hearty cabonara to accompany the noodles. Erm... by "hearty", I mean that I used whatever I had available in our freezer (bacon, ham, cheese sausages, regular sausages, grated mozarella cheese, etc), our larder (clam chowder, chick peas, button mushrooms, etc) and our refrigerator (enoki mushrooms, fresh mushrooms, eggs, heavy cream, etc). Yes, I think that you can probably guess how hearty the cabonara was.

No pasta meal would be complete without garlic bread. As such, I baked a loaf of onion and cheese bread. After I sliced the bread, I spread my homemade garlic spread on the bread and toasted the bread in the oven.

Before the guests arrived, I packed some of the goodies that I had made today and gave them to the three handsome boys who live opposite Da and I in our development. Little Hng Hng gave me a bashful smile as he greeted me.

Ding-dong! The guests had arrived! After they had an invigorating swim at our swimming pool, the eating session started with some Japanese snacks that Da bought from a shop near his office.

As promised, a simple dinner:-
(a) cabonara with linguine noodles
(b) garlic bread
(c) sausage rolls

Gasp! No finger food? No lasagne? Is this all that Pebbles cooked? Hang on... the "thereafters" are coming up....

Nining was in a playful mood today. Not only did she tie her towel around her head like a scarf, she went around taking photographs of just about anything she came across.

ET and Da drank a bottle of Tiger beer each.

I prepared several cups of hot mocca and hot green tea for the guests.

I tried a new cheesecake recipe today. This recipe was given to me by my friend, JS. Actually, she only gave me the list of ingredients without telling me the steps. I had to figure out the steps myself! Fortunately, the baked cheesecake turned out fine. The top of the cheesecake had cracks in them but the fault lies with me - I did not "steam bake" the cheesecake as I used a springform pan. The next time that I bake this cheesecake, I shall remember to use a regular cake pan instead. The other problem I faced was that as the cheesecake cooled down, the centre portion sank a little - I shall have to check with JS as to the reason for this. Other than this, everyone gave the thumbs up for the cheesecake. Thanks so much for the list of ingredients, JS!

By this time, everyone was extremely full. However, who can say "no" to homemade mocca ice cream? I made the ice cream last night for today's dinner.

I have a friend's wedding dinner to attend next saturday (while Da will be meeting up with WC and SC for dinner that day), so there will probably not be any photographs of food in next saturday's post. Hmm... unless I can sneak a camera into the wedding reception. tsk, tsk....

Shaloam,