Back home relatively early

I once heard a saying that everything is relative - the more money you have, the more relatives you have! *grin*

Okay, okay.... enough of the corny jokes. I guess that I am in a corny mood because I attended a work-related course this afternoon and the two speakers at the course cracked some jokes in the course of their presentation.

As it turned out, one of the two speakers was my schoolmate in the university. I thought that I recognised him from a distance by his voice (as I could not make out his face clearly from where I was seated). During the break time, while my colleague was talking to that speaker, I bumped into the two of them. When my colleague introduced me to the speaker, he replied, "yes, my classmate". I smiled and nodded. He then turned to me and said "But you've lost a lot of weight". Oops....

You may be wondering what this has to do with the word "relative". Well, I managed to reach home relatively early after the course ended. I guess whether it is considered early depends much on how you look at it. For people who leave the office "on the dot", the time of my arrival at home today was not considered "early". For someone like me, who does not often have the luxury of returning home when the sky has not yet become pitch dark, anything earlier than that is considered "early".

Whichever way you look at it, I am thankful for small mercies. As I type this post, the stock that I am cooking for Princess (to be used to cook her porridge, pasta, etc) is simmering in the large stock pot over the stovetop. After the stock is done, I will need to strain it before I portion out the stock into smaller containers for freezing. Is that a lot of work? Yes, it is. Some friends have suggested that I buy ready stock that is free of MSG but I wonder whether such stock is as nutritious as home-made ones. Any feedback from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

While we are on this topic, I have noticed that Princess enjoys eating pasta with tomato based gravy on the occasions that we order it at restaurants. I am wondering whether there is anywhere I can buy ready made tomato based gravy (for cooking pasta) that is free of MSG and suitable for infants.

Shortly after I arrived home, Da came home with dinner for my mother. PIL had something on and were unable to visit Princess today. As Princess was still wide awake, my mother ate her "mixed rice" dinner in the meantime.

I warmed up some pastries in the oven for Da. A client had given me a box of these pastries yesterday. The pastries are the typical kind that you see in cafes in Hong Kong (such as char siew sou, egg tart, etc). I also added a slice of bak kwa to Da's dinner plate. MIL had given us a few slices of Fragrance brand bak kwa over the weekend.

As for myself, I was feeling a little full from the tea reception that I attended with my colleagues before the course started. As such, I ate a slice of bak kwa for my dinner.

Goodness me... I spoke too soon. It is past 11 pm now and I am feeling a little hungry. I guess my teatime snack and slice of bak kwa must have been fully digested by now. I rummaged through the refrigerator (hi GP, I could not resist inserting the word "rummaged" in this post!) and took out two siew mai. I microwaved the siew mai on HIGH for a minute before I ate them.

Now I am wondering... should I make myself a mug of hot coffee? The stock is not ready yet. When you cook stock, you need to be patient. After the stock boils, you need to reduce the heat on the stove and let the stock simmer for some time (if you are using a big stock pot, a general guideline would be about 2 hours of simmering or erm... until the flavour comes out (yes, yes... this is the way the "old folks" describe cooking of stock)). One difficulty I find about learning cooking from the older generation is that they do not have any fixed recipe - if it is not sweet enough, you add more sugar; if it is not salty enough, you add salt or light sauce... I have given up asking them "but how do I know how many spoonfuls of sugar to add?" and I now find myself doing exactly as they have taught me and in turn, I teach others the same way (and get asked the same questions that I used to ask the older generation myself!). heehee....