Do you know that leftover rice kept in the fridge can become too dry?
When I have to heat up a bowl of leftover rice in the microwave oven, I always add a tablespoon of water to it. If I used leftover sauce, I will heat it up in a pot over the stove. I can add water to the sauce if I think it is not enough for the amount of rice I am heating. Once the sauce is boiling, I will then add the rice to heat up. Once the rice is fully heated, I will taste it to see if I need to add any other sauce to enhance its flavour.
Recently, I used the excess sauce from cooking Ginger Soya Sauce Chicken to heat up a bowl of leftover rice and discovered that it tasted just as flavourful as claypot rice.
These are the ingredients used for making a basic claypot rice.
You can see how the ingredients are prepared and cooked in this video:
These are the ingredients I used for making my ginger soya sauce chicken.
As my family do not eat food that are too sweet or salty, I am able to double the amount of water for making the sauce. However, should I found the sauce too bland, I can always add sugar, soya sauce and oyster sauce accordingly. Once the sauce is boiling, I will pour the excess sauce out into a bowl for storage. Then I continue to cook the ginger soya sauce chicken till the sauce thickens.
When I use the sauce from my ginger soya sauce chicken, I can also include the additional seasoning sauce and ingredients used for flavouring the clay pot rice which are as follows:
-Sesame Oil
-Shaoxing Wine
-Chinese Sausage
-Fried Shallot Oil
-Tsp Sesame Oil
-Spring Onion
-Fried Shallot
If I want Chinese sausage in the rice, I sliced one thinly to pan fry in a little oil. Once it is ready, I add the sausage and a little of its lard to the rice. It should taste good enough even without the spring onion and fried shallots added.
Are you going on a holiday with young kids in tow? Note that there will be times when there are transportation delays due to the weather or traffic. There is also a likelihood of logistical errors. It defeats the purpose of spending quality family time together if each of you are on your mobile phones to while the time away.
So, bring along colouring pens or a multi colour retractable ballpoint pen like this so you can all while away your time creatively.
You should be able to find drawing material to work with from brochures, which are blank on one side.
You can find them at the airports or shops you will be visiting. You should not have any problem finding writing papers in the hotels you stay in. You can also use the napkins from the restaurant you ate at. For me, I can make use of the papers I printed the itineraries on.
You will also need a die to help you to decide what each of you should draw to create the abstract art.
If you do not have one, just do an online search for "roll dice" and you will be able to find one online to work with. Check this link out and you will see what I mean.
Watch this video to see how you can start on this creative endeavour to while away your waiting time.
As for the patterns to work with, do a search for "play abstract Roll and Draw" on Pinterest and you will find a wide variety of patterns to play with. Alternatively, you can get your children to prepare the patterns on a stack of playing cards that you no longer use. In that way, you do not need a die to start. Just pick a card out from the stack to start drawing the pattern chosen.
That should keep the children occupied and restrain them from becoming overly excited about traveling for the holidays.
My daughter enjoys eating sweet corns. Usually I prepare them just by steaming them up over the soup I am cooking for the day. It is best to put a cover over the bowl of corns or their flavour will be lost in the liquid from the steam of boiling soup. I then flavour them with butter, which is good and healthy way to eat them.
I managed to find another way she can eat them since she also enjoys eating deep fried food. I found this Fried Corn Fritters recipe at Miso Jen Kitchen. I like it because it is simple and easy to make.
There is another version from Pailin's Kitchen. In her video she shared that the fritters are tastier if fresh corn is used. She also shared additional ingredients for the batter to make the fritters crunchier. There are some optional ingredients to consider adding to make them tastier.
These are the ingredients she used.
I have included dried shredded coconut and green onions as optional ingredients as they are not ingredients I commonly stock in my pantry.
I like mixing the dishes I have cooked so that I can serve them in different flavours. The most recent experiment that worked for me have to do with Marinated Chicken with BBQ Flavour from CP. The two peices supplied are drumsticks.
I usually put them, still frozen hard, in a metal container and airfry them by using the setting for cooking chicken. Before I start, I will dribble a tablespoon of garlic oil in the container to prevent the meat from sticking to it base as it cooks. Half way through, I will turn the chicken over to cook the other side. They are usually not fully cooked yet but after airfrying them, the meat will be soft enough to be cut with a pair of scissors into bite size pieces.
I will place the cut peices into a pot with half a cup of water to cook further. This is because, most of the time, we find prepacked marinated food a little too salty for our taste. So, it is a way for us to dilute it. Moreover, I prefer to cook my dishes with sauces in them. Once the liquid is boiling, I will reduce the heat and let it simmer for half an hour or till the meat is tender. This is the time to taste it for flavour. If it is not flavourful enough, I can add black pepper and tomato sauce to it. Other than that, I can opt to add oyster sauce and soya sauce.
Recently, I added a bell peppers dish that I have cooked earlier. I discovered that if too much yellow or red bell peppers are used over the green one, the dish will turn out too sweet for my husband's liking. To solve this issue, I added it to the BBQ flavour chicken I was cooking and the flavour turned out all right.
I prefer the sauce I have created for this BBQ flavour chicken thickened by adding cornstarch slurry to boil in it.
We are not Christians. We do not celebrate Christmas. But here I am, sharing information on social media on how one can use trimmings from a living conifer tree on display for Christmas to start a simmer pot of homemade air freshener. It just shows that I am a hoarder of useful tips and I enjoy sharing them to help others live a more eco-friendly life aka frugally. Continue reading if you are interested to learn how to save money on buying scented candles or fragrance oils.
I found out from reading some newsletters from Martha Stewart, that you have to trim the conifer tree you wish to display for Christmas. This is to ensure that you will have plenty of space between branches for decorations to hang freely. From what I have read, you don't have to throw away thoes trimmings. You can start a simmer pot by boiling them with pear slices and one or two sprigs of rosemary for an aromatic scent of winter in your home.
This video will give you an idea what a simmer pot is all about.
You can check out the other ingredients you can use from your kitchen to start a simmer pot from this articles shared by Martha Stewart:
If you like the idea, do a search online for "Simmer Pots .pdf". Through this search, I found more tips about starting a simmer pot from Compost Simmer Pots. You can even toss the peels from fruits you have eaten or juiced into the simmer pot.
This is the process for making a simmer pot:
-add all ingredients to a soup pot. -fill with water almost to the top. -boil over high heat. -once water is boiling, reduce heat. -let it simmer for as long as you like. -you can keep it in the refrigerator between simmers to extend its lifespan. -repeat each day until the mixture loses its scent. -compost the ingredients in the pot for your garden.
Recently, I watched the movie, "Origin", on Netflix. It is based on the life of Isabel Wilkerson who wrote the book, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents".
Watch the movie and learn what she has to said about caste if you think that it is not relevant in your life. Maybe, I can persuade you to watch it by sharing what she said:
"Caste is not simply hatred. It is the worn grooves of routine and expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place so long it looks natural when it isn't. Caste is everywhere, yet invisible. No one avoids exposure to its message and the message is simple. One kind of person is more desrving of freedom than another kind. Freedom to love whoever you want to love. Freedom to go wherever you want to go. Freedom to express yourself however you want to express yourself. Freedom to resist and fight for your human right to do so.
A world without caste would set everyone free".
Have you read this quote by J.M. Barrie?
"All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again".
The reason why issues with social status can happen again is because we were not taught how to face it. The victims do not want to talk openly about their traumatic events. Those who could benefit by allowing unfair segregation to continue will not feel comfortable talking about it either. Isabel Wilkerson said that you don't escape trauma by ignoring it, you escape by confronting it. Her metaphor will change your mind if you plan on letting bygone be bygone:
"We are all like homeowners who have inherited a house on a piece of land that's beautiful on the outside but the soil is unstable. People say I had nothing to do with how this all started.I never owned slaves. I didn't mistreat untouchables. I didn't gas Jews. And yes, not one of us was around when this house is built. But here we are. The current occupants of a property with stress cracks built into the foundation and a roof that must be replaced. We are heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We didn't errect the uneven pillars but they are ours to deal with now. The cracks won't fix themselves. Any more deterioration is on our watch."
