Monday, January 4, 2010

Day 18: House Arrest, Chopping the Suey and Packing Up

Today found me here at home... all day! I found I wasn't too sleep deprived last night so six hours of snooze time was enough for me. Woke up at 8am, and immediately went into cooking overdrive. Yes, cooking. On the menu: chop suey.

Defrost the pork? Check!
Peel the shrimps? Check!
Wash and cut up the veggies? Check!
Clean the straw mushrooms (and discard those that have gone bad since yesterday)? Check!
Slice the pork into thin strips? Check!

So into a cold pan (yes, cold. As in, no heat on the burner...) went strips of pork fat, skin on. Turned the heat up to Medium and let the fat render (ah, pork fat... smells so good!). In the meantime, bashed up and minced six cloves of garlic. Diced a good-sized onion too, shedding a few tears in the process. After a good ten minutes in the pan, I fished out the now-crispy pork, lowered the heat to low and tossed the garlic in, followed by the onions a minute later. Tossed in a good amount of patis and let that cook. Turned the heat back up to Medium, tossed in lean pork and let that cook for a good seven minutes. Added a good splash of oyster sauce and some water.

When the contents of the pan came up to a boil, I returned the cracklings, eeerrr... crisped pork strips. Dumped in the bell peppers, carrots, baby corn, asparagus, and straw mushrooms. Let that cook for four minutes (more like five, though) before tossing in the shrimp, broccoli and Chinese pechay. After two minutes, adjusted the seasoning (needed a bit of salt) and added a cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce.

Et viola! Ready for lunch... unfortunately, it was a lunch made for eight people. There are only four of us here at home. All good, though. Leftovers were cleaned up at dinnertime.

So today, I didn't leave the house... not even to go down to the ground floor... I'm starting to like days like this and I don't want to go back to Manila! I don't want to go back to work! Boohoohoo...

Italic
Anyway, I repacked my stuff earlier this evening and I succeeded in fitting most of them into a couple of sports bags. The rest of my clothes will go into my hand-carried luggage. Only 1 kilo overbaggage! Hah! Blame the suitcase! Dead weight = 5 kilos! Grrrrr... On the upside, I may or may not pay for that one kilo at the airport (hey, 320 baht can still buy me a dress! Or a pair of shoes...). On the downside, I have an excuse to squeeze in a little more shopping. Uh-oh...

So tomorrow, The Three Little Pigs will go to Central World and Siam Paragon for some last-minute purchases... then the bag stuffing shall begin in earnest. Thankfully, I bought all my pasalubong yesterday and have been able to allocate luggage space for them.

Only four days to go and I will bid beautiful Bangkok sawasdee kha. I wish I didn't have to leave...

No comments: