My Journey…

I made Chicken Parmesan last night after watching a program on Food Network. It’s not a difficult dish to make just that it requires some time and a few extra steps because you would need to cook the sauce first, then pan-fry the chicken before baking it in the oven.

I am rubbish at taking photos of food. Can someone please teach me how?

Tomato sauce (if you are not using store-bought sauces like Prego…etc)
Yellow onion - diced
Shallots - sliced
Garlic - chopped
Bay leave
Fresh basil - cut into strips
Canned tomatoes - crushed or petite-diced
Red wine
Salt
Pepper

Fry the onions, garlic and bay leave with some olive oil.
Add canned tomatoes, stir well.
Add fresh basil.
Season with salt and pepper.
Let sauce simmer for 5 minutes.
Add red wine and let the sauce simmer until thick.

Chicken
Salt
Pepper
Dried bread crumbs
Season chicken with salt and pepper.
Dust with dried bread crumbs
Pan fry it for no more than 4 minutes each side (just so the chicken does not get too dry)

Finishing touches
Parmesan - shredded
Mozzarella - shredded

Once done with the chicken, base a cooking tin or casserole dish with the tomato sauce.
Sprinkle a layer of freshly shredded parmesan chesse.
Place chicken on top of the cheese and spoon more parmesan on the chicken.
Cover the chicken with tomato sauce.
Top it with mozzarella cheese.
Bake it for 15 minutes in a 400F oven or until cheese is bubbly.

You can serve this dish with pasta (any sorts you like) or salad. I served mine with store-bought fresh ravioli.

If you decide to use pasta, remove the chicken from the baking dish and then pour cooked pasta into the dish to soak up all the tomato sauce with the gooey cheese which is in there.

If you have some time to spare over the weekend and don’t mind working about an hour in the kitchen, this is a great dish to make. Better with wine. Perfect with a loved one.

It was Thanksgiving last Thursday and everyone in the US had a long weekend (Friday is a given holiday too). It’s our first Thanksgiving in the US and could well be our last if we are leaving next year so we thought we will do a little celebration at home with the traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, stuffings, potatoes, veg, gravy and pumpkin pie. Unfortunately all our close friends are away on holidays, so it was a party for 2.

My date with a table full of food

I roasted a turkey, only a bone-in turkey breast instead of the whole turkey since we won’t be able to finish it. I bought an oven-ready turkey (yes I cheated) because I don’t really know how to ensure that the turkey comes out juicy.

I made turkey stuffings. I followed a recipe from Martha Stewart (with a little changes of my own) and it came out great. Do you know that in the South of US, they call stuffings dressing. It’s confusing when dressing is used for salad!

I made 2 types of potatoes, roasted and gratin. Steamed some vegetables and gravy came ready with the turkey I bought so no work there.

Food on Adam’s 1st plate

Adam and I have not had pumpkin pie before so for tradition sake I bought one from Sara Lee and that will be the last time we will have pumpkin pie. The one we bought has such strong smell and taste of cinnamon it feels like you are chewing on a cinnamon stick.

The infamous pumpkin pie

No celebration is complete without a happy drink right? Instead of champagne we had prosecco this time and we loved it.

With that meal I made which could feed at least 4 people, we had more than half the turkey left. I managed to cook 2 meals out of it the following days.

1) Turkey pie - like Sheperd’s pie just substitute the meat and add some remaining gravy into the meat so give it a more Thanksgiving feel.

2) Turkey pasta - pasta sauce with turkey meat and spiced it up with some tobasco sauce so that it has that spicy tangy taste.

So what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving?

• Lovely friends
• Crazy friends
• Drunk friends
• Great family
• Good food and drinks
• Holidays
• The man I am marrying

Sorry for not blogging for such a long time. Just that I was away and doing stuff and PC dying and then more stuff to do. I believe with things more settled now, I will have more time to blog.

Now that I have gotten your attention, I DID GO TO A STRIP CLUB. It’s a women’s only club (with men stripping) called La Bare. Yes yes, the men there are hot with nice body and no no they are not gay (we asked).

It was one Thursday evening and the girls (5 of us) had dinner together before calling for a cab to take us to La Bare. The taxi driver (who said he’s half French) asked us why do we want to go there and we said to see men perform.

Once there we picked our seats in front of the stage and enjoyed the show while sipping on champagne. Each stripper, I mean performer, came out in a uniform. There was a fireman, a pilot, a cowboy, a singer I think and I don’t really remember the rest. They will then dance and eventually strip. They don’t go fully naked, they have their speedos on.

The ladies who are watching can walk up, have a little dance with the performer and then tip him. Tip has to be put into their underwear ;-P

We laughed alot that night. It was funny seeing the performers dancing in suggestive manners and it was more funny when you see cougars paying for private dances by the side. Each private dance is $25 for about 10 minutes. You pick one performer and he will take you to a booth at the corner and give you a private lap dance. You can only touch his body and not his privates.

No, I didn’t have a private dance, I didn’t have the guts to do it but a friend of mine did it. Actually it wasn’t her fault, we paid and tricked her. She enjoyed it though.

Our waiter for the night was a bald, horny, short guy. When we paid our bill he asked us to slip the money into his pants. My friend asked him if he wore underwear and he said no and he immediately unzipped his pants to show us his hairy bush. Thank god we didn’t see his private, it will be yukky.

So who do we like most? Check them out here. We liked

1) Chandler - he came out as a fireman. He is quite good looking and has a nice body but he has since retired.

2) Tyler - The CowBoy. His thighs are as thick as my waist.

3) Tha One - he’s funny. I think he has the longest private of all because he loves to open his legs wide and swing it back and forth. His action makes us laugh alot.

I know we were suppose to enjoy the show but everything seems very funny. It was an experience and all 5 of us had a great night. 2 of my friends went back again a few weeks ago because their husbands were out of town. Now the rest of us are jealous and are scheming something when our husbands will be away come Dec. ;-p

*This post is dedicated to Su. Hope it cheers up your stressful days at work.