chicken mushroom soup

Out of the blues, I remembered one of my favorite soup during my childhood time. I can't remember when was the last time I drank this soup. I never really appreciate soup when I was younger and I was fussy with chinese soups. I guess as time pass by and as we grow older, our taste buds change.

So here goes another soup.

photo by melmok

Chicken Mushroom Soup (Chinese Style)
- lots of chicken bones or 1/2 kg of chicken ( i stock up my chicken bones to boil soup cos it adds flavor with the pork bones)
- 6-8 shitaki mushrooms ( i replace it with chinese mushroom cos i didn't have shitaki mushroom in hand)
- 6 rice bowls of water
- a hand full of wolfberries
- a hand full of dried scallops
- salt to taste

I added my left over canned clams with it's juice. The soup turned out wonderful and it tasted as good as I remembered.



Then to spice up our taste buds, I made sambal four angled beans.

photo by melmok

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trying to grow bok choy

I went over board with the bok choy seeds and made the same mistake again. I sow too many of them in my little DIY starter pots (little recyclable newspaper pots)!

photo by melmok

A week or so later, it germinated to a bunch which I had to kill all of these seedlings and save only one.... *hmmm...* 
I tried splitting it to a few but it was too stressful for me.

photo by melmok

I thought I could lay back and wait for my seedlings to do it's thing. But then few days ago..
I notice something. Did my research and found that my little seedlings has leafminers. *blahhh...*

photo by melmok

Temporarily I've sprayed garlic juice on my seedlings and now I'm waiting for my neem oil to arrive so that I kill these leafminers and it's larvae...


On top of that, I notice that 1-2 leaves in each seedlings is getting yellow... argghh...
I shall wait and see....

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plug in timer switch + more chinese soup

photo by melmok

Ah.. I finally found this plug in timer at Ace hardware store for my weekly soup weeks ago.
I was having a hard time trying to figure how to set the timer and finally manage to get it work after a few test. All I had to do is rotate the dial to no 1 and just pull up the little plastic pieces from '1' onwards till '8'.


Ta dahh... 8 hrs of slow cooking and we have our soup...
2-3 soup weekly.....

photo by melmok

Old cucumber soup with pork bone with dried scallops.
Wanted to add in the dried oysters but I ran out of it... Then after taking the first sip of the soup, I realize I could have added in some red dates and wolfberries that I've just stock up during the weekend. *slap on forehead*

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DIY Siew Yok

photo by melmok

I totally forgotten about my roast pork belly post.
My mom passed me a pack of seasoning and ask me to try out this easy peasy chinese roast pork belly. Rub some rough sea salt on the skin and season the rest of the meat with the seasoning for at least 8 hrs.
Then take out the sea salt out and grill it,
1st round, 2nd round, and after the 3rd round I manage to estimate the time for each size of the pork belly.

It turned out deli....ciouss...! It taste exactly like how it's suppose to taste like except it's juicier.
The only set back is that I was getting sick of the pork belly.

From the packaging, this seasoning is meant for chicken. Need to find some one who reads chinese and tell me how to use it for steam chicken.....

photo by melmok

thinning thyme and coriander

Its been 3 weeks now. It's still growing. Some of the leaves are browning and I think I should thin these plants. But I don't know how tooooo.....

photo by melmok

photo by melmok

I'm clueless now... leave it or thin it?
Argh...

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