Mother Hen and I

Savouring lollipop

Time really flies when you’re having fun! What a joy to see the Mother Hen again! Always so generous, she brought a big bag of goodies for us. Sea-salt with roasted garlic, big bags of walnuts, almonds, and dried cherries. She even made haystack cookies for SK!

We couldn't stop yakking in the car. There’s so much catching up to do. Though we email daily, it’s never the same when you’re talking face to face with an old friend. We ate curry till we were too stuffed to move and lounged around on the comfy sofa while the plants her mum gave were starting to go limp. We mustn’t let these plants die on us. SK, always the energetic one, offered to dig holes in the ground. We put the plants in, cover up and were done in 10 minutes!

Our vegetables

She spotted some papayas growing in the yard, so we decided to make a Burmese style green papaya salad. CH climbed up the ladder and got us a nice big one while she picked limes from the plant below. CH skinned and grated the papaya into long thin strips and I prepared the dressing. Fry thinly sliced garlic in oil until brown and fragrant. Set aside. Next fry some small dried shrimps the same way. Finally, fry some chopped dried chilli in oil. Put everything into the salad bowl. Add some ground peanuts, fish sauce, tamarind water, sugar and lime juice. Mix well and serve.

The salad makes a great appetizer. For dinner, I cooked braised chicken with black pepper sauce, broccoli with fresh scallops, fried green vegetables and yong-tau-foo soup.

My brother brought us ‘confinement food’ (pig trotters cooked in black vinegar, steamed grouper fish and a sweet ginkgo-nut dessert.) which is nutritious food for post-natal mothers. Traditional Chinese confinement food consists mainly of old ginger, rice wine, sesame oil, black vinegar, lots of chicken and lean pork, white fish and some vegetables. We were able to enjoy these delicious dishes because of his post-natal wife.

Picture courtesy of Stomp.com.sg

The grand finale was a special crepe cake for mum’s belated birthday celebration. Mille Crepe is a stack of 20 crepes placed on top of one another, with creamy durian filling in between the layers and a caramelised topping. This creation is so decadent, it is to die for!

By 9pm, Mother Hen was nodding off. It’d been a long but lovely day!