Miss C-Jaz was particularly impressive this evening with dinner. I made chicken adobo, which was so good and so easy, especially since I don't cook filipino food often (see recipe below*). No picture can capture its sour aroma and amazing taste. A picture might just not do the dish any justice.
J loved it - thankfully! Before we left for Sweden, we wondered where our filipino food fixes would come from. How would we survive away from both our parents' homes and authentic filipino foods? I never cooked much at home for this reason. We lived 5 minutes away from Ganma and Ganpa then another 5 minutes from Mamita and Wowo. If I could cook like our moms then we just might survive.
J wasn't the only one who enjoyed the adobo. Miss C-Jaz finished her entire Ikea bowl of one scoop of rice and chicken adobo. She also ate her cucumber, which I recently found a new way of cutting so that she would eat it.
When Miss C-Jaz was first starting to eat solids, I peeled cucumbers then cut it into slices and further into bite-size pieces. Eventually, I stopped cutting the cucumber into bite-size pieces. When she got better at eating, I stopped peeling cucumbers but continued to cut it into slices then into halves. Lately, since Miss C-Jaz has been helping me put J's salad together after his workouts, I cut the cucumbers (unpeeled) into slices then into quarters. Miss C-Jaz would bite the centres of each quarter piece then place it into J's salad, saliva and all. Today, I cut a 3" section of the cucumber then sliced it lengthwise until I reached the juicy core, Miss C-Jaz's favorite part. I cut this section further into 4 to 6 'stix', and voila, Miss C-Jaz easily ate her greens. Now, to work on broccoli and zucchini. If only there were a way to get rid of the green colour.
I don't know what it is about the green, but Miss C-Jaz definitely did not want to eat it in Monday's SCRAM-bled Egg & Zucchini Pie. I liked it. Yesterday, we tried something different in our Elmo cookbook of snacks. I was excited because I thought it would turn out into something similar to macaroons, but quite the contrary. We made 'Big Bird's Little Nests' made of a baked coconut mixture filled with non-fat sour cream and mandarins. It had a nice light taste, but the coconut mixture was dry, not chewy. Miss C-Jaz had fun filling the nests, but the first bite she took was spat out as fast as it came in.
In my macaroon-disappointment I tried changing the filling into something sweeter: Jello chocolate pudding and whipping cream. "Not bad, Mama," as Miss C-Jaz would say.
* Here's the Chicken Adobo recipe I made tonight for 2, adapted from Ganma's ('Tang-koo!'). There are lots of ways to make it, and here is one.
6 boneless chicken thighs, rinsed, seasoned with salt and pepper
1/2 cup each of soy sauce and vinegar (more or less depending on how much sauce you want)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 an onion, diced
bay leaf (if you have it)
Combine all these ingredients into a small pot. Let it sit to marinade if there's time. Otherwise, bring the pot to a boil, and let it boil on high for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium for 10 minutes, then finally to low for the last 5 minutes. Don't forget to cook jasmine rice. Enjoy ;)
