yummy mothers day

Though my mother is in the US, my family still celebrates mother's day every year. We usually head out to restaurants for lunch/dinner, then head home right after to chat with my mom. This year, we decided to stay at home, prepare lunch ourselves and actually have lunch with my mom -- online!

So who's in charge of the food prep? Since my sister is banned from the kitchen (self-imposed, just to make it clear. She'd rather stay at the dining area, if you know what I mean), that leaves me and my sister-in-law. She's in charge of dessert, I'll take care of the main course. No biggie since I've been practically living in my kitchen for the past few weeks. Let the challenge begin!

I took out my latest issue of Yummy Magazine (where I found my twitter ID on two of the pages, woah! I know right?) and looked for the most interesting recipe in there. Something I can eat (mammal-meat free since March 23!) and whose ingredients I can find in my kitchen -- that Easy Eggs Ben was a candidate (I have fish bacon, how great is that?) but probably not something I should prepare for lunch (though I would willingly eat eggs ben any time of the day, they're my favorite!). The Crispy Tilapia Tropicale looked very delicious but I don't know how to cut the carrots and red bell pepper properly (poor knife skills + terrible knife = julienned nothing) so that's out. Then I saw it. It's not mammal-meat. It's easy to make. It's healthy. It uses fruit-- one of my favorites even, and it looks oh so good.

Saucy Chicken with Mango it is. So I followed the directions and made the sauce first by mixing cornstarch, water, soy sauce and sugar. That was easy. Next was to cut the ginger into thin strips which was quite hard when you're using a knife as dull as mine. After successfully cutting the ginger, I cooked them with onion for a couple of minutes then added the chicken and the chicken stock. I just followed the rest of the instructions and after 1.5 hours (I can be unbelievably slow in the kitchen. I enjoy food prep too much), tada!


At first, I was quite hesitant to add the mangoes, (1) because I wanted to eat them right away, and (2) because the dish already tasted great even without it. But without the mangoes, it doesn't seem like a very unique dish (which was what I was going for) so I gave in and put the mangoes on the dish. It was then that I realized that I made the right decision. The mangoes added a very welcome sweetness to the flavorful dish. Yummy indeed.


Now it's almost lunch time and I have to get ready. My sister will pick me up in 30 minutes and we're travelling all the way to my brother's house in Taytay for lunch! We're about to have an awesome out of town family lunch for mother's day! Yey!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! :)

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