At the same time…

Last Saturday was the Chinese Dumpling or Dragon Boat Festival and Sunday, being the 3rd Sunday in June, was Father’s Day so we decided to celebrate both at the same time that evening.

Well, what happened was a couple of days after the dinner we had to celebrate my father’s birthday, my bedridden mum said she wanted to have a party again. “But we just had one,” we told her. “Maybe we can have another one in September for your birthday.” She persisted for a while and then she did not say anymore but she sure did not look happy. That was why seeing that there were these two occasions that we could celebrate at one go, I decided to cook some stuff for a simple “party”, just a small family affair.

I made some more meatballs but I decided not to have them the same way as the previous time so this time around, I cooked soup with them…

…with quail eggs, thinly-sliced canned mushroom and Chinese cabbage. The soup tasted great but no, I did not like the meatballs this way – it certainly was a whole lot nicer the way we had them the previous time, deep fried and served with sweet and sour sauce.

I cannot remember if I’ve blogged about this but in my growing up years, my mum would slaughter the chickens herself and she would fry the innards with canned peas in tomato sauce…

So to replicate that dish, I went to the market to buy some chicken liver. I asked the lady at one of the stalls the price and she said it was RM8.00 for a kilo. I told her that I wanted one piece – and instantly, the smile on her face disappeared. With that very disgruntled look, she picked out a couple, weighed them and said that would be RM1.00. I could not understand why she was so unhappy about it – I only needed a piece so I would not want to buy much more than that. If she had been very sweet and friendly, the next time I needed chicken or anything, I certainly would come back to her stall…but with that kind of attitude, no prize for guessing which stall would be the last I would go to. Tsk! Tsk!

I also bought these udang galah (freshwater prawns)…

…and fried them with ginger and soy sauce plus a little bit of sugar, the way my mum used to do it. There was a little bit egg left after making the aforementioned meatballs so I poured that in as well. These prawns were a bit bigger than the medium-sized ones that we would usually buy – RM50 a kilo…and the ones that day were not really good as the meat was not all that firm and succulent. However, there was a whole lot of that reddish pinkish stuff in the heads, what we call “kor“, and that is the best (very delicious) and also the worse (high cholesterol) part of the prawn. Never mind, at the current prices, we would not be buying them so often so we will only get to eat it once in a long while.

I also bought some salmon…

…for my girl to enjoy – skin crispy and the fish nicely grilled on medium high in the pan and of course, she loved it…very very much!

I had to go out for something at around 11.00 a.m. that morning so I stopped by here to get the lovely barbecued pork ribs (RM28.00 a rack)…

…and I asked them to leave out the french fries (and the pickled cucumber) as the last time I bought this home, the fries were not nice at all by dinnertime (after reheating) but I asked them for more of their lovely potato salad…

– they usually serve the ribs on a bed of this and they did – they gave me quite a lot of it! This was only half of it – I saved the other half for my girl to bring back to her school and enjoy it there. Well, I certainly was glad that I went and bought the ribs as my dad loved it so very much and kept singing its praises!!!

 My sister also went and bought these Sibu-style sio bee and dumplings…

…and on top of all the above, my girl and the mum went to the bakery around here and bought this cute-looking Father’s Day cake…

…that we had for dessert and enjoyed very much. They said it was strawberry so I expected some reddish sponge cake inside but no, the cake was something like what one would find in blackforest cakes and they had strawberries in the cream in between the layers. It was very nice and yes, despite having had so much for dinner, I had a second helping!

Needless to say, it was a delightful gathering – the best times would be those times spent with one’s loved ones, I am sure everyone would agree with me on this.