May 1993
More Pool Prep, Pork Meatballs again, Another Big Banquet, and Something Fishy (a recipe)
For an introduction to what these Menu Diary posts are about, please click HERE. And for the reasons why you really should read this series, please click HERE.
Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 May. I would have made this one. Pork in Black Bean Sauce was one of the recipes from the Chinese Cooking class I had taken some years before.
Sunday, 9 May. The ‘Slaving” Trenna is referring to was to get our backyard ready for the building of our swimming pool. Lots of plants needed moving, temporarily potting, giving away or in a few cases, composting. It was several weekends of really physical work, that we both did.
Tuesday, 11 May. Apricot Chicken. Of course it fell out of fashion in subsequent years, and I don’t know how many decades ago now that it’s been since I had some, but at the time it was, as Tren says, “Exquisite”.
Wednesday 19 – Friday 21 May. Italian Pork Meatballs, the recipe developed by Trenna based on a work colleague’s Mum’s input gets another airing, and it was “really!, really!, good”, and then it was “even better”. In between, on the Thursday, we did grocery shopping in the evening and then went to our favourite restaurant “Rumah Batik”. The brief story of, and recipe for the meatballs is here.
Monday 24 and Tuesday 25 May. Another delicious Pork Roast, which again, would have been done by me. As I write this I think this was near the start of the “Greg cooks on Mondays” policy. Trenna did the clothes washing every Monday which really wore her out, so we agreed that I would take on responsibility for Monday meals.
The idea worked OK but I was nowhere near as good as Trenna at thinking up meal ideas. There were countless times that I chose a dish that, for example had the same protein as we had had the day before. Or something very similar to a dish we had had just a few days earlier. Trenna found it very frustrating.
Friday 28 and Saturday 29 May. Check this out! “Saffron Chook (chicken); Lamb & Spud (potato) Curry; Basmati Rice; Eggplant Puree; Papadums; Mango Chutney”. It took 8 hours to prepare, and it was just for the two of us. I am in no doubt that I am a lucky man!
That would have taken her entire working day, and it would have caused her quite a lot of physical pain. But her comment about it – “It took 8 hours to prepare, and well worth it, it’s so more ish!”!
Sunday 30 May. Less cooking today, we had the left over Lamb & Spud Curry as jaffles. Even those were delicious!
And Finally an Update on the Last Menu Diary
In the last post on the Menu Diary I remarked that in 1993 we seemed to be having fish every week, and I pointed out that I rarely cook it now.
Well, spurred on by those thoughts last week I bought some nice pieces of schnapper and cooked a meal using Trenna’s recipe from many years ago (see photo below).
The meal really was very simple and delicious. The jumbo chips worked a treat and suited the meal beautifully. I’m definitely doing it again, and can recommend it.
ENJOY!