New Year's Eve Dinner 2015

 Hello Everyone!

2016 has arrived and I hope everyone was able to spend it with their loved ones! Usually my parents and I would go for a countdown party at the country club like we did last year. Unfortunately this year, our home club decided to stop hosting the countdowns and we weren't really gearing towards attending another country club's countdown this year so we thought a more quiet dinner at home would be so much better. 

Personally, I quite liked the intimate and quiet dinner with my parents and W. It felt like I was really spending time with my family for the New Year. Perhaps I just wanted something quiet to counter out all the social activities that has been happening over the past month or so. I haven't had much time with my parents, so I really really enjoyed prepping the dishes with mum, having dinner with just the 4 of us, then belting out songs on the karoke until it was 1am. 

To some, it may be uneventful. To me, it was probably my favourite New Year.

 

 I mean, look at all that food!

 

 Daddy had bought two bottles of champagne!

Not all of our dishes were made from scratch of course, I realised I didn't take photos of every single thing on the table too, but I did manage to snap most of them! I guess I'd probably start with what wasn't made from scratch? Hehe

 

 

 Pork Ribs

I'm not sure where mum and dad picked these up, but they got them in Sweet Barbeque and Crushed Black Pepper. They were frozen in the packaging and all you needd to do was take them out from the plastics and wrap them up in foil before throwing them into the oven to bake for about 45mins! 

I'm not a ribs person, I generally don't like foods that you use your fingers to eat unless it's stuff like fruit or sweets. These ribs were alright in my opinion, they did get a little dry-ish after a while and I wasn't too fond of the sauces or anything. It may help if you have some sauce/glaze on the size to bring up the flavour a bit more. I didn't eat much of these, but I doused the pieces I ate in tobasco (as I do with almost everything). 

 

Ham

I'm presuming mum and dad got the ham at the same place as the ribs. Of course, you don't do much to ham apart from slicing it and laying it onto a plate. We didn't really touch this honestly, but it was pretty decent, had a bit of a smokey flavour to it which I liked! Other than that, it was relatively mediocre~

 

Mushroom Soup

THIS. This, I devoured like the world was ending. I had like 3-4 bowls of this. I absolutely love mushroom soup. Sad to say, this one was not made from scratch. Mum basically added a whole load of fresh mushrooms (Portabello, White Mushroom, Shitake and Button) and milk to packets of Campbells mushroom soup. It really tastes amazing and I kept dunking the bread rolls into the soup because I love having bread with my soups! 

 

 

 Menudo

This one's a filipino stew, it basically has pork meat and liver in a tomato based sauce. I'm not a liver fan, but I do enjoy this dish from time to time! When I cook with mum, we usually eyeball our way through so I can't give the exact recipe. However, the ingredient list is well within my reach!

INGREDIENTS:

Capsicum (red and green) - diced

Garbanzo Beans

Pork Fillet and Liver - diced

Raisins

Carrots - diced

Potato - diced

Menudo seasoning mix

 Potato Salad

I would say this is the dish I'm the most proud of. Probably because I handled this the most. If I'm not wrong, this was inspired from the potato salad that's sold at one of our family friend's restaurants which you can read about here. We pretty much eyeballed this as well, gave it a taste test every now and then. Although I'm one for recipe books, I also think doing the trial and error method is good for learning in the kitchen.  

INGREDIENTS:

Potatoes - mashed

Eggs - hard boiled and diced

Peas, Corn and Carrot mix

Japanese Mayo

Bacon Bits 

I hope you guys have enjoyed this blogpost as much as I have making the dishes with my mum! I've got hopes for the coming year and I already see a million hurdles that I'll have to cross. Then again, it's nothing compared to the support my friends, parents and W have been giving me, that's my motivation.

I've learnt new things, tied up some lose ends and met new people last year. Then again, I've also cut some ties and burnt quite a few bridges as well. Sad to say, we need to know when to say goodbye and when we have to let go of people. There are things worth fighting for, but there are things that aren't worth hurting yourself for either. We have to make choices, and in 2016, I hope I learn to make better choices and continue working towards my goals and I hope you guys will do too!

Apart from that, I've also told myself that I need to remember to be grateful for even the smallest things. I've been keeping a physical journal to list down things I'm grateful for daily and things I want to achieve the next day. I decided to share snippets of that with everyone in hope to inspire people to be grateful for the tiniest things, so I started using Dayre and I will do my best to list one thing I'm grateful for everyday. I've been on it for a while, but I'd like to really make an effort to do one post everyday!

Till my next blogpost! Happy New Year! 

xx

Shayne