10.5 lbs

Chad and I woke up early this morning so that I could go strawberry picking with his mom, Maeve and brother, Scott. Chad had to work so he drove me to his mom's house before heading back home and then to work in the early afternoon.

After a 45-minute drive in Chad's mom's car (Scott drove), we were at the strawberry fields. The strawberries were smaller than I imagined they would be- a result of a June which is uncharacteristically dry and sunny. The bad news: Lots more picking to fill up the box. The good news: They MUST be concentrated with flavour.
It was a wonderful morning. There were many mothers with their young children there. The kids' were excited and every other word I heard from them was "Strawberry". For many of them, it could have been their first time picking strawberry picking. Like it was for me.

The mild weather helped make it relatively easy first time strawberry-picking for me. Extrapolating from my experience with it for a mere hour or so, however, I could tell that that doing it all day would be back-breaking.

After about 75 minutes, I had about filled my strawberry box/basket and decided I had enough of berry-picking and enough strawberries to satisfy both Chad and me. Aunty Maeve and Scott were already on their second box and continued picking for another 20 minutes.

My box of strawberries

The weigh-in for our day's pickin' : Aunty Maeve: 16 lbs, Scott: 25 lbs and me :10.5 lbs

In an 'Experimenting' Mood

I've been in the mood for experimenting in the kitchen lately. Here's the dinner I prepared and packed for Chad, chicken tandoori skewers with saffron rice pilaf. Packed dinner is not always this elaborate. I usually prepare them in the morning BEFORE Chad makes breakfast for us. Sometimes, all I do is assemble a sandwich using store-bought cold-cuts, but lately it's been briyani or poached and roasted soy chicken or split whole tandoori chicken or saffron rice pilaf or chicken tandoori skewers or chocolate lava cake. As it is with any experiment, there are successes and failures. The briyani was a disaster, the chocolate lava cake was a bit too much 'lava' and a bit too little 'cake' and when I made the saffron rice pilaf the FIRST time (SECOND attempt shown in photo above), it did not look 'saffrony' enough and it had so much cardamon, it smelled a bit like cheap perfume! Lots of cheap perfume!

The poached and roasted soy chicken was really good. It tasted like the roasted chicken you find at chicken rice stalls in Singapore. So the next thing I want to try is to make the rice and chilly sauce so we can have something akin to Singapore chicken rice right here in Seattle. The tandoori chicken was so good the first time I made it using split whole chiken, I decided to tweek the recipe and make the chiken skewers using boneless, skinless chicken thighs we already had in the fridge. I also tweeked the recipe for the saffron rice pilaf by reducing the cardamon and including golden raisins and cashews.

Chad loves the Sichuan chicken we had at a restaurant in Singapore and the Portuguese Curry Devil ('Debil') my mom made while we were in Malacca. These are among my favourites too. Looks like I'll be taking further advantage of this 'experimenting mood' of mine this week. I've had lots of fun doing these experiments. It would be even better if I could find someone willing to clean up AFTER me (*wink* Yes, I'm looking at you, Chad).