Monkeys!

There are monkeys living here!  I saw them, they were strolling about casually in the duck farmer's yard next door.  My Mom saw them too: a mother and child.  The monkeys, that is.  Now don't get excited, Erin.  This town has a thriving mango industry, and monkeys can be pests.  Probably someone set them loose here to destroy crops.  If you want to raise a monkey, you had better get it as an infant and keep it under control.  I don't want a monkey as a pet.

But what do the monkeys mean?  I went to the market in the morning to get more salad fixings.  Maybe it were monkeys that suddenly raised the price of spinach, and sold out all the tofu.  I did buy some broccoli and jicama though.  I'm thinking of using the broccoli for a tempura, while I used the jicama to make a salad.  A spinach, tomato, jicama, Chinese cabbage and cucumber salad.  I used the pink vinaigrette.  I assume you must like my vinaigrette, because Floofy loves my vinaigrette.  She's always ready to pounce on a vegetable that squirts out of my mouth and onto the floor.  I can't just let her drink the stuff though.  It's oil and vinegar.

 

Hey Natty Honey!  How's school?  I hope you are doing great!  Today's movie assignment is "The Gods Must Be Crazy" from 1980.  It's a cheesy little comedy made as an independent film, but gained enough popularity to spawn a sequel.  I especially love the music.  I don't know how easy it would be for you to find this movie, but please watch the movies I ask you to watch when I ask you to watch it, because I will be watching it at the same time.

Rice products

Hi Honey!  How are you today?  How's work?  I suppose you are keeping busy, so please keep safe as well and make sure you get plenty of rest.  Me, I'm feeling slightly agitated but not out of control.  It's probably all the tourists that are in town for the holiday weekend.  MashaAllah, it's almost as if the tourists never left town....  But I'm out of salad fixings, and I need to go and buy some more.  I think tomorrow I will be able to eat leaves again inshaAllah.  Rather instead, my Mom gave me 3 packs of rice vermicelli.  Plus I still have one and half packs still unused.  So I guess today's adventure into Erin's food is rice vermicelli something.  All these rice products are local economy, not just that but the neighbor to the north which is Thailand also generates rice products.  Which is where this rice vermicelli is from.  You can eat rice, right?  So I made rice vermicelli wok fried in sauce, it's quite tasty, and it turned out to be more photogenic than I expected.  Oh, but I put chicken in there.  Do you eat chicken?  I guess we can add the chicken after.  It has a egg in there too.  Do you eat egg?

Hey Natty Honey!  Are you excited?  Are you?  Are you?  You beautiful creature!  How are those exams coming along?  I hope you did well.  I'm guessing that you like salads too.  No salads on the menu today, but you are more than welcome to partake of the rice vermicelli.  Hey, I'm glad your tummy has calmed down.  But we love that excitement too, don't we?  You can have both, Honey.  Whatever your situation, just be patient and pray.

Egg salad

Egg salad is a salad, right?  It's got the word "salad" in it, so it must be a salad.  So for today's salad, I made egg salad, with chopped celery and onions.  Of course it tastes great, I used Heinz's salad cream.  I also sauteed up some Chinese cabbage with chopped eggplant and garlic.  To be eaten with fresh tortillas.  But does this qualify as Erin food?  Oh, not the tortillas.  Next time I'll use large leaves instead of tortillas.  But not today though- I need a break from eating leaves until my mouth stops hurting.

Natty Sweetie, your movie assignment for today is "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death" from 1944.  Oh you don't have to hunt and pay for this movie Honey, it's on YouTube!  Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were perfectly cast as Holmes and Watson, but the scripts were so awful it ruined the movies they made.  The producers tried too hard to be "contemporary".  However, this movie came close to the dreary, haunted English mansion feel that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle portrayed.  Which ironically, is contemporary to good old England in 2018.

Salad fatigue

I had to take a break from eating leaves today, Honey.  Please forgive me, apparently I have no stamina as a herbivore.  I'm learning a lot though, and my poop has never been more solid.  But I still had a block of tofu left, so I made tofu in soup.  Does that qualify as Erin food?  Have you ever had tofu in soup?  The concept is basically a ramen noodles in soup approach, except that we use a block of tofu instead of a brick of ramen.

It looks impressive, but I used too much water so it was kind of tasteless.  Last week when I was hunting for salad fixings, I came across this store that sold burger fixings, and I bought myself a lamb chop and kept that in the freezer.  So today, I had a pan-fried lamb chop with fries for dinner.  Oh Erin, I like that so much better than a salad.  I'm sorry!  I didn't take a photo though.

Aw Natty Honey, don't you start counting your fingers again.  I want you to feel secure, because now is a great time to be Natty.  You have the world at your feet, and you have people who love you and want to take sweet loving care of you.  Namely me!  So study hard, and do well in school OK?

Tofu

Hi Honey!  How's work?  Are you still busy selling sports products?  Well, please make sure you get plenty of rest and eat properly.  I've never eaten so many salads in my life.  My mouth isn't used to chewing on all those leaves, so it hurts a bit.  The things we do for love, huh?  Tofu is easy to bite, though.  I'm sure you would agree with me that tofu is good for you, and very versatile.  Plus, fresh tofu is so delicious.  There's an excellent tofu maker who has a stall at the market downtown, and more people here are getting good at making soft tofu, which is great because I like tofu very much.  So for today's salad, I mixed yesterday's tomato and cucumber salad (which tastes better today because it had been marinading in the vinaigrette overnight, even though it's not very photogenic) with the green part of Chinese cabbage, spread it out at the bottom of the bowl, and arranged tofu chunks on top, then sprinkled more vinaigrette on it.  Delicious!  Want some?

Hi Natty Honey!  How is school going?  Do you enjoy the life of a student?  I don't have any movie assignments for you today.  To tell you the truth, it is the computer that chooses the movie for you to watch and when to watch it, so in essence God takes over my computer which tells me what movie out of my database for you to watch.  So be warned that you're going to have to watch some movies over and over again.  And some of them are B or cult movies.  This is business, I hope you understand.  You can study and watch movies at the same time.  Just please try to keep up with me in this matter OK?

The Pink Vinaigrette

Hi Honey!  How's it going?  Are you super super busy?  Please don't forget me, because I love you.  When I was searching for a name brand dressing the other day, I didn't find any vinaigrette or oil and vinegar or Italian dressings, so I made up some of my own.  When I was working in the restaurant, I made the dressing by combining oils and vinegars and a seasoning packet.  One day, I was making ranch dressing, but they were all out of the ranch seasoning packet.  So I grabbed the Italian dressing packet and poured that in there, laughing out loud to myself because I knew what would happen.  Lo and behold, all the ranch dressing sold out.  But ranch always sells out!  Some months later, they came out with "Italian ranch" seasoning packet.

But whatever.  Let them have it.  I'm at the edge of my budget, so I couldn't experiment with expensive oils and vinegars, so I used what I had.  I made today's vinaigrette with palm oil, plain white vinegar, water, anchovy bouillon, and fresh chopped chives and cilantro.  Vinaigrette dressing is usually the color of the oil, so I added some color with a teeny weeny bit of unsweetened rose syrup, and the dressing turned pink.

I made some tomato and cucumber salad with it, which had chopped garlic and onion in it.  But I also bought more spinach (boy, spinach is sure cheap in this town), so today's salad is spinach with tomato and cucumber.

Hi Natty Honey!  How's school?  Oh it's business as usual for me!  Today I want you to watch another James Bond movie.  From 2002, "Die Another Day" with Pierce Brosnan as Bond.  I think he made a great Bond.  All the Bonds cast were good choices, except Timothy Dalton.  I didn't like him as Bond.  I think your big brother would make a great James Bond.  Kind of like a Roger Moore.

 

 

 

Mustard greens

Erin, I can see a tan line!  Please don't get a tan.  I don't care if you spend all day everyday lying on the beach (as long as you take the time to pray), but please don't get a tan.  Please?

Anyway, there was one leafy vegetable that was all over the market yesterday, but I didn't get it: mustard greens.  Good thing I have a patch of mustard greens in my yard.  Babies, but enough to make a salad.

Today's salad is a little more balanced.  The butter lettuce didn't last until the next day.  I should have used it all up yesterday.  This time I took a snapshot of the salad mix with the dressing in.  Less food than yesterday's lunch, but still a heaping fit in a 12" bowl.  Filling, delicious, and satisfying too (if you like salads).  And oh yes, healthy.  The little flowers in the middle are turmeric flowers I got from my yard. 

Hey Natty Honey!  The next movie I want you to watch is a James Bond movie from 1974: "The Man With The Golden Gun".  This secret love thing is so intriguing, huh?  The people in the movie look like the locals here, but they are not.  Close, though.  Just right across the border, Thailand.  The aura is definitely local though.