The McDonald's stomach

 Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  I hope that all is well with you, and you are healthy and safe.  How's your tummy today?  I have what I call a "McDonald's stomach", and I think you have it too.  It's basically a sensitive stomach that prefers bland foods, regardless of what your palate may want.  Namely, anything on a McDonald's menu.  I like McDonald's food, though.  There is a McDonald's here and a KFC, but if you want Subway then we would have to drive a little further.  Not bad for the Malaysian sticks.  I like to adventure and experiment with food, though.  I've always been that way, now that I have experience I can experiment and my stomach would approve too.  Not today, however.  I had steamed white rice and poached eggs with soy sauce.  Did you ever notice that whenever you go to a restaurant, you never get a choice of what condiments are available?  But you put them on your food anyway and it doesn't affect your judgment of the restaurant?  I used the cheapest soy sauce I could buy.  Oh, I also had my home made hot sauce with my dinner.  I guess I'm a rebel.  My stomach will be the judge of that.

Does your brother want me to watch "Vikings"?  Lately YouTube has been planting "Vikings" clips in my recommended videos list.  If he wanted me to watch that show then he should ask, not hint.  Hinting is for women.  Nor should he get Google to do his dirty work for him, it's the same as hinting.  I would watch that show for you Natty, but it's not on YouTube.  Oh, the series is ending?  Then I think your brother should become the next James Bond.  Which would make him the youngest James Bond ever, but that would give him plenty of time to make seven movies.  Let's pray the writers and directors are good.

Seek to please God

 Hi Natty!  How are you feeling?  Could it be that you feel that you just had your stomach cleansed, and you are tasting food again little by little, and very slowly?  That your once routine environment is washed away for you to see the hidden layers of your routine and environment?  Feeling exposed and sheltered at the same time?  It's a new same old world, a prize of wisdom.  At the end of the day, none of us really has any patience at all.  Patience is from Allah, with patience there is no panic.  If you loved me, your husband inshaAllah, it's because God made you love me.  I love you and I will marry you inshaAllah, but I marry because of Allah.  If you followed my instructions, then you followed the bidding of a man who does his best to please Allah, given the circumstance and the task he is given to do.  Please seek to please God, please yearn for heaven, and ask God to grant you patience.

Relax

 Hi Natty.  How are you feeling today?  I hope you are learning to relax.  How's your tummy?  I think pills would work better for your tummy than syrups.  Anyway, please try to stay calm.  Don't you worry about a thing, my beautiful love.  Everything is going to work out fine for us inshaAllah.  I love you with all of my heart.

My way

 Hi Natty!  How are you feeling?  Please try to stay calm.  Relax and enjoy being you!  You're beautiful, and I love you.  What's on the menu today?  Cooking isn't a competition to me, Natty Honey.  I have a little bit of knowledge, and I like to cook what I like to eat.  That's all.  I can't afford the best ingredients, but I make do with what I have and I enjoy it, so for that I am grateful.  Lunch was noodles in soup of course.  I had a chicken leg, so I fried that up first in honey, salt, and pepper before turning it into broth.  I made poached eggs for dinner again, gotta practice you know.  I got sick of following the instructions from videos from YouTube, and decided to go with my own common sense.  I used a circle mold with handle, and a small shallow pan of hot water.  I got the best results this time, and the least mess.  The temperature of the water is critical, though.  I don't use a thermometer, so I waited until small bubbles formed rapidly at the bottom of the saucepan.  I kept the mold in the water then cracked the egg into it, watched it as it cooked, separated the edge from the mold with a small knife, which was then the egg floated on its own.  As soon as it turned white all over, I immediately fished it out for a soft boiled egg.

Here are some more nice snapshots from the How does your avatar look today ? thread.

Lentils

 

Hi Natty!  What's going on?  I hope you're keeping safe and healthy.  It's Thursday over here.  I went shopping for groceries in the morning.  I'm pretty pleased with my food budget, I managed to calculate time and what I eat to end up under budget somehow, plus I have a lot of food right now.  Oh no!  The price of lentils has gone up!  It's still cheap, after all lentils are Biblically one of the cheapest foods around.  I'm sure the price went up since I started making lentil fritters regularly.  That's what I needed lentils for.  Lentil fritters make such a great late night snack.  I make a huge batch of fritter dough, portion it out then freeze it.  I did that in the evening but it took a long time today, I barely had time to make dinner.  I've been practicing making poached eggs and fries every evening lately, I want to perfect my technique you know.  Tonight's poached eggs was a failure though.  0/3 eggs poached, or rather 2 flops and one somewhat poached egg.  The problem was the pot I used: it didn't create a very good vortex for the vortex approach.  It's a nice pot, but I won't use it for poached eggs again.  I didn't waste the eggs though.  I had mangled eggs and fries for dinner.

I love noodles in soup!

 Hi Natty!  How are you feeling today?  I hope you are healthy and safe, I keep seeing news that the pandemic is intensifying in California.  So please try keep your distance away from people.  They've implemented another lockdown in this country.  Apparently another wave of the disease hit the highly populated areas, something about a mutant strain of the virus.  Yeah, I knew it.  Allah gave my state a break, so we're still pretty much a green zone here so alhamdulillah.  The lockdown only partially applies to us.

I love noodles in soup!  It must be the Asian in me, but I can eat the stuff everyday especially for lunch: it's the perfect portion.  Since I discovered home made miso, my options for broth have multiplied.  The Chinese and Japanese like to put pig in their broth, but I don't need that.  I use chicken or beef, or sometimes no meat at all.  Everyday is different with my noodle soup.

I have a lot of of yuba bean curd, known here as "pucuk" (pronounced "puchok"), right now which is basically dried up tofu skin.  I break the stuff up and add it in my soup for something extra to chew on.  I had some beef knuckle left over, so I used that up for my soup today.  I boiled it 3 times already, but today is its last hurrah.  It still made good soup!  I put the yuba in too early so it fragmented (kind of like alphabet soup) but no problem, I put some more yuba in later to make up for it.  I used my hot chilli miso plus seaweed today.  Unfortunately, I always need to use MSG to complete the flavor, I can't seem to get away from that stuff.  The anchovy bouillon I have has MSG in it, and I use as little as possible.  I have one pack of ramen left and lots of rice vermicelli, so I used the vermicelli as noodles.  Sometimes I crack a soft boiled egg in there, but not today.  Pour the lot into my pink bowl, and top it of with dried onions, salted radish, and my home made hot sauce.  I love noodles in soup!

Excited girl

 

Isn't she adorable?  Such a pretty girl, and a pretty dress.  I love the cape!  The best part is how excited she is, it's infectious!  You must be quite excited too, Natty.  Please do try to keep safe, and not be tempted to socialize right now, things are exciting yeah but there's nothing to celebrate about.  With all this excitement, I need to reaffirm my agenda.  My orders are to stand my ground here, right here where I am now.  I need to be married, so I will build a house here for my wife inshaAllah.  I choose you to be my wife, Natty.  I have a feeling that your bosses are influencing or are going to influence you to influence me to abandon my agenda and relocate.  That is something I will not do, inshaAllah.