X'mas Eve Dinner

Well, looks like it's finally time for da main man in the house to do some work in the kitchen, or rather under direct instruction from his i'd-write-u-a-list-of-to-do's-once-u're-done-with-all-ur-finals "female master"...so yeah, first thing on the list was for me to prepare a "traditional x'mas dinner". Being ever resourceful, i googled for "christmas recipe" and up pops all sorts of dish i didn't know one should consume during x'mas, or rather these are dishes that i eat all year round anyway...well, i ended up going with a swiss cheese fondue, a prime rib roast and venturing into baking my first cake!


what has a bud light beer, orange mermalade, garlic, minced ginger, soy sauce, hot sauce etc has in common? well, they all happen to be the ingredient for the seasoning that i'm gonna use for my prime rib roast...it's really a wonder how anyone could think that mixing all these stuff together could actually produce anything edible, much less producing some kind of tastebud pleasure...as it turns out, the prime rib roast turns out to be almost tasteless, but the $16 rib roast has got a texture to die for...possible the best piece of meat i've eaten for the past 3 yrs since i've been here in US...


our main character for the night getting ready to be seasaoned...to be frank i waas abit worried how it would turn out at this point, cos all i can smell from the elaborate combination of ingredient is just cheap beer...surprisingly, the end product didn't has any taste of beer thou..


my first attempt of baking a cake...after much coaxing from Tammy who highly doubts, probably rightly so,my ability to bake a cake from the "flour up"...i resorted to buying some 'instant' cake mix where u just pour out the already mixed content, throw in a few eggs and milk...the instruction reads "use electric whisk to whisk for 4 minutes"...obviously i refused to buy an electric whisk for possibly the last cake i'd ever baked,, so i ended up doing all the mixing and stirring in a rice cooker (haha, east meets west) with a pair of forks...man it was HARD! took me almost 8 minutes to get things mixed well...i also took the discretion to melt some chocolate in the hope of replicating one of those famous Sara Lee chocolate-laced cake...well, i shalln't go into it any further, but it was quite a needless distraction which further escaltes the disaster in the kitchen


so..i'm making swiss cheese fondue, but i refuse to buy a fondue set, thinking that with my jungle confidence training i can start a small-scale anywhere i want to...so with a spark of genius i decided to use the rice cooker (again) and pour in water and use inverted cups as support for the eventual cheese pot...and put candles which will float on the water and hopefuly keep the cheese melted...the floating-candle heating device worked well, for 2 miniutes...before the candle all died out because of lack of oxygen supply i think...well, wat can u do rite..


while my heater invention didn't work too well, the fondue was AWESOME! the swiss cheese is simmering with the wine and cheery brandy i put in...this is sooooo french man...haha...it really tastes great, although tammy complains that the bread which we dip into the cheese isn't crusty enough, which i agree...well, tammy, so u know what to do the next time u make fondue for me yeah? hee


well...after almost 4 hrs of oven heat...the prime rib roast is indeed "roasted"...but it is not as bad as it looks...the texture is heavenly albeit the seasoning didn't really come thro..


white zinfandel! kicking'!


me working the cake...


as u can see..the cake is not half as glamorous as the other 2 dishes...personally i think it's alrite for my first attempt..but the only compliment i could force out of tammy was 'great effort', which equals 'bad food'..


Present time!!! i got Rick Price CD!!!! Rick Price!!!! i was soooooooo excited man! i've been trying to get hold of the rick price albums for the longest time..apparently tammy got the Australia's HMV store to ship it over...it was great!!! she also gave me three Cambodia bracelets!!! yay!...i gave her a knife (haha...) since our own set of knives aren't that sharp and also a black bag from Ross, which tammy promptly went back for an exchange (she thinks that the bag was too auntie)...haha..well, it was a great nite nevertheless!