I had one of those moments where I was absolutely starving and I had no idea what to eat! I opened up the freezer and saw that I’ve had a packet of udon which has been sitting there for a long time now because I had no idea what to do with it. I knew I had to use this up soon (especially since it’s taking up precious freezer space) so I googled some udon recipes and tried to throw something together with the ingredients I had!

I started off by boiling the udon in a saucepan. Cook this until it expands a little and is nice and firm, yet smooth and a bit soft.

While that’s cooking up, I fried some onions, spring onions (green onions), shitake mushroom and beensprout in a frying pan.

Add some soy sauce and seaweed and mixed this up. Cook this for about 2-5 minutes.

Once the  udon is done, add this to the pan and mix. I also added some black pepper (because I love pepper so much)

Then serve! :)

This was actually surprisingly more tasty that I expected! Must be the flavour from the shitake mushrooms and the seaweed! When I ate this, I added some Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese spice) and it was amazing. Yum yum.

In light of ANZAC Day, I decided to make ANZAC biscuits (or biccies!). I’ve grown up loving ANZAC biscuits (and not just because ANZAC Day is my birthday) but because they are truly delicious!

They are popular in Australia and New Zealand, being made out of rolled oats, flour, coconut, sugar, butter, golden syrup, bicarbonate of soda and boiling water.

I’ve been asked numerous amount of times why these biscuits are called ANZAC Biscuits and I have to be honest, I did not know. I did know however that ANZAC stands for the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps and ANZAC Day is a national day that we hold in honourary memory of them.

Upon some internet research, I found that the biscuits were sent by wives to soldiers abroad because they were worried about the nutrition of their husbands, and also the ingredients do not spoil easily and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation. These biccies can stand up to months unrefrigerated!

What I love even more about these biccies is that they are extremely easy to make with very little ingredients. I used this recipe I found online. Enjoy!

INGREDIENTS
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup plain flour
1 cup sugar
125g (4oz) butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 300F (150C)

Mix oats, flour, sugar and coconut together.
Melt syrup and butter together.
Mix soda with boiling water and add to melted butter and syrup.
Add to dry ingredients.
Place 1 tablespoonfuls of mixture on greased tray (allow room for spreading).
Bake for 20 minutes.
Loosen while warm, cool on trays.

So the other day I got back home from work absolutely starving! I needed to cook something QUICKLY. I searched my fridge and I had some left over beef, onion and green peppers. I then searched my cupboard and I found a brand new jar of Black Pepper Sauce.

Perfect! I can make Black Pepper Beef, but one thing was that I had never cooked it before. But because it’s one of my most loved dishes (and also because I was so starving) I thought I would attempt to make something up. So here we go…

So in went the beef on the pan with some oil. Sizzle sizzle.

This is my Black Pepper Sauce I bought from T&T.

Once the beef is done, add 3 tablespoons of the sauce and 3 tablespoons of water.

Add chopped up onion and green peppers. (By the way, I wish I also had red peppers which would’ve been nice but at this time I was too hungry to care)

And mix it up!

And then serve!

Looking pretty tasty for such a simple dish, right?

I was pretty ready to gobble this up right from the bowl as seen above, but I try to keep my rule consistent: one meat dish and one vegetable dish to eat with rice. So I added some bok choy and some oil to the wok.

Add some soya sauce.

And then serve!

YUM.

I love easy simple meals… Let me tell you – this was soooooo good. I was a very happy girl after this. Hahaha.

In celebration of our new apartment living, Teren & I invited some friends over for Steam Boat.

Playing the wii.

Grace, Louise & I making funny faces.

Here’s the gang. L-R: Sammy, Tomomi, Teren, Andra, Mai, Grace, Ryan and Louise.

In all, it was fun. :)

Let me tell you that before I came to Canada, I’ve never really cooked. Sure, I’ve done the whole packet noodles – boil water, add noodles, add seasoning. There’s also the cooking I’ve done at Home Economics back in high school, but that was really basic. Anything more advanced than that, I haven’t even bothered to attempt because I was just downright scared. 

I know how clumsy I am. Everyday, just walking around I end up with bruises. Not even sure how. So I’ve been really scared that one day I will cut my fingers off or burn the house down. 

But thanks to dear Shirley, my confidence in cooking has increased. I’ve been cooking here and there. Today I cooked Thai Pineapple Fried Rice. I love Thai food. 

The other day I cooked Tom Yum soup. Yesterday I cooked Mabo Tofu. Haha. Such simple things but so yummy.