All the Food and Gifts from Portugal

Forgive me readers.. it has been 10 days since my last entry. 

Mostly I've been lazy. But also my brain is tired all the time from dealing with the incompetence of caregiver #2. We have been scrambling to find a replacement asap. I managed to get in touch with a friend's ex-caregiver who took care of her mum during the last 3 years of her life as she succumbed to dementia too. We're getting the paperwork started as soon as she clears her medical in her home country. 

Which, hopefully, will be TOMORROW! Fingers crossed that she's fit for overseas deployment. 

Meanwhile, the new washing machine is great. For some reason I can actually smell the soap on my clothes with this washer. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But it smells good. At the end of the cycle everything is also drier than in the old machine. So it's cut my dryer time by 30 mins! 

I realise that since I've been so busy trying to get the Thailand fotos up on the blog, I've not posted any of the OTHER food pics from our date nights. So you're gonna get them all at one go. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

NUMBER 1 - We (well, I) apparently couldn't get enough of Thai cuisine following the recent holiday so we went and had MORE Thai food when we came back. 

Dinner at a place we've eaten at before, but this time we decided to try stuff we've never tried. 

Crab Tanghoon in claypot - crab good. tanghoon good. chinese parseley, not so much.

Sour spicy coconut milk and seafood soup. Interesting. Rich. Thick. I would eat this again.

Stir fried kangkong. Deceptively spicy. Didn't look it. Sure was tho.

NUMBER 2 - One hot clammy evening, BIKSS' car decided it didn't want to start. So it (and we) were stuck in the basement carpark of a nearby mall. Well, the car was. So that's where we went. He was on the fone with a million people trying to see to a tow truck etc... so I decided to hop into a Vietnamese place we were familiar with. 

It's kinda weird. Every time we eat there we agree it's really delicious. But we never actually REMEMBER to go back there when we have a craving. It's only ever by chance that we dine there again and we say to each other each time that it's a good place to go for Vietnamese food. It's as if our memories get wiped when we leave the restaurant LOL. These are their fried spring rolls. Veggie ones I think. I can't quite remember ... hur hur hur. 

Bun Thit Hue Nuong - Rice vermicelli, grilled pork, fried spring rolls with a very delicious sweet and sour sauce that we got an extra serving of and poured over the whole thing! It's basically Bun Cha without the meatballs.

Grilled something. Maybe more pork. 

Banh Flan - Vietnamese coffee and caramel flan

NUMBER 3 - This Russian restaurant run by Hainanese cooks (don't ask me... I have no clue how THAT came about) has been around for decades. It's pricey, but kind of  an "old school" restaurant. Dark, quiet, with a little murmuring of conversation that never quite goes above an acceptable "polite" volume. I loved it. The food, well.. it was interesting... I'll give them that. It was the first time there for both of us. I'm glad we got to try it together.

Borshch -

A hearty classic Russian broth with Angus beef brisket, slow cooked to perfection

Blinis Caviar -

Homemade Russian pancakes served with caviar and créme fraiche

SHASHLIK of BEEF - 

The menu states "Our Shashliks are traditionally served without sauce as the meats are specially marinated, please request for sauce if you need any."

So we ate ours with the pickles and veggies that came with it. I don't usually eat heavily seasoned food anyway, so this was exactly like eating at home! I've been known to eat unseasoned and unsauced food. 

Baked Alaska -

Wellington of ice cream, sponge cake and meringue, flambéed with dark rum

Here's a video - 

NUMBER 4 - Afternoon tea at a mid-range hotel coffeehouse with an Asian twist! Turned out their savouries were good. Their sweets, not so much. This was part of the afternoon we spent together before he left for his work trip to Portugal. And also the day I bought my new washing machine.

Laksa in a jar

Fried "carrot" cake aka radish cake aka chai tow kway. The reason some people call it carrot cake is because daikon or radish (which is the main ingredient in this savoury dish) is known in Chinese as 'white carrot'. Hence, fried carrot cake.

Not great mini burgers and not great 'pie tee' either.

An assortment of cakes and things. Top shelf, meh. Bottom shelf - quite delicious.

Satay in a jar

NUMBER 5 - After shopping for the washing machine we went to a pizza place by the marina. We'd never eaten there before so decided to try it. I ate half a pizza. And the meatballs. And the veggies. And I finished everything in no time at all! I must have been really hungry or really stressed. I have been known to get very very hungry and eat-y when I've been working my brain. And I had definitely been working my brain with the caregiver issues and the washing machine issues recently.

A half and half pizza, grilled veggies, and (below) meatballs in gravy.

NUMBER 6 - The post-worktrip dinner. We went to a mall that houses a few Thai restaurants and a Thai supermarket, cos I wanted to have a look at the offerings. We didn't make it to the supermarket... so I think we'll go tomorrow instead. 

Stir fried veggies - GOOD

Grilled pork skewers - also GOOD

Seafood curry fry up. I enjoyed this one tremendously. 

BIKSS looked at the all-orange mass on the plate and announced "that's not going to photo well". 

I agreed. This was the best I could do. 

.... and now.... PRESENT TIME!

BIKSS was in Portugal for a work thing. And since I couldn't come with, I did the next best thing. I googled "Best souvenirs from Lisbon" and gave him a shopping list - The Rooster of Barcelos was one of the items on that list.

From the www :

In Portugal, the rooster is a symbol of faith, good luck and justice based on the legend of the "Old Cock of Barcelos". The legend tells a story about a pilgrim traveling through Spain who is accused of stealing silver from a landowner, and is sentenced to death by hanging.

To plead his innocence, he begs the judge to reverse his sentence. The judge was about to tuck into a roasted cockerel, when the pilgrim vowed that as proof of his innocence the cockerel will stand up on his plate and crow.

The judge pushed aside his meal and laughed. As the pilgrim was about to be hung, the cockerel miraculously stood up and crowed. Leaving the judge in disbelief, he then hurried to the gallows to free the innocent man.

Many years later, the pilgrim returned to Barcelos to carve a statue of the cockerel, where the legend and symbolism lives on til this day.

Also, a dozen Portuguese egg tarts. These were HIS suggestion, not an item on my list. They're a LOT sweeter than the ones that are sold in where-I-live, and a fair bit "stickier" too. Still, it's good eating. He asked if I wanted 6 or 12. Of course I said 12. 

I collect magnets. So I had it on my list. Along with a picture of a clay magnet with the Lisbon tram on it so he would know exactly what to look for. He couldn't find any clay ones, but he did get these. I have taken possession of the one on the right. I am still waiting for the one on the left. 

And on top of all that, a surprise - we got in the car and he gave me a present, wrapped in red paper with a bow and everything. (The shop wrapped it for him, he said.) 

It was an Azulejo bracelet - absolutely beautiful, but impossible for me to put on or take off on my own. This requires a second person to work the adjustable bands hahahah. 

And wait, the CHEESES! 

Cured (aged) sheep milk cheese on the left, made in Portugal, and a Very Delicious Camembert - subtle and pungent at the same time. I don't know how else to describe it. I wondered why he would get FRENCH cheese from Portugal, instead of just more Portuegese cheese - turns out it's a lot cheaper there. Less than 2 Euro, he tells me. It'll be about 10 to 12 Euro here for that same size wheel. Cheese is generally expensive in Asia which is why I don't buy a lot of good (or ANY) cheese. But I DO love me my cheeses. And I think I tolerate the 'smelly' cheeses better than most of the people I know. Got that from my Mamma. 

Quick aside - I recently picked up some natural goat cheese at the store cos it was on clearance. (How else am I going to afford it!?!) When I got home I offered some to the caregivers to try - cos they'd never tried it before. BOTH of them immediately made a face and went looking for a beverage to kill the taste. Then popped some candy to try and recover from the "stink" of the cheese. I then turned to mum and popped a little bit from my finger into her mouth. Her eyes widened, she looked at me, and when I offered her more she readily accepted. She had three fingertip-fuls in all. The caregivers looked on in disbelief. 

I am my mother's daughter, I announced.  

I haven't got into the sheep milk cheese yet but I hear it's less pungent than goat cheese. (Also isn't it strange that one is sheep MILK cheese and the other is just GOAT cheese?) I do still have a bunch of other cheese to get through first before I open that one up. 

Right. And now I have to go to bed. It's been a long day and this has been a long post. 

Here's the bag of sotong flavour crackers I've been snacking on while putting this post up.