LUXOMME

Hot pot is one of those things that you can sit hours for, slowly enjoying the food and the company. It's also a dinner event which forces you into conversations and creates a sharing environment which quickly becomes absolute mayhem. With people throwing ingredients in and people taking them out at the same time, it's messy business, but the more chaotic it becomes, the more relaxing it feels.




For those of you who have never had hotpot, it's essentially Asian fondue, where you put together an assortment of items and cook it as you go. It makes for a long drawn out dinner process where you can sit and mingle with friends for hours.



Typical items include meats, seafood, dumplings, vegetables, and assorted tofu products which you dip into a wonderful concoction of sauces you pre-mix beforehand. It's fun, it's casual and it's personal.






Slowly working our way through the food, we found ourselves left with a ton of leftovers and feeling exceedingly full. The girls moved over to the couches and played TABOO and charades, while the boys stayed on to help polish the last things off.

Between long work days and my need to sleep, I don't get the chance to get people together like this often. In fact, I don't think I've done anything like this since my university days, which seems like eons ago. I was planning on heading back to Hong Kong for CNY this year, and was disappointed when I wasn't able to leave because of work, but I'm glad we were all able to share in this night together.

Despite this being a fun filled month so far, work asides, I'm still not loving February because of the cold. Let's hope it goes by a little quicker.

naomi

While I re-vamped my blog, I worked from my bed. The blogger system is based on templates which are coded, and in order for me to personalize and streamline this blog, it meant that I had to play around with the coding. To a person who has no formal html training, it was frustrating at times, but everything seems to run smoothly now!


I spent most of my afternoon working on refining the coding and finished working out the kinks just in time to watch the sun set.

Lamenting over the fact that the weather right now has dipped significantly compared to the temperature a few weeks ago, and feeling exhausted from a long days of non-stop errands, I decided that it was time to finish it off with a bowl of delicious noodles.


Not wanting to go alone, I texted my friends to see when they would be ready to leave. The girls and I piled up into my car and we drove into the frigid Winter night, in search of something to fill out tummies. We eventually settled on a quaint and cozy restaurant close to downtown.



The three of us ordered a Smörgåsbord of different items ranging from soup noodles, and vermicelli, to salad wraps and steaming hot beef baguettes. 

A beef vermicelli wrap for me, and a pho and vermicelli bowl for the girls!

I've missed you guys.

This month has been crazy hectic with work, traveling and just wrapping everything up before I leave for Christmas - which by the way is officially less than a month away! I haven't really had a chance to do anything exciting this month other than errands, gym, work and repeat. My camera also had technical issues for part of it, which is why I haven't been blogging lately.

I feel like every time I do blog though, I talk about the weather, which has been absolutely miserable. Feeling a cold coming on, I passed by the supermarket on the way home from work and thought I would try to forget about the snow by making a warm winter soup.




The ingredients are simple, healthy and clean. The main component is the butternut squash and everything else revolves around it. There's no set recipe I use, just whatever vegetables I'm feeling like that day.

Today, I threw together a mix mash of onions, garlic, celery and carrot.


Roasting the squash takes the longest time, but if you're feeling particularly lazy (like me), 10 minutes in the microwave is a little shortcut I like to use. It's sweet alone, but a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper will bring out the nuttiness of the soft flesh.



Vegetables don't have to be finely or carefully chopped since everything will blend down anyways. My kind of prep.





The vegetables need to be simmered until they're mushy soft before blending. The first time I made a vegetable soup like this, I tried to immersion blend while the soup was still on the heating element. Bad idea.

Take it off the stove and let it cool a bit before adding the spices and blending everything together.


The last ingredient is a bit of a secret. When I make this for my family, I tuck the milk carton down at the bottom of the garbage can so no one finds out. The heavy cream is what really pulls this soup together, and in my opinion, if I'm eating a whole pot of vegetables. a little cream is justified. Right?

I broke my pasta ban in favor of meatless Wednesdays (actually Mondays) and fresh herbs from the garden.

That's a good compromise right?



Used fiber rich pasta in lieu of the yummy + superior fiberless type. My attempt of trying to feel not as guilty afterwards.

Cooked till al dente in sodium chloride rich water. 



Everything here is from my garden... except for the garlic and marinated artichoke, which I picked up at the nearby Italian Market.



It was definitely worth it.

naomi