Trip to China Town

Our good friends Catherine and Allen took us on a trip to China Town for lunch and some grocery shopping. R.D. was very excited to get some different ingredients. Before hitting the grocery, we went for Dim Sum. It had been many years since Tony (R.D.'s Dad) and I had Dim Sum and it was as good as we remembered. Our hosts were very gracious and explained every dish and we drank a ton of tea, probably why I couldn't sleep that night! Once we got to the grocery we spent at least 2 hours going up and down every isle. All of the products were very interesting and so different. It seemed like we were in a different world everyone around us speaking Chinese. R.D. seemed to like the the meat and veggie area best, they had duck heads and tongue. He also spent a lot of time with the fresh ginger. Catherine takes a trip to this store every weekend and 9 out of 10 times brings home fresh fish. And when she says fresh, she means fresh! Basically you picks a fish out of the tank and they hit it with a mallet and clean it,you can't do that at stop and shop! R.D. wanted to also bring home one of these fish and steam in his bamboo steamer. The grocery has different kinds of fish, but on this day there was tilapia. R.D. got two fish and we amazingly watched the process. Now this is fresh... we started seaming it about 2 hours after R.I.P! Once we got home, the fish needed to be cleaned a bit more, but neither one of us wanted to touch them... haha (the were actually still moving a little). This is where our big mistake comes in haha. We should have cleaned it a lot more. When talking to Catherine about this the next day, she runs water into the fish for about 10 minutes... we did not do this. It was also hard to take the meat off the bone, so our plates did not look very pretty and the fish tasted dirty. On the way out of China Town we stopped by what I can only call a Chinese deli. They had ducks hanging and all kinds of great looking food. We picked up some real BBQ boneless spare ribs... not those red ones from the take out place on the corner, these were real. Overall it was a great trip and we can't wait to go again... R.D. wants to give the fish another try.

Sunday Dinner

Since Meghan and Scott have announced their engagement, we have all gone on diets! So R.D. cooked Sunday dinner for the Weight Watchers cookbook, honey mustard pork chops with broccoli and brown rice. The marinade was cooked on the stove early in the morning because the chops had to marinate for eight hours. The chops were very thin, quarter inch, so R.D. cooked these four minutes on each side. The broccoli steamed in the microwave and the rice was in the cooker. We all sat down to eat, but the pork was not cooked all the way through. R.D. was very upset, holding back the tears, so i grabbed up the pork and put it back in the oven, just a few more minutes and they were done. I must say this wasn't R.D.'s best meal, unfortunately he put too much brown rice in the cooker and it came out very soggy. The broccoli was good though, R.D. was discouraged, and very quiet during dinner, but his is back and will try again. I guess it all comes down to diets are no good! hahah.