Hard Decisions

I keep waking up before 7am, no matter what time I go to sleep the night before. As soon as there is a sliver of blue morning light at the curtains, I wake up.

After much flip flopping about in bed, I got bored and got up and had breakfast. Cereal! Yes, i was excited! I haven't had cereal in about a year. I kept buying healthy cereal flavours that were gross and I'd end up throwing a nearly full box out, so I stopped buying it. This one was really good though, Kelloggs Honey Cornflakes. Not quite as good as Crunchy Nut which they don't sell here, but nice enough.

I went over to my in-law's place after breakfast to give Pinkie her medication. The silly dog ate poison up at camp about a month ago(she went over to the adjoining plantation and ate poison pellets there). While she survived the initial poisoning, the poison damaged her kidneys, and kidneys cannot be fixed :( My father-in-law says we should put her down as she has lost a lot of weight and will have to be on meds for the rest of her life, but G and I want to see if she will respond to the medicine first. I'm just buying time really until I can figure out what to do. Pinkie has been a camp dog her whole life, but bringing her back up may not be possible as her medicine needs to be kept below 4C and the generator only powers the fridge at camp for 7-8 hours of the day.

So, we'll just wait and see for now. I actually googled "kidney transplant for dogs" the other day. I'm dreaming of course as a procedure like that for dogs in Malaysia is basically science fiction.

I was starving after playing with the dogs and went home and made a pizza. I used the leftover meatloaf as a topping along with ricotta, spring onions , cherry tomatoes, parmesan and fresh parsley sprinkled over at the end.

Dinner: Cold green tea soba and salad with wasabi-ponzu sauce.

Dessert: Can you spot my Meiji chocolate wrappers? Just lazing in front of the tv. Looking forward to G coming home tomorrow.

Ricotta Baby

I made two batches of fresh ricotta in the last couple of weeks and I've been enjoying this creamy mild cheese in just about everything, including pancakes. Bill Granger's Ricotta Hotcakes got a big thumb's up from G. I don't think I'll be making pancakes any other way from now on. The ricotta and the whipped egg whites made the softest fluffiest melt in your mouth pancakes I've ever had.

This morning I made baked eggs with ricotta, spring onions, marinara sauce and cherry tomatoes for breakfast. They puffed up like crazy in the oven (yay!) but quickly deflated when I took them out.( boo!)

They were a little tricky to unmould. Next time I'll just serve them up in ramekins. I had them with a little Japanese mayo.

Lunch was spaghetti with garlic prawns, ricotta and marinara sauce (the sauce was hiding underneath the pasta) with a little seven spice Japanese pepper sprinkled on top, and a simple salad of cucumber, cherry tomatoes, mint n spring onions with ponzu n olive oil.

I'm supposed to be going out to run some errands today but it's bucketing down so hard. December is normally rainy here in KK. I just realised this is the third December I've had living here. Time is really flying. I'm a lot happier here now, but I'm still looking forward to the day when we can move away, either back to Melbourne or somewhere else.

Update: My dinner. I admit, when I make up my own recipe, it can be 50/50. Sometimes it comes out great n sometimes it's just meeeehhhh. This made up tofu chicken meatloaf however was very moreish. No, I didn't put ricotta in it, I used parmesan instead. With egg, breadcrumbs, spring onions, garlic powder, parsley, dried thyme n paprika. Smeared with a tomato bbq sauce on top, then baked at 180 C for 45 mins.