Food for Thought

Comfy Roti John for breakfast, snack and brunch

Roti John with porkmince

This weekend the temperature dropped together with rain and wind it's getting chilly, a good reason to bring in some warmth with comfy food. We strolled over the local freshmarket in the centre of Leiden and stopped at a Morrocan stall where we bought fresh baked flatbread, other mediterranean ingredients and moved on for our dinner groceries.

Once home hubby suggested a Dutch winterdish "Prei Stampot", however we modified the original recipe with extra ingredients and a thick cut pan-fried pork chop just to satisfy the boys tastebuds. But the real surprise comfy food was when I'd prepared a "Roti John" for brunch, just by looking at the crusty loaf, minced meat and a tin of sardines it made me remember our visits to Tekka Mall Foodcourt, Sim Lim Tower for Kaya toast and other eateries in the basement foodcourt.

Roti John, is a popular Malay breakfast and favourite snack at Kopitiams in Singapore and Malaysia. Basically a meat-omelet sandwhich with choices of Chicken/Lamb mince, sardines or tuna together with onion, garlic, chilipaste and eggs all scrambled together topped on bread and then pan-fried. Tea Tarik would've just made it picture perfect with this simple snack, but we indulged ourselves anyway .

The first loaf was with Sardines and it tastes so good, that we had another Roti John this morning with porkmince and Sambal Badjak as chili paste instead. It didn't last long either.......

Ingredients

• 1 French loaf (Turkish/Morrocan crusty flatbread is better)
• 100 gms Minced Chicken/Pork/Lamb/Beef or small tin sardines/tuna in tomato sauce
• 3 Eggs
• 1 Onion & 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1 Tbl chili paste (Sambal Belanchan or any chili paste to your liking
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• Chillies, slice diagonally to mix in or just scatter on top
• Garnish with tomato parts, cucumber slices (fresh chili's) with a dollop of chili sauce on the side

Method:

1. In a bowl mix the first five ingredients and beat together with the eggs.

2. Slice the french bread in halves, press cavity and fill in with above mixture.

4. Heat up the pan and add vegetable/olive oil.

5. Put the bread with the egg-meat side into the frying pan, mixture side down.

6. Listen to it sizzles, cook and turnover both sides until golden brown and sprinkle chillies to your liking.

7. Serve with a sweet chili sauce, garnished with cucumber and tomato slices.

Give it a try, you'll like it:)

Are you a boot person or a shoe person? Why?

I'm a true shoe-ish type, a shoe's shape; model, color, heel height, straps, sandal, sling-back, flats, outdoor, evening-wear all suit me fine. Boots however were bound to weather circumstances and often connected to work/survival outfits, but nowadays you see young women wearing fashionable boots even during warmer days due to use of new material different from leather.

Nevertheless a high-heeled shoe defines a woman's calf and arch of the feet, add to that a well-maintained pedicure and our toe nails just shine like jewels up front and a clean smooth heel at the back. Nothings worse when you look at cracks like a Grand Canyon or Tarokko Gorge for Asian fit.

Same counts when we don't maintain our shoes, what's the point of wearing a pair like crunched soda cans or last best seen on purchase day. With the right shoe on your feet, it complements your outfit or just make you walk your day.

Whether you wear boots, clogs/Dutch wooden shoes, you choose for comfort and/or fashion statement the choices are limitless. Unforutnately my shoe closet isn't....

Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?

Funny, if this question would've been asked ten years ago I wouldn't even have believed a prediction of living abroad lest being an expat for the last ten years in Asia. However time revealed and decided that we did as a family spent our time in sub-tropical countries and we enjoyed every minute being in a different culture and life-style.

At the moment we've moved back to our origins which is The Netherlands while our ancestral roots are Chinese we've become native Dutch for the last three generations. So at this point with this question viewing the next ten years I now know that we will be spending time on both sides of the Globe due to work and built-up lives here in Europe as well as South-east Asia with family and friends.

For a short while I signed our travel stories as modern No-Mads, realizing we are actually the Third generation without borders as the lyrics goes; "Wherever I lay my hat is my home".
Just now I finished a similar conversation with a friend who asked if I wasn't tiered of moving and living without a base, I replied: "On the contrary wherever we go we will make a place to call our own".

And without exaggeration true friendship doesn't have any borders, hesitation, any conversation at any time will be continued or a new topic will be shared as time goes by.

TypePad Conversations » Answer this question!

Mobile application finally at work

Enjoying nifty gadgets and figuring out which features applies best to my liking and tools can be time consuming and comes along with small annoyances. However once it's installed and delivers their promise it gratifies the time and choice for mobile or PC use. Just installed pixelpipe with other social networks accounts controlled under this mobile application, giving me flexibilty with destinations of posts or tweets and when to publish mobility. The N900 is a small tablet PC with mobile phone function and my expectation is that both will operate smoothly as time will show and future posts.

Crossover between words and ingredients

Ok, after receiving the closing e-mail a few days ago I just briefly went over and hit the button making the switch to TypePad while I actually had abandoned Vox blog for quite some time due to spam annoyance and trouble with previous vox blog settings. Being curious is what actually brought me here to experience how this will work out and perhaps even make a jump to a professional account who know

Co-incidently I made another cross-over, after having spent a decade in Asia my family is back to country of origin, The Netherlands. A  short-stay has transferred into moving back for a longer term untill the next job/project sends us abroad again. Till then this will be home again where luckily all Asian spices and ingredients are abundently available so the flavors will be on our table soon again to taste.

Due to circumstances we are still staying at a hotel and tonight we've finally enjoyed a home-cooked dinner after evenings of dining out, which is easy but nothing beats a home meal. Dinner plan for tomorrow is a Dutch mash potato dish, but then again that's the plan depending what we come across on offer shopping for ingredients.