Late night Gavin came home from work ravenous, so I fed him pasta with tomato sauce and spinach.  I sprinkled some parm on top as well.

Of course I dug in and helped myself to about a fourth of this massive helping. 

I also had a yogurt and a spoon full of peanut butter.  We split a late night kiwi for dessert.

This morning we woke up early and decided to hit the courts and play some tennis.  We did this often when we first moved here, but as our social lives picked up and nights got later, it became harder and harder to get up in the morning and play. 

Before heading out I fueled up on black coffee, a Milo vitamin drink (I made mine with water rather than milk) and a fruit cup including pear, pineapple and dragon fruit.

After breakfast we headed to the park and played for 45 minutes.  I was pretty wiped after that, so i sat out the last 15 while Gavin played with our ball boy.

After tennis I came home craving some more homemade spring rolls.  I was out of lettuce, so I decided to play around with the ingredients I had around the house.  I browned some tofu strips and softened cabbage.  I rolled a slice of tofu, a spoonful of cabbage, Vermicelli noodles, and a leaf of endive into each rice paper. 

 Not to toot my own horn, but they were pretty awesome.  I served them with Chili sauce and ate four.  They are so easy and fun to make, I wish I had figured them out earlier!  I plan to play around even more with the stuffing in the coming weeks.

Today was a pretty hectic day.  We woke up late and had a quick breakfast.  I had three of these little cheese rolls I made, a yogurt, and tons of fruit.

 Today we had dragon fruit and kiwi.

In case you don't know what a dragon fruit is:

Right after breakfast we started calling around to figure out this maid business.  It turns out our friends forgot to give the maid our address.  So we called a few different people to figure out how to get someone in to clean our filthy apartment.  After a lot of a dead ends and a woman who told me her mother was very busy...forever busy, we realized it was time to put on some gloves and get to work ourselves.  And so we worked.  We worked for two hours, two hours of continuous labor.  The result: our house is sparkling!  We took a long rest after that and just before I head to head to work we realized how hungry we were!  We decide to try a new restaurant by our work.  We picked out several small dishes and dug in.  My plate included green beans with slices of beef, a mixed vegetable melody, a pile of rice, and some sort of weird pork stuffed pepper.  The pork was not for me, so I kept the pepper and passed the pork off to Gav!

After we ate, we each got a coffee with cream.  This one was a little too sweet for my liking, but it gave me the energy to go into a pretty crazy 2 hour kids class!

I'm not sure what our plans are for this evening, Gav works until 9:30, but I'm sure I'll have something more before the day is through!

Indian and Spring Rolls

Yesterday's lunch consisted of Indian food!  Gavin and I went to the Pham to our favorite Indian restaurant, Pumjabi.  We ordered Butter Chicken, Spinach Paneer, Roti and Plain Nan.

Gavin's Plate:

My Plate:

It was delicious!

Our work provided dinner was petty good compared to normal.  It was a chicken, potato, and carrot stew served with bread.  It was very different and good, however, I wasn't feeling like a carnivore, so I picked out the chicken and gave it to Gav.

We enjoyed a few late night Tigers, and I make vegetarian spring rolls to snack on.

We dipped them in a spicy chili sauce.  They were so easy to make and tasty, plan to make them again soon, only next time I want to add more veggies than just lettuce.

An English Breakfast

This morning I went ahead and made an English Breakfast.  I had one egg, two mini rolls toasted with cheese, a slice of lean bacon, and a cup of baked beans.  Everything was perfect except for the bacon.  I didn't eat more than a bite of mine.  Too much like ham for my liking. 

We also shared a bowl of fruit and each had a mug of instant coffee.

 Last night we went out with some friends.  I had a few Saigon Beers, and ate a frozen yogurt when we got home.

A Trip to the Store

I took a trip to Big C, the Wal-Mart of grocery stores here in Saigon.  I normally go to a much smaller and closer store, but was feeling adventurous and am getting tired of the selection at COOP Mart.  To my delight I found so much fun stuff for the next few weeks!

Seaweed snacks for Gavin

An assortment of yummy cheeses

Baked beans!  I plan to make an English Breakfast this week, complete with beans, toast, runny eggs, and lean smoked bacon (also picked that up today!)

Spaghetti, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce, spinach, and Parmesan cheese for several night of pasta!

Rice paper, lettuce, and Vermicelli noodles.  It's time I take on homemade spring rolls.

I also got tons of canned beans, I'm officially a few ingredients away form making some excellent Mexican!  I bought a few more sets of silverware as well, it was getting pretty annoying having to wash our two forks and spoons before each meal!

While writing this I munched on a few of these cookies.

They taste like hard, flax seed Madelines.  Pretty good!

Back in Business

This morning I woke up really early anticipating the arrival of a maid to clean the house.  I arranged for her visit last week through some friends who use her quite regularly.  I had never thought at 25 years old I would have or need a maid, but living in a two bedroom/two bathroom, working a decent amount, and never ending amounts of dust lead me to call out for help.  It also helps that the average maid starts at a dollar an hour here in Vietnam.

The maid was supposed to start at 10, so I got up early to straighten and organize the house.  We had a lot of little messes in every corner.  By the time 10 rolled around, our apartment was free of all clutter which unfortunately made the un-swept floors and dusty table tops even more apparent.  At 10, I finally sat down and ate a yogurt.  I like to freeze them, what a refreshing 110 calorie treat!

I opened my current book, Museum of Innocence, and started reading.  I didn't look up until noon!  The maid never came to interrupt me.  I was very disappointed about the mix-up (did our friends neglect to organize it? was the maid ill or did she get lost?) because I put my whole day on hold waiting for her.  Gavin and I decided to hang round the house today in case she showed up, but she never did. 

I went ahead and made Gavin and I some lunch around one.  Our stir-fry included egg noodles, tofu, various veggies and chunks of fresh pineapple.  I wasn't feeling too hungry so I just had a few bites off Gavin's plate.

I spent my day reading and took a nap in the afternoon.  Although I have the night off, Gavin had to work.  Just before he left, I made him a little something to hold him over until his work provided dinner.  Instant noodle soup!  It was all I really had that was fast and easy laying around the house.  We had two packages and split them 70/30 since I've not really been hungry all day.

It doesn't look like much, mostly because I didn't put the dried mushroom seasoning in mine, but it was pretty good.  Half egg noodles and half rice noodles, an interesting combo!

A Missing Day

I feel really guilty about already slipping on food posts after only starting my blog a few days ago, but I have an excuse!  My internet was down last night when I had intended to post.  I also work a 10 hour day on Sundays and usually use my two hour break to nap rather than peruse the internet.

Time to back up a bit:
Gavin and I got a little lazy when it came to Christmas Dinner.  Rather than going out as planned, we opted to watch Milk on our new DVD player and order in pizza.

We ended up with 2 pizzas due to delivery mix up.  We got this teeny tiny personal pan pizza first.

I think it was half seafood and half meat-lovers.  Gross.  I had two slices of the meaty side due to extreme hunger along with most of the garden salad we ordered.

Later our actual pizza arrived and I had two more normal sized slices.

We ordered it from Pepperoni's.  The pizza we ordered was just ok, and after all the confusion and having to eat such a disjointed meal I don't think we will be ordering from there again.

Sundays are always our busiest days.  We work all day.  We try to eat a hearty breakfast, but if a good breakfast is the difference between waking up at 6 and 6:20, I take sleeping in any day!  Sunday's breakfast was a diet supplement, nutrient packed, just-add-hot-water mix we call "Gruel" around here.  It doesn't look like much but it gives me energy and keeps me going for 4 hours of morning kids classes.

 I also partook in a massive cup of coffee with my beloved creamer and a cup of fruit with fresh kiwi and pear.

Lunch was an unpictured plate of beef noodles at a local spot, followed by a nap at home.

Dinner was provided by our work and consited of an extreemly meaty Banh Mi.  I took out all the meat, tried to scrape out the liver pate, and doctored it up the best I could with chili sauce but was still left underwhelmed and with iron tasting burps.

Late night snacks while watching a film included 2 Saltine Crackers, a sweet cracker with a slice of cheese and a few too many Tiger's than I'm proud to admit having.

Remodeling Street Food

I was feeling a little creative today when lunch time came around.  Gavin and I went to the electronic kingdom down the street to buy a DVD player (a Christmas present to ourselves) and passed the Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sandwich) stand we often hit up before work.  We are both getting really sick of normal Banh Mi.  The meat can be wretched at times and generally makes me want to become a strict vegetarian.  There are always clouds of flies swarming around it and huge chunks of fat left attached.

A normal Banh Mi with meat

Today I  thought of a way to spice it up a bit.  We bought two sandwiches with no meat.  As this is pretty much unheard of here, the poor sandwich guy was confused!  The fresh baguettes were stuffed with cucumber, daikons, carrots, hot peppers and cilantro with a hefty dose of soy sauce on top.  I took these babies home and sauteed slices of tofu, green cabbage and purple cabbage in a little oil and Thai Chili sauce.  Once the tofu had browned and the veggies had softened, I added them into the Banh Mi.  It was perfect.  Nice and spicy, hearty and healthy.  I feel like this might become a regular.

My wonderful remodeled street food!

It's Christmas!

Today started with a lovely Christmas breakfast.  It included one runny egg each and a massive stack of pancakes.  We were so excited the other night to find a small package of pancake mix at a small Japanese shop called Tokyo Market in District One.  I knew immediately I would make flapjacks for Christmas breakfast.  I added a bit of blackberry jam on mine, delicious!  I also enjoyed a fresh fruit salad containing pears, kiwi, and pineapple.  For drinks, Con Soc coffee with creamer and a bit of sugar.

I have been going back and forth on the creamer here.  I really shouldn't even call it creamer.  It's supposed to be condensed milk, but it looks eerily similar to Elmer's glue when you pour it into your coffee and has similar color and texture.  It isn't good for you at all: straight sugar, fat and preservatives.  But it is so damn good.  At first I only got it when we were at local cafes, but I recently turned to the darkside and purchased some for the house.