Grubbs n Critters

May 15, 2015

Fabulous Friday Flavour: Home-made Honey Roasted Chicken Rice

Being horribly jet-lagged couldn’t stop me from getting busy in the kitchen last week. I may have felt like I could have doze off standing up or by doing anything at all, yet as soon I get my hands dirty with all the ingredients I have on hand, I was buzzing with such adrenaline again! I was raring to go, go, go!

There weren’t much in the fridge, but with a couple of essential ingredients like fresh chillies, garlic, cumin, soy sauce, fresh lime, ginger, cube stocks and honey amongst the few of my kitchen staples, the possibilities were endless!

Making Honey-Roasted Chicken Rice sounded appealing and I thought that I would recycle an old recipe of my Home made Chicken Rice for a sumptuous weekend dinner. It has been a while since I made them. It was time to connect with an old friend again.

We were only missing chicken plus 2 other things , and getting them from our nearest supermarket took only 10 minutes. Wait. Make that 25 minutes with kids in tow.

This recipe sounded like it requires a lot of ingredients, time and effort but really, 45 minutes was all it took from end to end. I made a little tweak from the previous recipe denoted with **. And the results: Extremely satisfying!

Easy & Quick Roasted Chicken

2015-07-13 13:30:49

Serves 6

Succulent, flavourful and flesh-dropping-off-the bone type of recipe. You'll love this recipe for its quick and easy preparation.

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Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

1 hr 15 min

Prep Time

15 min

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

1 hr 15 min

Ingredients

8 pieces chicken legs
2 inch ginger, pounded
2 tbsp sweet soya (black) sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp honey
1 tspn salt
1 tspn ground white paper
2 tspn ALL SPICE powder
2 tspn tumeric powder
1.5 tspn cumin powder
1 inch ginger sliced
Tumeric Leaves (optional)

Sides/Garnishes

Cucumber, sliced

Instructions

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
Combine pounded ginger, soy sauces, honey, salt, white pepper, All Spice powder, tumeric and cumin and rub it all over the chicken. Leave it to marinade for min. 15 minutes.
Prepare aluminum foil – put in the marinated chicken and spread the sliced ginger on top of the chicken. Lay the tumeric leaves over the chicken (if using)
Crimp the aluminum foil together end-to-end loosely. Put in the oven for 30-40minutes
After which, open up the aluminium foil a little bit and roast for 5-10 minutes till golden brown and the skin becomes crispier. (Leave it too long or the chicken will get dry)
Once the skin is brown enough, keep the aluminum foil loosely crimped together to keep it moist
Serve with salad or rice on the side.

Notes

An easy dish to make to satisfy even the pickiest pallete.

By Ann Grubbs 'n Critters

Adapted from Grubbs 'n Critters

Grubbs n Critters https://grubbsncritters.com/

Fluffy seasoned rice, flavourful broth of soup, sweet-spicy-tangy chilli sauce with succulent, moist and juicy roasted chicken falling off the bone…what is there not to like! This is food for the soul!

#FoodieFriDIYs #HomeMatters #SQHOP

Holland 2015 Day 5-9: Family Time in Peer, Belgium

Category: Travels

Nothing like a vacation for Grubbs ‘n Critters family without a stay-over in one of Centre Parc’s Property; something which is very atypical of a Dutch family holiday. We decided to explore a little further this time and took a 2.5 hour drive to Peer, Belgium and housed ourselves in a holiday village in the heart of nature called Centre Parc Erperheide.

By now, we have been to 4 Centre Parcs over the last few years. Regardless if the bungalow is in Centre Parcs Drente, Laandal De Loomerbergen, De Eemphof or De Heuttenheugte they all are surrounded by forest and all of the bungalows LOOK THE SAME – style and layout out.

Parks like this has plenty to do and very appropriately designed for family with kids. From indoor water play at Aqua Mundo, to indoor playgrounds and petting zoos, as well as other kids’ activity like cooking or dressing up for children to live out their fantasies, even to just chilling in the various little restaurants/cafes or just cycling around, everything is housed within the park’s perimeters.

The cottage we had this time wasn’t so far from the Market Dome where the hustle and bustle, mainly for meals, groceries and swimming, happens. Being near to it is always very convenient, else you would have to walk quite a bit to get there.

The park is virtually car-free. The paths are very well-paved, thus, providing a good route for walking and cycling around. The kids had a jolly good time in Eperheide’s ginormous indoor playground, joining in kids’ activities, mucking about in the outdoor playground as well as getting their pony rides, usually a “reward” for their good behavior. Watching them bouncing off the walls was tiring, yet it was also heartening to see them so happy.

Getting them to sleep in the evening wasn’t too difficult as they were mostly already spent by bed-time. However, we had to intervene so as to minimise their playtime before they go to sleep by laying together with them until they doze off. Both Silver Bullet and I are usually so tired after a full-day affair that we fell asleep with them too!

One thing with going to parks like that is the fact eating out or regularly buying groceries from the supermarket can be quite expensive. The cottages do, however, have built-in kitchen, so it would be wise to prepare and pack food from home if you do not want to spend too much money for a simple meal out could easily cost at least 50 Euros per time for a family of 4.

Otherwise, it is a great place to be for a family vacation, especially so if you have kids. What I really love about it was the fact that it is surrounded by a lot of trees and all sorts of animals which were the native inhabitants of the park. Imagine waking up to birds chirping and when dusk breaks, all you could hear is the sound of the your own breath with the firewood crackling in the background.

On our 3rd day there, we decided to drive out of the park and explore the nearest city about 15 minutes called Hasselt. Nothing to shout about in my opinion with nothing much to do, except for a little bit of shopping (although we didn’t have much to buy) and going to proper cafes to get lunch.

Was there any tantrums at all? Absolutely! But nothing major as within minutes, they were all smiles again. Bribing gets easier when you are on vacation because we can always threaten them that they were not going to go anywhere or get any treats if they weren’t in their best behaviour. We would also hate it if we don’t get to go anywhere – simply because they would drive us nuts if we all were being cooped up in the cottage all day!

5 days in the park passed y so quickly. The next thing we knew, we were already preparing to pack, bound again for Holland.

The bummer about being in Belgium coming from Holland though is the fact that I don’t get new stamps on my passport!

Holland 2015 Day 1 – 4: Easy Days

Category: Family life

Arriving in Holland on a late Thursday evening after an 11+ hours flight from Bangkok’s afternoon flight departure meant really late bedtime for the kids. They slept for a little more over 3 hours prior to landing (of course it is convenient that sleep always, always have to come before landing!) and that is more than just a power-nap to last them for a while more.

I was still stoically trying to recover from the embarrassment of the little incident during flight descent when Squirt, with a big smile on his face, started screaming in excitement at the top of his lungs and innocently squealed out loud ““Mama! We are going doowwwwwnnnn!” (Read the story here) as we patiently waited for the final cue to get ourselves out of the plane before we made our way to the baggage collection.

The kids were super-hyper right after we landed. They loved their little travel trunkies and had a blast pulling them along and was excited to show -off their trunkies to their Oma and Opa who had made the time to “collect” us from the airport and drove us to their home.

As annoying those 2 little imps can be trying to pull their trunkies in line and disrupted people who were walking by, I thought they looked quite cute tugging their brightly coloured trolley bags.Those trunkies were both filled with nothing but toys and snacks which had kept them occupied while in the plane. I supposed it made them feel more adult. At least they stopped fighting over who got the right to pull our carry-on trolley bag. Phew. Fi-bloody-nally!

The drive to my in-laws was a scenic one. We passed by fields littered with sheeps, cows, ducks, horses along with their young and was greeted by some colourful tulips fields along the way. A pretty sight and sights which awed the kids (and me!) to no end. All sorts of flowers were blooming everywhere. It was the kind of sights that would lift your spirits up and bring about the little springs in your heels.

It was still light at 8.30 pm when we arrived at our destination and the little imps had seen no reason for them to go to bed.

They stalled for time when we arrived home, ecstatic with the new sets of toys that were laid out especially for them and pleaded with us to play a little bit more before they were shoved into their beds. It was still morning for all they care! Why friggin’ sleep right?!

By the time they were in bed and almost fast asleep, it was past 9.45 p.m. For us, it was just about the right time to adjust our body clock as we both virtually had no naps while in mid-air.

Both kids woke up at about 3.am. local time, refusing to go back to bed. Squirt finally relented after a few cuddles, but Spud fought vehemently with her Dad that lasted over several hours. At 3.am (or 7 a.m BKK time) she was done sleeping! Somehow, she managed to keep herself up till 7 pm the next day without any naps! I could have fallen asleep standing up. Madness!

We left the kids to Silver Bullet parents the day after we arrived as I had to pop by my local office for a business meeting. And, had Silver Bullet not accompany me, I would have been completely lost trying to navigate some parts of Amsterdam which neither of us had ventured out to before. Even so, we still got quite lost, but eventually managed to find the place I had to be. The only consolation was that the weather was nice to be walking about without breaking out too much sweat.

We didn’t spend a lot of time in Amsterdam after my meeting. We grabbed lunch, walked around a little and then headed back home and spent another hour on a train ride. As we combed through the streets of Amsterdam which we have been to a gazzillion times, I realised that even after a year of hiatus, I was quite bored with the city.

We had a quiet weekend. The kids played outside (and inside and practically did not stop playing!), had a visit from Silver Bullet’s Opa, caught up with Silver Bullet’s close friends who just had babies and visited his father who had a birthday (a visit which Spud had refused to come along), and ran errands to prep ourselves us up for a little family trip to Belgium.

Apart from that, we took things easy. I checked myself out from my everyday reality and started winding down.

I was loving the environment, the scenery, the weather and even though was not at all too thrilled in anticipation of the kids’ potential tanrums, I was certainly looking forward to spend some quality family time.

It was, as the Dutch calls it, gezellig**

** Gezellig: an untranslatable word that is used A LOT. It encompasses the heart of Dutch culture where it can mean beyond nice, cosy, warm, fuzzy. Or something to that effect. Dutch rules apply where it sometimes cannot be used in some context. Too complicated to explain. Go ask a Dutch.