Merry Christmas, especially to those who restore from the days and nights without electricity and hot water in Toronto and other impacted cities!
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| Icy budded branches are cascading against the fence |
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| Creeping frozen boxwood stiff outward |
As you may heard of Toronto's power outage, my family had no exception to escape this bad luck. With outburst joy, my home had finally electricity power back on around 11 p.m. on 24th. Patiently waiting at my friend's house for a few hours, my family swiftly moved back and continued cooking turkey for our festive dinner on Christmas Day.
Turned out my turkey was delicious as well as apple pies, blueberry pie and mini butter tarts ...
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| Yummy turkey with water mouthing stuffing |
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| Homemade mini butter tarts made by a friend from Regina, homemade apple pies and blueberry pies made by my husband. |
It was a wonderful dinner with all the siblings and in laws, whose homes have been restored from the electricity disconnection. One of the in laws flew from Regina for this dinner on 24th. There was an explosion at Regina refinery. Gratefully, she was able to come to join us safe and on time and nobody was hurt at the refinery. My brother in laws had done his cataract surgery last Friday and he tried to take it easy and rest at home but it was out of power on Saturday's night. Through God's mercy, his Christian in-law offered a nice warm place for him to stay.
For me? My home was out of electricity only last Friday's night and the hot water tank still worked. So, I still could have a good supply of hot water. I have an outdoor BBQ propane grill at my porch and a portable stove fuelled by Butane gas cartridges, some hot water bottles, a Thermos Shuttle Chef and a fireplace and one firelog. So, my husband and I got up early in morning and fed our 23-month-old son quickly. We started driving to the less-impacted areas for shopping some firelogs around 10 a.m. By the time we got there, big signs, stating "all the firelogs are sold out", was posted at the entrances of Walmart and Home Depot. Finally, we got some at Canadian Tire. The lady there was a bit upset of too many visitors asking the same question, "Where does the firelogs locate?" We all grinned!
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| Dripping ice popsicles hanging across the bottom of the Canadian Tire sign |
Back to home, I started to ponder how I can cook with the left-over at refrigerator and my existing equipments, i.e. portable stove, thermos Shuttle Chef and outdoor BBQ propane grill. Honestly, I didn't want to set up my grill outside my house in approximately -10 degree celsius. So, the grill was checked off from my list. Without Internet Access, I recalled a Cantonese live show at Hong Kong Radio, which I watched a few days ago. It was called "Rich Mate Poor Mate III". That episode depicted an ex-investment banker elite and a first-honour student of Le Corton Blue Paris spent a few days living in a poor family with shabby kitchen. She wanted to promote how to cook a nutritious meal with a tight-shoestring budget. Of course she had a headache to cook a proper meal with a portable stove at the beginning; she figured out steaming food and cutting food very fine could save a lot of gas and fuel. So I adapted this theory to cook my first meal without electricity. Here is my menu,
Steamed black bean pork short ribs
Steamed egg tofu
BBQ pork [left over at regridgerator]
Trying to do most during the day time when the sun is still bright, I started cooking at 1:30 p.m for a dinner of two plus an infant. First, I freshly chopped garlic and minced black beans and marinated short ribs for a while. Then I used the Thermos' inner layer saucepan to cook my marinated pork short ribs on the portable stove. After brought it to boil, I let it simmer about 10 minutes with medium heat. In the meantime, I steamed the 1/2-inch sliced egg tofu and BBQ pork. By the time the short ribs was done, I put it into the bottom of the Thermos Shuttle Chef, then placed the BBQ pork dish on the top. On its top, I put the egg roll dish supported with a thin stainless steel plate. Each dish was covered with an aluminium foil. At last, closed the lid and let them sit until the dinner time.
At the dinner time, when we opened the lid of the inner containers and steams vigorously came out because the rooms got a lot of colder than before. Anyways, we had a happy candle-lit supper on that night and my little one had a very good appetite.
Although we had fixed the dinner problem part, how about our sleeping...?
Continue...
Charlotte L Design
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