Since I’ve banned canned food this week after we OD’d on Transformer tin cans last weekend, I made shepherd’s pie for lunch today. From scratch.

Yes, it can be fattening but as long as you don’t eat it every day, you won’t need to subject yourself to any weight loss program review.

Usually I cheat by using chicken instead of lamb. Haha, the poor shepherd would be insulted! But today I made the ‘real’ thing with ground lamb. The kids loved it and say I should open a restaurant next to the one where they first tasted this, you know the one that claims to have that award-winning secret recipe for cheesecakes,  . Yeah, my kids sure know how to polish my shoes so I’ll cook this for them again next week.

Shepherd’s pie isn’t exactly the kind of food that chinapeks (chinks) would appreciate. But surprisingly my uncle who happened to drop by today says it’s very good. He thinks I can’t cook and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I had Ratatouille sitting on top of my head the whole time I was cooking this .

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I missed eating my favorite bachangs, or dumplings this year because I was still on my 30-day vegetarian diet during the Dumpling Festival. Which means the 6 delicious homemade dumplings my dear neighbor gave me were sitting in my freezer for quite a while.

She gave me two of 3 different types here - sambal bachang which is spicy and tastes rather wierd to me *shudder*, pork bachang with chestnuts, dried shrimp and wobbly pork (I love playing with the jiggly fat but if I eat it, I’ll definitely need a diet pill to go with it !) and the pea version of the pork bachang which is the most yummy of all!

My dear neighbor tells me there’s two Dumpling Festivals this year and the second is tomorrow. Wonder if I’ll find more of her homemade dumplings dangling on the fence tomorrow morning?

On Saturday, the day before we went to the Philharmonic, we had lunch at Tai Thong at Caesar’s Palace. It was the second time in a week that we pigged out there. Woo-hoo, that’s how much we love dimsum.

Later while Steev, Skye and I went home, Hip2bDad and Raine went to collect an auto insurance quote for a friend and then sneaked off to buy durians (we drove separate cars). Can’t say we’re a family of big durian fans. We’re not crazy about it but if it’s there, okay we’ll eat it.

Then there are my durian rules. No one is allowed to burp in an air-conditioned room after eating it! And there’s no way I’d transport durians in my car! I hate the horrible stink that lingers on for days that even a bunch of pandan (screwpine) can’t get rid of!

So it’s not surprising we haven’t had durians in years (yes, you heard me, years!!). We’re the guilty parents who’ve been depriving our poor kids of this king of fruits . Anyhow Hip2bDad and Raine came home *surprise!* with a heap of durians costing 2 hundred bucks! It’s like eating gold, burp !

We’ve been eating out almost every day after I broke my vegetarian diet. It’s like payback time for the depleted waistline, gawd . Well, we decided to spend a quiet day at home today.

So I peeked in the fridge, scrummaged up a few ingredients and whipped up this huge portion of salmon linguine for lunch. Used to order this at restaurants but not any more. Restaurant pastas come in small servings and cost an arm and a leg.

My homecooked salmon linguine, according to my kids (and they may be biased here), is da best! I make it extra saucy, the way we like it. I cook enough for everyone to eat as much as they want. Even the leftovers are swept clean at the next meal. So do you think it’s worth it?

Skye, my cheeky 13-year-old, greeted me with “Happy Meat Day, Mom” when she saw me this morning. Yep, I’m omnivorous again today. Not sure how I made it through the 30 days of no meat, no seafood, no eggs, veggies only but truth be told, it wasn’t that hard! Nyek, just that the constant hunger pangs were starting to turn me frantic .

But all’s well again. The kids dragged me to Tony Roma’s to celebrate (Skye’s bright idea!) and I had this for lunch.

Not the most delicious grilled chicken but hey, it’s my first real chicken meal in a whole month, okay?

So now that we don’t have to worry about separate meals for the kids and me any more, we can all get back to our own business of reading, writing, blogging and playing computer games. I’m sure if we had any PS3 players, that’s where you’ll find my kids but we gave ours away after lining up for hours to buy it at the launch .

My bestest girl friend in the world swears she’ll never date someone who’s a vegetarian. Not even if he’s tall, dark and good-looking and has a house on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley which he built with his own two hands?

Me: No? Wait a minute, what are you saying? He’s a really nice guy and I can see he really likes you.

She: Uh-uh, I gotta have my meat, meat, MEAT *growl*! If I don’t have meat, I might just kill somebody, gawd! You know how I love to go out and have a nice filet mignon once in a while.

At any rate, we drove up to see his house one weekend. Beautiful ranch, beautiful house, beautiful view… until he started serving us bowls of salad and bird seed for lunch.

My poor girl friend took one look at “lunch” and turned to me with her evil eye when he wasn’t looking.

And I don’t blame her. To be completely honest, I can’t say I’m into bird seed either ! I mean, just looking at them makes me wonder how much I’d have to eat to get my growling tummy to shut up!

So yeah, I can totally see her going, um, I think I’ll have the grilled bird seed with mushroom sauce, medium rare please!! If she were to ever date him, she’d never, ever need anything that even vaguely resembles an appetite suppressant ever, that’s for sure! Just the sight of those bird seeds will make her thin .

Woo-hoo, this is the beginning of the last week of my 30-day vegetarian diet. Again I couldn’t wait to jump on that weighing scale this morning. Looks like I’ve gained back another 0.5kg (1 lb) which is good.

Over the past week, I’ve upped my workouts so maybe I’m building more muscle, I don’t know. Anyways I started doing push-ups and of course, I embarrassed myself being the klutz that I am .

Man, push-ups are hard. They’re really hard to do because women have very little upper body strength. Dang, I feel like I’m pushing a bullock cart up a cobbled street. My arms are just screaming!!!

A gym buddy of mine was saying she seems to be building bulk in her arms. Actually that’s true, I notice that in mine too. Instead of getting thinner, they’re kinda bigger than before. Of course, neither of us wants to look like the Incredible Bulk but oh well, as she says, better bulk than ding-a-ling underarms, it really cracks me up when she says it like that !

I couldn’t wait to jump on the scale at the gym this morning. I don’t have a weighing scale in the house. Well, it kaput years ago but I never bothered replacing it since no one uses it. So I had to wait out the weekend to get to the gym this morning to find out if I’d lost more weight. Surprise! I’ve gained back 0.5kg (1 lb) since last week. Whew!

My vegetarian meals are still bland as I haven’t been inspired to cook anything fancy. When I first started this 30-day vegetarian diet, I wasn’t sure if I’d actually be climbing the walls for meat after a few days. Today is the start of the third week of my diet and I’m still not missing meat yet. When we eat out, I look at all my favorite meat dishes and I’m still not turned on ! I guess that’s a good sign?

The hunger pangs are pretty bad though. They’re constant and don’t seem to go away! I’m not a snacker but these days, I’m even trying to beat my own kids to the last crumb, hahaha. Just found out someone has finished up my last bag of chips and I’d better not find out whodunnit, grrr!!!