The one with the culinary skills

Culinary skills and cultural appreciation beats learning multiplication tables any day of the week! 

Kira had asked for sushi for her birthday tea. Now we could have brought it in, or had it delivered and she would have loved the meal. We offered her instead a sushi experience, ranging from Japanese to Hawaiian dishes. 

We brought butterflied prawns and salmon for Sashimi which arrived on the morning. Leighton prepped a Hawaiian style poke dish, and performed a demo of making sushi rolls, having given the girls a range of ingredients to have their own sushi making experience. 

They loved it! It was a talking point for them for days... Despite the many other experiences they had as well, it was not lost in amongst the crowd, which it could easily have been if they just had a tray from Asda.


Leighton has had A5 wagyu on his culinary experience bucket list for years. We made the decision to include it as part of this celebration week. However it was not going to be just a steak, chips and salad meal for this birthday boy. 

He executed a fine dining experience for the entire family to enjoy from one steak. He spent weeks watching the professionals online and planning out the meal, even to the extent of drawing a diagram. Sophia was joining him in learning about the cows and how to best pay respect to this beautiful meat. She now watches the YouTuber Guga food, who specialises in cooking within this field, in her free time. She was so excited when the meat arrived. 

The experience was A5 wagyu cooked 5 ways for 5 family members. There was absolutely no wastage. 

We all had an individual spread laid out before us and wagyu was presented as follows: 

- Flash cooked on sushi rice

- Flash cooked on sous vide duck yolk 

- Sliced as a starting steak

- Wagyu fried rice (this was eaten over the next few days as well, it was amazing). 

- Bean sprouts cooked in the left over wagyu fat.

This was served with a side salad, steamed bok choy, tender stem broccoli and a miso soup, accompanied by pickles onions, garlic chips and crispjy Shallots. Dipping condiments included smoked aged soy sauce, ponzu sauce, long pepper and Fleur de Sal.

The steak was a dream so I'm told.... I had one bite of my portion 😂. Xander polished off his within minutes and I couldn't deny him mine. After all it was his celebration as well. Having battled chemo, radiation, and isolation away from his family for seven weeks straight, least he deserved was my steak. I had plenty of the sides which were all amazingly good.

The biggest lesson of all: An appreciation of us, winning as a family team. We are all here to celebrate, and we survived the momentous journey of last year together. It was no mean feat. In less than a month Xander will have survived to reach his first year post transplant.

As I write this, I have reached 25 years post transplant! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning From Your Environment

Image
There is so much potential for learning on car journeys. This time Sophia's attention was caught by seeing electricity pylons and wind turbines and she was avidly asking questions about these. I briefly introduced them to her and offered to set up some follow up science educational YouTube videos at a later date. Good old 'Dr Binocs' came through and the children have been eagerly learning about fossil fuels, renewable energy and electricity. Sophia has started writing down her thoughts and knowledge on electricity in her new science book. It is a great sidestep from their current topic of light, which is being learnt enthusiastically. They have loved their light experiments, as simple as they were, including going into a dark room and shining a torch, seeing how a pencil seems to change when placed in a glass of water, just with a light shining on it. Observing what materials allow light to pass through and which cast shadows, and performing shadow puppet plays on the wall...
Read more

Role playing Is A Serious Business!

Image
The morning period is personally the best time of day for lessons for my girls. They are alert, focused and raring to start lessons, consequently breakfast lessons are an established learning time. I have a captive audience, they are in the kitchen with me anyway learning how to prepare the food, tidy down and set the table. This session can be the best for attention span and concentration out of the entire day, so I have learnt to capitalise on this precious half hour.  This morning we learnt twenty spellings from two word families. They are storming through their word lists, quickly approaching the 200 mark in only a couple of months. I cannot recommend this learning style enough, the girls are retaining their spelling knowledge and are actively using the words in their artwork in their free time. Today they also requested spelling tests to be their handwriting practice, and did further spelling practice on top for another half an hour through choice.  The rest of breakfast ...
Read more

Always be thankful

Image
 It was December 2021 when Miss Jo, The Children's Coach contacted me and offered the girls free places in her January zoom class. This was the tutor who had organised and ran the summer fun project which the girls had been nominated and awarded for bravery. The girls absolutely loved her as a teacher and had immediately bonded with her. They wrote her letters and talked about her every day during this project.  I took her up on this very kind and generous offer and the girls had a regular half an hour zoom class every Thursday on the theme of gratitude. The girls were the youngest ones in the class and they handled it really well.  Sophia wrote the classes on the calender, scheduling in the lessons, for the month. Kira took a postcard written to her by Miss Jo, which she had received the previous year, to bed with her every night until the classes took place. She read it to me as her bedtime story.  The first thing Kira said to Miss Jo on class, was to thank her for...
Read more