My Favourite Chicken Soup Recipe

Serves 4
Fat per serve: 5g
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Total cooking time: 30 minutes


Ingredients:
1 small leek, white part only
2 potatoes
2 chicken breast fillets
2 teaspoons oil
1 420g can of creamed corn
3 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon chopped chives

Method:
1. Finely slice the leek, and chop the potatoes into cubes. Cut the chicken into thin strips.
2. Heat the oil in a non-stick large pan, add the leek, cover and cook over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until very soft.
3. Add the potato, chicken, corn and stock to the leek in the pan. Stir to combine, bring to boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or until the potato is very soft. Just before serving, garnish with the chives. Season with salt if needed and pepper.

Nutrition per serve:
Protein 30g; Fat 5 g; Carbohydrate 25g;Dietary Fibre 5g; Cholesterol 50mg; 1110kj (256 calories)

I survived the dentist - take 1

I have needed to go to the dentist for nearly a year now to get work done. When I was a little girl (12), I had to get a big double molar taken out. Since then I have chewed all my food on the right side of my mouth. As you can imagine, this took a toll on my right side teeth, with the bottom molar faring considerably worse than the top molar, meaning, I have no tooth left, it is all filling.
I always thought, oh well, I'll just keep getting it refilled. I never really thought about how to fix the issue... until I came to China.

Last year Kane and I went to the see the dentist to get a clean. My poor old over worked molar had been a little sensitive for a few years I had also realised that it was getting a little decayed at the base of the filling. The dentist David (an English speaking Chinese), suggested crowning it. He also said that I needed to bridge where the tooth had been pulled out 17 year before to try to even the chewing load. A big shock to let sink in, but I knew he was right.

I put it off for a while to 'think', then came our holiday back home, then came no money, then the Christmas holiday, then the CNY holiday, which all cost money. I ran out of excuses in the end. So- nearly a year later, I finally plucked up the courage and the money to get this process started. Plus a few months back I made a deal with myself, I can't any big purchases until this was done, and so once this is all paid for, I can start buying my wedding dress, some furniture to bring home, etc. The deal worked!

I was so scared today, needless to say, I had had a heap of work done, especially between 11-17 years old with my braces and pre-work, and dentist are not my favourite specialists! :)

David was so lovely. He was really gentle with injection and he did it in three goes. First the denti-freeze gel to dumb the skin and then the first injection which was fine and the second deeper one, of which I didn't feel at all. Then two hours of sitting in the chair with my mouth open. I was over that by the end. So I write this with just a dull ache, mostly where I had the injection and from having my mouth open for so long. I am wearing a temporary crown while the full porcelain ones are being made in Shanghai. The two crowns will hold a bridge in the middle so I can chew food on the left side of my mouth. I am sure it'll feel weird after having no tooth for more than half of my life.

So after the bridge is attached next Sunday, I will then go back the following weekend to crown the remaining right side molar which I am sure will be happy to have a new lease on life :) 4 weeks total and the job will be done.

And the best bit... in Australia, work like this would cost over $1000AU per tooth. Here, it is going to cost me RMB6525 for everything, which is around $1300AU, plus I get RMB3000 back on health insurance and RMB800 back from school, so I'll only be out of pocket around RMB2700, which is around $500AU. That wouldn't happen back home.

Now this has been started and I have paid the first installment, next week I make my first trip to the wedding dress tailor to begin discussions!!!!!!!! I'm so excited...

Home Sick

I am feeling really homesick at the moment. It seems that the closer I get to coming home, the greater the home sickness. It's a real emotional pang in the pit of my stomach that almost ends in tears... almost! I am holding it together so far.

I am so looking forward to Kane and my wedding and it can be really hard when we have different ideas about it. The guest list is a real issue at the moment and I can't see how we are going to solve our differences. Most things are organised and I know most of what is going on so that I can actually visualise what it might be like, but in saying that I have been 'thinking' about things for over a year now and we still have more than 9 months to go. I am sick of 'thinking' just hurry up already.

Anyway, I need to get myself back to the gym after our holiday to the Philippines, before we left I was going 5-6 times a week no fail! I haven't been since we went on holiday's though. I know that once I get going again the mojo will come back but I am just feeling so down at the moment about so many things. I just want to go home.

xx

Our Holiday Story

Kite Surfing Beach

(Michael and Me)

Hi everyone,
We have been so distracted the last few days with the magnitude of all the fires back home. We check the Herald Sun a few times an hour for news, and can’t believe how bad it must be to be there. I know there is nothing that we could have done if we’d been there, but it’s the uselessness of being so far away that gets to us in so many situations – the price of being away I suppose. So I thought, I could do a long post about how we are feeling in response to the fires, or I could tell you about our holiday, I thought the latter may break the constant bushfire news back home a little.
So – Off to Boracay went Rippon-McGregor!
We started out holiday in Suzhou on Friday 20th as it was cancelled due to severe weather – Beauty J
The weekend was spent huddled up under blankets, eating soup and watching Entourage! – Great
Chinese New Year came with an onslaught of fireworks, -Yay!
Finally Monday came and we were supposed to catch the bus to Pudong Airport in Shanghai and stay the night in a hotel there. To start with Kane got the time wrong on the bus ticket and we missed the bus to the airport. Luckily we were going a day early, so we went home, put the heater back on, cancelled the hotel and booked a car for 6am on Tuesday. Tuesday went well and we got to the airport with heaps of time and all good to Manila. The hotel was OK, but it was in a bad area called Malati. It scared us a bit outside on the road with many very poor people milling around and the cops talking to some people as well, kids were asking for money, etc. So another early morning on Wednesday, 4am and we caught a flight to Caiticlan. All good, we got to the hotel, it was beautiful and checked in early.

Alta Vista de BoracayA view of the golf course from our pool.
We rested and went into town for a look around. The rest of our holiday was spent swimming, resting, eating, reading, drinking, very cheap beer and cocktails. Another few people from school came to the same hotel as us, and that was great. It was good to have people to hang out with. There was a family from Perth (one boy is in my class) Australia and another 2 teachers (You will see some of these people in the photos). The beach is wonderful, like walking on icing sugar.

Puka Shell Beach


White Beach

The water was a turquoise blue and so warm, very little waves on the main beach, but a lot choppier on the others. The weather was average, being very windy and overcast for 8 out of the 10 days we were there.

Sunset on White Beach

We did a little shopping and bought some board shorts for Kane, 2 dresses for me and a ‘needle’ basket, like a wicker basket for coffee stuff.
We were supposed to come home on the Saturday 7th of Feb. We had booked a 7.25am flight from Caiticlan to Manila and an International flight from Manila to Shanghai at 12.25pm. We got up at 4.20am and checked out, got breakfast to go and hoped in the car, it was raining pretty steadily. We got to the ferry station and were very wet by the time we got under cover. We were saturated by the time we got to the ferry/very old boat(!), and enjoyed the choppy dripping, cold, windy trip to Caiticlan. We got in a car and ran to the airport terminal, drenched by then! I went to get our passports out and removed the breakfast we hadn’t eaten yet to be told we couldn’t take it in with us (Problem – Kane loves his food), they take some Boracay sand off me (sad), and tell us that the 7.25 flight has been cancelled, not too much of a problem because they have rescheduled us on the 7.05 flight. We started hear announcement cancelling flights and thought, we’ll be OK, they’ve told us J No – we were wrong, flight cancelled, catch a bus to Kalibo (1.5 hours away) and catch another flight. We told them about our international flight and a girl faxed through our details and we were told ‘someone will be waiting for you and they will usher you through quickly’, we were a little relieved. Now - we’re hungry. Not much food.
We got to Kalibo and they didn’t know we were coming. We had to wait around for all passengers to check in before we could find out if we would fit. There were 23 people standing in that airport, and only 18 people could get on the plane. Kane did a really good job trying to find out what was going on and we were so happy to get a ticket as we needed to catch the 12.25pm International flight to Shanghai from Manila. It was 11.00 when we got on the plane. When we landed 40 minutes later there were more issues, no one to meet us, we missed the flight.
It’s 2.00 and we still haven’t eaten.
Because it was a weather issue and PAL express had cancelled the flight it was not our fault that we missed the flight. So they put us up in a hotel with transfers and meals all for free and put us on the 6.35 to Shanghai. We finally eat at 4.00. We were well looked after with a buffet dinner worth a lot of money.
We waddled over to a shopping centre to have a look around and Kane bought some cigars.
Another early start 3.15am on Sunday 8th. While at the airport on Sunday it was then that I went on the Internet and started to read about the fires back home. I was in shock a little I think, because it was not until Sunday afternoon that we realised how bad it all was.
So we were due to land in Shanghai at 9.35, at 9.30 they tell us ‘we can’t land in Pudong, we must divert to Hangzhou’. Not really knowing what was going on we were thinking ‘shit, not again.’ We find out Pudong has zero visibility and we sit on Hangzhou runway for 2 hours. Finally we get to Pudong and had met a German with a driver going to Suzhou and get a lift with him.
36 hours since we left Boracay. I’m still shattered.
Yesterday we received an email from a trustee telling us that our school is feeling the financial downturn, so now we are all a bit scared about a meeting that will be held tomorrow night after school, we think we are going to lose our bonuses and possibley have take a pay cut, there are many rumours flying around. So I guess tomorrow we will find out.
I need to stop now because I am making so many mistakes while typing. Sorry if you’ve found some J
Take care,
Love to all,
Kelly

Sunset on White Beach at Nigi Nigi Noos Too (Kane, Michael and Ben)

(Nadine, Me and Monica)

The crew at Nigi Nigi's

Sunset

The very choppy snorkeling trip with added jelly fish!

Finding a safe snorkeling cove The boat