Mother’s Day 2019

H-town (Houston), I, Me, and Myself

I see a lot of memes and jokes about women never able to decide where to eat. That’s not the case in my household. I take charge of where to eat (and what to eat) at all times, ahead of time. With Mother’s Day, I picked and reserved our restaurant a month ago. La Table Chateau has the best Mother’s Day Brunch in Houston. It has all the good qualities of Quattro at Four Seasons but without the off-putting crowd. The only drawback is that it is a lot smaller so the bookings tend to be limited, hence the one month notice.

The day started with wonderful flowers.

  • The boys did a great job picking this arrangement. I love the colors and the flowery pitcher that I can use later.

They also dressed my favorite puppy, Cookie, in the cutest shirt that says it all.

I love mommy. I love you too, Cookie. Way to represent my puppy babies. I’m proud to be a puppy-mommy to all of you.

We then proceeded to La Table. The restaurant has two areas. La Table Marche is the ground floor where they have the bakery as well. The second floor is La Table Chateau, this is where the Mother’s Day Brunch is. When making reservations, you want to be seated here.

It starts out with family style breakfast foods including omelet, sausages, assorted breads, potatoes, fruits and pancakes. That alone is a feast in itself, as you can probably see.
This is the cheese and charcuterie section.
My favorite – the appetizer section. It has the humongous shrimp, smoked salmon, ceviche and OYSTERS!!! I had about 12 oysters. Dave thinks it will upset my stomach later. He still has no idea of the strength of my gut. There’s Ceasar and Greek salad too, which I totally ignored.
This is their amazing beef tenderloin. There is also leg of lamb and salmon that i didn’t take a picture of.
….and dessert!!! Creme brûlée with vanilla beans and chocolate mousse (not in picture). I normally don’t like chocolate fountain but i take an exception on this one. They use really good Belgian chocolate which pairs well with strawberries and madelines.
We picked up some cupcakes on our way home. Dave got me another bottle of 1996 De Venoge Louis XV, Brut. We had the same for New Year and it was excellent. So here’s me with all my loot.

I’m not doing any chores today, it’s a given. I’m spending the rest of the day with that bottle and cupcakes, on the couch, re-watching Game of Thrones. I love being a mom.

Shrimp Dumpling Soup

Stuff I Cook

I woke up early today and decided to clean the refrigerator. It could be argued that there are far better ways to spend a day-off than hunch and scrub cold surfaces off white, crumbly things which I can only hope are cheese curds, but cleaning is the only way I can take stock of what I’ve been buying. And true enough, I just discovered that we have three opened jars of mustard, 14 different kinds of cheese in various stages of freshness and decay, and dog ice cream. Someone has been buying various brands of dog ice cream that has started to occupy valuable real estate in my freezer.

It’s a cold day today so I thought of making some sort of soup. I really want to try making xiaolongbao (soup dumpling) but I’m too lazy. It takes a lot of time and skill. And if you’ve been scrubbing for almost an hour, those kind of dishes are a no-go. So I decided to make shrimp dumpling soup. The fact that I discovered that i have 3 bags of shrimps in the freezer may or may not have come into play in making that decision.

To make the dumpling, simply wrap a shrimp with some chopped ginger. I don’t do fancy wraps, i just want to make sure it won’t open up . One pound of shrimp should be enough for a family f 2-4.

For the broth, boil the shrimp heads and carcass in a cup of water for about 5 minutes drain, set aside. Chop some onions and ginger. Boil about 3 cups of chicken broth then add the onions and ginger. when boiled add the shrimp broth.

Add the dumpling one by one, slowly, without crowding. Stir gently and cook for about 4 minutes. Take picture. Enjoy.

Easy. Simple. One less bag of shrimp crowding my freezer. More room for dog ice cream. #winning