Reading Week with my Boy

My son, Devin, was able to come home for reading week from Carleton University this week. He had a lot of catching up to do, as he has been fighting many rounds of sickness. He has missed many classes, done assignments while still suffering from a fever, even had an interview for a co-op while still dealing with lack of sleep and brain fog - not ideal when you are trying to make the best of your schooling and give a great impression. He lives in the dorm, of course a cesspool for germs, and has a weak stomach. It seems anytime he gets sick with a cold or flu, he eventually ends up vomiting and once he starts, that poor kid is put through the ringer until he is down 5 lbs and has laid on the couch for 3 days straight. Is it anxiety? Is it a weak immune system? Is it superbugs after covid? And I will answer what is on everyone's mind... maybe he is just hung over or high, I mean he is 19 after all. But because he has such a weak stomach already, he just finds he can not drink at all and that has not made him tempted to try vaping or other drugs. Score one for mom! Tee, hee!

This is a jackfruit. Remove the seeds and white pith to eat the yellow flesh.

Anyhow, I knew he was going to be busy this week catching up on reading and assignments, so I told him I wanted to do 2 things with him to have fun. The first was to have him do a painting with me and second was to make Asian themed food for the week, as he loves all things rice, noodles and Asian food. I mentioned in a previous post that I took out a bunch of cookbooks from the library and one of them was a Japanese Superfood book. From this book we made the following recipes: Kaeshi Sauce, Ground Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl, Yakisoba with Homemade BBQ sauce, Japanese Fried Chicken Nuggets, and Yakitori Grilled Chicken Wings. With the help of a few websites and our imagination we also made: Garlic Fried Bok Choy, Gochujang Seafood mushrooms, Sushi Rice, Mongolian Beef and Sesame Orange Chicken. To purchase our Asian groceries we shopped at the New Green Fresh Supermarket on Hazeldean Road near the Value Village, for those who live in Ottawa. Our one purchase for fun was a jackfruit, thankfully not an entire jackfruit as they can be huge. We paid $10 for the jackfruit we bought and had to watch a YouTube video on how to eat it. With Devin around it did not last long, he was a fan! It reminded me of a pomegranate in how you got the fruit out, lots of pith that you don't eat and then you have to remove a seed on top of that and then eat the flesh that is left. So quite a bit of work to get it all out of the shell, but it was a delicate sweet that you don't really get with any other fruit. Worth trying for sure.

I enjoyed most of the meals enough, but the flavour profile isn't always my favorite, with soy sauce, oyster sauce, etc. Devin enjoyed the soba noodle dish, but said you couldn't eat too much of it as it felt heavy in your stomach. I really liked the yakatori chicken wings and would do that again for sure, except they were the highest WW points of all the food we had - sigh! The Mongolian Beef was super tasty, but we forgot to make more rice, as my 19 year old ate all the sushi rice leftovers, it needed something to go with it as it was super salty. We still need to make the orange chicken, but I have a feeling that will also be a favorite. Devin bought himself a few things for dorm when we were at the store, like these loose leaf teas and a huge jar of kimchi, which he says he is now craving. Devin also doesn't drink pop and so he tried some unsweetened teas and coconut water.

This afternoon we head to Booster Juice for a smoothie break and Michael's to buy canvases for our paint pouring activity - check out the YouTube channel to see that in a few days. I hope you enjoyed this short post. What kind of food adventure have you tried lately?