Dinner is a family affair (and why I won't be eating fish for awhile)

We recently invited my parents for dinner, and the whole family got roped in to help! This round, Junior J wanted to write the menu on sheets of paper, so I wrote the names of the dishes on a piece of paper, he copied it, and we clipped them to a clipboard (something we spotted at a cafe a couple of days back). He was extremely proud of his menu!

Here's what we ate that night:

:: Fish in a Bag: We ate something similar at Casa Verde previously and the kids loved it! I chanced across this Jamie Oliver recipe when I was browsing for ways to cook fish, and we decided to cook it for my parents. However, we steam it instead, since it seems to cook faster. Hubby usually does the fish, since I'm not good at cooking fish, and he does a fantastic job.

:: Sun-dried Tomato Basil Pasta: This is a hit with the family, and it is remarkably easy to prepare since you only need to cook the pasta and blitz the other ingredients in a blender. (Note: We substitute orzo with fusilli, and use the oil used for soaking the tomatoes instead of olive oil. And because the tomatoes and oil are already salty, we do not add any salt or cheese.)

:: Zoodles with Creamy Avocado Sauce: We recently bought a spiral vegetable slicer from Amazon and have been experimenting with it (disclaimer: this is an affiliate link). Thus far, we've mainly made zoodles (zucchini noodles) using the slicer, but I'm hoping to try it with sweet potatoes, or make our own curly fries. It's basically a gadget where you fix the veggies to a holder, turn the handle, and the veggies are sliced into spirals. Ours has 3 blades that slices the vegetables into flat "noodles", or spaghetti-like ones of two different thickness. The one we are using was recommended by another blogger, and is simple enough for a 2 year old to operate: 

Thus far, he has been making all our zoodles.
Usually one quarter of what he cranks out goes into his tummy,
even before it reaches the dinner table!

We eat the zoodles raw. I found the avocado sauce a tad too sour, and we'll probably use half a lemon next time, instead of an entire lemon. Otherwise, the sauce does add a nice tang to the zoodles!

We had a lovely dinner together! The only unfortunate thing was that while I was almost done with dinner, I accidentally swallowed a small fish bone (you know how we mothers tend to gulp down our dinner because there's always some kid to attend to?). So we spent the last part of dinner trying to get the bone out. It was quite funny, since we were all sitting around eating, while hubby was poking at me with a chopstick while I aimed his handphone light into my mouth so he could see. He thought it was embedded in my tonsil, so we ended up having to make a trip to the A&E (with baby in tow, while my parents ended up having to babysit the two older boys at home). The doctor examined me, and after quite a bit of literal tongue-pulling and a scope, declared he couldn't spot the bone, and recommended a CT scan. By then I couldn't really feel my throat from the anaesthesia, so we decided to take a chance and go home and monitor, in the hope that the bone had dislodged itself and gone down! 

I am really thankful for good and patient doctors, and I take my hat to all the ENT doctors. Having to spend the day helping people, while they gag and cough and make strange noises at you, is certainly not an easy task! And I think this incident has put me off eating fish for awhile!

Linking up with: