Eye High Hand Low

I can't keep smiling as I am typing the title - some definitely will be clueless... Ho ho ho...

Anyway, while doing grocery in China town, I decided to buy ingredients to make soup on Sunday. The grocery store did have 紅蘿白 so I settled on 青紅蘿白煲雞 (normally i would use carrots as substitute). Picking out the 紅蘿白 was easy enough because they were smaller and it wasn't too difficult to find a package of the right amount. The packages for the 青蘿白, on the other hand, were either too big or too small. I think I actually spent at least 5 minutes picking up each package and tried to determine if it was too few/enough/too many.

Apparently my instinct cannot be trusted - or perhaps it's been a while since i make soup? This is what I ended up with:


Unfortunately, I totally forgot about one "kind" of ingredient - can you guess?

After adding 2/3 of the 青紅蘿白, I was like "Oh crap!" because the pot was almost filled up (with an inch or so left). And I haven't even add the chicken into the pot yet! (by the way, the chicken was those frozen Cornish hen you can find in the supermarket - what you see in the plastic container is the whole hen). Decision, desicion...I could either 1) Throw away the extra stuff, which seems like a waste 2) Find another pot and make extra 3) Put them extra stuff back to the fridge and make more the next day, since I can't "freeze" them. (Side note: for those who don't know, making these type of soups takes time. You want to let the whole pot boils at a low - medium heat for at least a couple hours) (Side note #2: I actually had to call back home to ask my mom what's the minimum time I need since I don't want to wait all evening :P)

I finally opted for #3 - so there's another pot of soup sitting in my kitchen right now. I've never had that much soup in two consecutive days (I had left over from yesterday plus some from today. I think I still have half pot sitting on the stove now cooling down). I grew up with lots of 湯水 (三日一小煲, 五日一大煲 is a frequent term I used to described my mom. That doesn't count the 滾湯 which took place on the days she did not "煲湯") so a bit extra doesn't bother me much. But two pots in two days by myself - that's definitely something.

Now answer to my missing ingredient: I forgot to add 蜜棗! 失策!