I love to cook and bake, but am doing less of it since Zara was born.

When I was 8, 9months pregnant with Zara, for my 1 hr lunch break, since I was such a greedy pig I used to bake pies or sausage rolls at home (since I was getting very heavy and lugging the notebook to and fro the office was hurting my back, I was spending most of the later months working from home). I also used to bake new years cookies for both my mil and our home but didn’t do it this year because I was busy with Zara.

After Zara was born, I was spending less time in the kitchen. When I did, it usually was because I wanted to make something for Zara. When she started solids, I prepared her food on weekends like stewed fruits; steamed or, when I was adventurous, Mediterranean style vege; pureed them, and then froze them in ice cube trays and the following day just popped them out and store them in zip locks bags.

It was only when she turned 9mths old that we introduced meat and hence porridge to her (before it was all pureed vege or fruits mixed with organic rice cereal). No more need to do bulk cooking for her on weekends. Her porridge is mainly done by Tuyam, our maid.

When we moved to our new place this March, I wanted a good oven, because our old cheap one was not cooking cakes or cookies evenly. We bought one with full feature (not the Teka or Pacific self-cleaning-catalytic-oh-so-expensive type). The only piece of equipment in the house which I had full say on since this is my forte (the rest of the gadgets I left it to Daddy).

I had probably just baked a cake, roasted some sweet potato and potato and that’s about it for this whole year.

MIL and SIL were coming over for dinner yesterday, and it was also our marketing day. So I thought maybe I can get a fresh chicken and roast it for dinner, and try out the rotisserie.

The chic was a medium sized chic, I seasoned it the minute we got back from the market. I used light soya sauce, a bit of dark soya sauce, brown sugar, ginger juice, minced garlic, a pinch of cinnamon powder and salt.

At 6pm, I got Daddy to bring Zara to the park because I had to cook. I stuffed the chicken with garlic cloves and ginger slices, and skewed it through the rotisserie rod. Once it’s in the oven, I just set the timer, and left the kitchen to do some blog surfing (hubby of course didn’t know it was that easy to roast a chicken).

I went to the kitchen to check a few times, just to make sure things were ok. In the process, I got burnt by being careless while moving the tray and the rotisserie rod about.

The chicken was ready in an hours time and turned out to be quite nice; evenly cooked, juicy in the inside, and best of all, all the fat has dripped to the tray. For the ultimate test, we gave some to Zara. Alas, she being a fish person, preferred the steamed garoupa to the chicken. I kept the left over breast for her though, we’ll use it to make sandwich for her for lunch.

I’ll start to spend more time with the oven now that I know how the rotisserie work, and if Daddy didn’t mind looking after Zara, I can bake cookies again for the coming new year.