Home-cooked food – Page 21 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Another Easy-To-Cook, One Pot Meal

Another easy-to-cook meal that I love to dish out whenever I am in a lazy mood to cook is pork ribs porridge / chicken porridge. The other day I cooked porridge with ‘siu cee kuat’ (roast pork ribs), porks ribs, lin cee (dried lotus seeds) and dried oysters. When it’s cooked this way, my 3 little fussy eaters will have no problem polishing off their bowl of porridge. I also added a little sea salt for taste.

Here, Alycia is solving the Math questions which I had set for her. She told me that she did not want to waste time and did her Math over lunch. These days, I have been setting a lot of Math equations for her to solve to brush up her Math. I believe that with lots and lots of practise, one can excel in their Math. Once there is a hiatus, your brain tends to go rusty.

For dessert, I told her no sweet stuff. So she had a cocktail of pine nuts and roast broad beans. I never like the idea of feeding my gals with too much sweet stuff, especially colorful candies / sweets and junk food. But it’s difficult to control them when other people keep rewarding them with sweets and junkie.

No. of times viewed = 159

Steamed Fish And Pumpkin With Butter And Mixed Herbs

This is one of Baby’s latest favorite dishes:

Ma Yau fish slice with organic Japanese pumpkin (this type of pumpkin tastes very much better than regular local ones), McCormick mixed herbs and butter. This is before steaming.

This is how it looks like after 8 minutes of steaming in the pot.

Baby spoon-feeding herself. There was also a bowl of soup to wash down her meal. Baby eats like a kitten and can’t eat a lot in one sitting, so she eats a few small meals in a day. Feed her too much, I’m rest assured that her regurgitated food will spew out like lava from a volcano.

She liked it so much, she licked the bowl clean!

Sometimes I steam the fish with brocolli and carrots. With the mixed herbs, butter and a pinch of salt, the dish tastes really good. Even I like it. It’s so easy and quick to prepare this meal and it’s bursting with nutrients too.

No. of times viewed = 374

Wholesome, Tasty And Fast-To-Fix Lunches

Whenever I run out of lunch ideas, sandwiches and toasts will always be served and they are a great hit with my 2 older gals too. Here’s what we had this week:

Tuna and hard boiled kampung chicken (free range chicken) eggs all mashed up and mixed with a heap of Philadelphia Light cheese spread, in replacement of the fattening mayonaise. I had forgotten to chop up some raw cabbage to add into the mixture. Raw cabbage in that tuna-egg-cheese combination tastes good, like coleslaw.

Then splatter the yummy tuna-eggs-cheese spread on 2 slices of walnut-wholemeal toasted bread and cut into triangles. Insert a slice of cheese and some cool Japanese cucumbers. Yums, Alycia loved this and said that it tasted as good as the ones from restaurants.

And this was my lunch on another day :

Bolognaise meat sauce on a slice of multi-grain-seed toast, sprinkled with some grated Parmesan cheese. So yummy! It tasted like a cross between pizza and canape.

No. of times viewed = 143

Mushroom Soup Pasta

I whipped up a very tasty pasta dish using Campbell’s mushroom soup for the girls the other day. I used elbow macaroni and Disney’s Princess veggie pasta. This is so easy peasy to cook and the girls all loved them, especially rascal #2 who wanted to eat the pasta for 2 days straight and asked for it again and again!

First, cook the macaroni and pasta al dente.

Then, pour one sachet of Campbell’s mushroom soup (I buy the ones without added MSG) into a pot and add water. Bring to a boil.

I also marinated 2 slices of ma yau fish with some mixed herbs and a pinch of salt.

When the soup is boiling, put in the already cooked pasta and elbow macaroni into the soup. Toss in the fish too. Stir so that the pasta, fish and soup will not stick to the pot.

10 – 15 minutes later, lunch is ready!

The herbs fish went very well with the pasta and macaroni in the mushroom soup. This is such an easy to cook and tasty dish for kids. I am glad that Baby and Sherilyn, my 2 very picky eaters loved this dish.

Next, I am going to post about a new dish that I had whipped up for Baby, which she loved to bits. Even older kids and adults would love it. It’s so quick and easy to prepare (I only cook easy and quick dishes, no time to fix elaborate meals) and very nutritious too. It’s steamed fish and pumpkin with mixed herbs and butter. Stay tuned for this post!

No. of times viewed = 725

Buckwheat Pancake

Sometime early this year, my sil from New Zealand gave me a box of gluten-free buckwheat pancake flour. Last week, I finally made the pancakes for my girls.

I used 1/2 the packet of pancake flour. I added 3 eggs, 2 tablespoon of Aly and Sher’s Dutch Lady 456 milk powder and a pinch of salt into the flour and poured water to form a batter. Then heat up my non-stick pan, put in some President butter and poured the mixture into the pan.

When the pancakes were ready, I used my My Melody cookie/bread cutter and cut them into these:

The My Melody shaped buckwheat pancakes were for Sherilyn. She gets turned on by bread / pancakes / fried eggs / fruits cut into cute shapes, but not Alycia. Alycia only gets turned on by tasty food… appearance doesn’t really appeal to her.

And that’s how Sher ate the pancakes – by slathering kaya and putting cheese on top.

I made extra portions, put them in glider food storage bags and stored them in the freezer for future quickie lunches. When I am in lazy mood to cook, I just need to thaw the pancakes, put them into the toaster oven and lunch is served!

No. of times viewed = 9543

Spaghetti Never Too Much

My 3 girls have spaghetti or pasta (ala Bolognaise) at least twice a week. On other days, they have pasta cooked with cheese-milk-butter or cooked with Campbell’s mushroom soup. When there’s pasta or spaghetti on the dining table, everyone is happy – no fretting, no whining and no bribing.

Cooking pasta/spaghetti bolognaise is also one sure way of getting rascal #2 eat her meat. I mix the minced meat really well with the pasta/spaghetti and she would slurp everything into her mouth – no spitting, no coercion, no yelling.

And while my 3 kids slurp their noodles away, I put the bolognaise meat sauce on top of my toasted wholemeal walnut bread, like a canape, which tastes very much like pizza. Yums…. iLike!

No. of times viewed = 257

Our Saturday

As I am typing this post, Baby is now being babysat by her 2 sisters who are entertaining her in my bedroom. Alycia is as usual inside the playpen cuddling her and letting Baby step on her head and all over her, hahaha! Sherilyn is on my bed experimenting hair styles and arranging out her clothes for tonight’s dinner. This vain pot is really vain. We’re only eating out at a nearby eatery and she’s all excited. She went through her wardrobe to search for outing clothes…..she has even chosen clothes for her jie jie and laid out both her clothes and her jie jie’s clothes on her bed neatly *slaps forehead* That will be another post to blog about, which I will do next week.

Here are some pix of my 3 gals enjoying kon cheen har loke (dry-style pan fried prawns) taken last week:

Baby is absolutely crazy over prawns. Her fight with her jie jie over the prawn made her say “I wan” (want)!

Me, me, meeeeeeeee……. I want mameee………!

Check out my other blog (aka my food blog) for the recipe.

Have a great weekend everyone!

No. of times viewed = 212

Mac N Cheese With Tuna

Mac n cheese is one dish that my girls will never ever get fed up with. Most of the time, I cook it for them from scratch using their formula milk powder or fresh milk, butter, cheddar cheese and grated parmesan cheese. But sometimes I use San Remo instant Macaroni Cheese (supposedly no MSG).

The other day I cooked San Remo mac n cheese and added 1/2 a can of tuna fish for that added calcium and protein.

Also blanched some french beans for some fibre, phytochemicals and more protein.

Verdict : They loved it and licked their platter clean! Though not quite a nutritionally sound meal but it’s one that would surely bring excitement and smiles to my girls’ faces.

No. of times viewed = 400

Food Glorious Food

Over the past one week, I’ve been pigging in and out quite a bit. Here are just some of the grub that I ate, bought and cooked :

Ribeye steak (well done) that I cooked with stir-fried brocolli and french beans.

Ribeye steak (medium well) that the hubs cooked, on a bed of mashed potatoes, black pepper sauce and boiled brocolli. His food presentation sure beats mine hands down. My hubs is really fastidious when it comes to food presentation. Me, I just chomp down whatever is cooked. No luxury time for nice food presentation when you have 3 kids to mind.

Pandan snow skin mooncake with lotus paste and egg yolk from Shangri-La Hotel. Nice! Love the super soft pandan flavored skin. Price is even nicer!

Strawberry flavored snow skin mooncake with lotus paste and cheese from Shangri-La Hotel. Too sweet for my liking.

This is ‘sar keong’ (in Cantonese) or cekur (in Malay). It is a type of root/herb from the ginger family and is also known as sand ginger. It is really aromatic. They are used regularly in Nyonya recipes. The leaves are finely shredded and commonly used in popular Nyonya dishes such as nasi ulam (Nyonya rice salad) and perut ikan (pickled fish stomach, vegetables and herbs curry). My mum planted this in her garden and brought some for me when she came to KL from Ipoh to visit me early this week.

And this is the plate of chicken which I cooked with the shredded ‘sar keong’ roots and leaves. This is one of my favorite dishes. My dad cooks the tastiest ‘sar keong’ chicken. I still can’t pick up his fine culinary skill and no matter how many times I had cooked this dish, it can never taste as good as my dad’s.

No. of times viewed = 684

How To Get Kids To Eat Food They Dislike

My mil made some sushi for the gals last week since they’ve been badgering daddy to bring them to the Japanese restaurant for sushi. The gals liked them so much that my mil made another batch of sushi the following day. This time, she concealed steamed pumpkin in the sushi. My gals hate pumpkin and would never eat them but when the pumpkin was hidden in the sushi, ho ho ho ho, they walloped all the sushi and licked the platter clean! Even Sherilyn who hates rice and meat gobbled down the sushi… FUSS-FREE!

Sushi with pumpkin, homemade char siew, Japanese cucumber, fried eggs and Japanese mayonaise.

Check out my other blog to see how my mil made homemade char siew sushi.

No. of times viewed = 414

Making A Dish Look Good

My mil who is a great cook would only put presentable dishes on the dining table. Unlike me, I don’t bother much about making the food look really good, I use whatever plate/bowl that’s within reach and I try to find the shortest and easiest possible way to prepare a dish, but not my mil. She goes into great lenghts to prepare a dish. She’s one who would remove the skin of a tomato by blanching it in a pot of boiling water. Me? I’d just reach out for a fruit peeler.

See this plate of canned sardine fish? My mil made it look so appetizing by slicing up some chilled Japanese cucumbers and onions and squeezed in some lemon juice. Me? I’d have just put the sardines in a China bowl and dump it into the microwave or toaster oven, then dig in it. Even my 2 gals who don’t really fancy canned sardines digged in them and they do taste good with all the accompaniments. I sapu almost the entire plate of sardines! I would have beautified my dishes too if I had more time on hand now.

No. of times viewed = 169

Homemade Wholemeal High Fibre Pancakes

When my Streamyx was disconnected for more than a week recently, I had some free time and decided to make pancakes for the gals since it’s been quite some time since I last made pancakes for them.

I used wholemeal high fibre bread flour sunce there were still 2 packets in the fridge. I also put in 3 eggs, 4 tablespoons of milk powder, some almond strips, sunflower seeds, a dash of salt and some lemon juice. The pancakes turned out very well.

I cut out the pancakes using my My Melody cookie cutter, a fish shape and a bear shape cookie cutter. Alycia and Sherilyn ate them.

And I ate the odds and ends.

On a side note, Baby C has another UTI attack. Hop over to my health blog to read the story.

No. of times viewed = 272

I Love Kai Jau

This is the ‘kai jau’ (chicken cooked with ginger wine and rice wine) that my hubby’s aunt cooked on Baby C’s fullmoon party last week. She cooked so much that there was so much leftover. After my confinement lady left on Friday last week, I ate that ‘kai jau’ for 4 days in a row! But if you ask me if I am already fed up of eating ‘kai jau’, my answer is NO. In fact, I don’t mind eating it everyday and I prefer it cooked with ‘mui yoke’ (lean pork slices). Unfortunately, my body cannot tolerate the heatiness and my throat feels a tad sore, my voice a tad hoarse and my body feels hot all the time.

No. of times viewed = 182

Boxing Day Breakfast

On Christmas day, we were out shopping at Mid Valley. Hubby bought some bacon and sausages from Cold Storage and on Boxing Day, he woke up early to cook them for us for breakfast.

The gals didn’t like scrambled eggs (and I ended up finishing half the plate) but loved the salty cheese sausages. I seldom buy deli meat like ham, sausages and bacon as they are loaded with sodium and preservative but eating them once in a blue moon is alright.

No. of times viewed = 218

Everyone Loves Fried Vermicelli

My gals, especially Miss Spitty Spat Sherilyn hates eating rice and dishes but if there is fried vermicelli or fried mee, she can chomp down a big bowl without any fuss, threats or bribes. On days when we have fried vermicelli for lunch, I will ask my maid to cook one large pot that is even enough for everyone for dinner. It’s so easy and simple – just cook once a day for 2 meals and everyone is happy!

No. of times viewed = 192

I Love Radish

This is a red radish. I never knew that there are a few types of radishes until my mil bought them. Apart from the white radish, there are also pink radish (pink skin white flesh) and green radish (green skin white flesh). The pink and green ones taste much better than the white radish. I love radish soup and stew with radish. I even love raw shredded radish (the ones for eating with tempura) and pickled radish.

Here’s a chicken stew with pink radish, potatoes, Chinese chestnuts, bombay onions and tomatoes that I had cooked.

I read that if one has taken medication or anything ‘poa’ (nourishing), then one is not supposed to eat radish as radish will negate the effects of the medication and the nutrients.

No. of times viewed = 204