Homemade food – Page 2 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Our Dinner – Thursday, 31 Jan 2013

I have been feeling under the weather since yesterday. Yesterday my throat and congested nose were really bad. Today, the congestion on my nose has eased a little but still unable to breathe through my nose — and I hate breathing through my mouth. I could hardly smell and taste my food. No appetite to eat anything but have been feeling very, very thirsty for the past 2 days, caused by the nose congestion and with the goo trickling into my throat. I guess it’s nature’s way of pumping water into the body to keep fever and infection at bay. Since I feel quite bloated drinking water and have no appetite to eat anything else, I cooked porridge and steam eggs with minced meat today.

Here’s our dinner today…

1) blanched mustard green veggie drizzled with organic Tamari sauce

2) steamed eggs with minced meat. The 3 fussy eaters loved it and walloped the plate of dish until the very last spoonful! I can never go wrong with this dish as it is everyone’s favorite.

3) porridge. Porridge was cooked with pork ribs, minced meat, shredded roast chicken breast meat from Jason’s Grocer (overnight), carrots, dried scallops, dried oysters and seasoned with a dash of organic Tamari sauce.

I made an extra portion of steamed eggs with meat and porridge for tomorrow’s lunch. When I steamed the eggs with meat in the big wok, I placed the Tiffian carrier mixture on the lower deck and stacked the stainless steel plate on top. When the dish was cooked, I removed the plate placed on top for our dinner just now. Then left the tiffian carrier one to cool down. Once the porridge and steamed dish are cooled down, I’ll place them in the fridge and tomorrow’s lunch will be gao tim! So happy I don’t have to cook again tomorrow! And we’ll most likely go out for dinner tomorrow since it’s a public holiday 🙂

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Salad Maniac

Lately, I am into fixing salads for the kids. Since I have no more help from the maid and mil, I have to find the simplest ways in food preparation in the shortest time possible. So yeah, I am hooked on salads as salads do not need peeling and chopping of garlic/onion and no wok or oil splatters are involved. Most of my salads involve vegetables that are parboiled as I still think young kids should not be eating too much raw veggie, especially if the veggie is non-organic. Apart from using organic butterhead lettuce, I normally blanch brocolli, cauliflower, french beans, mustard green and ladies fingers. Then I throw in some Japanese cucumbers, organic cherry tomatoes, avocados, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pistachios, apples, pears, over-night roast chicken and hard boiled eggs. These are all wholesome and healthy stuff and full of fibre.

Here are some of the salads that I prepared recently…

Butterhead lettuce salad with over-night smoked chicken from Han Room restaurant, cherry tomatoes, avocado, Japanese cucumber, pumpkin seeds and hard boiled egg. Since no one wanted to touch the breast meat during our dinner at Han Room on hubby’s birthday, I asked for the chicken breast meat to be packed back for salad!

Eggs are something that I try to include in the kids’ meals everyday as eggs are chokefull of nutrients. I normally use free-range chicken eggs.

I used Goma dressing, bought from Isetan. Goma dressing is sesame seed salad dressing from Japan and is very flavorful. The kids and I love it! Ain’t cheap though, at RM20 for a small bottle that can only last us 9-10 times and used very sparingly since it’s not cheap, call me el cheapo haha!

Ingredients of Goma Dressing. This dressing goes very well with blanched mustard green, ladies fingers and other green leafy veggie.

Brocolli and seeds (sunflower seeds and pistachios) salad with green pears, apples, cherry tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and Goma dressing

And a very simple one -organic french bean salad with Japanese cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and mayo as dressing.

French bean-avocado salad with chicken bolognaise spaghetti on Sunday.

In case you are wondering whether salad is all I feed my kids, of course not la… the salad is to replace the usual stir-fry veggie dish. I still have a meat dish (chicken, pork or fish) and a soup for the kids for dinner 😉

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Homemade Buckwheat Noodles and Bubur Cha Cha

Living with a great cook and a foodie hubs who is in the food catering industry, I need to have steely will power not to succumb to temptations of sinfully delish food all the time. And thank God I have that steadfast self control to resist the grub and determination to exercise everyday 😀

These are some of the highlights of the mil’s homecooked goodies last week:

Homemade buckwheat noodles with anchovies soup, fish balls and fu pei…

It was her first time making buckwheat noodles using organic buckwheat flour…

She also made bubur cha cha for dessert with thick coconut milk. I could still resist the buckwheat noodles but the bubur cha cha with thick santan? How can I say NO to coconut milk? I go bonkers over coconut milk and can gulp down a cup of coconut milk in one sitting. I am nuts over coconuts LOL!!

No. of times viewed = 431

Seafood Noodles For The Kids

My girls’ all-time favorite for lunch – noodles with squids (all 3 of them are hooked on squids!), prawns, veggie in a bowl of anchovies soup. I gave them each a hard-boiled free-range chicken egg for added nutrients. They can eat this twice a day, 2 days in a row and fuss-free. And it’s pretty simple to prepare too.

No. of times viewed = 334

Wholesome Pancakes

Today I made pancakes for the girls. Normally I would use organic wholemeal flour but the other day, I bought a pack of PanJack pancake flour to try. For added nutrients and protein, I added 2 big scoops of milk powder and 3 eggs into the batter.

The result was REWARDING! My girls loved the pancakes. They were crispy on the sides and soft in the middle. I also added some scraped block Cheddar cheese into the batter and used butter to fry the pancakes, which made the pancakes really fragrant and mouth watering. The wafting aroma of the butter melting in the pan as it cooks the pancake batter can really drown someone who is on a low carb diet… and seduce her to succumb to a whole slice of the delish sinful morsel. Yup, I succumbed to a whole slice of the sinful delight… with drizzles of maple syrup too *guilty !!*

Baby impatiently digging into her pancakes.

No. of times viewed = 386

My Homecooked Dishes

Despite being super busy with my online store and 3 high demand kiddos, I still make it a point to cook for my kids twice a day.

Here are just some of my culinary ‘display’ :

Braised potato chicken with tomatoes. The sweet and sour taste of the tomatoes is very flavorful and can whet the kids’ appetite easily…

Stir-fried leek flower, Baby’s all-time favorite veggie…

‘Loh kai’ with bean curd (braised chicken with soy sauce, rose wine and five anise star)…

This is my kids’ all-time favorite and is the easiest ever dish to whip up for busy mums! It’s a non-messy and easy to prepare dish without any frying and splattering of hot oil everywhere 🙂

No. of times viewed = 263

Kaya (Coconut Jam) Cooked In Slow Cooker

I had finished my mum’s homemade kaya and bought those on-the-shelf kaya from the mini mart. But the kaya tasted awful – it was diabetes-inducing sweet and tasteless, with very little santan taste and a tad rancid taste too. My girls love kaya too and they had been asking me for kaya each time they ate bread. All of a sudden, I had a light-bulb moment. I remembered my mum making kaya on the slow cooker, which was way easier than cooking the kaya in a pot on the stove. So off I went to buy a packet of fresh santan during my morning run and set off to make kaya in the slow cooker when I came home.

I remembered my mum telling me that to make kaya, you need a bowl of everything – a bowl of eggs, a bowl of santan and 3/4 bowl of sugar (reduced sugar, should be 1 bowl too). I only used 1/2 bowl of brown sugar. I also blended some pandan leaves (screwpine leaves) and squeezed the juice out.

This is how the kaya looked like about half an hour later in the slow cooker:

Stirring is needed every fifteen minutes, else the kaya will turn into clumps.

This is my kaya an hour later.

The texture is not the smooth type but porridge-like consistency but I still loved it. It tasted really yummy – very ‘santany’ and not too sweet, iLike! I am surely going to make more kaya on the slow cooker very soon 😀

No. of times viewed = 844

Our Simple Homecooked Dinner

Ever since my mil has gone to HK, our meals are pretty simple and easy to cook. I normally cook 2 dishes and there is always a soup. At least twice a week, I will either fry noodles, fry rice, cook spaghetti / pasta or cook porridge. I only cook once in the afternoon and then everyone eats the same thing again for dinner. Sometimes, we eat the same thing again the next day – for lunch haha! That rarely happens, unless my girls are crazy over that dish.

I always make sure that there is a protein dish and a fibre dish served at each meal. Red meat and seafood are rarely cooked. Fish is cooked every other day. Greens are served everyday.

Here’s one of my dinners:

Fried yee mein (I cooked this in the afternoon – for lunch and dinner!), stir-fried brocolli with chicken slices and a long beans-onions omelette. The brocolli and omelette dish were too big a portion and we had this again for lunch the next day.

Are your menus pretty much the same as mine too? Would love to hear yours too 🙂

No. of times viewed = 320

Goodies Made With Love From Home

When she’s around, I don’t have to worry about food on the table – 3 meals a day. She prefers homemade breads, cakes, cookies and homecooked food. When she’s around, she would discourage eating out and even discourages buying bread, buns and cakes from the bakery for she will bake them.

Here are some of the goodies that she made recently:

Pandan chiffon cake (sugar and oil reduced)…

Oatmeal-cranberry-almond cookies (sugar reduced)…

Marble cake. She baked 2 loafs of marble cake and a batch of oatmeal cookies in one afternoon!

And this is my breakfast… now you see why I was darn worried when I hurt my back and could not exercise for 4 days. With so much good food, I cannot afford not to exercise for even 1 day.

Stir fried leek flowers with fresh ‘kai pay koo’ (chicken drumstick fresh mushroom) and fishballs…

Crispy pan fried fish…

Loh kai yake (braised chicken wings).

A very tasty bowl of ham choi – siew chee geok (preserved salted veggie soup with roast pork trotters, tomatoes and onions).

Now she’s gone and will be away in Hong Kong for several months. I shall miss having piping hot and delish homecooked food served 2x a day. I shall miss looking forward to what she’s whipping up in the kitchen and in the oven for us to have tea and breakfast every other day. I shall miss staying cool and sweat-free during meal times. Now, I have to take over the kitchen. I shall be sweaty and smell of oil all over during meal times as I will be the one slogging over the hot stove, boo hoo hoo…

No. of times viewed = 336

Deep Freezing Fried Vermicelli

I always cook large portions of spaghetti and pasta and deep freeze them for Baby. The other day I cooked a big pot of fried vermicelli and decided to try deep freezing them. I had never before tried deep freezing fried vermicelli and I am glad that I experimented doing so, as the defrosted and reheated fried vermicelli tasted just as good several days later.

My fried mee hoon (vermicelli) with mustard green (sawi), chicken breast meat, tofu pok (puffed tofu), lots of chopped garlic and 2 eggs. My 3 gals love fried mee hoon and this pyrex serving dish of mee hoon is enough for lunch, dinner and 2 portions for deep freezing.

Does anyone deep freeze fried vermicelli too? I am a deep freezing health freak mommy. My freezer is filled with frozen food from bread to stews, spaghetti, pasta, soups, unfinished rice and much more. My mum is the champion. She deep freezes mooncakes, CNY cookies, cakes, durian, strawberries and just about anything that she can think of!

No. of times viewed = 1737

Soup And Tong Sui Maker

My mum recently bought a Primada Grains Nutrition Expert, which is a ‘tong sui’ maker. The maker is primarily to make tong sui from grains – soy beans, mung beans, red beans, barley, white sesame seeds, black sesame seeds, white almonds, walnuts, peanuts, brown rice, red rice, black rice and just about any type of grains, nuts and seeds. My mum tried to be adventurous and tried using the maker to make mushroom soup, tomato soup, beet root soup, chicken soup and even went a step further by surfing the internet for soup recipes. The outcome has been amazing. Her soups were really tasty and tasted even better than canned soups and those sold in restaurants.

When we were in Ipoh last week, she made tomato-carrot-potato-big onion soup with chicken stock and basil leaves:

This is fresh shiitake mushroom soup with evaporated milk and basil leaves.

The Primada tong sui and soup maker. It will be a worthy and healthy investment if you love drinking soup and tong sui.

No. of times viewed = 1223

Homemade Pandan Kaya

During our stay in Ipoh, my parents made kaya four times. The first batch of kaya was SO delish that they were polished off within 2-3 days. The second time round, my mum wanted to try making kaya using the crockpot/slow cooker. But she had forgotten to turn the heat to low when we went shopping. When we came home, the pot of kaya became half pudding, half kuih! She made the 3rd batch yesterday and today, made the fourth batch using crockpot again! I eat the kaya like I would ice-cream – put it in a bowl and slurp it into my mouth!

My dad squeezing the pandan leaves (screwpine leaves) inside a muslin cloth bag (or use a clean white nappy) to extract the juice…

My dad slogging over the hot stove to stir the pot of kaya….

Freshly made kaya slathered on toasts – this is Sherilyn’s dessert…

Baby loves them too. Everyone in the family loves homemade kaya to bits.

My dad and mum’s homemade pandan kaya are made with free range chicken eggs and freshly squeezed pandan juice. The recipe is simple:

1) 1 bowl eggs
2) 1 bowl santan (fresh coconut milk). Make sure the santan is fresh so that the kaya will be aromatic and no rancid taste.
3) 1 bowl sugar (my mum reduced the sugar to slightly less than half a bowl)
4) Juice from 2 bunches of pandan leaves with no added water.

For caramel kaya, scoop up about 2 tablespoons of sugar from the 1/2 bowl of sugar and cook it till the sugar becomes brown (caramel). Then pour the caramel into the pot of kaya when it’s almost ready (check the consistency – some people like it thick, some like it a tad diluted and some like it a tad cuddled like porridge texture).

Our fourth batch of pandan kaya is brewing in the crockpot, almost ready and I’ve already polished off a few tablespoons! Shall blog about Crockpot Kaya next!

CNY is coming soon. I’ve got some very modish cheong sam for sale at my online store, so do check them out!

No. of times viewed = 5169

Croissants For Dinner

Hubs went to the bakery and bought a bag full of croissants, 2 loafs of multi-grain-seed bread and a loaf of walnut wholemeal bread and some buns! He always doesn’t know how to buy things. When he buys, he buys too much, everything! So I told our maid not to cook rice and we all had bread for dinner – croissants for the girls and multi-grain-seed bread for me.

Sherilyn was grinning from ear to ear coz she doesn’t have to eat rice. Eating rice with dishes is like putting her in a torture chamber! Check out her left eye lid – it was swollen. I think some insects bit her.

I also fried some eggs and stir-fried a plate of brocolli with fresh shitake mushrooms and homemade fish paste, so that everyone gets some protein, fibre and disease-fighting nutrients from the mushrooms.

Have a great Sunday everyone? What’s your plan today? We’re off to church soon then off to my classmate’s friend’s daughter’s birthday party at McDonald’s.

No. of times viewed = 351

Homemade Croutons

Hubby’s aunt made the gals a loaf of white bread the other day. However, the bread was a tad dry and the gals didn’t quite like it. It just didn’t taste like the Gardenia white bread, their favorite white bread. So I kept the bread in the freezer and decided yesterday to make some croutons so that Baby C could eat them with her meds. Before I put the bread into the toaster, I cut them into small cubes. To make sure that the croutons did not get burnt, I had to keep tossing and turning them.

The result? All 3 of my gals love the crunchy croutons and kept asking for more. I’m going to make another batch soon.

No. of times viewed = 156

Homemade Jam And Bread Spread

My mum made some homemade jam and bread spread before she came to visit us last week. She made peanut butter, pandan kaya (a bread spread made of coconut milk, sugar, eggs and screwpine leaves juice), strawberry jam, green bean or mung bean paste and red bean paste – all with reduced sugar as I don’t like them too sweet.

From left : 2 bottles of red bean paste, green bean paste and pandan kaya (my mum used the juice from 40 blades of pandan or screwpine leaves to make 2 bottles of kaya).

I loved the paste so much that I ate them on its own and they tasted just like ice-cream when they are chilled. The paste went very well with bread, toast and crackers.

The pandan kaya was cooked in a pot under low heat (stirred continuously for an hour) whilst the green bean and red bean paste were made partially in her Kenwood breadmaker. Before throwing the beans into the breadmaker, she soaked the beans overnight. After the beans were soaked, she boiled them in a pot of water for about half an hour or until the beans were soft. Once soft, she blended the beans into very fine paste before throwing them into the breadmaker together with a little sugar.

I told my mum that she can even open a store to sell her homemade jam and bread spread. Maybe I can even set up an online store to sell her jam…. another food for thought….

No. of times viewed = 453

Homemade Soya Bean Milk

My mum gave me her Cosway soya bean milk maker when she came last week. With this maker, I can make my own soya bean milk every other day. Not only is homemade soya bean milk healthier, tastier and thicker, it is also way cheaper than the ones sold outside or packet ones.

All I need are 2 cups (cup that comes with the machine) of soya beans and 1.3 litre or 1.5 litre of water and within 20 minutes, the soya bean milk is ready!

Prior to putting the beans into the maker, it’s best to soak the soya beans for at least 8 hours or overnight.

The hot and thick soya bean milk, fresh from the maker. Really wholesome and healthy!

This maker can also make almond tong sui, black sesame tong sui, peanuts tong sui and much more. The soya bean residue can even be made into many types of finger food from soya bean fritters to soya bean pancakes and much more. A recipe book comes together with the maker. We will make the soya bean fritters for dinner today. Let me see how it taste and I’ll write a post on it if the soya bean fritters turn out well.

The soya bean milk maker cost no more than RM400. It’s really a good investment if you are a soya bean milk lover or tong sui lover.

No. of times viewed = 1887