snacks – Page 2 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Boxes Of Goodies

Our once yearly treat to the world’s tastiest potato snacks arrived at our door step a few days ago. The MIL and SIL would visit Japan every year. If they visit Hokkaido, they will surely think of us and get us a box or two of Potato Farm Jaga Pokkuru premium potato chips and have them couriered back to us ASAP. For someone like moi who cringe at the sight of those killer McD and KFC french fries (and all fast food french fries for that matter), I would somehow submit to Hokkaido’s Potato Farm’s potato chips.

Potato Farm’s chips look like petrified French fries. They also taste like them but are in concentrated form and very crispy. Each box has 10 packets of 18g chips and are slightly salted. Thank goodness the individual packets come in very small serving and contains only 108 calories (which I can easily jog away in the morning), else I can easily chomp away to a thousand calories when my tummy is growling with hunger or when I am stressed up. Yep, indulging in sinful snacks can help me to de-stress haha!

In the 2 boxes of parcels couriered back to us were also packs and packs of our favorite Whittaker’s Almond Gold Chocolate — in all sizes of packaging, including the latest bite-size ones. This time, she also sent us Whittaker’s Hazelnut Slab, which tastes just as good as almond and I have been devouring on them for the past 3 days. Fei sei lor!! MIL bought the Whittaker’s chocs from New Zealand.

Meiji chocs, my all-time favorite Ferrero Rocher, Japanese chocs, Panettone Christmas bread, Japanese jellies (the girls’ favorite), Manuka honey and so much more goodies were in our 2 boxes of surprise. I better not slacken in my exercise any further. During the 6-week long school holidays, I have chucked my daily exercise at the back-seat and shored up on some beauty sleep before the battle of school days begins again. Now, I have to work out doubly hard!

Here’s wishing my SIL no. 1 and SIL no. 3 a very big thank you for all the goodies from Japan, New Zealand and Hong Kong! Also thank you to SIL no. 4 from Hawaii for the lovely handmade gifts for us 🙂

No. of times viewed = 4868

Berry Chocolately Bread

This is my breakfast today:

Milo sprinkled on homemade wholewheat bread with sliced jumbo sized strawberries.

This is anytime healthier than char koay teow, chee cheong fun, curry laksa or nasi lemak eh? I realize that if I cut down on deep fried, oily and spicy food, the monthly zits will stop bothering my face. And my complexion glows too! So try out health freak mommy’s complexion glowing recipe of daily exercise, drinking lots of plain water, green tea, coconut water, eating a few servings of fruits everyday and ditch your junk food. Feeding your skin with a good skin care product is vital too. One thing that I must strive to improve on is to get at least 6 hours of sleep. Still trying very hard in this area!

No. of times viewed = 480

A Bite Of East and West

Had this for breakkie this morning…

My fusion creation of east meeting west — homemade walnut-rye bread with Surgers butter, drizzled with maple syrup from Canada and topped with freshly grated coconut, simply wholesome and yummy! As usual my breakfast will only be complete after downing a hot mug of Japanese matcha.

I am very much a bread person and I prefer bread (wholemeal with nuts and seeds) to nasi lemak and noodles for breakfast. What’s your preference for breakfast?

No. of times viewed = 679

Famous Traditional Heong Peang @ Gunung Rapat, Ipoh – 189 (Yat Pat Gao Enterprise)

During our food hunt in our recent Ipoh trip, we brought the girls to visit a Heong Peang ‘factory’ in Gunung Rapat, Ipoh, before adjourning to Sam Poh Toong Caves. From the facade of the makeshift ‘factory’ housed in an attap house in one of the ‘kampung’ of Gunung Rapat, no one, absolutely no one would have thought that this tiny attap house could churn out so many pieces of traditional Heong Peang for distribution for sale all over Malaysia! It was definitely an eye opener for the kids, as well as for me! For almost 20 years, my dad has been buying Heong Peang from 189 @ Gunung Rapat. If you do not make any prior booking via the phone, your trip to 189 may be futile and you may have to leave empty handed.

A kneading dough machine in one of the rooms.

Sherilyn and Cass watching in awe how the workers knead and fill up the dough with molasses.

A worker kneading the dough and shaping them.

A tray of biscuits waiting to be placed in the ‘oven’

The uncooked biscuits are lined around the sides of the ‘oven’ to be baked, which looks like a cement well. About 150 pieces are stuck to the ‘oven’ at one time. If you stand to watch the process for 15 minutes (that’s how quick it is to bake the Heong Peang), you will be amazed to see how the biscuits get browned and skin turn flaky and crispy… and be prepared to bring along some hankies and wet wipes to wipe away your dribbling sweat!

Coconut husks are used as fuel for the fire, this is what I call authentic traditional baking method!

The biscuits turning brown and almost ready!

A batch of really hot-from-the-oven super crunchy Heong Peang outside the oven, waiting to be packed.

Save some tissue papers for wiping off your dribbling saliva too, when you see and smell the irresistible freshly baked Heong Peang! As with most kampung styled prepared food, you just have to bear with the not-so-hygienic newspapers used to line the trays. ‘Kar Liu’ food always taste better eh?

We bought 8 packs of Heong Peang from 189 — including 1 packet that’s reduced sugar. Some are individually packed and has a classier packaging. The individually packed ones can last longer. Some of the biscuits were for distribution to friends and the rest – we have been gorging on them everyday. Waiting to see the deadly aftermath on my scale soon as I have not been exercising everyday lately!

189 (Yat Pat Gao Enterprise)
189, Lorong Gunung Rapat 5,
31350 Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia.
Telephone : 6016-560 9781 (Lew), 605-312 7033

No. of times viewed = 1251

Lunch Box For My Princess Wannabe

My princess wannabe was in a mega good mood when I let her bring this Hello Kitty lunch box which comes with a matching lunch bag to school. Inside the lunch box was fried rice, home cooked. When she came home, she told me that she walloped every grain of rice there was in the lunch box!

But if I were to put this set into Alycia’s school bag, I can be rest assured to hear a roaring “eeeyerrrr mummy, I DON’T WANT this!!”…. followed by never ending whines and complains until the lunch bag is removed from her bag, away from her sight! Sisters they are, but they have polar opposites characters, attitude, likes and dislikes.

No. of times viewed = 272

Not So Unhealthy Chips

Remember my earlier post on Food For Friends organic tortilla chips? I got another pack and this time, I got the multi-colored veggie flavored one. The red chips are made from beet root powder, green ones from spinach powder and yellow ones from organic corns. Yums, feel so good when I munch on them. Can feel the chips lift my mood up as the stress melts away hehehe….

These are the only chips that I do not mind my girls to snack on as I find that they are not that salty. But I do limit their intake to no more than 3 chips a day. The chips are free from MSG and the flavorings come from sea salt, parsley flakes, carrot powder, tomato powder, lime and garlic powder.

No. of times viewed = 234

Healthy Chips Made From Soy, Flaxseed, Organic Corns and Sea Salt

Here’s my latest stress buster –

When I am stressed out to the max by the girls and with work, I munch on feel-good comfort food like this. This Food For Friends tortilla chips are made from organic soy grits, organic stone ground yellow corns, lots of organic brown flaxseeds, lime and sea salt. Not very salty and taste good to me. I am going to grab another bag of these chips from the mini market tomorrow when I drop rascal #2 for ballet 😀

Good source of DHA and fibre from the flaxseeds. But quite costly at RM12.90 a bag…. well actually it’s only half bag full!

No. of times viewed = 4597

Sweet Macarons From Les Deux Garcons, Taman Desa, KL

So much about the latest rave and craze on macarons, my hubs bought 2 boxes from a bakery that manufacturers fine French desserts to try. The only macarons that I had tried were the ones that my mum used to bake from left-over egg whites decades ago. Her macarons were very crispy and sometimes she would add some cocoa powder to the macaron mixture before baking them. I liked her macarons, albeit not crazy over them, as I would over cream puffs, cakes or pastries.

When I saw the brightly colored macarons, I knew instantly that they would not sweep me off my feet and bring me to macaron land. I donch like food that are heavily covered in food coloring and sugar. Nor do I like my girls to have such food additives inside them. Since my hubs had spent quite a bit on these macaroos, we all savored them. True to my expectation, they macarons were tremendously sweet. Alycia is the only one who liked them. This girl has a sweet tooth and likes almost everything that is sweet.

The macarons came in all flavors – green one is wasabe, pink is strawberry, brown ones are chocolate and coffee, gray one is peanut butter, turquoise one is Earl Grey Ganache and yellow one mango. These macarons would act as a great gift to someone who appreciates and enjoys fine desserts. A box of these macarons cost a whopping RM50! I had read that macarons are very costly as the ingredients used are very costly, eg. almond powder.

Les Deux Garcons is open from 9.30am – 6.30pm (Tuesday-Sunday).
Address & tel no.
16, Jalan 2/109E Desa Business Park
Taman Desa 58100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: 603.7980 0200
website : http://www.lesdeuxgarcons.com.my/store/index.php

No. of times viewed = 1173

Frozen Ice Cream Puff

My brother bought a box of 6 Beard Papa’s cream puff for the girls when he went to Mid Valley Megamall. When he reached home, he placed the box of cream puff in the freezer to cool up the cream so that we could have them for our afternoon snack in a while but we had forgotten all about it until the next morning! I thawed the cream puff for about half an hour and when I sank my teeth onto the puff, the cream was still half frozen and it tasted just like ice-cream! Not bad at all and my girls loved it anyway and we call it ice cream cream puff!

No. of times viewed = 251

More CNY Snacks

On Saturday, we bought more CNY cookies and snacks from our neighborhood road-side stall vendors:

Deep fried arrowroot chips (RM13), ‘bee hives’ (RM18, this is by far the best ‘bee hives’ biscuit I’ve ever tasted. It’s light, not oily at all and not too sweet), peanut-sesame seed candies (RM12), roasted almonds in shell (RM18). This morning when I went to the road-side vegetarian stall to help my friend buy some cookies, I bought a canister of almond cookies (RM22). Gosh, the almond cookies taste SO SO good, every bite is almond bits!! I’ve whacked almost a quarter of the almond cookies all by myself just now over breakfast!

Oh yes, on Sunday we were out almost the whole day. Since I did not have much time to whip up hot piping dishes for dinner, I reheated some pork jerky (yoke kon) which I had kept in the fridge (hubs bought them a week ago). My gals had hot pork jerky, fried eggs and homecooked ‘loh hon cai’ (vegetarian) for dinner. They loved it so much! Not a nutritionally sound meal (pork jerkies are terribly sweet), but taste damn good 😉

By the time it’s CNY, which is in 2 weeks’, I think my tummy will churn and turn just by looking at the CNY cookies, meat jerky and snacks hahahahahah!!

No. of times viewed = 372

Our Saturday

The girls had a very pleasant surprise last night when half way through dinner, daddy (a basketball buff) came home after watching a basketball tourney with a bag of goodies for them. There were 4 devil’s horns headbands, one of which is battery-operated headgear with lights, a huge plastic toy axe, 2 huge foams in the shape of high-5 hands and some balloons. These Halloween themed items were given to VIP supporters of one of the basketball teams. Before even finishing their dinner, they excitedly wore the devil’s horns headbands and played with the balloons and toy axe.

Baby wearing the battery-operated devil’s horns headgear with orange lights.

Daddy (a huge doughnut fan) also bought 2 doughnuts from Krispy Kreme to try, which I find too sweet for my liking.

After dinner, daddy dug out his camcorder to test it as he will be using it to shoot Alycia and Sherilyn in action during their school concert tomorrow. Baby the samseng didn’t want to be left out and climbed up the dining table to join in the fun!

Later in the night, we all watched old videos that daddy had previously shot – videos of me in the hospital after giving birth to Baby, videos of Alycia’s ballet concert, Alycia’s school concert and other old videos of Aly and Sher goofing around. Everyone had a good hearty laugh watching the old videos. Watching the videos made me realized how much and how fast my girls are growing up right before my eyes.

Daddy and my mil are now in town attending Aly and Sher’s school concert and I am enjoying the peace and serenity at home. Baby is taking her nap but she will wake up anytime. Baby has been driving me CRAZY lately with her crappy crabbiness, diaper-removing rebel and heart-stopping stunts, HAIH……

No. of times viewed = 188

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

Singapore Layer Cake

A visiting friend from Singapore came 2 days ago and gave us a layer cake, supposedly the most popular and tastiest in Singapore. The layer cake comes with prunes wedged in the middle and on top of the cake.

We were told that this small piece of layer cake costs over RM100!

So how did it taste? Well, not too sweet and not too rich that it will make one feel ‘jai’ very fast. I actually like it and have been eating it everyday. That’s the reason why I had to workout doubly hard at the gym today… and tomorrow too, to burn off those extra calories gained from gorging on this darn tasty layer cake!

No. of times viewed = 709

Light Meals For Me

As my belly is becoming bigger each day, I can only stomach light meals but frequent meals throughout the day. A heavy meal would leave me feeling really uncomfortable and at times have slight heartburn. After breakfast of a hard boiled egg, some fruits, a glass of fresh milk, a handful of almonds and some cookies almost everyday, I would only have appetite for something really light for lunch like Canapés with butter, chicken floss and Japanese cucumber or a piece of toast. I really admire some preggy women who can eat a big plate of nasi lemak for breakfast, a big bowl of noodles for lunch and a big plate of rice with 3-4 dishes for dinner. I can never eat like this, during all 3 of my pregnancies.

Did you have a good appetite when you were preggers?

No. of times viewed = 275

Lotus Root Chips

I think these lotus root chips are a new snack this Chinese New Year as I have not seen these last year. I’ve seen many stalls at the pasar malam (night market) selling these for the past one month. Out of curiosity, I asked my mil to buy me a bottle when she went to the SS2 market last week. They taste very much the same as arrow head (ngar koo) chips. A bottle cost RM14. I like them and so do Alycia and Sherilyn but I only limit them to 2 chips a day, for fear they will develop sore throat.

No. of times viewed = 475

Green Tea Pastry Egg Tart

Green tea has been touted as a health beverage and it’s supposedly high in antioxidants. Green tea has been so hyped up that it’s being used in almost every snack around ranging from green tea chiffon cakes to green tea bread, green tea ice-cream, green tea cream puffs, green tea Kit Kat chocolates, green tea flavored kuaci and now green tea egg tarts. Hubby got some of these from Mr Cook’s @ Gardens the other day. It’s a new product from Mr Cook’s. How does it taste? If you’re a green tea lover like me, you’ll love it.

No. of times viewed = 447