Citrusy Biscotti with Dried Cranberries, Chocolate Chips and Coconut

This recipe is adapted from my previous Tropical Biscotti Recipe. It is so delicious and I wonder why I only make biscotti during the Christmas holidays.   It is not difficult to make at all, you only need a hand whisk and then a spatula before using your hand to knead the dough.  The only troublesome part is you have to double or triple bake it.  I bake mine three times because I like it brown on all sides.

I already perfected this recipe the last time, even I go back to my old recipe to make biscotti, so you can rest ensure that it will turn out good, not hard rock that you couldn't even bite into it.  It is so good that you can eat it just like that or dip it in your coffee.  I received compliments on my biscotti every time I give it away.

Wishing all of you a very Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!!  It is a long holidays break for the kids, I guess I should start on a new Korean drama marathon.  *wink*

Happy Dongzhi Festival !!

Dongzi Festival falls on the first day of winter.  Chinese celebrate it by eating "Tang Yuan" or glutinous rice balls.  By eating the tang yuan, you are also a year older or wiser.  *wink*  They also cook an elaborate meal to celebrate it with family members. 

These tang yuan were shaped by both my girls.  It is great that now they are able to help me in the kitchen and doing some house chores.  My eldest is interested in learning how to cook now, thus far, she can make her own ramen noodle with eggs and fried eggs.  I will slowly teach her more, it's my way of imparting my cooking knowledge to the next generation.  So that they will know what to do when they are in college.

Last but not least, HAPPY DONGZHI FESTIVAL to all who celebrated and also Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to all my readers and family!

Crunchy Pumpkin Spiced Cookies

I finally succeeded in making a better, crispier and crunchy pumpkin cookies than my previous attempt.  Since I don't use canola oil now, I have to find a substitute for it.  I can't use peanut oil because I mostly make this as gift besides our own consumption.  You know, have to be careful about peanut allergy these days.  I don't want to use my extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil because they are expensive.  So, I left with butter, butter is what our grandma used in the old days anyway before cheaper oil replaced it in baking.  Anyway, today we know that butter is a good fat and it would not raise your cholesterol level by eating it in moderation.  So, I am not afraid of butter anymore and have been using it to substitute my older recipes that called for canola oil.  As for my Chinese New Year cookie recipes, I will either use peanut oil or butter as the substitute.

This is so crunchy and delicious!  You just have to make it to believe it!  Now I learned the trick, I have to shape it thin and bake it until it's slightly brown to make it crunchy.  As you can see above, I make it for teachers at school and I hope they like this little crunchy pumpkin spiced cookie!  :-)

If you make this, please do feedback to me ya! 

All Natural Red Hue Pickled Ginger Slices

 

I discovered a way of making the all natural red hue pickled ginger slices so I want to share it with you all.  I actually thought of this while writing a draft post for the raspberry vinegar that I made.  What a coincidence that I was put off by the store-bought version when I realized that they actually used artificial red colorings to make it red.  As my readers probably know, I am trying to feed my family with healthy food choices and cutting down or eliminate artificial food colorings and flavorings are one of it.  I am 100% concurred with the saying that if you are going to feed yourself anyway, why don't feed your body with all natural and nutrients rich superfood?  Why feed your body with more chemicals and toxic (we already have enough of that via air, water, environment, etc), and burden your body to work extra hard to get rid of it?  If your body is overworked all the times everyday, what would happen?  Think about it!

Blackberry Preserves

I love making berries preserves.  Whenever berries are on sales, I would buy a lot (my bad habit) and since we couldn't taste the berries first, it is like playing with luck, sometimes we would get sweet berries and sometimes we would end out with sour berries.  Luckily these days whenever I end out with lots of sour berries, I know I can make jam/preserves with it.  When blackberries were on sales, I bought a lot again because normally blackberries were sweet, unlike raspberries most of the times were sour.  So, imagine my dismay when it turned out to be sour, so sour that none of us want to eat it.  Hence, I made some refrigerator preserves with it, even without realizing it, I have been making my own jam/preserves throughout the summer (blueberries, raspberries and now blackberries).  I also have some blueberries freeze up to make some preserves during the winter.  Another winter jam that I like best is cuties clementines!  I am waiting for cuties to go on sales.

Baked Butter Tilapia Fillets

Baked fish seem like the easiest way to prepare fish for me these days.  It is basically fuss free and ready in 10 minutes.  Since we like the flavor of butter and some crispiness on the fish, I used the dried chopped onion on the fish, it provides the crispiness to the fish fillets.  Also added some dried celery flakes, I guess extra celery flakes and onion won't hurt as those two are pretty much superfood.  Just season lightly with natural sea salt or Himalayan rock salt for the natural minerals.  Just pair it with steamed broccoli and carrot (if you don't eat carb or rice) and Viola and there you have it!  

Quinoa Chili

While browsing the coupon website, I came across this recipe.  A chili recipe that uses a slow cooker and quinoa.  As you know, I love love the convenience of a slow cooker so this recipe hit the spot.  Furthermore, I have about 3/4 cup of quinoa left that I wasn't sure what to do with it,  if I use it to substitute rice, it would not be enough, it has to mix with something more substance to make it into a meal.

Hence this recipe is great as I have some canned beans in my pantry, quinoa, onion, chicken breast and spices in my cabinet.  Just put all in a slow cooker and the dinner is ready!  This is just an idea, you can play with your own recipe!

I also like to wish all my readers a Happy Thanksgiving holidays, drive safely, enjoy each other companies and delicious food.  I will be off during the week to spend it with friends. :-)

Pumpkin Roll with Cream Cheese Filling

I always wanted to make a pumpkin roll with cream cheese filling as I couldn't trust the ones sold outside at the supermarkets.  Eating healthier also means most of the things we eat now have to be homemade.  I really do not wish to live like my great grandma used to live in this "modern" days, but because of the GMO and toxic chemicals that they put in the processed food, in order to protect ourselves, I am force to make things from scratch.  I do buy organic cookies or non-GMO verified potato chips but I haven't seen non-GMO verified pumpkin roll yet.  So, I have to make it if I want to eat it right?  Anyway, this pumpkin roll is oil free and butter free!!  Most of the fat comes from the cream cheese filling.

This pumpkin roll is soft and kind of spongy (which is strange as I just hand whisked the ingredients).  The cream cheese filling is just yummilicious and a plus for me is that this pumpkin roll is very easy to make (only a hand whisk, a bowl and a spatula plus measuring spoons and cups), quick to mix the batter and filling, 15 minutes to bake and just a little assemble would do.  Not a lot of things to wash too, so try it if you like easy recipe like me.

Chocolate Bread Machine Bread

This is my experiment with chocolate bread made in a bread machine.  It is a soft sandwich bread but lack of chocolate flavor.  I should have added some chocolate chips perhaps?  Or use Specially Dark cocoa powder?  The color looks like whole wheat bread to me instead of chocolate bread. :-P  But it does has a hint of chocolate smell.  Just a hint!

I will probably play with this recipe some more.  Not sure whether we can buy natural chocolate essence here?  Oh well, needs to figure it up more as how to bring up the chocolate flavor without compromising the texture of this bread.  If you know of any idea, let me know.  It has to be made in the bread machine though!

Raspberry Vinegar

This is the first time I tried my hand on making the raspberry vinegar.  It is actually very easy to make.  I bought too much of sour raspberries which resulted in this bottle of raspberry vinegar and while writing this post, it strikes me that I can use it to make red hue pickled ginger slices, not bad at all.  :-)  As it is all natural!!   When I read through the ingredients list in the store-bought version, I saw that they used red coloring.  I was like what a bummer, here's go another convenient store-bought product for me.  Hence, this raspberry vinegar came in handy as I can use it to pickle some ginger slices in this beautiful red vinegar to get the red color hue ginger slices for sushi or "Yu Sang" during the Chinese New Year.   I already have a bottle of normal pickled ginger for potstickers/ pan-fried dumplings, now I  will have another bottle of red hue pickled ginger for "Yu Sang"!  It can last a long time when kept refrigerated.  As both ginger and vinegar are good for us, you can definitely have a little bit of this each day with your meal.

Here it is, I made this couple of days later after my draft.  This was day 1 pickled.  I keep it in the refrigerator.

Cream Cheese Chicken Pasta

My quick way of disposing the cream cheese, use it to make cheesy pasta!  Or to make cream cheese chicken soup (old recipe back in 2008) or cream cheese pound cake (2009).  I got to admit, this cheesy pasta is a bit dry, so make sure you don't over-cook the pasta like me until most of the almond milk was evaporated.  Take it out when it's still wet.  Or just add more almond milk or milk (your choice).  Edda loved it and requested to finish the leftover.  Of course I warmed the leftover pasta on the stove in a saucepan and added more almond milk to make it creamy for her.  She said it was delicious!  I have 4 more ounce of cream cheese, more cheesy pasta or cream cheese pound cake to make....hmmm...

Three Beans Detox Soup

We all know beans are good for us right?  But I have never heard of this combination before until I watched a Taiwanese TV show recently.  She said this three beans detox soup can detox the body.  Since I always have these three beans in my pantry so of course I have to cook it.  Her recipe is without the sugar but I added Chinese brown sugar so that it is more like a dessert soup to us.  My girls both like this kind of Chinese dessert soup, they wallop all the beans including the soup every time I cooked it.

Green bean is cooling so it is not advisable to eat/drink green bean soup during your menstruation.  So, she suggested that during your menstruation, you can cut down on the green beans or even omit it.  Red and black beans are considered neutral so you can eat it all the times.  I always thought red bean is a bit on the heaty side, but I guess I was wrong.  On the side note, green tea is also cooling, so no green tea during menstruation please!

For this to work, you will have to cook until all the beans are broken out and eat it along with the soup.

Stir-Fried Vegetarian Rice Stick Noodle

This was our first time trying the Jianxi rice stick and to be honest, I don't think it is suitable for stir-fry because the noodle is soft and not the chewy kind.  So, it would disintegrate when stir-frying.  The above picture is still fine but when I tried to heat up the leftover the next day by stir-frying it (trying to cut down on microwave usage by heating food up the traditional way), the noodle really broken out into smaller pieces.  Next time I would use this rice stick noodle in soup or as a cold dish.

My vegetarian rice stick noodle, again trying to incorporate as many different colors superfood as possible.

Gluten Free Almond Flaxseed Coconut Cookies

What to do with the almond meal in my refrigerator that I got from making almond milk right?  I wanted to make a gluten free cookie but it also has to be healthy and delicious.  So, I had to play with what I have in my pantry and freezer and came out with this idea and combination.  Luckily this cookie turned out delicious so that I would be able to share the recipe with you all.  It would be a keeper for me as well as I would definitely make this again!

This would make such a great gift to those healthy conscious or gluten free teachers at school!!   Christmas is approaching and this cookie will serve well to the gluten free guests or as a gift to your gluten free friends and relatives.

Soft, chewy and packed with goodness!  Not to say yummilicious!!  Sooo good, you got to try it and feedback to me ya!  And if you do a blog post, remember to link back to my original recipe and credit me, that would be much appreciated.   It's a joy to share the recipe that I created and I love reading feedback but I also want to be credited for my effort. *wink*

Dairy Free Whole Wheat Buns

Just like the name implied, with the success of dairy-free buns, I was experimenting it with whole wheat flour.  It turned out well, still soft but not as soft as the dairy-free buns.  If you shape it big, it will be a hamburger bun, if you shape it small, it will be the dinner bun, just however way you like it.

This bun will turn soggy if you sandwich it with condiment sauces for too long.  So, not suitable for lunchbox.  It is good if you just make it and eat it right away.

Bitter Gourd with Eggs

Bitter food is healthy food especially bitter gourd.  If your body feels heaty, bitter gourd will be recommended to you because it is a very cooling food.  But because it is bitter, I hardly ever buy it because my husband is a picky eater and I am not sure how well it will fair with my girls.

One day, while I was shopping at the Asian supermarket, the bitter gourd that I saw just looked so fresh and inviting that it was calling me to pick it up.  A Chinese chef that I knew told me to pick bitter gourd that has wide ridges, then it won't be that bitter.  I also sprinkled it with sea salt, hoping that some bitterness would come out as well.  Additionally, I took the safer route to fry it with eggs as my husband and girls all loved eggs, and would probably eat anything that contains eggs.

The result:  They all finished it.  My girls did complain that it is bitter, but I told them that's why it is good for you and eat them up and so they did.  Maybe I should also blanch it first to make it even less bitter?

Baked Sweet Potato Fries

What I did when I have some sweet potatoes at home?  Dump it into curry, turn it into fries and make a Chinese sweet dessert soup with it.

Since I don't really do deep-frying these days, I chose to bake it.  Baking it also easier as I don't have to fry them in batches, less time consuming, less messy (no oil spattering every way) and also easy clean up.  It might not be as crispy as the deep-fried one, but suit our family just fine.
 

Homemade Almond Milk and Almond Meal

 

When I learned that almond milk is actually very easy to make, I wanted to make it at home.  Problem is I have to wait until the raw almond is on sales so that I can stock up.  If not, making the almond milk at home can be more expensive that buying the non-GMO Silk's almond milk.  The above is what I made with 1 cup of raw almonds, it only lasted for two days.  Only my two girls have a small glass of almond milk with Milo in the morning and my husband and I only use it in our morning coffee, so frankly we don't drink a lot of milk to begin with.  We drink water throughout the day, milk is just for breakfast.  I can certainly stretch my dollar by adding more water.  I saw that some add up to 8 or 10 cups of water per 1 cup of almonds.  That would be cheaper than buying but to me it would be very diluted.  I used 3 cups of water and I still find it quite bland when compared to store-bought (the next time I would try 4 cups and stretch it to 3 days).  Nevertheless, nothing beat homemade as the ingredients are only water and almonds.  Store-bought one added a lot more stuff in their ingredients list which I would gladly avoid if I can.  

If you like, you can actually season your almond milk with sea salt, raw honey, agave, pure vanilla extract, dates, etc.  But I just want to keep mine plain.  Homemade almond milk does separate, so shake well before use.  Or if you can afford it, I think 1 cup of raw almonds to 2 cup of water is the best ratio.

Tofu Shirataki Noodle Soup

When their daddy was on a business trip, I just wanted something easy to make and good for lunch and dinner.  A big pot of slow cooker chicken stock that I can cook overnight just pop up.  Just so happen that we had some leftover rotisserie chicken breast and some fresh romaine lettuce and mushroom in the refrigerator, the meal was planned.

For dinner, instead of tofu shirataki, we had some whole wheat thin spaghetti as noodle and also par-boiled spinach as the vegetable.