Stir Fried Ramen

Need a quick meal and yet wanted it to be balance?  I was left with two pieces of chicken strips and I had to make it into a meal that could feed three.  I bought those Maruchan ramen when it went on sales for 10 cents each for stir-frying.  I did not like the seasoning that came with it so I either made my own soup base or save this for stir-frying.  With the protein and carbohydrate readied, all I needed was some vegetable to make it complete.  Just checked the refrigerator for whatever veggie you have and you can cook up this delicious ramen dish in less than 10 minutes.

I'm sharing this noodle with Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast.  This week host is Ruth herself! Check out her delicious round up on Friday Nov, 5th! 

Green Tea Pumpkin Seeds

I always wanted to roast some pumpkin seeds.  My opportunity came when I had a bag of pumpkin seeds given by a library event (pumpkin carving) that we went to.  I loved green tea flavor and so automatically I wanted to try green tea flavored roasted pumpkin seeds.  This is definitely good and make a great snack.  Me and my girls all loved it.

Since this was slow roasted for an hour, we can certainly pop the whole thing in the mouth.  It's totally edible with extra fiber and crunch.  You can taste the green tea and salt.  Of course if you choose to just eat the seed, you can do that too. I did that while watching my korean drama.  LOL!

Soft Pumpkin Cookies

What can represent Fall season more than pumpkin?  I just want to make something with pumpkin this time of the year.  I saw this pumpkin cookies recipe on joyofbaking Website and decided to give it a try.  The reason was simple because I never make it before.  This cookie is just like what it stated, soft and cake like in texture.  I certainly would prefer a more chewy one or crispy one.  I used sugar instead of brown sugar as stated in the original recipe, I wonder perhaps it might caused my cookies to be none chewy.  I also omitted the cream cheese frosting.  Anyway, my girls loved it nonetheless so I was glad.  Evy will bring this as her school snack.

As for me, I would love to play and experiment with this recipe some more, as I wanted a crispy pumpkin cookies instead of soft and cake like.  It's like eating a tiny piece of cake on the next day.

Spicy Green Beans with Shrimps

I like this dish and made it quite often.  I don't know if the green bean is in season but the farmer market here has been selling it for 99 cent/ pound.  If I would make this for my family, I would omit the extra chili and since I was making this for adults, I added my chili paste in oil to give it an extra kick.  I only added one teaspoon because I was afraid that it might be too spicy as this new batch of my chili paste in oil was kinda spicy.  I certainly wouldn't want to make it inedible for most because of the heat.

I have a similar recipe here.  Except for this I added some chili paste in oil to make it spicier.  Check it out, super easy to make for the overseas Malaysian who misses this dish.  You can substitute the green bean with asparagus, long bean, okra and eggplant.

 

Evy & Edda Updates 10/10/2010

My Evy at 6.5.  She lost the baby fat on her face and looks slimmer now.  She is considered tall in her class, I think she inherited her daddy's tall gene.  We didn't skip her to 2nd grade so she is at Grade 1 but goes to enrichment class once a week if applicable.  We also signed her up in a Destination Imagination club where she will participate in activities that will challenge her critical thinking, problem solving and presentation skills.  They will get to compete with other schools in COS.

We enrolled her in a Chinese School here.  Now she goes to the Chinese School Grade 1 level every Sunday for two hours.  In this class, she will learn to recognize Chinese characters, read, write, speak and form sentences.  She would received a page of reading material and homework assignment which she would have to learn before class.  I got to say, she did well in it.  Her Chinese teacher was impressed at the sentences that Evy could form in Mandarin.  I was so pleased and proud to hear that of course.  :-P  We just received two text books and 4 work books from the school and she will be getting a test this coming Sunday.

I made her lunchbox everyday to bring to school.  It's nothing fancy like a bento because I couldn't foresee myself being that hardworking.  Her lunch consisted of brown rice, veggie and chicken/fish (sometimes fried rice or noodle) that we had the night before.  I took out her portion before we started dinner.  The next day, I reheat her rice and pack it in a 12oz. food thermos along with her water bottle and snack.  For me, this is healthier than the cafeteria food that the school served (even though this cafeteria offers healthy food choices).   Her reward for finishing all her lunch (Mon-Fri) is she will get to eat in the cafeteria on the day that I don't have a lunchbox for her (like we went out to eat on Sunday night and thus no lunchbox on Monday).  If it happens that one of those day, she brought back half thermos fulled of food, then her reward is canceled.  So, on that day, I will cook some chicken potstickers (from frozen) or omelet and pack with some brown rice for her.

Banana Dried Fruit Waffles

This is another type of healthy waffle that I had in mind.  My elder girl won't eat banana but she liked banana cake.  So, I thought I would smashed up the banana and added into the batter and make the waffle so that she doesn't even know she is eating a waffle with banana in it.  On of my readers suggested me to slice the banana and bake it with the waffle which gave me the idea.  For this, I only used one large banana and surprisingly I could still smell the banana in this waffle.

I read that a good energy food for breakfast is oatmeal, banana, milk and etc.  So, this is definitely a good energy boost breakfast for you to last until lunch.  Not to say, yummy too and no syrup needed!  This waffle has oatmeal, banana, milk, eggs, honey and dried cranberries to list some.