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.