Taro Dessert Soup with Taro Chewy Balls

Slightly more work than the usual dessert but definitely worth all the effort.  I have a soft spot for taro, anything that made with taro root, I know I wouldn't be able to resist it.  I found Veronica chewy ball recipe on the web and decided to give it a try.  Mine didn't turn out as chewy, probably it was because I didn't use the hot water to knead the dough and used the tap water instead.  After I had mixed everything and then I remembered I forgot to boil water, oh well.  Also I would suggest to add sugar when mixing the dough so that the taro chewy balls would be sweet instead of bland.  Overall, it was still a nice dessert!

Korean Rice Cake Soup

My original plan was to make a seaweed tofu miso soup with added Korean fish cake.  And then I remembered I still have half a packet of the fresh rice cake in the refrigerator and then the AHA moment, why not I just mixed it in together with the soup?  Now I had a one dish meal ready to consume hot in this cold weather day and I didn't have to worry about cooking the rice.  This makes one excellent meatless meal as well.

The fresh rice cake is good in stir-fry, spicy with gochujang or non-spicy with soy sauce and so good in soup too, so remember to grab a packet of this whenever you are in a Korean supermarket, it can certainly comes in handy.

Caution:  Don't overcook the rice cake, otherwise it won't be chewy anymore, it will expand and become soft.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

We all loved chocolate.  When thinking of what cookies to make, chocolate chocolate chip cookies came into mind.  I bought some Enjoy Life chocolate morsels when it was on sale last Christmas so it definitely came in handy when making this cookies.  I also used it in my Banana Chocolate Cake recipe that I posted awhile back.  It was so good my girls couldn't stop snacking on it.

Green Bean, Barley and Sago Dessert Soup

I saw a green bean and barley Chinese sweet dessert soup on Facebook not too long ago and thought what a great idea as I have never try adding barley into my green bean soup.  Since I have some barley at home so I set up to give this combination a try.  I also added sago pearls just because my girls and I loved sago a lot.

What a surprise and we really loved it as barley added some chewy bite into the mix and it was so delicious.  Since both barley and green bean are cooling food, it is good if someone in your family is coughing or has heaty body.

Keep the leftover in the refrigerator and just eat it cold.  Enjoy!

Pear Puff Pastry

I have some pears in the refrigerator and some frozen roti canai or roti pratha in the freezer, so this dessert came into my mind again.  Using my old recipe here to recreate this.  Very simple and very easy, just peeled and sliced the pear thinly and arranged it on top of the roti canai and sprinkled the top with some cinnamon and brown sugar, fold up and baked in 400'F toaster oven for 25 minutes. You can certainly preheat your oven to 375'F and baked it for 25 minutes if you don't have a toaster oven.  Cut and enjoy with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream or as is, whatever to your fancy! Enjoy!

Stir-fried Soy Shrimps

Shrimps have been so cheap lately, every supermarkets have it on sale, as cheap as $5 a pound for x-large or large shrimps, it got to make me wonder, why?!  I checked my bag of shrimps and it said farm raised from CA.  It made me feel safer because at least it is not farm raised from China or Vietnam.  But seriously, is anything safe to eat these days?  Fishes from Pacific Ocean is contaminated by the Japan radiation.  Farm raised fishes or shrimps that were produced by China, Vietnam, India, etc were said to be very dirty because it were fed with feces from pigs or chicken.  I don't know man... it seem like I either eat organic or become a vegetarian.  Eat more veggies should be the better choice for now as eating more variety of fruit and vegetable is good for us.  We can have occasional seafood, poultry or meat so that the diet is more balance but more towards vegetarian for future health.  Reading as some of the chickens and pigs from the US are going to ship to China to process and package before it ship back to the US to sell to the US consumers, I don't know man.  As the China guidelines and quality control might be in question.  If you are what you eat, and what you eat matter, what should you be eating?