Chili Crab Claws!

While I was shopping at Sprouts one day with my elder daughter, I saw these gorgeous crab claws on sales for $5.99/lb.  The cheapest I have seen for sales was $3.99/lb.  But these claws looked big and tempting and it was Chinese New Year.  So, I asked my Evy, do you want to eat some crab claws and she said sure.  Hence, crab claws it is!

I had Chili Crabs in mind when I bought this and since I wanted a really easy recipe so I looked online and adapted the recipe from Food.com.  Of course I made some changes to suit what I had at home and viola, a chili crab claws was created.  We had it with bread as the gravy was so great to mix with bread (I was too lazy to drive 25 minutes away to an Asian market to buy mantau/steamed buns and deep-fried it, thus the alternative.).  Surprisingly my little Edda who was not so keen about the idea of Chili Crab, enjoyed it a lot.  I was quite surprised actually but looking at them enjoying their crab claws really made me happy.  They even requested me to buy more crab next time!  Hahaha...

Swirl Green Tea Vanilla Pound Cake

I have a block of cream cheese sitting in the refrigerator so I had to find a recipe for it.  I remembered I once made a orange cream cheese pound cake that was really good.  I should have follow that recipe with I adapted instead of trying this new recipe at allrecipes.com.  It is still good but it was not as good as it could be as I have tasted better.  I was kind of disappointed.  Next time I will use the recipe in my blog for cream cheese pound cake instead of trying another recipe.

I added green tea powder for the middle layer.  Next time I probably make it all green tea flavor as this high quality matcha powder is really fragrant.  I took half to my work place and they all loved it. It felt great to share your food to someones who appreciated it.  :)

Chinese New Year Feast 2017

I am blessed to be invited to the Chinese New Year Feast of 2017.  Blessed with so much delicious and luxurious food to celebrate with co-workers and friends.  When you were faced with so much great food, what would you do but to dig in!  :)  Thank you boss for this divine and scrumptious meal.

This crab was super delicious!  Finger licking good!

Steamed fish for nian nian you yu.

Lobsters! 

Deep-fried Quails, my love!

Steamed Chicken, tradition.

Stir-fried Leek with squids, so that every day you get to count money.  Haha...

Girls' Lunch Boxes

I am back to making my girls' lunch boxes.  Organic bread, organic spring salad, organic Ranch dressing, all natural uncured turkey, all natural pepper jack cheese and non-GMO popcorns.  I can't stress that enough, homemade is the best food that you can give your body.  I tried to cook more often as eating out can be costly and packed with GMO ingredients.  It is hard to avoid GMO ingredients but I am trying to feed less of it to my kids.  For the process food, I mostly buy the non-GMO and organic ones these days, but my girls still have access to the GMO chips at school.  My girls are well informed believe me because I talk to them all the times but they don't have a choice when they are in school and were given the GMO snack.  Unless they have the will power to say NO to snack that was given which is hard.  Even I had a hard time to say NO to free food.  We all have a choice and sometimes I do like to cheat.  Cheat in moderation??  :P

Golden Shrimps to Welcome the Chinese New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai to those who celebrated!!  May this new year brings all of us much joy, peace of mind, great health, good luck and fortune!  I had experience a lot over the past three years.  Hell in 2014 and 2015 and basically had my world turned upside down.  Things that I have never thought could happen to me, happened to me and I had to wake up and be strong for myself and both of my girls.  Emotional roller coasters that I had to overcome and the responsibilities that I had to bear to ease the transition for my girls.  Glad to say that everything worked up well in God's hands.  Everything flown into place with the help of the invisible hands and the universe and I am very blessed.  We settled ourselves and move on in 2016.  That was the reason for the lack of postings all these years, I didn't have the luxury of staying at home and inventing and experimenting with new recipes anymore.  My time was limited to sending my girls to school and back, taking care of them and work, work, and more work.  My day off I just want to rest and/or bring my girls out to eat and do stuff.  I finally got more half day off for myself and spending more time with my girls and get to cook more home-cooked meal which was great!  I needed a break and learned to truly appreciate those working and full-time moms. It was not easy.

Okay, back to this recipe.  I made this super-easy deep-fried Golden Shrimps recently for a CNY party.  One bag of 2 lb extra large shrimps, shelled but with the tail on.  Made some cuts on the side of the shrimps to make it straight.  Then season the shrimps with sea salt, black pepper, organic no-salt seasonings from Kirkland, sesame oil and a little sweet potato starch.  Mix well.  And then wrap each in the wanton wrapper, seal with flour/water glue, set aside and finish the rest.  Lastly, deep-fry until golden brown and cooked through.  Serve with Thai sweet chili sauce.  Enjoy!

Baked Cheesy Rotini

I hardly cooked a proper Chinese meal these days.  Hmmm...not sure why!  Perhaps when I have an off day, I wanted to bring my girls out.  It might be also it will be too hot to cook at home during the Summer when my house doesn't have an air-conditional.  I didn't want to warm up my house and sweat myself when wok frying on the stove.  If I do cook, simple one dish meal would surface. Maybe one dish rice dish finished in a rice cooker is another idea.  Or just a simple noodle soup with frozen dumplings, green veggie and an egg throw in.  Something simple like that or just a bowl of fresh salad with dressing.

This pasta dish was actually not quite simple to make as I have to precook the pasta first and then set it aside and then cook the ground chicken (with chicken breast that I have to cut and ground myself) with tomato sauce and then set it aside.  Before I assemble the poultry tomato sauce and pasta with cheese in layers before finishing it off with a cheese layer on top and then baked it in a preheated 350'F oven for 20 minutes and then broiled it for 3 minutes to brown the cheese to finish it off.  I probably won't be making this anytime soon as it was quite tedious.  Ha!