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!

Butter Parmesan Linguine

This is one simple one dish meal to prepare for your family.  I like the simplicity of it and yet so delicious.  All you need is some leftover chicken breast meat, frozen veggie, linguine or any kind of dried pasta, butter and shredded Parmesan cheese.

I like the frozen broccoli and cauliflower mixed as it matched well with the pasta but you can certainly used any kind of veggie you have at home, frozen peas and carrots work well too.

Marmalade No-churn Ice-cream

After I learned about this easy self-made no-churn ice-cream, I just loved to play around with new flavors!  This is one flavor that I tried after the green tea flavor.  I had some marmalade that I made in the refrigerator, so I thought why not I tried putting preserves into the mix and hence here it is!  Next time I would love to try the mocha flavor that I loved.  Creativity is endless and so does the flavors, just play with it as you will create your own kind of flavor that none in this world!  Enjoy and have fun experimenting!

Coconut Mochi Cake

I have some sweeten coconut flakes in the refrigerator and making a coconut mochi cake just strike me as an excellent idea.  It couldn't be yummier and the crust was crispy in the day it was baked and turned soft the next day.  Nevertheless it was still delicious!  If you like all things coconut, you might want to give this recipe a try!  Least to say it was super duper easy to make as well.  Enjoy!

No Bake Chocolate Oat Bars

No Bake Chocolate Oat Bars to go!  I made this bar before back in 2013!!  I think it's about time that I made another version of this bar again.  Any healthy nuts, dried fruit, seeds you have, just add it into this bar and you are good to go!

Packed and ready to grab and go bar.  My girls loved it!

Citrus Poppy Seed Short-bread Cookies

I was just in the mood for some short-bread cookies.  I had freeze some orange zest for use in baking in the future and this recipe definitely called for it.  This cookie is fragrant with butter and citrus and very crunchy.  I hope you would like this short-bread cookies.  It is not hard to make but the dough is crumbly so it can be hard to shape into a log.  Good luck!

No-churn Green Tea/ Matcha Ice-cream

Yay!  I don't have to pay more for green tea ice-cream anymore!  Creamy and delicious green tea ice-cream can be easily made at home.  Since I learned the method for no-churn ice-cream, I have been making my own ice-cream with the flavor that I loved!  With the basic no-churn ice-cream recipe, you can create any flavor ice-cream that you could think of! If you can think it, you can make it!  I would definitely experiment more flavors in the future.

My Pullman tin finally came into good use!  The ice-cream fit nicely in this tin plus it came with a cover.  So convenient and so lovely!

Green Bean Starch Banchan

I had this in a Korean restaurant before and I remembered wondering what was it, what was this jelly texture thing actually is.  And now I know, it is actually a green bean jelly that was made of green bean starch and water and then cook until thicken.

I remembered my mom used to make homemade glue for me.  Whenever I wanted glue for my school project, I would run to my mom and she would use hot water and this white flour to make glue.  I told my girls perhaps I should keep one packet in my pantry so that whenever you girls need glue, I can make some for you.  Haha...  Why not, it's edible glue and it's all natural!

I served mine with some sweeten soy sauce plus chili oil.  Added some chopped green onion as well. I think I could add more water to make this jelly a bit softer as I found it a bit hard.  Would be nice if the texture is softer I think.

Caramel Hoen Kwe Water Chestnut Kuih

This Hoen Kwe kuih is refreshing and so easy to make.  This kuih is supposed to be white in color but due to my inexperience or first time cooking using this hoen kwe flour, I sorted caramelized the sugar and resulted in this caramel color kuih.  Tastewise, it was actually a plus because this kuih was fragrant with caramel and soft with the crunch from the water chestnut.  The original recipe from the back of the Hoen Kwe flour tub was too sweet, so I cut the sugar down to 1 cup.  A bit similar to water chestnut kuih but the texture is different.

Pour into a glass container, let cool and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before slicing.

Steamed Radish Cake

Homemade steamed radish cake can be so flavorful, soft and delicious!  I always keep a daikon in my refrigerator or Korean round radish.  I used it to make soup, banchan (Korean side dishes), etc.  One day since I have all the ingredients at home, I said to myself, why not make some radish kuih?  I love radish cake, either pan-fried or eating it soft and fresh with Sriracha, so satisfying! This method is considering a short-cut method since I don't have to cook everything in a pan until thicken and then steamed it. Just mixed and steamed!

The end result is so good.  Just substitute taro for taro cake and pumpkin for pumpkin cake.  Or leave it out for a white plain rice cake! (Then you can cook some savory chai por/preserved turnips to eat it with) This recipe should be interchangeable.  Good Luck experimenting!