my taiwanese neighbour and homecook food

My neighbour next door who is from Taiwan had her parents visiting for the month. She had told me that her mom is a great cook. I was informed that i am to look forward to good homecook food from her mom when her mom come over to stay. Her parents arrived yesterday and she passed to me over the fence a box of buttered nut cake from one of the famous cake shop in her hometown in Taipei. She had given me a box of cheese cake before from the same store. Mmmmm…. Srumptious !!!!

She also gave me a pack of the brittle nut snack famed in Taiwan, and a huge pack of dried swordfish, also popular in Taiwan (taste somewhat like those dried cuttlefish snack from our shores). She said her mom used to sprinkle those onto her porridge or rice when she was little and refused to eat meat.

I had left the 2 kids with her dad earlier this morning. Can you beat it? It’s her dad’s first day in Malaysia this year and he's alone at home (my neighbour had gone out with her mom) and there’s me, knocking on their door, asking him if he could mind my kids since I had to rush to court on an emergency basis, husband car having a puncture and we couldnt risk the court striking out the client's case.

After getting a next date (could have been a judgment in default.. LOL) I went home and to pick up the kids from next door. Apparently, her mom cooked her signature dish, the mince meat in soy and onion today,("Ru Loh fan") along with yam and sweet potatoes porridge. Man, I could smell the aroma from MY doorway. This aroma is nothing like homecook food. This has got to be gourmet food. So when I went to pick up the kids, I just had to ask her mom what’s on the stove. She told me the next time she cook that dish, she is going to ask me over to learn how to. In any event, since she had cooked extra for my 2 kids, my neighbour made me take some food home for lunch.

I fed Ashley the moment i step into the house, even though i thought she would still be full, having a big portion of breakfast barely 2 hours ago and a bottle of milk just before i came home. I gotta tell you, I haven’t seen Ashley eating so fast before. She finish all but half of the mince pork, leaving me only mostly the gravy. It did smell and taste that good. She also ate a good size bowl of the yam and sweet potato porridge. She went for her nap with a full tummy.



For her dinner, I pureed the rest of the mince with some of its gravy and fed it to Ashley again with some warm rice. She lap that up too. It was a tad fatty, and i had dug out most of the fat part.

Gee, this is one recipe I just GOT to have. Will post it here when I get that recipe.

Merry Christmas !!!

Merry Christmas, Everyone !!!
Hope you painted the town red!

Yea, this is a lot of graphic for a simple wish. I have just discovered those and just couldnt resist them. HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY EVERYONE !!!!

snowman soup

i got this from a girlfriend last night and it thought this is cool. So i thought i share it here.



She said that this makes a fun, simple gift for a neighbor for Christmas.

Snowman Soup
Buy a mug with a winter theme ie snowflakes. Put in it a package of Hot chocolate mix, some miniature marshmallows, and a candy cane. Wrap it well with plastic wrap. Attach a note that says:

Snowman Soup
I was told that you've been good this year,
I'm always glad to hear it.
With freezing weather drawing near,
You'll need to warm the spirit.
So, here's a little Snowman Soup,
Complete with stirring stick.
Add hot water and sip it slow,
It's sure to do the trick.

We dont have cold weathers here nor need hot chocolate to warm us up in this hot climate,but in true Malaysian spirit, we celebrate every festivals that came along, dont we?

Baby's Meatloaf

my favourite BABY TO TODDLER RECIPE

½ cup ground chicken (about 4 oz)
½ cup steamed diced vegetable
½ cup bread crumbs or organic ground oat
enough milk to bind

Shape into a 2 inch thick loaf cook at 350 until completely done, or microwave for about three minutes.

ADULT FOOD for BABIES

As babies grew into their 9 month or so and after successful introduction of single food, babies can share the adult’s food for their meals, as long as you add seasoning to your food only after you dish out her portion and as long as your food is not within the categories of food to be avoided for her age.

Today we have stir-fried free range chicken (kampong chicken) in olive oil with organic onion and pumpkin. I blend a batch for Ashley into lightly coarse texture and the rest goes to our table for dinner.

Yesterday, we had lamb stew with organic carrots, potatoes, celery and organic tomato paste. Ashley had a pureed version of the unseasoned portion and I added seasoning to the rest to go with our dinner dishes.

Over the weekend, she had Spaghetti Bolognese which we had for lunch and the day before that she had regular stir fry organic vegetables, sweet and sour kampong chicken with organic rice that we had for dinner, pulsed into smaller chunks. I usually use organic olive oil for cooking if I intend a portion of them to go to the baby and we usually take free range chicken and organic vegetables for our meals. You could try these for ideas.

BABY FOOD

I have been asked by so many friends on how to puree baby food that I thought I start my own baby food blog and print it here. There is only so many e-mails I can sent out repeating the same procedures over and over again. LOL. With this I could just point them the way. This blog also let me have a record of Ashley’s diet and favourite dish of the week. Besides, Kimberly’s old food journal is getting rather dog-eared from all the thumbing through my looking for food variety for Ashley. If I am so inclined to have a 3rd baby (which I very much so doubt, darling husband) this will come in useful.

SIMPLE PUREE

Puree, as most of you have by now know to be oh-so-easy, is really oh-so-easy. All you need is a blender and some ice cube trays to freeze them in. Tupperware sells covered ice cube trays, which is ideal for freezing and/or storing baby purees. And, oh, some freezer safe ziplock bag for storing the frozen food for convenience or when you ran out of trays.

You probably like to introduce fruits and vegetables. I start off with Pear because Ashley doesn’t favour apple much in her first few months. She also had pumpkin, sweet potatoes, papaya, banana, avocado and carrot at the same time. Although I started carrot and other root vegetables slightly later just in case there is an issue on nitrates.

To puree fruit, simply peel fruits, core them. For vegetables, simply peel vegetables and sliced them julienne. Then place on a metal plate over a wok with a cover to steam (or a steamer if you prefers) until soft. Use a pot with cover if you don’t have a wok cover.

Then simply blend the cooked fruits and veges with the juice which has seeped out during steaming process. For carrots and other nitrate vegetables like potatoes and sweet potatoes, I discard the juice in the first few months. Then spoon into ice cube trays and freeze. Tupperware sells ice cube trays with covers. When frozen, take out cubes and store in freezer safe ziplock bags and label them with the date. Use fruits and vegetables within 3 months. Mine normally last only about a month.

If you store an assortment of potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, sweet potatoes and chicken puree, your baby could have chicken casserole any time you wish. Add apple, pear and wintermelon puree, your baby could have a fruit salad anytime she wishes. However, I normally do combination of meals by adding a cube of fruit to her savouries.

If you are going to cook rice porridge and doesn’t fancy standing over the basin peeling fruits or vegetables and washing up after that, you could just simply pluck a cube or two out of the freezer and leave in the slow cooker to heat up about 10 minutes before you feed your baby.

If you don’t fancy cooking at all, simply heat up a cube of apple and a cube of carrot and add rice cereal, oat or milk to them.

It seems much easier for me to just rinse rice and leave them in the slow cooker without the additional chore of peeling and washing up.

In case you are wondering how fresh frozen food are, you probably want to do a search on the search engine and you probably would find that most frozen food are as fresh as the day it is cooked if stored and frozen properly. In fact, I would say it is fresher than wilting vegetables, exposed half cut fruits stored in the refrigerator and leftovers vegetables from the night before.



That's wintermelon in the right bottom tray, carrot puree above it. On the left is a tray of sweet potato and the 2 trays on top in light pink are the chicken purees. You should ideally puree the chicken tight and breast as these contained the most iron and protein.

My mother in law find it easy to just dump a cube in the hot porridge or thaw it in the microwave before adding cereal to it for baby.

My new food blog and fairy bread again

yippee ai ai yay !!!! My new food blog !!!!

okay, i have posted this at my other blog, www.allthingspurple.blogspot.com which is actually about my 2 kids, but i am going to post this here again, this being MY food blog. Plus, i think delighful stories should be shared.

Fairy bread

You know what they say about learning something new everyday. Okay, today i learned about Fairy Breads.

Someone in my breastfeeding forum says she fed her 9 month old boy Fairy Bread and he absolutely loves it. And I thought, that sounds so delightful. So, I had to ask, "What's Fairy Bread". The answer came back, "its bread spread with butter with Hundreds and Thousands on it".

Intriqued, i had to ask further, "What are Hundreds and Thousands?"

The answer came back, "Its colourful sprinkles that you sprinkle on cupcakes"

Oh...... i see. So that's what Fairy Breads are.

Enchanting as it sounds, i doubt i will be feeding my little one bread spread with sprinkles, but Fairy Breads and Hundreds and Thousands does sounds intriquing, doesnt it? Like fairies with sprinkles of laughter skipping everywhere.