Sketches of Life

We all know that eating fruit is extremely beneficial to our health and well-being. However, finding the time to eat enough fruit per day can be difficult due to busy lifestyles. So the quickest was to get those fruits into our system is by drinking its juice or best of all if you know how to make smoothies.

I have found a site that has hundreds of smoothie recipes to help with this. I am going to give it a try. My favorite recipes are the strawberry smoothies.

If you have good fruit smoothies recipe why not share it with the rest and submit it to the site.

I am so happy when my Singh BIL came back here. We will be enjoying good food if he cooks and when he cooks. He make good western food like grilled lamb, pizza, spaghetti, etc. All my favorite.

Actually I planned to cook spaghetti for Msau when she comes here but I couldn’t remember the recipe. Called my Philippino friend but she did not answer her call so I asked BIL for his recipe and he volunteered to cook! You are so blessed, LengLui.

Yesterday we had a late lunch, KFC. Even though I ate only one piece, I still feel full by dinner time. I wonder what they added in the chicken till we can be so full. It must have something to do with the fasting month. To make the Muslim who fasted feels full longer than usual. On other days, after 3 pcs, by dinner I will be hungry already. With advance technology, I believe this is possible. No?

That’s the name of my new niche blog. It will be a compilation of all simple dish recipes that I can dig and I can cook (hopefully). I will also add in simple food that I eat.

I got an idea to start this blog when my colleague kept asking me to search for her simple dish that can be prepared fast.

She needs to cook before coming to office. If she wakes up late, then it will be just deep fried fish and stir fry veggie.

So I hope to share simple dish recipe for all the working moms/dads or even student out there.

Do link the blog if you like it.

Here is a recipe to reduce high blood pressure. Tested and proven effective by my lady boss. Recently her blood pressure shot up to 180. She will then immediately make the juice to drink. After 15 minutes, her blood pressure when down to 120.

I shall call this juice, Blood Pressure Juice. All you need is…

One Green Apple
One Stick of Celery
Half Starfruit (if it is very big)

Juice them!

Drink every morning before meal or when your blood pressure increases.

Unfortunately there are side effect drinking this Blood Pressure Juice.

1. Your heart will be beating faster. I think the juice dilutes your blood. So you have to monitor our heartbeat rate. If it is faster than usual, try to reduce the frequency of drinking the juice.

2. Backache and the tingling feeling on your spine. This because all the above fruit and veggie are the “cold” type of food.

Disclaimer: Although this is a proven recipe, I strongly urge those who have any known special allergies to check with their doctors first before trying.

My family likes to eat the All Butter Shortbread especially my children. We love the buttery taste. During the recent church camp, I bought a packet of McVitie’s brand and in less than 15 minutes, all gone.

Yesterday at Tesco I saw All Butter Shortbread, Tesco brand. 26 cents cheaper and 50g more than McVitie’s. Since this is made in UK, I gave it a try. I bought both McVitie’s and Tesco brand.

The verdict, I would rather spend 26 cents more and get 50g lesser. Don’t believe me, give it try.

Everyone is talking about niche blog and seriously starting it too, especially those high earners in Cari Makan and other network. Since I almost decided to resign, I have just bought another domain for my food blog. It will be at www.simpledishonline.info.

Don’t go there yet. Mandrake, my hoster have yet to set it up for me. It is still early now, I hope after lunch I can start blogging there. hehe

Well, from the domain name, you can figure out what’s the blog gonna be all about. I am going to blog about the simple dishes that I can cook and eat, dishes from my mom that will be Nyonya food and simple dishes that I can dig from my friends and colleagues.

As a full time working mother of 3, I don’t have time to cook those complicated meals that requires a lot of ingredients and preparation. I am sure many working mothers are facing the same issue. Once I arrive home from work, I only have an hour to put a decent meal on the table.

So, anyone who want to prepare a quick meal, do hop over to my blog for ideas.

The weather is very hot this few days and because of the heatiness, I am having sore-throat now. At this time, I would love it if I can get hold of a glass of fruit smoothies. To get one I have to drive all the way to town so I decided to make my own since I have a lot of Starfruits at home. But how to make smoothies. Just Google search! I found a site that has hundreds of smoothie recipes but I can’t find a Starfruits smoothies. Maybe I will just improvise.

I love drinking the Honey Sea Coconut drink especially on a hot day. It is very cooling. Sometimes I would buy the Honey Sea Coconut in can, mix it with water and ice and drink. 2 years ago, someone taught my youngest sister how to make her own Honey Sea Coconut and it is way much cheaper than buying the ones in the can. Every since then, I never buy anymore Honey Sea Coconut and I can have as much of the sea coconut in my drink to chew. I even made the drink to sell during fund raising food fair. Very profitable too.

Here’s the recipe:
Fresh Sea Coconut - I buy them from the Central Market, peeled.
Dried Longans - You can buy them from the Chinese Medicine Shop.
Pure Honey
Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar)

Method:
Peel clean the fresh sea coconut and sliced them thinly.
Put everything in a big pot, add water and simmer it using slow fire until it thickens.
Cool it down.
Transfer them into a container and keep it chill in the refrigerator.

When you want to enjoy your Honey Sea Coconut drink, scoop some of it, add cold water and drink away!

I love trying out new recipe especially western dishes. One of my brother in laws make very good BBQ lamb ribs but until now I still have not gotten his secret recipe. I found a recipe called the First Timer’s Rib from Chefs.com. I wish I made these ribs because from the look at the ingredients, it looks so simple.

Here’s the ingredient
For the mop sauce:
3 Tbsps. unsalted butter
1 cup apple cider
3 Tbsps. bourbon, or 3 more tablespoons apple cider
3 Tbsps. soy sauce

For the rub and ribs:
2 Tbsps. coarse salt (kosher or sea)
2 Tbsps. brown sugar
2 Tbsps. sweet paprika
1 Tbsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 tsps. dry mustard (preferably Colman’s)
2 tsps. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. celery seed
2 racks baby back pork ribs(4 to 5 pounds total)
Lemon Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce or another favorite barbecue sauce

The instruction to prepare it is quite lengthy. Do check out the links given in this post for the instruction if you want to give it a try too. Weekend is coming, get your hubby to mind the kids and we experiment new recipe in the kitchen.

My brother is a good cook but when he cooks, my mom has to replenish her shallots and garlic faster that usual. He uses a lot of both in his cooking and that is what made the food smell and taste nicer. I don’t really see (taste) the significant of it until recently my hubby complaints about the Pong Teh that his mother cook. “Did you prepare the ingredient for Mother?” he asked. “Today, No. Why?” I replied and asked. “It is a bit diluted, like not enough ingredients.” he explained.

Well, I know the reason. When I prepare the Pong Teh ingredient for my MIL, I will peel quite a handful of both shallots and garlic which my MIL will blend with some Soya Bean Paste. It makes the gravy thicker and sweeter (coz a lot of shallots). That day, I realized why the dishes that my brother cooks always taste good.

I still remember when I was young; I would get so excited to know that one of my uncles is coming to visit. The main reason is not because of him, himself, it is the goodies that he brings. Without fail he will sure bring along a packet of chocolate gold coins. You know, the gold coins that has the Queen Elizabeth face on it.

I really miss eating those coins. Not that it can’t be bought in the supermarket but the quality of the chocolate is very poor nowadays. Not creamy any more. The last trip when SIL from UK came home, she brought back some of the gold coins. That was finger licking good! I heard that she might be coming back here again. Must remind her to buy some for me.

Last Friday I got my MIL to help me cook Chicken Pong Teh again. Chicken Pong Teh goes well with Sambal Belacan. So I made some during lunch time. In the evening when I came back from work, hubby told me that MIL loves it! I am so happy.

Here’s my Sambal Belacan recipe. You might be able to win your MIL’s heart with it.

Ingredients
4-5 Fresh Red Chili
4 Bird Eye Chili (to make you explode. hehe)
2 Shallots
2 Inch Belacan (Shrimp Paste)
Salt

Method
1. Fry the Belacan till dry (no oil needed, ok)
2. Cut the chili to 3-4 parts to make it easier to pound.
3. Place all the ingredients into a pounder (lesung) and pound till it all mashed up.

How to eat it
Take a small pinch of the Sambal Belacan with every spoon of rice that has been mixed with the Pong Teh gravy or take a small spoon of the Sambal Belacan and mix well with your rice. Mmmm…delicious. (writing this makes me salivate!)

When I first met hubby, he was the bartender in the restaurant that we worked. The best thing of having a bartender boyfriend is you can enjoy cocktails almost everyday (psst…boss don’t know. Hehe). He loves making the Mixed Drinks Cocktails. The one I like the most is A Few Of My Favorite Things, a mixture of Amaretto Almond Liqueur, Bailey’s® Irish Cream, Kahlua® Coffee Liqueur, Vanilla Liqueur, Butterscotch Schnapps, Vodka & Milk.

Sometimes when we do not have customer at night and the boss is way, you know, when the cat leaves, the rats come out, we have the time of our life playing Drinking Games like the coin drinking game called the Spinner. Thank God none of us become alcohol addicts! Well, if you like to try making your own cocktail, there are hundreds of Mixed Drink Recipes from SuperCocktails.com.

At least now I have the peace of mind to leave my children alone to play in the room.

I am so bad at cooking that even frying a slice of fish I couldn’t get it right. Too scare that it won’t cook in the inside I fried it longer and it turn out to be over cooked. Dry and hard. Praise God that my children don’t mind eating the dry fish. I think they were too hungry!

Someone tell me, do I fry on slow fire or medium fire or high fire and how long does it normally take to get it just nice and juicy?

I just ate 2 pieces of Him Heang’s Tambun Biscuit that was brought to Malacca all the way from Penang. It is a gift from Sara, the manager of a MNC, one of my company’s customer. She went to Penang for a conference and she remembered me! Not only that she also gave me another box of Beh Teh Saw. Don’t ask me to translate I do not know Chinese.

I went to Penang recently and I don’t even bought back any of the above! Lazy to carry.

Btw, she is still single. Anyone interested? Do let me know.

This recipe is given by my aunt. All this while I did my chocolate fudge for my cake topping by just steaming a bar of cooking chocolate then add water and boil it. After trying my aunt’s choc fudge, I bid farewell to my choc fudge recipe. I don’t think mine is a real choc fudge.

Here’s the recipe:

100ml Condensed Milk
180g Unsalted Butter
300ml Evaporated Milk
3 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
1.5 Tbsp Honey
1 Tsp Vanilla Essence

Simmer them on slow fire till it become fudge.

We used to plant quite a number of Roselle trees and because they are too much of it, we made Roselle Jam.

Here’s how we did it:

Wash clean the Roselle’s petals. Mix in brown sugar, 1:1. Leave for 2-3 hours to let the brown sugar to be come liquid. Then Cook the mixture for 20 minutes. Cool it down then blend. Add lime to crystallize the jam. Store in bottles.

Honestly, I don’t really like the jam coz it is sourish. You got to use a lot of sugar to make it sweet.

The above is how the Stew Pork Bee Hoon look like. The recipe is here.

After a few days of waking up early. I wanted a quick dish so that I can wake up slightly later. The first thing that came to my mind is Fried Bee Hoon! Done in half an hour and everyone loves it even my picky boy.

When I need to cook something fast for the children, this is one of the dishes that I will opt for.

Ingredients:
1/2 Chicken
4 Potatoes cut in 4
4 Shallots
4 Garlics
1/2 Tbsp of Minced Bean Paste (Taucu)
A few Slices of Ginger
Water
Salt for taste
Oil

Method:
1. Pound the garlics and shallots.
2. Fry them
3. Add the Bean Paste, stir for a while till the aroma comes up.
4. Add in water, like half a pot.
5. Add in the chicken, potato, ginger and salt.
6. Simmer it till the chicken cooked.

There you go. Easy right?

I like to sprinkle some fried onions on my fried rice, fried bee hoon or porridge to get the nice smelling aroma. You see, my children will only eat food that smells delicious. So this is one of the trick that I use to get them eat my food coz I am not a good cook like my mom.

When it comes to frying onion, 80% will be burnt coz I dunno how to control the fire. Most of the time, I got my mom to help me fry them. Someone just told me to add a little milk to onions while frying as this will help retain a rich color and prevent them from burning. Hmmm…milk? Sound interesting. Will try it this Sunday as Sundays are our Fried Bee Hoon Day.

This is a typical Nyonya food. Prawn plus pineapple cooked in coconut milk. This is my favorite; I will usually eat them with fried salted fish. Sometimes when there are no prawns, my mom will replace it with salted fish. (must get the ikan sepat masin).

Ingredients:
(A)
1 Pineapple sliced it 1.5″ by 1.5″ around 0.5cm thickness.
Coconut Milk from 1 Coconut. One bowl from the 1st squeeze (thick) and another 2nd squeeze (diluted).

(B)
10 Dried Chilli
10 Shallots
0.5″ Fresh Turmeric
1 inch Belacan
Some Anchovies

Blend the above (B).

Methods:
Bring to boil the thick coconut milk then add in ingredient (B). Let it boil for 10 minutes. Then add in the ingredient (A) plus sugar and salt to taste.

You are done. Simple right.

FYI, I only tried this once!

I seldom cook so I can’t remember the ingredients to all my recipe, especially those that I got from my mom. I jot them down in a small notebook. Since it is small, it went missing a few times but God is good, I managed to find it every time it went missing. Yesterday, I panic again. I wanted to blog about those recipes but I couldn’t find the recipe book. Oh No! Not again! Search high and low for it. Finally I found it in a pencil holder. Someone must have found it and put it there. I am going to post ALL the recipe in this blog. Backing it up here.

If my mom is no longer in this world, I won’t ever get to taste her dishes without the recipe book. Eh…my youngest sis can cook as good as her. Maybe I’ll bug her to cook for me.

Meaning, pork cook in soy sauce. To those who does not eat pork, you can swap it with chicken but it won’t taste as nice as pork.

This is my girls favorite. Must get the meat that has some lard on it. I dunno what you call it in English. My mom calls it “Samchan”.

Ingredients:
Thinly Sliced Pork
Dark Soy Sauce
Salt
Lots of Garlic
Mushroom
Water

Method:
Throw in everything in the water and let it simmer for 1-2 hours till the meat become very soft.

Easy right. Very tasty too. Whenever my mom serve this to my eldest, she will go, “Mmmm, this is my favorite.”

I found another recipe using Tuna. This time with chilli, my children can’t take it though but hubby would sure love it. I got it from Ayam Brand Singapore website. It is more simple than mine. I wonder whether it taste nice or not. Once I tried it, I will blog about it.

Ingredients:
1 pack (400g) of Vermicelli/bee hoon
1 can Ayam Brand Chilli Tuna
6 shallots, finely chopped
1 cucumber, sliced
1 red chilli, sliced
1 lime, extract juice
Small quantity of Cooking oil
Pepper, salt and sugar

Methods:
1) Soak vermicelli in boiling water for 3 minutes and drain water to cool
2) Fry shallots in cooking oil until golden brown
3) Add drained vermicelli, chilli tuna into frying pan. Stir fry.
4) Add pepper, salt and sugar to taste.
5) Remove from heat, add in cucumber and lime juice
6) Garnish with parsley and lettuce. Serve.

Sunday is a Bee Hoon Day. I must fry Bee Hoon either of breakfast, lunch or dinner. Normally, I’ll do it for breakfast then pack some to church for my girls lunch. The church service ends quite late sometimes.

This week, I tried something different besides my “famous” Stew Pork Bee Hoon. Long long time ago, one of my MIL fried Bee Hoon. It tasted different and nice. She told me she used Tuna. On Sunday, I took the risk and tried frying my Bee Hoon with tuna, hoping that my girl will like them.

Once it is ready, I get Belle to eat it. She smell it first! “Emmm, nice.” she said and proceed eating it. What a relief. The trick is, I sprinkled some fried shallot on it to get the nice aroma.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1 can of Tuna flakes in water
500g of Bee Hoon
Chopped Garlic
Sliced Shallots
Carrot & Cabbage
Dark Soy Sauce
Salt
Water

Method
1. Fry the shallots till brownish. Remove it. Set aside.
2. Fry the garlic
3. Add in the tuna. Stir fry for a lil while.
4. Add in the vege. Stir, stir, stir.
5. Water comes next. Bring it to boil.
6. Add salt and the dark soy sauce.
7. Lastly, the Bee Hoon that has been soaked in water.
8. Fry till all the water dries up.
9. Sprinkle the fried shallots and serve.

Happy Cooking!

Yup, this week will be a recipe week. I will blog about my favorite recipes throughout this week. My recipes are usually very simple and can be prepared in less than half an hour. If there are so many ingredients to prepare, I’ll request my mom to cook it for me. Yes, I am LAZY. hehehehe.

INGREDIENTS

2 Cups Self-Raising Flour

1 Cup Coco Powder

1 Cup Sugar

3 Eggs

1 Cup Evaporated Milk

1 Cup Cooking Oil

1 Cup Hot Water

1 Tbsp Nescafe

1 Tsp Vanilla Essence

1 Tsp Bicarbonate Soda

METHOD

A. Mix the flour with the coco powder, bicarbonate soda, and sugar. Set it aside.

B. In separate bowl, mix the milk, egg, cooking oil and vanilla essence.

Mix A & B until smooth then sieve it.

Lastly add in the Nescafe that has been diluted with the hot water.

Steam for 45 minutes.

Make sure the water is boiling before steaming the batter.

I have not tried the above though. Will sure post the picture once I tried it. Btw, recipe given by my Malay colleague. From what I have tasted, Malays are good at baking steam cake.

Do you know that you can bake bread using rice cooker? I found out about it a few days ago when I saw the How To Make Rice Cooker Bread by wikiHow in my Google Account page.

After browsing thru the recipe and the how to, it is quite complicated and time consuming to use a rice cooker to bake a bread. Everything is done manually. You will need to turn the bread in the rice cooker so that it will be evenly cooked! Hot! Hot! Hot!

If you really love eating bread, I would suggest you invest in breadmaker like me. It is very convenient and only takes 5 mins to prepare. Just dumb in all the ingredient in the breadmaker pan, select the type of bread, whether it is normal or whole-wheat which will determine the time for the bread to be ready. Normal bread takes 3 hours and 45 mins. Whole-wheat takes 4 hours and 15 mins. Then press start and go to to bed (if you do it at night like I do). The next morning you wake up to the fresh bread smell.

After 1.5 month since I bought a breadmaker from Cosway, I finally made the effort to pick up the phone and call my friend to ask for the bread recipe. Below is the recipe:

1 Cup of Water
3 Tbsp of Wheatgerm
1 Tsp of Fine Salt
3 Tbsp Butter or Margerine
400g of High Protein Flour
1 Tsp of Dry Yeast
3 Tbsp of Sugar
1 Cup of Fruit and Nuts

The above bread is without wheatgerm so, I added another 100g of the flour.

One more is baking in the breadmaker now, for my mom and will make one more tomorrow for my colleagues.

I just love homemade bread coz I can add lots of nuts in it and it makes my home smells nice.