Banana Cheese Puff Pastry

Could not remember when did I buy a pack of the puff pastry sheets.  Though I noticed it whenever I opened my fridge, I kept giving myself all sort of reasons to postpone my plan to bake some puffs which I planned to do so at the time I bought these pastry sheets.  Without further procrastination, I finally used them to make some banana cheese puff pastry, with my self created recipe.   

Unlike the self made from scratch pastry, the store bought puff pastry sheets always give the 100% result and less work.   

My fresh from oven Banana Cheese Puff Pastry 

The simple method in making the Banana Cheese Puff Pastry :

 Place half slice of cheese on the pastry cheese

 Place your favourite type of banana (I used Pisang Saba cut into half for each puff) and wrap it up.  Seal the edges, egg wash each of them and bake in the oven till the pastries turn brown like this.

 and serve when the pastries have cooled down to room temperature.  

 My afternoon tea : The Banana Cheese puff pastry & hot Sabah Tea

Pumpkin cake

Pumpkin is among the cheapest vegetable fruit that we can find in the market, this whole fruit cost less than RM4.00.  My girls love pumpkin cake especially the one that baked by their aunty.

Since they like it so much, I try to bake some for them following a recipe from youtube

the ingredients are 2 cups of pumpkin, 7 eggs, 90g coconut milk and some sugar

mashed the pumpkin after it is steamed

put all ingredients into the blender, mix well

into the oven and bake till cooked.  It took about an hour.

Slice and serve.  

Juicing for good health

My better half has been wanting to try this juice ever since he read about the benefit of this juice a year ago, it is said to be good to unclog the arteries..it is hard to tell the conditions of our arteries in our body after all these years..we made a point to try this juice yesterday.  The ingredients are easy to find, I got them all in the supermarket on my way home.

We read about the benefit a year ago and did not keep any written information, therefore, there is no exact measurements of each ingredients we can follow, we take the liberty to estimate how much of each ingredient we need so long as all the main ingredients are in.

What we need are : Garlic, Ginger, Lemon, Honey and Apple Cider Vinegar (we opted out ACV).

peeled and sliced the ingredients ready for juicing

 my dear Alpha juicer have been in the box for months...it is now out for this purpose

 

The unclogging arteries "yellow juice" is ready to be boiled.

Add in honey after it is cooled.  Keep refrigerated.  Enjoy this healthy juice 1 - 2 table spoons each day.  I have ready a youtube videos here for you to check out how it is done.  Hope this juice will provide us with much needed health benefits.

Mashed potatoes, the simplest method

I am impatient to handle tedious and time consuming recipes.  My girls loves to eat mashed potatoes, the easiest, simplest and fastest way to prepare mashed potatoes that I discovered is to use the packet soup as base.  

I have tried Vono brand Mushroom Cheese soup

and also Campbell's mushroom soup, both are well received by my girls

in a small pot, mix water (I never measure how much water, just agak-agak (own estimation), some milk powder dissolve in water, add in some butter.  The milk and butter are optional.

bring the water mixture to boil, with small fire, add in the mashed potatoes flakes bit by bit, I have tried Western Family and Hungry Jack Brands, both are good. 

stir with eggs stirrer or spatula till the mashed potatoes flakes are well mixed in to the desired consistency, if it is too runny just add more potatoes flakes bit by bit, add a bit of water if otherwise.

It is easy to prepare, usually I will let my girls to handle the cooking under my supervision

they like it plain

relaxing with a bowl of mashed potatoes.  Ideal for weekend snacks.

Honey Chicken made simple

To save time on preparing and cooking , especially on working days, I usually think of the simplest way to serve dinner on the table before our girls start digging the fridge for food. It will tend to spoil their appetite if they have some snacks just before dinner time, to avoid that I have to prepare our dinner superly fast.

One way to do it is to use ready packed paste whereby I just need to add in chicken or meat or fish and some vegetable to the sauce, usually only requires few steps to come out with a dish.

I used the Maggi Honey Chicken Paste, it is a little spicy. I posted my version of the recipe here.

Pork with old melon soup & red dates

Jean gave me an idea to cook this delicious soup.  It's pork with old melon and red dates soup.  I peeled off the old melon skin which is orangy in colour; they look very much like winter melon after being cooked. A great soup to ease off heatiness in our bodies. 

French Toast

Crystal came to me just before noon and said "Mummy, I'm kind of hungry, can you please make the bread cover with egg, like the one you made that day?" "You mean french toast?" I asked. "emmm...I think so...!" "OK". I took some eggs and Sri Kaya (paste made of sugar, eggs & coconut) from the fridge and she followed me to the kitchen saw the bread and said "luckily we have got bread and eggs", "Yeap" I said. And together we made her favourite french toast for lunch today. My recipe for french toast is to mix eggs with Sri Kaya so that the toast is sweet in taste.

Nutritious Porridge for kids

This is one of my porridge cooking ideas for my girls; that is by mixing two types of rice, add in lean pork and shredded carrots for more nutritions and to enhance its taste as well. It is best using rice cooker with its porridge cooking mode to cook the porridge as I find it easier, faster and no repetitive checks are necessary. A well cooked nutritious porridge is ready within 30 minutes. Want to know more facts about rice click here.

All ready to eat.

SLIGHTLY WESTERN

How about slightly western tonite? We had chicken fillet to go with noodles and sausages, and small helpings of omelette, carrot and pumpkin. The Chicken fillet tasted just nice as it has been marinated for few hours before it was pan fried with bread crumbs. Pearl had noodles with sausages and she was a bit adventurous to taste some chicken and she love it. Crystal restricted herself with the noodles with sausages only, it was just as difficult to get her to taste new food. Both of them said no no to veggies, it's a real headache for me...sigh..

STRAWBERRY MILK DESSERT

Our girls (basically all kids) like jellies very much. They usually grabbed a pack or two jellies into the shopping cart whenever we go for shopping. They have tried many different types of jellies from the supermarket shelves and I thought it would be a good idea to surprise them with mummy’s special jelly. Though the jelly that I made turned out to be more like custard but the nutrition are much better than the ones from the ready packed supermarket brands. Regardless whatever it turned out to be, the girls are really thrilled with mummy’s jelly. This is my simple jelly recipe :-

a) 500ml water (bring to boiled and off fire);

b) Evenly add a sachet of edible Gelatine while stirring briskly with a fork. Continue to stir until all the gelatine granules have dissolved and the liquid is clear and golden.

c) Allow the Gelatine mixture to cool slightly before adding 5 – 6 table spoons of Dumex Duglo Strawberry milk powder. Stirring briskly until the milk powder have dissolved. (Just add some condensed milk or sugar if you want it to be sweeter).

d) Transfer the mixture to a mould or a container;
e) Let it set in the fridge then serve.

The girls are so thrilled and eargely trying out mummy's jelly straight from the mould.