Yam Rice (Oh Ah Peng 芋头饭)

My mum used to make this Yam rice back home, there are similar dishes made with pumpkin, Chinese mustard (Gai Choy) and long bean.

It is prepared almost like Spanish Paella, the rice is cooked together with ingredients and seasoning, in a pot/wok, and later simmer to perfection.

Its simply irresistible as the tastes of yam, meat and other ingredients were all well blend into rice, every spoon of it is a charm! All you need is another bowl of soup, and that is! A great dinner already!

咸饭是我在家乡时妈妈常做的一个饭食，妈妈常做的有菜豆饭，芥菜饭，芋头饭和南瓜饭等等。就是把蔬菜类的食材加上香菇，虾米，葱蒜和五花肉焖好，再炖一锅汤，就能美美地喂饱一家子。

很方便，又美味喔！

Spring Onion/Scallion Pancake with yeast dough- Recipe 2

I grow up eating rice and was never a good bread eater until much later in life. Being married to a man of Northern Indian Origin, I picked up a thing or two about bread and wheat flour along the line and started playing around with flour a lot more in recent years.

I had full intention to feed and raise baby A as rice eater, his first cereal was RICE cereal, and I feed everything to him with rice porridge. To my dismayed, he slowly grow up to love more of everything made from wheat, pasta, dumplings, noodles, you name it and he likes it!

For I am a mother who doesn't know how to deal with a very adamant toddler, I have now resolved to work on baby A's taste bud, as long as he eats Chinese food, be it wheat or rice! LOL

So long story short, I made this raised pancake for lunch on this rainy afternoon, 3 of us shared two 8 inches pancake with some lentil soup.  It was yummy and everybody is happy!

Spiced Boiled Peanuts (With Shell) 【带壳五香花生】

I was shopping for Christmas dinner at the Asian supermarket the other day and saw these fresh peanuts packed by the pound. I instantly had the vision of stall selling steamed peanuts at roadside/Pasar Malam back in Malaysia. Those were just peanuts freshly harvest boiled and steamed in salt water, it is a simple, earthly and super yummy snacks!

I grabbed a bag of the peanuts, went home and made this five spice (五香）boiled peanuts. This snack is simply Perfect! You just gotta try this out!

前几天在超市买菜时看见中国超市里摆着好多新鲜的带壳花生，突然想起回乡的时候去了一家港式餐厅吃饭，有一道卤水花生俊宝非常喜欢吃了好多。

于是买了一磅的新鲜花生，做了一锅五香花生当零食，结果家里老的小的抢着吃噢！

Vegetable Fruit Cupcake With Yogurt Frosting

Baby A turned 1 two weeks ago, we had a great party with love ones and close friends over the weekend.
I was still yet to recovered from the preparation of party, there actual day came and I was thinking of taking the shortcut to just get some shop bought cupcakes and candies for his celebration in Daycare.

So I went to the supermarket to look for something ready for babies... After reading like 20 labels with chemical terms that I can't even pronounce, I decided that what I cannot give to my own child, I cannot serve them to the little pumpkins in the daycare!

So I went home and baked a dozen of mini vegetables and fruit cupcakes with greek yogurt frosting... I also manage to made some chocolate coated strawberries for the kids!

The babies loved the cupcakes and we had a blast at the daycare that afternoon!

Seafood Crispy Rice Noodle 【香底米粉】

Last week was a very bad week for me and baby A, it was Friday afternoon and he started showing signs of fever, his fever spike up to 104 F that night, we brought him to his pediatrician first thing Saturday morning, apparently my poor baby had ear throat double infections, no wonder he refused food and nursing completely. 

Worrying that he will be dehydrated I had to forcefully give him liquid, he swallowed with great difficulty and lots of tears.

To cut the story short, it was 5 days and nights of no sleep and lots of tears for both mommy and baby. When he finally nursed after 5 whole days of nursing strike... I sigh with relief and promise to myself that I will never complain about his night time marathon nursing again!

So today after sending the baby to the daycare, I decided that I want something that could comfort me and compensate the harsh week I had! I set out to make this crispy rice noodle. 

There is this restaurant near my parent's house that made the best crispy rice noodle ever. I tried to make this as close to the one they made back home as possible. This recipe tastes slightly different than the one I liked, but not bad as a home cook version, not bad at all.

我娘家门口有家餐厅做的炒粉非常好吃，尤其是这道香底米粉。它的做法是把干米粉先炸脆沥干油后淋上煮好的海鲜和汤汁。

炸过的米粉淋上滑蛋汤汁滑滑软软的，夹着没淋到汤汁的部分，带点脆脆的口感，是一种很不一样的饮食体验哦！

Mooncake Golden Syrup -- The first step of making Cantonese Mooncake

The Mid-Autumn festival (中秋节）is approaching again. It is time to make the famous mooncake!

A group of us in NJ get together around this time of the year every year to make mooncake together, some of us will prepared the fillings and some of us made the skin dough, we made so many different kind of mooncakes, ranging from Shanghainese meat/salted mooncake to the sweet treat like Cantonese mooncake.

The debate of which should be official -- the salted version or the sweet version is always one of the heated debates during our get together, the debate will continues to the next few weeks when we meet again to eat our mooncakes and celebrate Mid-Autumn festival together with a lot of yummy pot luck dishes. We can never remember who won the debate,but the memories of celebrations, good time, good foods and food friends are always in our mind.

This year I decided to make a batch of golden syrup, even though I could not make it to the mooncake making get together due to personal reason. 

The Chinese Forum - Wenxuecity that I was honored to be appointed as a moderator (版主) is currently running a Mid-Autumn Festival activity. I figured if I can't write a post about mooncake, maybe I can submit this Golden Syrup as part of the show/Activity.

【南瓜椰子酱 】Pumpkin Kaya（Pumpkin Coconut Jam / Vegan Kaya )

小时候最爱的早餐之一就是抹上牛油(Butter)和椰子酱(Kaya)的烤土司再加上两只半生熟蛋，每次吃都那么让人满足，那滋味至今仍然让我念念不忘。

每年一到南瓜季节我总忍不住要买一些回来，这个南瓜椰子酱在网上流传已久，我一直想做一次，今天终于如愿，出来的效果太让人惊喜！金灿灿的颜色也让我非常欢喜！

I went out to the pharmacy to pick up a few things yesterday and was surrounded by Halloween decorations in the stores! It is a good reminder that pumpkin season is here again! I am a big fan of pumpkins and would love to try just about any recipes that called for this golden color treat!

This particular Coconut Jam/Kaya recipe has been circulating around bloggers for a good couple of years, I have read about it and thought it was such a smart and brilliant way to make this renown coconut Jam vegetarian friendly! I bumped into this recipe again not long ago, and since I have a big piece of pumpkin sitting in the fridge, guess what I did yesterday?

Yupp! I made this jam and the outcome is so great that I can hardly take my eyes off of it! I hope my pictures do justice to its beauty. 

I also enjoyed a piece of toast with butter and Kaya right after I was done making it. Now the idea of fall approaching is not that depressing anymore.

【阿多博卤鸡】Chicken Adobo

好吃到不行-- 阿多博卤鸡 （Chicken Adobo），终于知道菲律宾人为什么老夸他们这款卤鸡了，香浓，软糯，入口即化的鸡肉配上热腾腾的白米饭，减肥的人请自行绕道而过！

As I mentioned in my previous post that I was reading a couple of Filipino food blogs and could not but to notice that everyone of them rave about their yummy national dish -- Chicken Adobo. I made a mental note that I definitely have to try making it once. And how glad am I that I did! This dish is super yummy and I had to drag N and baby A out for a 3 miles walk to burn off the extra rice I had for dinner!