Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Tagged: fast

Kids and Parenting

Weekday Breakfast are Important

Weekday mornings can be quite hectic with little kids. Well, I say little kids, myself could be a major factor too. Sometimes you just want to keep your eyes closed for just another 5 more minutes..you know what I mean. But I firmly believe, having kids is responsibility, meaning, you put yourself after your kids’ needs and you do whatever you can to make sure they are healthy, happy and make sure your example speaks the loudest.

In my case, getting up bright and early and eating healthy are two of the main things, at least for this blog.

Weekday breakfast can be rougher decisions to make. Do we just shove a glazed donut with sprinkles on their plate with a bottle of chocolate milk? Absolutely not in my mind. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, people say. What we put in their little stomach right now could form their life time habit. Just imagine one (or two) donut a day plus a sweet drink, over time, how much damage will that cause to their body? All because we, as parents are too lazy to get out of bed 15 minutes earlier to make some healthy oatmeal, or avocado toast, or fried egg…

I made these on a weekday last week. Most of the time I forget to take pictures for my blog, because to me, that’s normal daily thing.

You can get the cucumber salad and egg drop soup recipes from my cooking posts.

Cooking

Easy as 2-Ingredient Pie

How much easier can it be than a 2-ingredient pie? OK, there are total of 3 ingredients, including a store-bought pie crust. But, as far as the filling goes, there are only 2 ingredients, and nope, sugar is not one of them. So, go ahead, indulge a little, because you can!

 

I LOVE this recipe, because it really got all the goodness of a pie, but none of the bad stuff – no added sugar, no extensive baking, or water bath, super fast, kid friendly, and you can lick off the spoon since there is no raw egg!

Ingredients:

1 store-bought pie crust

2 packages of cream cheese

1/2 cup of Nutella

 

Method:

 

You probably already figured it out. It’s really that simple. Soften the cream cheese, add in Nutella, mix, dump into pie crust and smooth the top. Leave pie in the fridge to set. DONE!

Cooking

Super Greens with Garlic

Doesn’t anything sounds delicious with garlic? Nothing beats this wonderful super power greens with garlic!

I have super green kale and spinach in my fridge. I bought these in bulk. I use these in meals and smoothies too. This is a great way to get some vegetables in my kids. Anyway, smoothie is another blog, another day.

Here we go. First thing first, break out your biggest pan or wok, you will need the big guy this time.

Ingredients:

4 large cloves of garlic roughly chopped, more if you like it more garlicky

1 tablespoon cooking oil

4 cups of baby spinach

4 cups of kale

1/2 cup water

Salt, pepper, 1 tsp chicken bouillon powder

 

Method

Heat oil in a pan or wok on medium high heat. Add garlic and cook till fragrant, about 20 seconds.

Grab kale and dump into pan. It may seem way too much kale, but don’t worry, it will wilt to about a quarter of the size. I filled it all the way to the top of my wok.

Sprinkle half of the salt on top to help kale wilt. Add water into wok, lid on after mixing salt and kale. Leave it for a couple of minutes, and let the direct heat and steam do double the work. Lower the heat to medium to medium low if you are worried about burning the pan. After the lid comes off, this is how much kale will wilt.

 

Go in with the spinach, again, I filled the wok all the way to the top.

Add the rest of the salt. No need for the lid this time. Just stir the green goodness around, spinach wilts in no time.

Add chicken bouillon, and pepper, dish up and enjoy!

 

Cooking

Veggie Goodness

This one essentially is a generic recipe, simply because you can use whatever you have in your fridge, and incorporate any dietary preference. What I made was simply  delicious!

 

 

Ingredients:

1 carrot, peeled and cut into match sticks

about 8 brown button mushrooms, any kind would do really, sliced

a couple handful of kale, hard stems removed

1 small onion, any kind would do, roughly chopped

about 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Optional: 1 tsp of Italian seasoning, or dried basil, or herb province, you get the idea, whatever herb you have in your pantry would do..

 

Method:

Pan on medium high heat, go in with about 2 tbsp cooking oil. After oil is heated up, go in with roughly chopped garlic. Move around the garlic until it’s fragrant, about 10 seconds. Go in with onions, cook until onions are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, cook for another 2, 3 minutes. Once mushroom and onions are softened, add carrots and kale, stir to mix. Add salt and pepper to help vegetables to soften. If pan gets dry, add about 1/4 cup of water. Put the lid on and let the vegetables steam for a minute or so. This will help soften kale quite fast.

Lid off, allow water to evaporate if preferred. Adjust seasoning, add in optional herbs. Dish up and enjoy!

This is a super simply and healthy dish. You can certainly play with the vegetable combination and herb flavors. Dress up with citrus zest and juice if wonderful as well.

 

Cooking

Lamb and Leek

Another amazing and super fast recipe!

You will need literally 4 ingredients:

1 lb of thinly sliced lamb meat, I normally don’t try to slice my own. I buy a box from any Asian super market, the butcher can slice for you, or use the pre-packaged meats for hot pot!

2 stocks of leeks. If you use the giant wrist size American leeks, 2 is enough. If you also pick up the finger thick Asian leeks, please use a small bundle. I have never had enough of leeks in this dish. So to me, the more the merrier.

1 tsp ground cumin, yes, this cumin elevates the flavor and aroma of this dish incredibly.

1 tsp light soy

 

Method:

Thoroughly wash leeks under running water. Leeks tend to hide sand between layers close to the root. I like to cut off the root, and cut along the leek to slice it in half. Then I cut the leek into 1 inch sections, give or take. Using my fingers, I separate the layers and drop them into a large bowl under running water and rinse. Leek layers tend to float on top and sand will sink to the bottom. I do this a couple of times and make sure my leek is all cleaned up and I will dump them into a colander to let dry.

Non-stick pan on medium high heat, go in with a table spoon of cooking oil, in with the lamb. Move the meat around with a wooden spoon and when about 80% of the meat changed color, go in with the leeks and ground cumin. Stir fry for a few minutes until leeks are softened and cumin is heated up and fragrant. Go in with soy sauce and adjust flavor as needed.

Dish up and enjoy! The whole dish takes literally a few minutes to make. Serve over steamed white rice, guaranteed hit!

 

Cooking

Chinese Wontons

Yes, these are the authentic Chinese wontons. Nope, they are not the fried tortilla strips in a bag you get from a fast food chain restaurant. And guess what, they are super easy to make, you should try it too!

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork (you can use super lean, lean, regular, any type you like)

1 inch worth of ginger root, don’t worry about peeling, freeze ahead of time if you can

2 green onions, green part and white part

2 eggs

salt, pepper and chicken bullion powder to taste

1 package of store bought wonton wrappers (I like super thin type, it will say on the packaging, can be found in refrigerated area or frozen area, better yet, check out your local Asian market!)

You will also need a large clean surface to store the wontons. I normally use my cutting board, baking sheet or pizza pan. And I normally make a large quantity, so I choose the pans that fit my freezer. I freeze my wontons on the pans over night, and bag them the next day for a quick and easy wonton meal any time.

How to make wontons:

Take out the frozen wonton wrappers from the freezer, leave them in the packaging, on the counter to defrost, or leave them in the fridge over night to defrost. Do not microwave or heat it up, the wrappers will stick together and you might as well make meatball soup instead.

Dump all ingredients into a mixing bowl, doesn’t matter the sequence, just dump them all in. Please don’t mind my not so clean bowl in the picture, I only remembered to take pictures after I ran out of fillings, so the picture was second batch fillings.

Use a spoon, a fork or a pair of chopsticks (if you feel extra Asian today), mix the filling mixture vigorously in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction for a good 5 minutes. This is the workout session for me for the day. Normally I would be able to feel the upper body muscles that I didn’t know I had. Take breaks if you need to, I certainly took a bunch breaks. Use a standup mixture if you have one, especially if you are making a large portion of wontons. One thing to keep in mind, when mixing the filling, keep it in one direction. This one directional thing is quite serious, if you ask people selling wontons in my hometown farmer’s market. They say it helps the filling to be soft and it will melt in your mouth.

This is the time to take the wrappers out of the packaging. Use your thumb and index finger to grab the entire stack of wrappers in the middle, shake it to loosen up the stack of wrappers over the sink, you will have some loose flour falling off, that’s fine. Notice in the picture below, I have the stack of wrappers fanned out all pretty on the cutting board. This is easy to do, and it helps when you need to grab one wrapper at a time, because most wrappers would be offset a tiny bit and already separated, but not exposed with a large surface to dry out. What I did was after shaking the stack, I put them on the cutting board, firmly pressing down the stack with the palm of my hand and turned my hand clockwise. You can use either hand, turn either direction. It may take a bit practice to feel the right pressure to apply. If too firm, you can press the wrappers together more, and they won’t fan out, if not firm enough, only the top layer of wrappers will fan out. Another essential for wonton making, a glass of your favorite drink. I got one there shown in the picture too!

Making the wonton is actually quite easy, probably a lot easier than you think. There are multiple ways of making wontons. I do not mean any method is better than others, but I am showing you how wontons are made in my home town. They look like sailor hats.

Grab a wrapper and lay in one hand, grab roughly 1/2 tbsp of filling and put in the center of wrapper. Fold wrapper over towards yourself, offset a bit, so it’s not a perfect rectangle, it will make the wonton look prettier in the end. Dab some water at one corner on the fold, lift middle finger up a bit and push the “meatball center” up a tiny bit, bring the 2 corners on the fold together, with the corner with water on the bottom, pinch the corners together, water will act like glue. Viola! Your first wonton is done! Now based on how your wonton turned out, you can adjust filling portion, add a bit more water on the corner or put on less.

Here is a video of how I made my wontons.

 

Common things to adjust:

Filling portion. Always start with less filling, you really can’t mess up with tiny bit of filling. It’s a good practice. Worst case, you can consider your first ever wonton a cross between flat noodle and wontons. There really is no right or wrong on the filling portion.

Wonton wrapper cracks, this is because the wrappers are dried out. The cracked wrapper you might as well toss it out, not much you could do to fix that. But the rest of the wrappers, you can lay a damp piece of paper towel over the stack for a while, or keep it on until you need another wrapper. I work pretty fast, so I don’t do this. If you are practicing making wontons, you can do this to your wrapper stacks, so you are not under pressure and feel like you are on a timed cooking show.