Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: healthy

Cooking

Little Smokies Breakfast Tacos

This is such a quick, easy, tasty on-the-go breakfast idea for little ones, of course, I wouldn’t miss this opportunity to indulge one myself 🙂

Ingredients:

  • 5 organic free range eggs I got from a friend at work, her sister’s farm got fresh farm eggs!
  • 10 little smokie sausage links, I used all beef kind
  • 5 cook-at-home tortillas, nowadays you can get these from major grocery stores, in the refrigerated area, next to cheeses
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • dash of sriracha to taste

Method:

Crack the eggs into a bowl and lightly beat them with a fork, add salt and pepper to taste. Go a bit easier on salt than you would normally, since the little smokies are quite salty themselves.

Heat up a medium non-stick pan on medium heat, cook the tortillas per instructions on the package. Set them aside. I tore 5 pieces of foil, since this is our on-the-go breakfast, I got the packaging ready. So I kept 1 piece of foil on the cutting board and laid the cooked tortilla on top, and laid the rest of the foil sheets on top to keep the tortillas warm while I prepare the filling.

While the tortillas are cooking, I used the waiting time to slice the little smokies into smaller chunks, easier to wrap and eat. Once all the tortillas are done, I threw the little smokie pieces into the same pan, without adding any oil. The sausages immediately started to sizzle, what amazing smell and sound in the morning! I let the little smokies sit in the pan for a minute and let them caramelize a bit before I moved them around in the pan with a spatula. 

Once the sausages are warmed through, I poured the beaten eggs into the pan and let it sit for about 30 seconds. Then I started scrambling the eggs, along with the sausages. The juices coming out of the sauces infuses the eggs as they moved around in the pan. It only takes a minute or so for the eggs to be cooked through.

Kill the heat, spread the 5 foil sheets on the counter, with 1 tortilla on top of each foil. Evenly divide egg and sausages on the tortillas. Squirt sriracha sauce as you wish and wrap the tortillas up in the foils. Breakfast on-the-go is done!

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

Super Banana Egg Pancakes

Yep, the title says it all. There are 2 ingredients only, bananas and eggs. Both are super foods, so the pancakes are super breakfast too!

You guessed it, it truly is that easy.

2 ingredients, 1 to 1 ratio. 1 banana with 1 egg. I had 2 ripe bananas, so I threw in 2 eggs.

Mash bananas in a bowl with a fork, crack in the eggs and blend with the same fork until mixed. Bananas can be a bit chunky or smooth, totally up to you.

Non-stick pan on medium heat, butter / oil / pam, up to you.

About 1/4 cup batter per pancake. Don’t go too much, because there is no flour in these pancakes, they are super tender and may break when you flip, if they are too big. Therefore, keep them as smaller cuties, no larger than 2 inches diameter is the best. They make super cute medallion pancakes.

Plate up and enjoy with some fresh berries or honey.

Cooking

Ratatouille

What a fabulous vegetable dish! It sounds not so appetizing, I admit, looks can be deceiving as well, unless you are really into that presentation thing and can afford tons of time on that, but the flavor, I have to say, it is amazing. Give it a try, super easy to make, super nutritious, easily transformed into vegetarian version, perfect for leftovers… what else to ask for?

I forgot to take pictures of mine, so here, I borrowed Martha Stewart’s image from her recipe. Of course mine is a lot simpler, nowhere near as fancy as far as red wine vinegar is used..but the final result looks pretty similar. I will for sure try hers next time.

Ingredients:

1 large eggplant, diced

5 Roma tomatoes, diced

2 yellow onions, medium size,

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

1 zucchini, diced

1 squash, diced

2 giant weird beans from my parents’ garden, diced. Totally optional, I just wanted to use it in my dish, what else am I going to use it for, seriously? Yep, that thing is like 1.5 ft long!

salt to taste

2 tsp garlic powder, you can totally substitute with minced fresh garlic, as a matter of fact, you should! I was being lazy..

1 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp dried parsley, again use fresh if you have access. Being Asian, I normally stock up on green onions, very rarely parsley.

1 tsp chicken bouillon, or use chicken / vegetable stock

I had some cooked ground pork, so I threw about 1/4 cup of that in to add flavor, totally optional.

1 bay leaf

 

Method:

Heavy bottom pot, I used my trusty Dutch oven, 1 tbsp vegetable oil, on medium-high heat. Cook onions until fragrant. Salt onions. Throw in all the rest of diced vegetables (how easy is that?!) Stir the vegetable around, add more salt, and all the seasonings, throw in the bay leaf. Add about 1 cup of water. Don’t worry if it seems dry, the vegetables will give out quite a bit of moisture during the cooking process. Bring the mixture to a low simmer, lower heat to medium low. Cover tightly and cook for about 1 hour. Stir occasionally and check liquid level. Make sure it doesn’t burn.

Fish out the bay leaf, enjoy! This dish is amazing the next day too. Good luck not over eating! But the good news is, it is so healthy you totally won’t feel guilty stuffing your face!

Cooking

Best Sausage Arugula Shell Pasta

After a whole week of recovering from my arm surgery, I took baby steps easing myself back into simple tasks, such as opening tea bags and folding laundry. Today, I attempted making a simple yet hearty meal for lunch, also testing recipes for when my babies return. I haven’t seen them for a long time, miss them so very much.

I have to say, this meal is the highlight of my past few days, and I was super excited, and of course, I over ate for lunch, again.

 

Did I mention this is super easy, one pot healthy, tasty and kid friendly meal? Here is how I made it. My apologies first, my left hand / arm still have very limited mobility, so I was nowhere near as fast or detail oriented as I would like to be, so I took the shortcuts where I could and did not take any pictures till the very end.

 

Ingredients:

1/2 large onion, or 1 small one, diced. The half onion left in the fridge since who knows when has been bugging me royally, so of course I seized the first available opportunity to use it. It took me a while to dice it carefully, simply because I don’t have the firm grip from my left hand yet, so, slowly and carefully, I tackled the onion.

2 cloves of garlic, minced. You guessed it, I didn’t bother mincing garlic, I used about 1 tsp of garlic powder.

8 oz bulk sweet Italian sausage, or 2 links of Italian sweet sausage, casing removed.

About 4 cups of stock, as usual, I swapped with water and bouillon combo. I used 1 chicken cube and 1 beef cube to test the flavor, it worked beautifully.

8 oz of baby arugula, I bought a bag of baby arugula salad, which came with a bag of surprised corn kernels, of course I threw that in the pasta

1 squash, it was also bugging me, sitting in the fridge for a while, withering away, I couldn’t stand wasting fresh vegetables..so I diced it up, quarter inch thick, half moon or quartered to achieve roughly same size. Of course, broccoli, zucchini, mushrooms, cabbage, eggplant, leeks…any vegetables would be fantastic option!

1 generous cup of dried small shell pasta. You can use any bite size pasta in your pantry. I would recommend something that has some curves, holes, ridges of some sort to grab on the delicious sauces and sausage meat in each bite, you would be pleasantly surprised how amazing this meal is.

Optional: shavings of Parmesan cheese.

 

Method:

I heated up about 1 tsp vegetable oil in a high sided pan. The reason is simple, I will be cooking the pasta in this pot, I want the least amount of liquid added possible to achieve maximum taste. Throw diced onions into the pot and soften for a couple of minutes. Then add fresh garlic, or garlic powder and cook for another 30 seconds or so.

Add sausages to onion mixture, use the spoon or spatula to break the sausages to smaller sizes, or to your liking. Lower the heat to medium, stir occasionally to brown the sausages well. The kitchen smells amazing at this point.

Once the sausages are browned, add the vegetables except for the arugula and half of the stock or water. I threw in the bouillon to let the cubes dissolve, raise the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Dump in the pasta and stir.

Lower heat to medium, stir occasionally to cook pasta gently. Add more liquid as needed, keep stirring, don’t walk away. After about 15 minutes, try pasta for doneness and seasoning. Mine was awesome, you can tell the shells grew in sizes and appear to be soft. Seasoning was spot on! After all, the sausages and bouillon are both quite salty. That’s why I never added any salt, can it be any easier?

Once pasta is done, kill the heat and fold in the arugula. It will look overwhelmingly much, but arugula will wilt to almost nothing, but add this subtle peppery yet sweet flavor to this dish. To me it is a must have ingredient.

Dish up, top with parm and enjoy!

Cooking

Best Pad Kee Mao Ever

I have perfected this dish. I have not met a single person that didn’t like it, that’s including kids, and not just my own…Everyone has way over eaten when this dish is served. So, if I can make a suggestion, pack up the rest of the dish and put away, before eating, otherwise you will go back to serve more.

Of course, I tweak the recipe with what I have on hand all the time. As long I have the delicious fat rice noodles on hand, I am golden!

Disclaimer, if you are not familiar with some of these sauces or seasoning, they are all very common sauces in Asian cooking, they are available at pretty much all Asian markets.

Here is how I made today’s version:

Ingredients:

1 package of fat rice noodles, left on the counter for a couple of hours to bring up to room temperature, then taken out of the packaging and microwaved on high for 5 minutes to completely soften.

4 large eggs

1 chicken breast, thinly sliced

4 Swiss chard, hard stem removed (I saved the stem for juicing later, no waste!) and thinly sliced

2 carrots, cut length wise in quarters and cut into match sticks

1 yellow onion, thinly sliced

4 cabbage leaves (I had Taiwan cabbage, so much softer than regular American cabbage), thinly sliced

4 cloves of large garlic, minced

1 knob of ginger, about 1/2 inch long, minced

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 handful of fresh basil, thinly sliced

 

Marinade for chicken:

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp cooking wine (I used Shaoxing wine, available at any Asian market)

1 tsp mushroom bouillon

1 tbsp rice vinegar

 

Seasoning for Pad Kee Mao:

4 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp sweet soy sauce

1 tbsp of Maggie sauce

1 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp mushroom bouillon

 

Method:

Marinade chicken with the chicken marinade above, mix well and set aside. Let the chicken soak up the flavor. Wash hands well.

Prepare vegetables as mentioned in ingredient list.

The noodles come in a package, stuck to each other. If you throw the whole clunk into the wok, they will never separate. So, heat them up in the microwave, and separate them with your fingers. Try not to break the noodles, because you don’t want to end up with a bowl or 1 inch long pieces. Be very careful, it can be hot. This is by far, the most time-consuming process.

Wok on high heat, go in with one table spoon of cooking oil. Once oil is hot, go in with chicken slices. Stir fry until chicken is cooked and pull out chicken and set aside.

In the same wok, add 2 tbsp cooking oil, crack all 4 eggs directly into the wok. Use spatula to break up the yokes and scramble the eggs.

Once eggs are set, go in with minced garlic and ginger. Stir around until fragrant. Dump the whole plate of prepared vegetables into the egg mixture and stir fry as if you are making a vegetable dish (hint, this could be a main dish itself, if you add the chicken back in after the vegetables are cooked).

Just look at the color of the vegetables! It’s such a colorful and healthy dish! Stir fry for about 3 minutes until the vegetables are softened. Go in with the separated noodles.

Add all sauces on top of noodles. At this time, you will need 2 spatulas to move the noodles and vegetables around and evenly distribute the flavor. Go in with the cooked chicken.

A very important trick to have amazing tasting Pad Kee Mao is to leave it alone at this point, with heat on. Yes you read it right, heat on, and leave it alone. The bottom layer will be slightly charred, the edges of the noodles will be slightly crispy and browned a bit. That, my friend, is priceless flavor! That is what makes an amazing Pad Kee Mao rather than regular stir fried noodle dish.

Kill the heat, go in with sliced fresh basil and green onions, stir up and dish up. You can garnish with the best looking piece of basil to impress!

 

 

 

 

Cooking

Herb Roasted Cauliflower

Cauliflower can be one of the vegetables that a lot of people have no clue what to do with. In fact, cauliflower is quite mild in flavor, which makes it a fantastic canvas for any flavor you would want it to taste like. It can also cover the texture rainbow from crunchy, to mushy and anything in between. So, let’s make humble cauliflower fabulous!

I am making a herb roasted version today, to go with Memorial day feast!

 

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower, cut into bite size pieces

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp ground pepper

1 tsp chili powder – this is to give a warm flavor and color, it won’t taste spicy at all

1 tsp dried basil – I don’t want fresh basil to burn in the oven

2 long sprigs of fresh thyme

1 long sprig of fresh rosemary

3 large cloves of garlic, minced

1/4 cup olive oil

 

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Spread cauliflower pieces in a large baking dish, I used a half sheet pan. Pick leaves off fresh thyme, throw on top of cauliflower. Pick leaves off fresh rosemary, roughly chop, throw on top of cauliflower, along with the rest of the ingredients. Mix well with a spatula, or clean hands (like me).

Stick in the oven for 35 minutes, if you like it a bit on the crunchy side, 40 minutes if you like it soft. Dish up and serve! Just because I am Asian, I had to throw in a little thinly sliced green onions as garnish :p

Cooking

Awesome Chopped Salad

One super versatile recipe to keep on hand. Great time to search your fridge and experiment new flavors.

Enough said, what I have below was about 3 very generous servings or 4 normal servings.

 

Salad:

1/2 head of iceberg lettuce, roughly chopped

1 8 oz bag of baby arugula and spinach mix

1 cucumber, peeled and diced

1/2 red onion, diced

1 tomato, diced

1 ear of corn, boiled and kernel cut off

4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1 pre-marinated chicken breast, grilled and chopped

1 lb large shrimp, peeled, de-veined, grilled with salt, pepper and paprika

 

Dressing:

1 clove of garlic, smashed

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 tsp of Dijon mustard

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp white wine vinegar

4 tbsp avocado oil

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

 

Topping:

1 tbsp Mexican cheese blend

 

Method:

Mix all salad ingredients together. I heated up my trusty cast iron pan on medium heat for a couple of minutes, added some vegetable oil, threw the chicken breast into the pan and moved on to tons of chopping and peeling.

I pulled out the largest mixing bowl, and if you make a lot of salads at home, you will know this. I have made way too many mistakes thinking the smaller bowl would do, and had to change it out half way through, or during mixing process. Keep piling the ingredients into the bowl, no specific order. Flip chicken after 5 minutes, and keep on cutting and peeling. Once chicken is done, pull it out and leave it on the cutting board to rest.

Into the same cast iron pan (no washing required!) goes the shrimps. One single layer would be crucial. Use a pair of tongs to spread out the shrimp. Flip them over after 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, the residual heat of cast iron pan would cook the shrimp through.

All ingredients go into the bowl. Put all dressing ingredients into your blender, blend until thoroughly emulsified. The dressing would be thick yellow liquid gold.

Pour about 4 tbsp of dressing into the salad bowl and mix with 2 wooden spoons. I like my salad lightly dressed, but do keep the extra dressing on the table for others. Top with cheese and enjoy!

 

 

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!