Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: kid friendly

Cooking

Drumsticks and 40 Cloves – Made in the Oven

Another recipe for the same classic dish. This one was done in the oven, so mainly hands-free cooking of a delicious fall-off-the-bone crowd-pleaser, what’s not to love? All you need is a large oven proof pan and lid.

Ingredients:

Chicken drum sticks, I made a huge batch, a whole family pack, 11 drumsticks in that pack

1 bundle of thyme, I had some nice wilted ones in my flower pot, yep, I haven’t been keeping up with the watering…

1 bundle of Thai basil, not traditional ingredient for this dish but adds a nice mild earthy flavor

A ton of garlic cloves. I honestly did not remember how many cloves I peeled, probably 5 heads worth. I was watching cooking channel and peeling garlic, gotta say, it was kinda therapeutic.

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Liberally salt and pepper the drumsticks on one side. Oven pre-heating at 400F.

Large oven safe pan with a thin layer of oil on medium high heat.

Carefully put drumsticks into the pan, seasoned side down, and liberally season the other side.

Brown all sides of the drumsticks, take your time, be patient. This golden brown color will carry over to the final cooked drumsticks. Brown them in batches if needed to.

Sprinkle all the garlic cloves, thyme bundle and Thai basil all over the top of the chicken drumsticks.

Drizzle the top of the whole dish with a couple rounds of olive oil. Cover with an oven proof lid.

Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes and lower heat to 350F. Bake for another 40 minutes.

You won’t believe how tender these drumsticks turn out, and how sweet and soft the garlic cloves would be. Enjoy as an appetizer, or over some simple cilantro lime rice and asparagus and bell pepper stir-fry…

Cooking

2-Ingredient Pancakes

Yep, only 2 ingredients. And it’s so good, you and your kids would love this one.

What are the 2 secret ingredients?

1 box of Jiffy corn muffin mix

1 can of cream style corn

Method:

In a medium bowl, mix the 2 ingredients together until there is no visible dry lumps.

Heat up a nonstick pan or a cast iron pan on medium heat, use butter or oil of your choice to coat the bottom of the pan. I used a ladle to drop about 1/2 cup of batter onto the pan. My pan fits 3 pancakes at a time.

Let the pancakes cook for about a minute until the edges are ever so slightly crisping up. Don’t wait for bubbles to form on the top of the pancakes like you would normally do. This pancake batter is quite thick, if you wait for bubbles to form, the bottom would be over cooked.

Flip the pancakes one by one when the bottom is nicely golden brown.

Love how you can see the corn kernels peaking through the pancakes. Give the 2nd side about 30 seconds to cook.

Dish up and serve warm. Everyone would love it! With this recipe, it makes exactly 6 pancakes, perfect amount for a family, along with some other fixings.

Cooking

Spicy Sticky Roasted Chicken

This one you guys, is for sure a keeper! It’s so incredibly easy yet tasty! Best of all, it’s pretty much all hands off cooking, meaning you can do something else, or absolutely nothing…All you need is a bit of planning, because over night marinating is the best. If you are in a pinch of time, a few hours will do just fine.

Ingredients:

Chicken pieces, skin on, bone in. I had a whole chicken cut up by the butcher, and used the breast pieces the other night for easy baked chicken. So I am using the rest of the chicken for this recipe.

1/2 cup of low sodium soy sauce

3 TBSP Hoisin sauce

3 TBSP oyster sauce

1 TBSP sugar

2 TBSP Sriracha sauce, leave it out if you don’t like spicies, add more if you like more kick, totally up to you, or use your favorite hot sauce

3 cloves of garlic, grated into paste with a grater

1 green onion, thinly sliced, needed on day 2, for garnish, optional

1 tsp toasted white sesame seeds, for garnish, optional

Method:

Clean chicken pieces, and lightly score each piece 2 to 3 times all the way to the bone. This helps the marinade to penetrate the meat. Add chicken to a stainless steel bowl, or a glass bowl, or a large plastic bag for marinating.

Add all ingredients except for green onions and sesame seeds to the chicken container. Massage well to evenly coat chicken pieces. Leave chicken in the fridge for marinating over night if you can.

When it’s ready to cook, pre-heat oven to 375 F. Line a baking dish with foil for easy cleaning up. Arrange chicken pieces onto the baking dish, without overlapping.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes and lower the heat to 350F. Bake for another 25 minutes to ensure chicken is baked all the way through.

Remove chicken from oven, let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Dish up chicken pieces, pour the pan juice over chicken pieces, top with green onion pieces and toasted white sesame seeds and impress everyone!

Cooking

Simple Tum Yum Pork Ribs

This one is very tasty, yet so simple to make. Don’t pass it up without giving it a try. Yep, it’s the small bowl in the center of the feast.

Ingredients:

1 lb pork short ribs, cut into pieces

2 stalks of lemon grass, only top part and tough outer layers of bottom part, reserve the bottoms for pad kee mao

about 20 sichuan pepper corn pods

1 knob of ginger, about 1 inch, thinly sliced

2 green onions, only green part, reserve white parts for pad kee mao

6 shiitake mushroom stems only, save caps for pad kee mao

2 TBSP fish sauce and salt to taste

Method:

Thoroughly clean pork ribs. Put all ingredients into a large enough pot, fill up with cold water to completely cover ribs.

Bring it up to a boil, reduce heat to low, and let it simmer for about 45 minutes. Once in a while, check on the water level, add more water as needed and push down any lemon grass or green onions sticking up, and skim off any foamy part on top.

As I was cooking pork ribs, I used some of the ingredients mentioned above for pad kee mao.

Once everything is cooked and dished up, kill the heat and fish out the pork ribs into a bowl, season the soup with fish sauce and salt to taste. Ladle the soup onto the ribs and enjoy! Pork ribs will be fall-off-the-bone tender, and the soup has a nice tangy flavor, just the same as your favorite Thai restaurant.

Cooking

Pork and Veggie Stir Fry

Another versatile dish, use your favorite vegetables and put your own spin on it. This is super quick and easy week night healthy meal. Your kids would love it too!

Ingredient:

Half a pound of lean pork, thinly sliced against the grain

1 TBSP corn starch

2 TBSP soy sauce

1 tsp Sichuan pepper corn powder, leave it out if you don’t have it

4 jalapenos

1 onion

1 green onion, sliced into 1/2 inch sections

1/8 cup of soy sauce

2 TBSP hoisin sauce

4 cloves of galic, minced

5 slices of fresh ginger, cut into strips and minced

Method:

Marinade pork slices in a small bowl with corn starch, 2 TBSP soy sauce and sichuan pepper corn powder. Mix well and set aside.

Cut jalapeno in half lengthwise, scoop out seeds and white part using a spoon and cut into bite size pieces. Cut onion into bite size pieces, separate the onion peddles, that would make stir fry a lot easier later.

Heat up about 2 TBSP vegetable oil in a nonstick pan on medium high heat. Dump pork slices into the pan and cook the meat to medium rare. Take the meat out from the pan and back into the marinating bowl for later.

Add more oil into the pan, in goes the minced garlic and ginger and stir fry until it’s fragrant. There is no need to wash the pan or wiping it down.

Add the onions and peppers and stir fry for a few minutes to take the raw edges off the vegetables. Add the pork slices back into the pan.

Add soy sauce and hoisin sauce to the pan and mix well. The sauces will help pick up any brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Because the pork had corn starch in the marinade, the sauce will thicken up nicely too and become kinda glossy.

Kill the heat, add the green onion pieces and stir through. Dish up and enjoy!

The best part of this dish? Switch up the vegetable choices and you get a different dish, the possibility is endless!

Cooking

Cilantro Lime Rice

Another week night dinner go-to recipe. It’s so easy, yet sooo good! You have got to try this one.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup of long grain rice

2 TBSP vegetable oil

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 lime

1 small bunch of cilantro

Method:

Heat up oil in a medium size pot on medium high. Add rice and toast the rice until it’s golden brown. This adds a lot of flavor to the rice and makes it super fluffy.

Add the minced garlic and stir the rice for another minute. You will almost immediately smell the fragrance of the garlic clove. But don’t worry, it will not linger in the rice in the end, just adding a very subtle hint of depth.

Add 2 1/4 cup of water to the pot. while the water is heating up, zest a lime directly into the pot. Use only the green part of the lime, don’t zest the white part, since it will be bitter. Add a dash of salt as well. Give it a good stir to distribute lime zest and salt.

Once water is boiling, lid on and lower heat to low. Simmer gently for 15 minutes. Then turn off heat, leave lid on and let the rice sit in the pot and continue steaming for 10 minutes.

In the mean time, cut the lime zested, and finely chop the cilantro leaves and soft stem part.

Lid off the pot, squeeze in the juice of the lime and add chopped cilantro. Fluff the rice with a fork and mix in the cilantro. Dish up and enjoy!

Cooking

Marinated Chicken Thighs

Super universal, ridiculously easy and fast, amazingly flavorful. Serve it as part of a main dish, and use leftovers in endless options.

Ingredients:

4 skinless boneless chicken thighs

1 cup of soy sauce

1/4 cup of honey

5 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Method:

Put all ingredients into a large ziploc bag, massage to combine well. Leave on counter top for 20 minutes while preparing the rest of the meal.

Pre-heat a heavy bottom pan, oil the pan to prevent chicken from sticking. Grill chicken on medium high heat on both sides for 5 minutes per side. Serve and enjoy!

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

Fast Easy and Tasty Cucumber Salad

This is technically not qualified as a recipe in my eyes. You will need to do like 2 things really and takes 2 minutes.

Ingredients:

4 Persian cucumbers or 1 English cucumber. Persian cucumbers are a lot smaller and crispier than regular cucumbers. Their skin is very tender, you don’t need to peel, just wash thoroughly. Because they are cute and small, kids tend to like these way more than regular cucumbers.

1 dash of salt

a few drops of sesame oil

Method:

Thoroughly wash and dry Persian cucumbers, cut off the ends and cut them into small chunks, however you like. Sprinkle salt and drizzle sesame oil on top. Mix and enjoy!

For more adult version and more added health factor, add a crushed clove of garlic.

Cooking

Healthier Pigs in Blankets

Everyone knows how to make pig in a blanket. A good old little smoky sausage link wrapped in a canned flattened biscuit dough and bake in the oven.

My kids, with no exception, love these. I made a slightly healthier version – with turkey sausage links, lower in sodium, lower in fat, wrapped in fluffy flaky crescent dough.

Ingredients:

1 package of low sodium low fat turkey dog, boiled to remove more sodium, they still taste pretty good, believe me.

1 can of crescent dough.

Method:

Pre-heat oven to temperature indicated on the crescent can.

Boil turkey sausage in a small pot to ensure they are fully cooked through, and remove more sodium. They will slightly puff up a bit.

Open the can of crescent dough, wrap each sausage link in the crescent triangle, starting from the wide end towards the point end.

Lay the on a sheet tray and bake per instruction of the crescent can, and enjoy!