Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: kid friendly

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

Egg Drop Noodle Soup

Yep, this is an awesome weekend breakfast, or weeknight dinner option for kids.

Ingredients:

Noodles, I used our home made fresh noodles, you can use shell pasta, spaghetti, any noodle would be fine.

3 eggs, beaten

2 tbsp corn starch, this is the secret how Chinese restaurant can make their egg drop soup so thick, and your attempt at home is so watery. No, it’s not the amount of eggs.

Method:

Boil noodle in a pot of water, as direction on package, till al dente. Drain some water out, leave in as much liquid as you wish for your final egg drop noodle soup.

Dissolve corn starch in about 1/4 cup of cold water – this is crucial. You have to dissolve the corn starch in cold water before adding to the pot. Otherwise it may form slime like streaks, so nasty. After dissolving the corn starch in cold water, slowly pour corn starch liquid into pot of noodles and boiling water. Stir the soup and watch the liquid in the pot thicken up slightly. Slowly pour your beaten eggs into the pot, stir the soup so the eggs will distribute evenly in the soup.

Taste and season your egg drop noodle soup as needed, drizzle in a bit of sesame oil if desired. Enjoy!

And I had one extra hard boiled egg, so I put it in my bowl 🙂

Cooking

Chicken Casserole Rice, Sort of

My daughter just had 3 teeth pulled. I made something soft, nutritious and tasty food that is least irritating to her gum.

So this is what I came up with – sort of a chicken casserole rice dish, whipped up on the whim.

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs, skin on, bone-in, that’s what I got, so don’t judge me. Feel free to use boneless skinless breast or thigh, all good.

1 medium onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 small head of broccoli, cut up into small pieces

1 chicken bouillon cube

1 can of cream of chicken

salt to taste

1 tsp dried parsley

2 cups of rice

 

Method:

Fill a medium pot with water, boil chicken on high and turn heat to medium after boiling. Don’t worry if you had a lot of water, you will use this broth to make rice.

Prep all veggies, clean, peel, dice up.

In a large pot, add 2 tbsp oil, put on high heat. Add onions and stir till onions are softened. Then add broccoli and carrot. Sprinkle some salt to help veggies soften.

Add 2 cups of rice, stir for a minute or two to taste rice. Fish out chicken and put on a cutting board to cool. Dump all broth into rice pot. Add chicken bouillon cube, stir, cover and lower heat to medium. Boil rice for about 15 minutes. Make sure there is enough liquid, if not, add water to at least cover rice by 1 inch.

While the chicken is cooling, I was digging around in the pantry to see what I had on hand to thicken the rice a bit in the end, something that will make it a bit creamy. Since I didn’t want to add too much cheese into it – I know, I am Asian, didn’t grow up on cheese, sorry. I found a can of cream of chicken.

 

After I chopped up chicken, roughly 15 minutes into cooking rice, I added the cream of chicken into rice, and filled up the can with water twice, and dumped water into the pot too. Mix the cream of chicken into rice.

Add all chicken, I actually threw the bones and skin back into the rice for flavor. In the end I will fish these out and discard. Mix well, add dried parsley. Taste for salt and doneness of rice. I added about 1 more tsp of salt.

My rice was cooked through, but still got a bit of a bite to it. I want the rice to be quite soft so it is really easy for kids to eat, especially my daughter at the moment, until she feels better. So I killed the heat, put the lid on the pot and let the residual heat to keep cooking the rice and the rice will soak up more juices.

 

Cooking

Singapore Noodle – Requested Dinner

Singapore noodles were requested to be on the dinner menu tonight. The reason is simple, it is super tasty. So I made it.

 

Ingredients:

1 green bell pepper, sliced

1 yellow onion,  sliced

1 red onion, sliced

1 lb shrimp, shells removed and deveined

1/2 lb bbq pork, thinly sliced into match sticks

7 eggs, or whatever amount you have

1 bag of dried rice sticks, softened in hot water

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 tbsp yellow curry powder

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp chili powder

1/2 tbsp cayenne pepper

1 cup water

 

Method:

Prepare all ingredients, wash, chop, soften, line them up. Drain water from noodles and roughly cut noodles with kitchen scissors, marinade shrimp in some salt, pepper, cayenne and garlic.

 

Large wok on medium high heat, go in with about 4 tbsp oil. Crack eggs into the wok and break up the yolk with your spatula or spoon. Stir eggs around until it is scrambled.

Push eggs to one side of the wok, add shrimp and cook until shrimps are 80% (ish) done.

Scoop out eggs and shrimp, you don’t want to over cook it. Add more oil into wok and add all vegetables into wok. Cook until vegetables are softened. Season with salt and pepper. Add bbq pork. Add eggs and shrimp back into wok. Add all noodles.

Add all seasoning and water. Use 2 spatulas or spoons to stir everything around. It will take a while to fully incorporate the seasoning and evenly distribute the flavor. Once it’s evenly distributed, and water absorbed by the noodles, taste for seasoning. Add any seasoning to entertain your taste buds.

If you don’t like spicy food, skip the cayenne, chili powder doesn’t add spiciness that much but it gives the noodles a warming pinkish color. Of course the main color will be light brown, due to yellow curry powder and soy sauce.

Seriously, make a bunch, these noodles hold their texture quite well, it will last a couple of days in the fridge, if it will ever survive that long.

 

 

 

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

Ice Cream Cake with Shortcuts

OK, I have to admit, this picture is almost one year old. Believe it was taken last July, but I seem to keep forgetting to make this super easy yet tasty treat for the kids this year.

We went to DQ today, eating the blizzard, I suddenly remembered this treat to keep in my freezer for a quick summer night dessert. Guess what’s going onto my do-make list? :p

Ingredients:

1 tub (or 2 tubs, or 3, if you want mixed flavor) store-bought quality ice cream, or your home-made ice cream. Let me tell ya, the home-made ice cream is SO MUCH better than store-bought! I will talk about the home-made ice cream in another blog another day. This is shortcut #1

1 loaf of store-bought sponge cake – shortcut #2

Toppings and surprises, such as M&Ms, chocolate chips, sweetened shredded coconut, minced gummy worms, crushed chocolate cookies or peanut butter cups, chocolate or strawberry syrup, heck, why not both? whipped cream, cherry…You get the idea, this is the part you unleash your creativity and imagination and make this ice cream cake with your flare.

 

Tools:

1 bread loaf pan, or tin foil loaf pan

Plastic wrap

serrated knife – this will make a HUGE difference cutting the sponge cake

 

Method:

Line the bread loaf with plastic wrap, leave plenty on both sides of the pan, so at the end of the process, you can fold the plastic over the top of the ice cream cake. This step is crucial, it keeps the ice cream cake isolated from the rest of the freezer items.

Slightly soften the store-bought ice cream. Tip, if the ice cream tub is too frozen, stick it in the microwave for 5 seconds, add a few more seconds if needed. Works like magic.

Unwrap the store-bought sponge cake from packaging, lay it sideways on your cutting board. Use the serrated knife to slice the sponge cake into three equal thickness slices. Be careful don’t crush your cake. Put the bottom slice in the loaf pan, just on top of the plastic wrap. Push it down snugly. Take first flavored ice cream, use a large spoon, or ice cream scoop, scoop about 3 large balls and line them onto the bottom layer of sponge cake. Use the back of the spoon to gently even out the ice cream. Top it with surprises.

Layer the middle sponge cake on top of the ice cream and surprises. Push it down gently. Repeat with the ice cream, same flavor or different, top with surprises again. Layer the top of the sponge cake on top. Top with ice cream. Repeat with topping or surprises.

Fold the over-hang plastic wrap from both sides to cover ice cream with toppings. Stick the whole thing into your freezer for a couple of hours before serving, so the softened ice cream has a chance to set again.

When ready to serve, take out the whole loaf pan from freezer. Unfold the plastic wrap from the top, use them as a handle to lift the cake out of the loaf pan – SMART! I know! 😀

Slice up the cake about 1 inch thick, or 2 inches, however you like. lay the cake sideways on a serving plate. Drizzle chocolate syrup or strawberry syrup, or whipped cream, stick a cherry on top – Again, let your imagination and taste buds take control and watch those happy faces!

Cooking

Letter Pasta Soup

Don’t ask me why, because I have no clue, why my kids are obsessed with these. May it be the alphabet letters of the pasta, may it be the chicken broth, I have no clue. In ideal world, I’d love to have some vegetables in it, or shredded chicken or something, but my kids really love it as is right now. I will have to figure out a great way to add more nutrient into it.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb alphabet pasta, good enough for 3 to 4 servings for little kids

about 4 cups of chicken stock, or 4 cups of water plus 2 chicken bullion cubes

 

Method:

Bring chicken broth or water to a boil. If using water, add chicken bullion cubes, or vegetable bullion cubes and dissolve. Add alphabet letters and cook according to the instruction on the packaging. Or, just let it boil for about 5 minutes. I like turning off my stove and put the lid on the pot and let the residual heat to finish cooking the tiny little pasta, and give the pasta another chance to fully absorb the flavor of the broth.

Dish up and serve! Another great hint, if you got little kids who are not really patient enough to wait till the soup is no longer piping hot, I like to serve the pasta into a bowl and throw in a few ice cubes into the bowl and mix. The letter pasta soup will cool down instantly, without diluting the flavor much.

 

Cooking

Simply Boiled Ribs – Nothing Ordinary About It!

Simplicity is quite often the best recipe. I love this recipe, even though I can hardly call it a recipe. It’s super simple and quick, and you will be making it over and over. Great for kids and adults! I heard on the radio one of the local grocery stores is having pork spare ribs on sale for 99 cent / lb. What a great deal! So, I went and got myself 2 slabs of meaty ribs, for 13 dollars! One slab went into the freezer for later, the other one is going onto my lunch table today, since I won’t have the kids for dinner.

I could only fit 4 ribs in this large bowl I got, but I have way more ribs in the pot on the stove. May not even need to refill the bowl.. These are so meaty and tender!

 

Ingredients:

1 slab of pork spare ribs, or baby back ribs, or rib cutlets, or even cubed meat… you get the idea, any cut of somewhat lean pork meat would do!

1 knob of ginger root, sliced to about 1/4 inch thickness

4 green onions, use the green part – yes green part, the part most recipes tell you to throw away. Save the whites for other recipes, we only need to borrow the flavor of the green onions, we are not eating it!

 

Sauce:

This, my friend, is the money-maker. I will tell you this one, as one of my top-secret recipes. Write it down, print it out, save it, book mark it, put it on your fridge.. do any of that. You will be making this over and over and over! Let me put it this way, I have not yet met a single person so far that is not obsessed with this sauce!

Kids version sauce:

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/4 tsp dark vinegar, use Asian vinegar if you can find it

1 tsp sesame oil, this is very strong potent flavor, you can even use 1/2 tsp if you prefer. A little goes a long way!

1/2 tsp powdered chicken bullion

Optional:

Remember the white part of the green onions? thinly slice it up and use about 1 tsp of it in the sauce for older kids, may be too strong for little kids

 

Adult version sauce:

All the above in kids version sauce, plus:

1 tsp hot chili oil (I have a family recipe, which is another greatest top-secret of my cooking, stay tuned!) store-bought is fine, but I find the flavor varies a lot. Find a brand you like and stick to that

1/4 tsp white sugar or honey. A little sweetness really balances out the spiciness of the chili oil

1 clove of garlic, finely minced, or grated

 

Method:

Slice between the bones of the ribs, and separate ribs. Put the ribs into a large pot and fill up with cold water. Slice up ginger root and throw into the pot. Fold the green part of the green onions and shove them into the water too. Put pot on stove, lid on, heat on high until water starts to boil. Lower heat to medium, skim off the impurities of the soup and discard. Leave the lid half on, so the water doesn’t over flow. Boil the ribs till tender, about 30 to 40 minutes. Take ribs out using a pair of tongs and place on a plate or in a shallow bowl.

Dip the ribs into the sauce and enjoy! Hint, make an individual dipping sauce bowl for everyone, you will for sure want to double dip!

Cooking

Cinnamon Sugar Crescent

If you are like me, you always have a few cans of crescent dough in your fridge, for a quick easy breakfast in minutes. But my kids are getting bored with the plain old crescents. One easy twist you can do with proven kid-friendly flavors is cinnamon sugar crescents.

 

Cinnamon has tons of benefits. Cinnamon is full of antioxidants, has anti-inflammatory properties,  reduces the risk of heart diseases, improves the sensitivity to hormone insulin, lowers blood sugar and is anti-diabetic… the list goes on and on. But you get the idea, don’t be too guilty of having a little bit of cinnamon sugar in your crescent!

The name says it all, this breakfast only requires 3 ingredients:

1 can of store bought crescent dough, produces 8 crescents

2 table spoon of sugar

1 table spoon of ground cinnamon

 

Method:

Pre-heat the oven following the instruction on the can. Unfold the dough onto a baking sheet. Note, if you don’t like scraping off the baked crescents off the baking sheet, use a silicone sheet. I did not have my morning coffee yet, so silicone sheet was forgotten. But it won’t happen again, coffee or not. Jokes aside, even if you forgot the silicone sheet, or don’t have one, it’s not the end of the world. All you need to do is to soak the baking sheet in water for a few minutes, the stuck on dough will come off easily with a little bit of scrubbing.

Mix sugar and ground cinnamon in a small bowl with a spoon. Sprinkle sugar mixture onto the spreaded dough, and smooth the mixture closer to the edges of the dough using the back of the spoon.

Roll up the lovely triangles as you normally would. Now it’s a fun time for the kids to pick up the leftover cinnamon sugar that escaped the dough. Then into the pre-heated oven the baking sheet goes.

 

In minutes, you will see happy faces!