Thursday, December 25, 2014

I BAKE PUMPKINS! 我烤南瓜!

我上网时看到一个关于肉桂烤南瓜的食谱。食谱看起来不错,有十个人分量。可是,家里只有我愿意让味蕾环游世界,让其尝试特别一点的东西,如:烤南瓜、酿甜椒等等。

只取食谱的1/15实在不简单,因为我不能大量吃南瓜(很”风“)。原本食谱要三磅(约1.5公斤)南瓜,而我只用了100克南瓜,因此我就凭直觉调味了,还加入一堆桂皮粉,因为我喜欢桂皮的味道。(当然,放太多桂皮粉,食物会很苦!)

食物盖上锡箔纸后,我就烤南瓜烤了40分钟。本来还要打开锡箔纸烤15分钟才上桌,结果还没烤第二次,南瓜就已经软烂如泥了,基本上就是软得让宝宝吃也没问题,哈!

虽然如此,我很喜欢我的烤南瓜,它又香又甜,单纯的南瓜甜味配上香浓的肉桂味道和浓郁的焦糖。如果我减少一点糖,这道烤南瓜将是一道健康、完美的饭后甜品。

做人要懂得变通。就像为一个人做饭、烘蛋糕、画画等等,规则归规则,但也要适时变通。



I stumbled a recipe across the internet for cinnamon baked pumpkins. The recipe looked awesome but it serves 10 people. Alas I am the only adventurous freak in my family who is willing to try out things like baked pumpkins, stuffed  peppers and such stuff. 

Imagine scaling a recipe down to 1/15 of the original recipe since I cannot take a lot of pumpkin. The original recipe called for 3 pounds of pumpkin and I used only 100 grams. There is absolutely no way that I could measure such tiny amounts of seasonings, so I just went by feel. I loved cinnamon, so I put a lot of cinnamon onto my pumpkins.

I baked them for 40 minutes, covered. The original recipe called for another 15 minutes of baking, uncovered, but I ignored that because my baked pumpkins turned out like baby food!

Anyway I love my almost burnt cinnamon-caramel pumpkins because they are sweet, earthy and kind-of-healthy post-meal dessert if I cut back on the sugar. Ha ha.

When push comes to shove, you have to follow your instincts and think out of the box. Just like cooking, baking and painting, you have to follow your heart to unleash yourself and live the best as you can. And if your instincts do not bring you to the right track, you can always turn back as long as you do not lose hope.

Merry Christmas!


(Image from Google)


May the twenty-fifth of December
Exudes God’s compassion
Rings the bell of joy
Rocks the oceans of rage to
Yesteryear, with its wings spread and ready to fly.

Cherish the birthday of Lord
Hearts wide open to receive His blessings
Rise, the question from Santa with his gifts:
Is the family good? Do you behave well?
Spare the lives of the sentient, from this jolly day,
To recreate the Garden of Eden
Masked and buried under the worldly filth;
And may the Angels be around us,
Spring is near, May peace blossom and may fiends be buried under thick snow.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Stuffed Bell Peppers!

As much as I love my mum's Chinese home-cooked food (I'm a Malaysian of 100% Chinese descent, duh), my curiosity always gets the better of me. This time, I want a stuffed vegetable, not vegetable in soups and stir-fries, which led on to me Googling "stuffed bell peppers"...

And I made my stuffed bell pepper using half of this recipe since I am the only weirdo in my family who loves to experiment with wacky combinations (stuffed peppers are considered wacky in my family) and am doomed to finish the entire dish. Well, at least I can make my taste buds to travel around the globe (hopefully) since I cannot afford to even travel on an airplane yet!

This must be really,really weird since none in my family has ever seen a stuffed pepper in his/her life...

Vegetarian Stuffed Red Bell Peppers with Brown Rice and Mushrooms | Ardei umpluti cu orez si ciuperci
This is the stuffed bell pepper from Gourmandelle, a bilingual vegetarian blog from Romania.

Looks beautiful, right? The ingredients are not too expensive and have some of my favourite vegetables(carrot, tomato, bell pepper, mushrooms). The instructions looked easy too, so I gave it a try.

I anticipated only three peppers since I used half of the recipe. As it turned out, I had to go through ALL the bell peppers in the refrigerator because the peppers were tiny. Sorry mom, I think I kind of ruined your precious peppers from Cameron Highlands...

The preparation process was of course, easy, otherwise I would not have tried it at the first place. I could not find any paprika so I used curry powder, and used dried parsley instead of the nonexistent coriander (What the hell am I doing?) The stuffing turned out pretty well except that it cooked quickly.

Here comes the hell of the entire process... stuffing the peppers. The recipe instructed me to stuff each pepper with 2 tablespoons of stuffing but I ended up with heaps of leftovers. Luckily two of the bell peppers were large enough to contain the extra stuffing. I then covered the stuffed peppers with tomatoes and cooked them in a pot for half an hour.

Here are my peppers... 



My heart sank. The large peppers were those which cracked and I had a hard time scooping them out. Miraculously, the small peppers kept their shape. This made me baffled. 

Here comes the taste test:


The pepper actually tasted good, not really mind-blowing but, still, good, except that the rice was undercooked. I would give my recreation of the dish 5/10 due to the undercooked rice.

Overall, I am going to try this dish again but with some tweaks:
  • Soak the rice for three hours before cooking
  • Cut off slightly around the tip of the pepper, not the entire top

This is my first time attempting this. No try, no knowledge, no experience, nothing to learn! Oh well,when it comes to learning, go big or go home.


Paradise of Romance

Welcome to the Lavender Garden, a relatively new tourist attraction at Cameron Highlands...

Before arriving there, feast yourself with the misty mountains which look like paradise in movies... through the car window.

Let's go to Lavender Garden! Children under 12 are charged RM3.00; adults RM5.00. No time limit imposed during the visit so you can immerse yourself in the ocean of beautiful flowers as long as your heart desires.

Lavender flowers symbolise purity, silence, devotion and caution. (Source)



If  the ocean of purple is enough to mesmerize you, just wait...

I'm not sure what car is this!

Here are the little huts for you to cast your wishes on: for health, friend, love etc. They look so cute that I wish I have these little huts in my future home, for the little birds to rest.

COUPLES ALERT: You can literally lock your love under these cute pastel-coloured arches!

The romantic purple ocean aside, there's this golden yellow bushes of coreopsis (金鸡菊), beaming wide to the sunshine.

It's Christmas! Why not have a romantic purple Christmas? (Okay I think I should stop here. I'm single. Haha)





Just as if you think that's all, wait till you walk a scenic little path leading up to some little hills and gardens which otherwise only appear in fairytales...




Now THIS is a great way to utilise rubbish (old rubber boots)! If you have enough space for a garden, you may want to try this money-saving idea. It looks cute too. Just be sure to clean the boots first.







Look at these flowers! God is so great that he created such seeds of the beauty. As human, we are responsible to preserve this beauty and pass them down across generations.

Celebrate REAL beauty like these, because they make the earth beautiful, unlike the plastic flower decors which involve using up the Earth's resources and make the earth sick!




Here are the strawberries growing. Visitors can pick them but if they do, they have to pick at least 200g of strawberries, which worth RM10.00.




Look at the happy koi frolicking in the water...






If you are hungry, you can always have some coffee at the cafe with a nice little dessert while chatting with your loved ones (in my case, it's family)

Strawberry cake that's not too sweet. 


Thank you for taking this virtual tour with me. I hope that you enjoyed it. :)

Please come again!



Healthy Pancakes? 健康煎饼?

Picture from the internet. The pancakes went too fast before I could take a picture of my pancakes (They are seriously yummy!) so I had to search for a picture as a stand-in. Sorry...


最近,我在这里看到煎饼食谱。两个基本材料?健康?容易?好!这可当成运动前或运动后的点心、美味早餐、茶点、郊游点心等等。还有,你可放心的吃完全部的煎饼哦。

煎饼的主要材料是香蕉和鸡蛋。香蕉富含纤维、钾和碳水化合物,提供能量;鸡蛋富含蛋白质。这个搭配能填饱肚子,提供慢慢的能量。还有,当你想吃煎饼却不能食用麸质和奶类,这道煎饼食谱是最佳的解答。

材料:
一根大香蕉/两根中香蕉
两粒鸡蛋
1/8茶匙泡打粉
1/8茶匙磨碎桂皮(可在超市/烘焙原料店买到)

做法:
弄碎香蕉,打蛋,然后和匀全部材料成面糊。
在不黏底锅热一点油,然后将2-3汤匙面糊舀入,煎成一片煎饼。你可同时煎3-4片煎饼,节省时间。(看平底锅大小)
每片煎饼需时30-60秒煎好一面,然后用锅铲翻煎饼,再煎大约一分钟即成。
可做约10片煎饼。



I saw this pancake recipe while browsing for easy recipes. Two basic ingredients? Healthy? Easy? Deal! This can be a great pre or post-workout snack, yummy breakfast to kickstart your day, or just shared with your family and friends as teatime or picnic treats. Best of all, you can eat the WHOLE THING, without guilt.

The pancakes are mainly made of two ingredients: banana and egg. Banana is rich in fiber, potassium and carbs for energy; while eggs provide protein. This combo is good at keeping hunger at bay and keep you energised. Plus, if you cannot tolerate gluten and/dairy, this is perfect.

Ingredients:
1 large banana/two medium bananas
two eggs
1/8 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

Method:
Mash the bananas thoroughly. Beat the eggs. Mix all the ingredients together into a batter.
Heat some oil in a nonstick pan. Scoop 2-3tbsp of the batter to form a pancake. You can make 3-4 pancakes at the same time to save time, depending on the size of your pan.
Each pancake needs 30-60 seconds to set. After the pancake has set, flip with a spatula and cook for about a minute. Repeat with the other pancakes .
Serve.

Makes about 10 pancakes

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Sharon in the kitchen (at last!)

Happy Holidays and Welcome December!

Hmm... what should I say? Being a foodaholic, of course I must mention... FOOD! 


One of the things on my holiday bucket-list is to cook. Yes, I love cooking. Unfortunately, I do not have the patience to make anything that calls for thirty minutes of preparation time (Well, Libras are quite lazy, so yeah), so my so-called “cooking masterpieces” are so easy that even kids may handle it with adult supervision. Anyway, food is meant to nourish your body, ensure your survival and make it happy, so why complicate the matter with complicated recipes which call for a bazillion number of ingredients, slaving over the stove and an uncertain result? I mean, after cooking the complicated food for like two hours or so and the food does not taste good, your hard work will go to waste. Life is too short for that!


Anyway, since food is going to have a large impact on my body, I might as well choose to make simple food from healthy ingredients (Okay, maybe not really squeaky-clean healthy because I still use conventional produce and cooking oil here and there.) Simple food is not always healthy, but healthy food is mostly simple. Complicated recipes usually demand copious amounts of fat, salt, sugar etc. anyway, or a combination of desserts as in marjolaine and Baked Alaska, or a mixture of everything. NOT FUN.


Let's start with snacks and desserts, shall we? Who loves having snacks and/or desserts ALL DAY? Hands up please. (Le me raising my hand now) I am not joking here. I can munch 18 hours a day (six hours for sleep) if not for the random love handles, bat wings and carrot legs. Of course, I must make snacks which can also double up as desserts because food is the best cure for blues. Ha ha. Snacks are also easy to make, rendering it suitable for novice cooks and lazy people who just can't be bothered to be soaked up in thick smoke and kitchen grease.

Excuse me while I share the recipes as well...

#1: Popsicles


Let's face it, this is Malaysia where it is literally summer for all seasons. Naturally, most of us will need a snack to chill. Let's go to BASKIN ROBBINS! How about Haagen Dazs or, for the budget conscious (like me), Walls or Kings? WAAAAIIIIITTT. Look at the label. Sugar, Tartrazine, Emulsifiers, Milk Solids... Okay this is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the idea. Instead, spend just 3 minutes (I am serious, THREE MINUTES), get your popsicle moulds, load them with frozen berries, frozen fruits or cut fresh fruits, pour in desired liquid like nondairy milk, fruit juice, coconut water etc., freeze for at least two hours, remove from the fridge and eat up. How complicated and energy-draining is that?

This tasted exactly like a popsicle,which was light and refreshing. Duh. If you want something (supposedly)decadent, here they are. Guess the secret ingredient. (Hint: Not cream)




Based on my extensive research in the quest of searching the perfect recipe for the most delicious yet friendly-on-the-figure popsicles, I can conclude that:

1.They are so simple that even idiots novices can do it
2. Two variations: 
   -Dump the fruits into the mould and fill it with liquid. Freeze.
   -Make a smoothie and freeze in moulds
   -Make several multicoloured smoothies. Fill the mould with a bit of the first. Freeze for awhile. Layer with next. Freeze. Repeat the entire process for more. 3 to 4 layers are enough. It will result in a beautiful, multicoloured frozen dessert.

Of course, the last option is way too difficult for me, so I might not be doing it anytime soon. If you have the tremendous amount of patience for it though, congratulations! Go for it.



#2: Lunch salad

Yes, if you do read my blog, you should know that I am very fond of salads and always make them in the campus. I even wish that I can start a salad business if not for the ban on refrigerators and blenders there! 

Repeat after me: NO SAD SALADS! By sad salads, I mean side salads which are comprised of two leaves of iceberg lettuce and a sad slice of tomato as seen in restaurants. No wonder many people dislike salads, well, at least the people around me. NOBODY DESERVES THIS ATROCITY!




Now this is what I call a salad, served with instant rice. Of course I had this in campus. I don't think this salad is mindblowing but at least it's pretty decent with a small head of broccoli, three baby corns, a carrot and some cherry tomatoes, seasoned with herbs. I challenge you to resist salivation if you see FullyRawKristina's salads. I dare you.

I would love to have salad like hers but I doubt I can go through even a quarter of her rainbow-on-a-platter!


This is another campus lunch-mixed veggies salad, fruity salad and failed carrot-potato soup. Talk about 90% fruits-and-veggies meal! Oh yum.


Anyway, this is my salad...



Mixed veggies and fruits salad with Orange-carrot-sesame dressing! I LOVE this dressing because it was sweet, savoury and for holy goodness sake, CREAMY! I only used like two drops of sesame oil for that Asian hint in the dressing. This is definitely my favourite meal salad by far. 

The veggies were coral leaves, tomatoes, carrot slices and bell pepper slices (I used 1/4 of the pepper. I don't really like eating huge amounts of raw pepper). The fruits were apple, orange and mulberries. I topped it off with some crushed walnuts for healthy fats and satiety. I should have used a larger plate instead so that I can make a pinwheel pattern. Whatever. I am eating it so the appearance does not matter (not if you serve me ONLY vegetables, though. I want my veggies in beautiful patterns rather than like a rubbish dump or I won't touch it.)

Dressings can really make or break a salad in terms of taste and nutrition. I will discuss about salad in my dusty blog which badly needs an update later! Stay tuned.



#3: Mega Fruit Bowls

I call these "MEGA FRUIT BOWLS" because there are at least 7 servings of fruit. These may look tiny for hardcore fruitarians but for me as a commoner, this is overwhelming.


For some reason I got constipated despite eating lots of fruits and veggies (At least 5 fruits a day and I don't count my veggie servings) and drinking lots of water. I workout twice a day too. Mum told me to eat lots of fruits. 
By the way, on the left are a whole Korean pear and two bananas with a dash of cinnamon; on the right are two oranges, a Packham pear and around 1/2 cup of mixed berries.
Apparently berries are heaty and cause constipation? I don't know. I love my berries and I have little knowledge on nutrition, if any. God please tell me that berries do NOT cause constipation!
After this breakfast (Around 650 calories), I got hungry within half an hour. My past experiences told me that I do not do well on a meal with solely fruits. I need some nuts in there at least. Fruits are rich in fibre and water but cannot fill me up. WHY?



#4: No-Bake Cookies

The best things in life are always simple: friendship, love, life, precious time, and of course great desserts which can be whipped up in minutes. Behold, my NO-BAKE COOKIES...



I choose Steffi's peanut butter. Granted, it has food conditioners (not good!) but it has the least ingredients (peanuts, food conditioner, salt) compared to other brands around. Plus, Steffi's is the only peanut butter without hydrogenated oil, palm oil and sugar.
I used this recipe but I tweaked it after reading the comments, i.e. reducing the salt, adding chocolate chips, mixing brown sugar and white sugar and adding a pinch of salt. I was glad that my sister loved it! This was actually the ONLY stuff made by me which my sister would actually eat, mainly due to the peanut butter.
There was no such thing as vegan butter in my area, so I used the only butter available which was basically a mix of palm oil and milk fats. It was not that good to the environment, but there was no choice and it was definitely far cheaper than pure butter! I am guilty.
The cookies were sweet and chewy, but I might consider reducing some salt and the sugar. I finished 1/4 of the batch in one sitting. It was SO good that I could finish the entire batch if not for self-control (so-called). Try making this and stop at three.
I used around 1/3 to 1/2 of the recipe because the original yielded a HUGE batch.
My sister loved it so much that I will make it again! Probably I won't just make a single flavour though this time. I might want to vary them like using half oats and desiccated coconut, make PB, chocolate and raisin cookies, add seeds into the mix, etc. That is, if I am hardworking enough for the extra minutes of work.


#5: Dreamy dessert smoothies

If I were skin-on-bones, I would love to gorge on pies and cakes and all sorts of desserts all day long. The problem is that I am chubby. I WANT PIES!

Luckily there are the kind folks in the world who create delicious and healthy dessert smoothies. Thank you folks so much.


Here are my blueberry-pie smoothie and berry-banana smoothie. They are really simple.

Blueberry Pie Smoothie (adapted from this recipe)

1 cup milk (I used cashew milk)
1/2 cup frozen blueberries
1/4 cup oats
dash of cinnamon

soak oats in milk for 5 minutes. Blend all the ingredients. Pour into a tall glass. Sip and enjoy.

I made the cashew milk myself. It fooled my dad into thinking that it was cow's milk! This is a good thing actually-cashew milk must be addictive then. I had to restrain myself from drinking the entire batch.

Best of all, cashew milk is easy. Soak the nuts, add water, sweetener and cinnamon (vanilla extract if you have) and blend. No straining required. Here is the recipe.


Banana-berries smoothie

1 frozen banana
1/2 cup of frozen berries
Optional greens
water

Blend it up. Pour into a tall glass. Sip and enjoy.


See, how easy are these? 

Basically these are what I did during the holidays. I know that this is NOT the end of my so-called cooking adventures. In fact, every day is a learning process. Fingers crossed, I can eventually cook well and make vegan treats when I start to live on my own.

And oh, here's dinner for tonight, which I made with mum. Today is the fifteenth day of the lunar moon, which is a vegetarian day. Vegetarianism is observed by Buddhists on the first day and fifteenth day of the lunar moon, No alcohol, egg and five pungent roots (onion, garlic, shallot, leek and chives) are allowed.

Here it is...




Bon appetit!