The Calling of A Wife, A Mom & A Nanny: food

Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

August 28, 2014

Organizing My Kitchen

After watching the food network channel yesterday, I had this urge to tidy up my kitchen. To be realistic, I started with only my dry kitchen. So I went through some of the articles on tips to arrange the kitchen. One of the tips that I really like said that before I can afford the kitchen that I dream of, it is good to make use of what I have.

So last night, I started at 9.30pm and finished at 12.40am. Blasted out some nice chinese pop songs. I kinda enjoyed the night.

Some tips that I bore in mind as I cleaned up:
1. Throw or give or sell away the stuff that I no longer use or I thought I still needed but haven't touched for years.

- I thew away some pots and pans which I thought I should keep for a "back-up", but they are not of good quality anymore (scratches on the cooking surface).
- Went through my medicine cabinets and threw away the expired ones.
- All those teas, coffees, snacks, packaged food.. it's good to dig through and throw away those that no one in the family will ever eat. (and the expired ones too of course).
- Posted some stuff online to sell away, i.e. bottles drying rack, sterilizer, etc. With all the preloved groups in Facebook nowadays, it is not hard to sell the stuff that we no longer use. Thanks Facebook for that!

2. Categorize the kitchen
- I put all the utensils that are frequently used at a place that are accessible.
- Moved the packaged food to the top (hardest to reach) cos the easier you can reach, the more likely you will eat them.

- Moved all the cleaning products to the top shelves so that the children can't reach them.
- Cleared the kitchen countertop. Stored my air fryer & pressure cooker in a convenient place (at least the countertop looks clean and tidy and I can still take those equipments out easily).
- Took out some stuff that are going to expire to a visible place so that I remember to eat/drink them, i.e. tea, supplements, etc.
- All the new unopened products (i.e. honey, jam, etc) went to the same shelf.
- Tidying my "Tupperware" shelf took the longest time, cos some lids were missing, some containers had scratches, and it was so hard to organize them neatly.
- Basically place the kitchen tools according to their category.

3. Wiped the shelves and tables with Dettol to clean and disinfect.

After all the housekeeping and cleaning, it is not the time to sit back and relax though. It's important to maintain and go through the food and meds again every 6 months. And probably I'll have to start cleaning my fridge and wet kitchen soon. I'll remind myself to take pics of before and after this time.

August 14, 2014

Cooking Soup Made Easy: Electric Pressure Cooker & Claypot

Months ago, I posted the ways I steamed all my dishes using the 3 tiers steamer.

Today, I wanna introduce to you my 2 fav kitchen equipments to boil soup. Now, I don't have time to keep checking on the soup or rather *cough* I usually forget that I'm cooking some soup when I'm babysitting 4 children. So I found these two appliances to be super useful.

1. Electric Pressure Cooker.
I bought my "mini" 2 Litres pressure cooker about half a year ago. I wasn't so sure if I was going to use it regularly, so as a try-out I bought SKG brand from Lazada and it was only RM149.00, and now it's RM146. (I never heard of this brand before this, but apparently the quality is pretty good.) It is good enough to cook for 3 little children (lunch and dinner). But if you want to cook bigger portion, you have to buy the 5 Litres one.

So this is my unit. You can cook rice, porridge, soup, chicken, cassarole etc with it. So far I've tried cooking rice (with vco), butter rice, porridge and soup. So far so good. It's very time-saving but the electricity consumption is quite high.

It keeps warm automatically after cooking.

2. Claypot

Again, with this pot I don't have to check on the soup frequently. After scalding the meats, I throw all the ingredients (except leafy vegetables which i usually throw in 5 mins before serving) in the pot and let it boil at high temp on the stove for about 5-10 minutes then turn to lowest temp and let it continue boiling for about 2-3 hours.

The thing about this pot is it reserves the water, so you don't have to worry the soup gets dry. And usually, after boiling for hours, the fragrant of the soup is thicker and the meat is so tender. And this pot is big enough for the whole family.

So these are my 2 favorites, what's yours?

August 13, 2014

First Outing After 2 Weeks of Quarantine

After 2 weeks of quarantine, I'm SO GLAD that I can finally bring the 2 kids out. But I still prefer that they have no interaction with other kids yet, just to be safe. Keira will be back to school next week.

Brought them out to eat their favorite spaghetti... HAPPY!

what is an outing without chocolate ice cream?!?

Their smiles were precious!

And after that, we came back home so that Caedy could take her nap and Keira and I did our baking! I've never really baked, in fact, I don't like baking but seems like Keira has been into it lately. This is our second time baking this week.

We used estimation for all the ingredients and it turned out OK. Not the best cupcakes (and we forgot to buy cupcake liners) but pretty decent for amateurs like us.

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of cake flour (i used "Radiant")

1 cup of sugar (i substituted it with molasses sugar)

1 egg

1 cup of milk

0.5 cup of unsalted butter (at room temp) / vege oil / coconut oil

1 cup of cocoa powder (unsweetened, i used "Van Houten")

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

0.5 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 teaspoon of coffee powder

Chocolate chips ("i used "Hershey's")

I just mixed all the ingredients using a spatula. Preheat oven 175 deg Celcius and start baking for 20 minutes. Again, you don't expect super moist perfect cupcakes but they are soft (unfortunately, not fluffy) and taste is just nice (not too sweet). Most importantly, Keira likes it and she's proud of herself after the baking session.

For me, with a cuppa OldTown White Coffee, it's good enough for my tea time snack.

I quite enjoy a day like this, but definitely can't afford to do it daily.

September 02, 2013

YOU CAN PREPARE HOMEMADE BABY FOOD!

I can't believe my last post was 6 months ago! How time flies.

Anyway, since Caedy was 6mo, I have started her on solid food. And from these 7months experience, I learned a lot. Some of you might think it's so troublesome to prepare baby food, so much work, so many things to wash and clean after that, bla bla bla... Before you decide to stock up your cabinet with those sugar-loaded cereals, think again. Why do you think it's hard? Is it because you didn't plan properly? Or is it because you don't have any clue how to go about it?

I gotta tell you, preparing baby food is so simple and compare to other cereals, it costs so much lesser. Here's some tips to help you start out:

1. Plan ahead
Yes, take out your organizer, or use your smartphone, or just pull out a sheet of paper. Plan out what you wanna cook for your baby this week. Start with a weekly menu sheet. (Therefore, you only need to do groceries shopping once a week). You don't have to serve different food everyday. (You'll get what I mean as you continue reading.)

2. Invest in the right kitchen equipments
Of course, not everyone can afford to buy everything, but if you can invest in one or two of these items, you'll save lots of time and energy. I used to think the conventional ways are the best, but boy was I wrong? I used to steam food (veges, chicken, fish, etc) using this:

I guess it works for some people... But well, it's definitely not the best way if you are a busy mom or if you have to cook few other dishes at the same time.

So I invested in this:

It's one of the best things I have in my kitchen:
(i) I can cook few dishes together.
If I'm preparing food for kids only, I cook them altogether, 1st tier (from the bottom) - steam veges, 2nd tier - steam egg, the 3rd tier - steam meat.
(ii) Sometimes I even use the lowest tier to steam Caedy's bottles.
(iii) You don't have to watch the time. Just set the timer, make sure the water is enough. Voilà!

Other kitchen equipment that you'll find useful:
- Blender (hand blender is good too)
- Slow cooker
- Multi function Rice Cooker (you can cook rice, soup, porridge, casserole, or even for steaming). Some rice cooker allows you to set the time you want the food to be ready. How smart!
- Microwave (to defrost and heat up the food)
- Oven (for baking)

3. Get some knowledge
Old folks will tell you that it's bad if you don't feed your baby fresh food.. Well, errr... hmm... it really depends on how you store the food. My simple guideline: cook the food thoroughly, cool it, keep it in clean air-tight containers, store in the refrigerator (max 3 days) or in the freezer (up to one week). Storing in an air-tight container & keeping it in the fridge/ freezer will prevent oxidation and therefore preserve the nutrients. So if you can't cook everyday, cook in batch! It's definitely better than giving your baby other food from the shelves.

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So today, this is what I prepare:

Purees:
1. Steamed green and yellow zucchinis for 10mins with the steamer.
2. Cool them quickly
3. Blend them together
4. Divide into 5 portions and keep in air-tight containers
5. Keep 3 in the refrigerator and another 2 in the freezer (I usually put the batches purees in one big air tight container in the freezer together with my expressed breastmilk, but since I'm not pumping anymore, I find that container too big. So temporarily, I use a ziplock bag, to double make sure the food remains fresh).

Porridge:
1. Cook brown rice & millet in a slow cooker
2. Cool it down
3. Divide into 3 portions & put in air tight containers
4. Keep them in the fridge
OK I seldom freeze porridge, cos it's too easy to cook, I can just dump all the ingredients (usually multi grains & meat) into the slow cooker before leaving to work, and come home with nice smooth hot porridge.

I heat up the purees, then mix it with the porridge before serving. So I can prepare 2-3 different purees on the same day and I can alternate them throughout the week (if it's the 1st time you're feeding your baby that particular food, make sure you feed the same food for 3-4 days consecutively, to identify allergies if there's any).

So this is Caedy's dinner for the next 4 days! Easy!
So mommy, don't keep telling yourself you can't do it, because you can...

Go ahead and try... Take out your organizer and start planning today! :)
(Note: http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/ is a very good website about baby food).

March 08, 2013

Introducing Solid Food

Caedy is now 7 mo +. I enjoy preparing solid food for her. One of the main reasons is Baby Bullet set. It's this cute blender set that comes with date-dial cups to store the food, blend blade, milling blade, and easy pop batch tray to make food cubes.

So far I've tried apple puree, pear puree, carrot puree, avocado puree, sweet potato puree and homemade pearled barley cereal... Except apple & avocado (which will turn brown if you keep in the fridge), I usually prepare 3 days food and store the food into the cute little cups. The good thing about these cups is it has date-dial system, just twist the date dial to the preparation date and store in the fridge. Easy peasy lemon squeezy... No more "oh man.. when did I prepare the food again?" U know... post-pregnancy brain.

For apple, pear, carrot and sweet potato puree, what I did was: steam the fruit / vege until it's soft, usually it takes about 20-30mins, cool them, and then blend it using baby bullet blender. And voila... you've got your healthy puree!

As for avocado, when it's ripe, scoop the meat out with spoon, add a little bit of water and blend into smooth texture. Mix with breastmilk. And... it's done. Yum yummm and healthy!

Whereas for barley, cook the barley until it's soft, then cool it and put inside the blender and blend until smooth. Alternatively, you can use the miller to make the barley into powder. then simmer in boiling water...

I'll start cooking porridge when Caedy is 9months.

I think all mommies are very excited when their baby is almost 6mo. For more info about baby's first food, do refer to http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/. One of the best websites that gives info about baby's food.

I usually fed Caedy solid 30-60mins after she drank her milk. i started with only 2-3 teaspoons of solid once a day, then slowly add another meal then slowly add the portion. Now she's eating about 2-3 tablespoons twice a day. And yeap she's growing healthy and happy!