Simple, Affordable & Satisfying home cooked Meal

This is a very common meals in my house where everyone find comfort and at ease to eat at home.  After reaching home through a series of usual after working hours traffic jams, reaching home with such comfort meals, we are truly blessed.    

With all the ingredients ready, cooking this meal is very easy and simple. 

 3 dish meal is served. Meat & meat, vegetable with garlic, plain omelette

My Turn to Cook - Spaghetti Bolognese local style

I always received thumbs up for my localised Spaghetti Bolognese from my people in the house. I must confess that I never follow any measurement of ingredients for my recipes, the main ingredients for my spaghetti sauce has to have minced meat (I prefer minced beef), carrots, onions, button mushrooms and tomoto puree.  I do not use any herbs except for those sauce that come with herbs.  So far I have not tried to do my own spaghetti sauce, all are bought from the supermarket. 

The presentation is very much lacking but home cooking is served and eat style, presentation comes last....:DDD

the comparison between mine 🔺and the hotel 🔻serving.  Garnishing will definitely give a dish an added flavour, next time I will prepare some garnishing like parsley to my home cooking to make them more visually appealing, it is an art in any culinary. 

Weekends Eats

Time just fly by during weekends.  We choose to stay home for breakfast when our girls do not have their Sunday school classes, our breakfast will become a brunch because we usually wake up late :D

last weekend, I cooked most of the meals at home which kept me all busy in the kitchen.  There seem are actually so many things to do around the house on weekends which I do not have the chance to do on working days,  Not long after our late breakfast, the clock telling me that it's time for lunch and dinner.   

So far this macaroni mushroom is a big favourite for my girls.  The above serving with coffee is my brunch

I am not a good cook, thus here come our simple lunch

Crunchy french beans with minced pork is the only main dish

Don't worry, we had Polo Char Sau Pau and plain Char Sau pau for afternoon tea bought from the famous local kopitiam 333 at Lintan.  The Polo Char Sau Pau is RM3.00 per piece, the shop owner is a good sales lady she convinced me to buy 2 to try it out, combination of sweet and savory,   

I still prefer the normal plain char sau pau.

Here come our dinner, when my turn to cook, I will serve more vegetable and keep reminding my girls to eat them.  "Eat more vegetable, blah blah blah...""

Just when we had finished our dinner, BIL and friend brought 3 big packets of mamak mee. Look delicious right?  Yes, I had mamak mee for supper, spicy but tasty with added calamansi juice.

Lunch for Papa on Sundays

Me and my youngest brother take turns sending lunch to our papa on every Sundays.  These 2 months is my turn..our papa is a very complacent person, hardly complain even when he is not pleased on how things happening around him.  He eats what we serve him, he will only give his comments when we ask whether the food is alright, most of the time he would just say "Okay".

We know his favourite dish is roasted pork but we can't be giving roasted pork rice every Sundays, so I try to vary the choices base on my preferences over his favourite. I would usually snap a photo of the lunch that I serve our papa and whatsapp to my siblings letting them know what he is having for lunch.  I would squeeze half a lemon for him to clear the oily meal if I find lemon in the fridge (thanks SIL for buying the lemon :D)..he would complain sour because I only put a small pinch of salt (try to avoid sugar) into the lemon juice.  He would drink it even it's very sour.

toasted pork, char siew rice with a bit of salted egg and salted fish.

fried rice with tauhu pork and chun ken (meat rolled with egg). 

roasted pork and chicken rice 

last week I prepared home cooked food for him, Chinese sausage omelette, sauteed broccoli and carrot with pork...my papa is  turning 79 years old this week.

Holy Saturday 2016

On Holy Saturday, the last day of Holy Week, the eve of Easter Sunday, we had steamed fish at home.  We bought a talapia for RM13.00 at the supermarket.  This dish alone is enough for the 4 of us.  Lots of tomatoes, black fungus and ginger..but we forgot one of my favourite ingredient, the lemon grass.  

Weekend home cook meal 周末爱心晚餐

My better half silently spares the kitchen for me during weekends.  He has been preparing meals for us on weekdays, he got to rest on weekends.

I am not a good cook, just try the best I can to prepare meal for my loved ones on weekends. 

fried eggs is their all time favourite, they complained my fried egg was tasteless, that's my cooking : less salt, no MSG.

the leftover pumpkin from the pumpkin cake, now sauteed with lean pork, my people in the house do not like it at all :(

black fungus with lean pork, carrot and button mushroom, my kids only picked on the lean pork and button mushrooms..What's for next weekend ? yet to figure out.

Pumpkin cake

Pumpkin is among the cheapest vegetable fruit that we can find in the market, this whole fruit cost less than RM4.00.  My girls love pumpkin cake especially the one that baked by their aunty.

Since they like it so much, I try to bake some for them following a recipe from youtube

the ingredients are 2 cups of pumpkin, 7 eggs, 90g coconut milk and some sugar

mashed the pumpkin after it is steamed

put all ingredients into the blender, mix well

into the oven and bake till cooked.  It took about an hour.

Slice and serve.  

Cheapest Asam Laksa Mee

The cheapest, fastest and delicious Asam Laksa mee.  

I believe this is the cheapest bowl of Asam Laksa mee that we could get nowadays.  My choice is Maggi Asam Laksa whenever I am craving for it.  

My better half knows very well of my taste, he added an egg, green vegetable and lemon grass for added nutrition and fragrance to my bowl of asam laksa mee.  Delicious, for nutrition wise, it is debatable and individual choice.

Cheesy Egg Sandwich

A special request by my girls to their daddy to make this Cheesy Egg Sandwich for them. As you can see the cheese is literally melting and flowing after it is cut in halve.   No wonder my girls said they miss the sandwich that their daddy make for them.

I added slices of tomatoes to my serving, simply satisfying tea break with a cup of hot coffee.

gone in just a minute.  Not enough for me, will make more next time.

Check out the making of this Cheesy Egg Sandwich here :

Sweet Potatoes Fritters

I usually make sweet potatoes bubur cha cha, a couple of weeks ago, I tried to make them into fritters so that my girls get to eat the sweet potatoes rather than only the soup.  I am glad that my girls like them though the appearance of the fritters do not look yummy, too plain for food presentation, haaa..

We can just take a piece or two for snacking during the afternoon before dinner time.  Sweet potatoes is a healthier choice than many other processed food for the children.   

I recorded down the preparation methods here for reference and for future improvement :

Pizza Bread

It was last week after school sports day, they were all sweaty after the event, it would be more comfortable to get refresh and settle for lunch at home.  Our girls agreed with having pizzas for lunch.  We had to stop by the supermarket to get some ingredients on our way home. 

This time we tried using bread as the base instead of pizza dough.  We chose the thick sliced white bread to hold the toppings.

I sliced and chopped the basic toppings like sausages, crab stick filaments, capsicum and onions and my girl help to grate the cheese through the Tupperware grater.

my girls and my niece placed the toppings on their own bread, the one with onions & capsicum is mine, ready to put into the oven.  It is hard to convince our girls to have a piece of vegetable on their portions.

I placed the pizza bread at the middle level in the oven with only the upper heating element on.  Here are the baked pizza bread hot from the oven...

my eldest girl added parmesan cheese on her serving as she complained that her pizza bread with lots of cheese has been taken by someone else.

and steamed sweet corns as side dish 

Home baked pizzas

We were out and about the whole day time yesterday.  We bought some ingredients on our way back in the evening to bake own pizzas at home.

No time to make pizza dough to wait for it to prove, we used the ready made ones.

We made 2 pizzas.  Our girls' job to load the toppings, just tomato puree, mozzarella cheese, sausage, capsicum and white fish filaments as toppings.  Our girls dislike having onions on their pizza.

the 2nd pizza was loaded with extra onions and minced beef

the crust is a bit hard and crusty

not as cheesy as the ones from the shop.  We are OK with it.  At least it is not that fattening. 

It was our first trial of baking pizzas at home, we need to improvise the recipes before we could consider having Pizzas Party at home, :D