Soba with Seafood and Spicy Korean Sauce. Made this dish again because it’s easy, delicious, and healthy!
Spicy Salmon with Wild Rice and Mashed Garlic Cauliflower. We haven’t had this particular dish in over a year, but that spice rub is so good. It’s super spicy, but you know us… the spicier it is, the more we love it! I’ll have to share the ingredients of it with you soon.
Week of 10/27 – 10/31
Monday: Simple Sesame Noodles
Tuesday: Turkey Taco
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: White Bean Chili
Friday: Pizza Party (with friends for Halloween)
While I love cooking now, I do get tired of it. Making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a family of six is pretty taxing. I can see why people resort to fast food (or eating out). I’m tempted to do so after a full day of doing stuff because the last thing I want to do is cook. I suck it up and end up cooking because for our large family, it’s just much more economical to cook and get a balanced meal. Granted, fast food would be cheap, but it probably isn’t balanced.
Hainanese Chicken Rice. I use this recipe as a guide, but change it to use less oil and only use chicken breast. We love it every time! We serve it with brown rice and this delicious bok choy recipe.
Soba Noodles with Spicy Korean Dressing. I use this recipe for the sauce, which is delicious and easy, a total win! I use buckwheat soba instead of ramen noodles, and add some seafood for protein. Like the meal above, we have bok choy for our veggies. We all have really been loving bok choy lately.
Week of 10/20 – 10/24
Monday: Homemade Pizza
Tuesday: Soba and Spicy Korean Sauce
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Salmon and Wild Rice
Friday: Ceviche Night
The garden is out of sage, but once we get more in, I want to attempt a healthier version of this recipe. I need to figure out more fall recipes. What is your favorite food blog? I’m in need for some cooking inspiration.
Last week, Cristina asked in this post, how I handle lunches for our homeschool busy days. We jam-pack their swim, piano, and hip hop classes all on one day, so we are mostly on the go on that particular day. We start with two hours of homeschooling (usually we tackle our english language arts), then we head off to swim. On the way, we listen to our Latin or Spanish chants. Glow is the first to have swim lessons, so while she is swimming, we are reading from our history book. After the girls have swim, it’s back in the car and I serve them lunch on our way to piano. After piano, we get home and do more school (math and science) for about two hours, then we go to hip hop. Once we are home from dance, they finish up any work left undone and it’s about time for dinner. It’s a pretty intense day, but we have the routine down, so it makes it manageable.
For lunch, I just pack the girls some PB&J (sunflower butter for True) sandwiches, along with apples and carrots for all. Carrots are still a choking hazard for Glow, so she gets an extra fruit. That pretty well fills them up until we hit snack time at 3:30pm. I make the sandwiches in the morning, while I’m making Ben’s lunch, and I do everything assembly line style so it’s pretty quick.
I must admit, I’ve been really bad making sure I eat lunch on those days. I’ll bring a some sort of bar (I like these, these, and these) and fruit for me, but I’m usually starving by the time dinner comes around. Lately, I haven’t been feeling the PB&J sandwich, so it’s why I don’t make myself one; I probably should though.
Do you pick up fast food on busy days or are simple sandwiches your go-to like us?
Korean Spicy Stew. I used a lean pork instead of chicken like the recipe called for. It was good, and the girls liked it, but Ben didn’t. I think I know now that my husband doesn’t like stews. He said it reminded him too much of American food. HA! Guess I won’t be cooking that dish again.
Week of 8/6 – 8/10
Monday: Cheese & Wine Night with some friends
Tuesday: Homemade Pizza
Wednesday: Spaghetti & Meatballs
Thursday: Dinner with friends
Friday: Ceviche Night
I haven’t cooked a fish dish in awhile, and my girls love salmon, so I will definitely have to put that in the menu soon.
Kimchi Udon.The whole family loved this recipe. I changed it up slightly to add more vegetables in it and seafood. In the past, True didn’t really like udon noodles, but in this dish, she did. Also, since learning she is no longer allergic to shellfish, this is the first recipe she’s tried with shrimp in it. She pretty much stayed away from the seafood, but it’s a start. She used to like it, then had an allergic reaction, so we haven’t given her any. We had her tested recently, and it came out negative (along with eggs and dairy).
Spicy Korean Pork Taco. I changed this up slightly by putting the sauce in a crockpot and letting the meat cook in there, and of course using a leaner meat. It was good, but not great, so I probably won’t make this again.
We love Korean dishes, can’t you tell?! I’ve been kind of tired of cooking lately, so we went out to dinner once last week. It was nice to get a break.
Warning: this is the longest food post of life. Seriously. When we went to Singapore, we wanted to dive into as much of the culture as possible, and one of the best ways is through food, right?! So we tried everything and anything! Stingray, cockles, mutton (you’re probably saying, “Say what?!”), and the list goes on and on. I’m going to share with you what we tried and some of what we thought. I couldn’t remember what I thought exactly about every dish, but if I didn’t like it, it sticks out, and I mention it below. Otherwise, I liked it! If you ever happen to find yourself on that sunny little island, this should help you navigate what to fill your tummy with, but like we tell our girls, don’t ever knock it until you’ve tried it.
Masala Thosai (Dosai) from the Tekka Market in Little India.
Wonton Noodle Soup from the Golden Mile Food Centre.
Bak Chor Mee from People’s Park Food Centre.
Clay Pot Chicken Rice from Golden Mile Food Centre.
Wanton Mee from Golden Mile Food Centre. Another delicious noodle dish.
Chwee Kueh from Tiong Bahru Market. This was the one dish we weren’t fond of. We had a bite and that was all we needed.
Soon Kueh from Tiong Bahru Market. My friend Abby brought us some for breakfast and I devoured it!
Chendol Cupcake from 40 Hands Cafe. It was different, not moist, but still tasty. There aren’t many desserts I don’t like though.
Tom Yum Seafood Soup from Golden Mile Food Centre.
Carrot Cake from People’s Park Food Centre. It’s not your American carrot cake, this is a vegetable dish, not a dessert. Ben and I both liked it and I’d like to try and recreate it at home, probably with a little less oil though.
Durian Ice Kachang, Cheng Tng, and Bo Bo Cha Cha from People’s Park Food Centre. They all tasted good, but my favorite might have been the durian one. Durian is strong, but after the initial taste, you get used to it. The burps that ensue afterwards isn’t as nice though, fair warning.
Teh Halia and Teh Masala from Tekka Market in Little India. It was hot as heck, but it didn’t stop of us from having these warm drinks. I loved the spices in them!
Otak Otak from Katong Laksa. Yes, this was delicious! It has a little bit of spice, and yes it looks a bit like spam; it is made from fish (a sort of fish cake) and has a totally different flavor from spam.
Roti John from People’s Park Food Centre.
Halwa from Tekka Market in Little India. Interesting flavor and texture, but I found it a little too sweet, and I love sweet, so this tells you this was really sweet.
Mee Goreng from Tekka Market in Little India. I pretty much loved all the noodle dishes we had in Singapore. This wasn’t saucy, but it was very flavorful.
Fish Nasi Briyani from Tekka Market in Little India.
Kambing Soup from Tekka Market in Little India.
Pulut Hitam from Island Creamery. Even ice cream in Singapore is so good!
Satay from People’s Park Food Centre. I love satay! But I guess you can already tell from this post, that I love a lot of food.
Laksa from Katong Laksa. We actually had this twice, so I can’t remember if this was from the first place or second, but both were so good. This was by far my favorite dish in Singapore. Well, it was tied with the Singaporean Ramen from Noodle Story. I have a couple packets of boxed laksa, so I can try to recreate it at home.
Ondeh Ondeh from Maxwell Centre. I wish I could have brought boxes of this dessert home with me! It’s type of a rice flour cake (I think) covered in coconut flakes. I just love how Asian desserts aren’t overwhelmingly sweet like American desserts tend to be.
Fresh Coconut from Chinatown. This was so refreshing to drink while walking around in the sweltering heat.
Ah Balling Soup from Golden Mile Food Centre. This was so good! I loved it so much that I now go to the local Asian market to stock up on frozen peanut balls to have it when I get the craving. My friend Abby shared a recipe here and I want to try it!
Chili Crab from Jumbo Seafood in the East Coast Lagoon (I think). I love crab. Give me crab, rice, and butter, and I’m in the zone, so this dish hit the right spot.
Singaporean Ramen from A Noodle Story at the Amoy Food Centre. The presentation and the flavors totally won me. I really miss this dish so much. If I ever find myself in Singapore again, I would head to the Amoy Centre as soon as I was able and get another bowl of this delicious dish. We wanted to go back on our last day there, but they were closed that day.
Dim Sum from Tim Ho Wan. We went to Tim Ho Wan for lunch this day after walking all over the place, and we were starving. I texted my friend Abby our location to see what would be the best place to eat, and this is what she suggested. I love dim sum and this did not disappoint!
Chicken Rice from Maxwell Food Centre. This was Ben’s favorite dish. I think he had it two more times when he went off by himself as I taught classes.
Sambal Sting Ray from Makansutra Gluttons by Bay. It’s similar to fish, but denser, and we love the flavors of the paste on top.
Hokkien Mee from Makansutra Gluttons by Bay. I thought it was good, but Ben didn’t like this so much.
Roti Prata from Chinatown. I would love to try and make this at home.
Obviously, we ate a lot. Looking at the pictures again, I notice there were some other dishes we ate that I didn’t get pictures of. We had 7 full days in Singapore and we enjoyed every bit of it. Ben, who is really picky with food because he likes to make sure he eats healthy (all the time), was totally game for anything, and he tried everything too! There’s only one dish above that we really didn’t like, but everything else was pretty good. We came home craving some of the food, so I immediately started recreating some of the dishes (with a healthier slant of course).
We were lucky enough to have the Bloesem team to get us started on our food quests, and our friend, Abby, was our personal tour guide 90% of the time, and she took us all over the place. When we did venture off on our own, this blog helped guide us (along with some tips a few of you shared too!). Oh Singapore, how we miss your diverse and delicious dishes!
Dear Singaporean friends,
If I got any of the dishes wrong (or spelled wrong), please correct me.
Love, Ruby
I have a large growing pile of fabric scraps. I refuse to throw them away because I am sure they can be used for something. I have been seeing different types of interesting necklaces made of buttons, beads, and fabric. Then, I figured why not make one out of my scraps...
I think it made my white shirt a little less boring. This was so quick and easy to make.
How to make a recycled scraps necklace (which is very similar to the straps on my braided tablecloth bag):
1. Take your scrap fabric, I cut a .5''-1'' snip and tear the rest of the fabric down for a nice frayed edge. Used 3 different fabrics for each strand.
2. Take 3 of the torn pieces and tie the ends together with a rubber band.
3. Braid the 3 pieces together and tie ends together with rubber band when done.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 for more strands. Remember you can make the strands any length you want, if run out of fabric, just weave more into the braid.
5. Once all the strands you want are braided, gather one end of each strand together and straight stitch together with sewing machine. Repeat for the other ends of the strands. Snip off any excess.
6. Gather ends of the necklace and sew together (snip excess) or a ribbon can be sewn at the ends to be able to tie the necklace closed, but I just sewed both ends together.
7. Voila! A nice way to make use of all your lovely scraps.
Sorry if the directions get you a little lost, but it really is easy. I promise. Maybe I should put some in the shop. Please share any other good ideas you may have of things that can be made with scraps. I would love to hear (read) them!
Soba with Seafood and Spicy Korean Sauce. Made this dish again because it’s easy, delicious, and healthy!
Spicy Salmon with Wild Rice and Mashed Garlic Cauliflower. We haven’t had this particular dish in over a year, but that spice rub is so good. It’s super spicy, but you know us… the spicier it is, the more we love it! I’ll have to share the ingredients of it with you soon.
Durian Ice Kachang, Cheng Tng, and Bo Bo Cha Cha from People’s Park Food Centre. They all tasted good, but my favorite might have been the durian one. Durian is strong, but after the initial taste, you get used to it. The burps that ensue afterwards isn’t as nice though, fair warning.
