Ava's first Thanksgiving!

Little Pilgrim!

First Thanksgiving that we are spending together with the four of us. Lots to be thankful for, like the picture above, Joseph being the great big brother he is. Always willing to give Ava a hand without asking. Ava is very lucky to have Joseph and let's hope she doesn't boss him around too much when she is older!

Each year now for Thanksgiving we like to keep the meal planning as simple as possible. Last two years instead of getting a whole raw turkey or raw turkey breast to bake, we buy it the morning of Thanksgiving from the deli section at the local market. Meat is cooked in their oven and it is always tasty and fresh. Last year we only got the dark meat and this year we decided on turkey breasts. This helps to free up the oven space to do other baking like the sweet potato and warming of other dishes.

Very flavorful and yummy!

Always got to have the green beans no matter what. And we do prefer the french green beans over the fatty ones. I usually blanch the green beans first before a quick sauteed with onions and mushrooms with some salt and pepper. That is all you need to keep it fresh and light.

We always prefer sauteed green beans with cremini mushrooms and onions.

Mashed potato is the most basic, this year I roasted a whole head of garlic to give it that sweet garlic tasty but without the garlic bite.

Roasted garlic mashed potatoes

 The #1 most requested item on Joseph's Thanksgiving meal. The one and only sweet potato and marshmallows. However, since we had a butternut squash sitting around, I added some to the mix and added some butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I even went above and beyond by placing each marshmallow standing up!

Sweet potato and butternut squash with marshmallows

 Since this is Ava's first Thanksgiving and just in time to start eating human food, I plated her little Thanksgiving dinner for her. She has a little pile of mashed potato with the turkey gravy, diced turkey breast, diced green beans, some sweet potato/butternut squash with marshmallows, and a piece of crescent roll for the gold! She ate that all up and loved every bite of it!!

Ava's first Thanksgiving! Her modified baby plate of her food.

Delicious!

 Here is the adult version of Ava's dish. Soon enough she will be eating like us all!

Mommy's adult version.

And what's a Thanksgiving without some good ol' Julian pies? Since Joseph finished the pumpkin pie from Costco earlier in the week, I decided to get Julian pumpkin and apple pie. We ate them nice and warm with french vanilla ice cream. However my mom preferred it with her Haagen Dazs green tea ice cream.

Super Asian style here with the green tea ice cream!!

Pin It Now!

Tweet

Mom's Ginger Chicken Soup with Tofu Noodles

Whenever we start to feel sick or actually come down with some sickness, my mom would always make her chicken soup for us. It is very basic and doesn't involve alot of ingredients at all. In fact, just your simple chicken pieces or a whole chicken cut up, and LOTS of sliced ginger to cook with it.

Ginger has many benefits like anti-inflammatory and cold and flu prevention. There is usually a pot each week and we would just drink this instead of water. This time I decided to try adding Shirataki Noodles (basically tofu noodles).

20 calories? No cholesterol? No sugar? YES PLEASE!

Recipe for chicken broth:
1 whole chicken cut into pieces
Stock pot full of water
1 whole ginger- cut into chunks
Kosher salt
Japanese Hon-Dashi (flavoring agent)
1 stem of green onions- minced
Shirataki tofu noodles

We usually boil the chicken with the bones and ginger until the chicken is close to falling apart. Then we will season it with salt and hon-dashi (Japanese fish bonito flavoring agent). Follow the direction to prepare the Shirataki Noodles. Add in the noodles at the end and top with minced green onions. End result is a very light chicken soup with strong hint of ginger. The ginger compliments the chicken and Joseph absolutely loves this dish. He will have it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and eat bowls and bowls of it.

Here is Joseph enjoying the tofu noodles with his all time favorite chicken soup. Slurping it up and trying the tofu noodles for the first time. He was totally amazed of tofu being squeezed into noodles.

He loves his Pororo training chopsticks

Slurp, slurp, slurp!

Until then, Enjoy!

Pin It Now!

Tweet

Breakfast: Egg White Spinach Soyrizo Panini

Macho looking=YES? Macho bad ingredients=NO!

Not that everyone has soyrizo sitting in their refrigerator all the time, I decided to finally take it out of the fridge and do something with it. Soyrizo is basically tofu with more spices than you can count put into a link of sausage but meatless. TASTE JUST LIKE CHORIZO! (With less grease of course). So I thought let's just do a good ol' breakfast panini. Simple to make and easy to eat. This panini is easy to fool the veggie haters.

One for me, one for mom.

All you need in this macho looking panini is just FIVE ingredients:

Sliced sourdough bread
Baby Spinach (sauteed in pan with a little salt)
Soyrizo (sauteed out of casing)
Scrambled egg whites (I used about 5)
Shredded mexican four cheese

Put in any order you like preferably with the cheese next to the sourdough. Put in panini press and it's done in no time. I did brush the outer parts of the sourdough with olive oil so it would be nice grill marks.

For those with weak teeth, regular texas toast would work..grilled cheese maybe?

Crunch, crunch, crunch..

The soyrizo is pretty spicy just like regular chorizo. By using egg whites and sauteed baby spinach, it helps neutralize the spices. You can do any combination by either adding more egg whites to the soyrizo, or more spinach to the panini, or more soyrizo and less of everything else. In the end it's a great breakfast panini to perk you up! I think if I did a blind test, most people would say there's egg yolks and meat in this sandwich!

This one came out with the nice grill marks.

I actually meant to add avocado to the panini to help with the strong flavor of the soyrizo. But I totally forgot so that ended up in a smoothie my mom and I concocted. I will just use the extra avocados and left over soyrizo egg white scramble and work it into a nice burrito tomorrow. :) Until then, enjoy!

Pin It Now!

Tweet

Grubbing for pork chops and more..Taiwan style

After a long day of work, it is totally the best thing ever when my mom have dinner planned out. Plus it gives me a chance to take photographs of her cooking and showcase her craft. Dinner tonight at the Forks and Kisses household is cruising Taiwanese style consisting of white rice, fried pork chop, and three cup chicken "三杯雞". You know it's a real homecooked meal because mom cannot give you the exact measurements of all the ingredients. Usually it's like, "you know, a little pinch of this.. just pour this much,, scoop 2, oh wait maybe 3..". So, what I mean is: NO EXACT MEASUREMENTS!! Therefore, I only cook a couple Chinese dishes and leave the rest to my mom.

Deliciousness always.

So Joseph pretty much ate up the first three pieces before he even started on his rice. I prefer him to eat his rice, but hey, he's eating alot of food so no complaints here!! The remaining 3 I ate as much as I could.

Next up on the menu is my mom's Three Cup Chicken dish. It is a soy sauce based dish where you cook the ginger first for flavor, then brown the chicken pieces and then simmer the chicken pieces with the soy sauce, rice wine,sugar(?), and sesame oil. Basil is added near the end as the finishing touch for color and flavor.

I went and snipped two red chili from our garden to add a pop of color.

Look at that cow, carrying all that yummy-licious chicken in its belly. MOOOOOCLUCKCLUCK!

And here we are, the final product of my mom's great cooking. I love to take the sauce from the Three Cup Chicken and smear it all over my rice, gives it a nice flavor. Hopefully when she sees this, it will make her want to cook some more!! Since I know she has a lot more in her arsenal of good eats. So until then, ENJOY!! Pin It Now!

Tweet