Taro wrapped Duck

I bought some organic duck breast from a organic farmer, because J loves to eat BBQ duck.  I decided to try to make this dish I tried years ago in a Chinese restaurant.  It was fried taro stuffed with duck inside.  My in-laws were over watching the girls, so I thought it would be the perfect time to try it.  It turned out delicious.  We ate it all up, even the girls enjoyed it.   

INGREDIENTS :

1 Taro 2 duck breast 4 cup of chicken stock 2 cups of corn starch oil for deep frying  SEASONINGS: (1) 1/2 cup of cornstarch, 2 tablespoon of oil, 1 teaspoon salt (2) 1Tablespoon rice wine, 1/2 Tablespoon soy sauce

PREPARATION :

1. Peel, rinse, and slice taro; Pour 1 cup of stock and add sliced taro to a pot; Bring to the boil; Simmer over a low heat until soft; Remove, add seasoning (1) and mash (almost like a play doe consistency) 2. Apply seasoning (2) on the duck evenly; Marinate for 30 minutes. 3. Bake duck breast in oven for about 40 minutes 4. Sprinkle some corn starch over the sliced duck; Cover with smashed taro; Roll in corn starch evenly.  5. (a) place into deep fryer and deep fry until brown.        (b) if you don't have a deep fryer you can use a wok; 6.  Take out and let it cool.  Slice and serve

Made little taro balls with no duck inside because I had so much mashed taro left. 

Garden 2013

Here is an update on my garden. 
 So how were my garden boxes you ask?  They were excellent.  I did not get any animals eating my plants and the organic soil helped a lot of my fruits and vegetables flourish.  I would definitely recommend using garden boxes.  Another benefit of the garden box is it makes it much easier to harvest your food without hurting your back.  Its not on the ground so you don't have to bend over as much.

Here is some of the stuff I got this summer.

Red raspberries

Tomatoes: cherry, yellow boy, beef steak, grape, and roma

 
Spinach

 Peas and long beans

 Yellow and green Zucchinis

 Strawberries

 Lettuce: red, green, romaine and butter

Herbs: mint, Parsley, Lemon Balm

 Carrots

 Beets

Soft pretzels

YUMMMMM, every time we go to the states I have to a Aunt Annie's pretzel.  They are soooo good.  Soft pretzels here are not common, and if you do stumble upon some, it's usually hard and dry.  I found this recipe from allrecipes.com, and the girls had so much fun making them too.

Buttery Soft Pretzels

Ingredients:

4 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 teaspoon white sugar 1 1/4 cups warm water (110 degrees F /45 degrees C) 5 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup white sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1 tablespoon vegetable oil   1/2 cup baking soda 4 cups hot water 1/4 cup kosher salt, for topping

Directions:

1.	In a small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
2.	In a large bowl, mix together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt. Make a well in the center; add the oil and yeast mixture. Mix and form into a dough. If the mixture is dry, add one or two tablespoons of water. Knead the dough until smooth, about 7 to 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
3.	Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). In a large bowl, dissolve baking soda in hot water.
4.	When risen, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope and twist into a pretzel shape. Once all of the dough is all shaped, dip each pretzel into the baking soda solution and place on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt.
5.	Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes, until browned.

I'm finally back

YEAH! I'm happy to say my mom has returned from her month long vacation from Asia.  The girls and myself are almost all better from our colds.  The van is scheduled to be fixed in November and the insurance is dealing with the bus company for me.  It looks like my life is slowly coming back. 

I have many more recipes that I have made the past month, but just didn't get a chance to post them, so I will write them and post them up ASAP.  I'll also give you an update on my garden as well.  

I'm so lucky my sister is a photographer (www.huaphotography.com).  On the  Friday right before Thanksgiving E had a PD day, so we decided to go out for a little walk/photoshoot.  Good thing we went that day, because on Tuesday when I was driving E to school all the leaves were already on the ground. 

Where have I been?

So if you're wondering where I have disappeared to, I'm still here.  My life in the past few weeks have been crazy.  Here's why
1. The girls have started school. Which means home work, reading, practicing piano (which we still need to do). Packing lunches and snacks. Making sure I'm on top of all the events (picture day, parent night, library day, swimming lessons ...and the list  goes on).  
2.  My mom and dad left me for a month.  They are taking their well deserved holiday to Asia.  My mom usually comes to my house everyday so I can drive the girls to school. She also cleans my house when she's here.  So imagine the state of my house now.  It looks like a tornado hit it, not once maybe 10 times in a row.  I try to clean as I go but it's hard when I'm constantly cooking, and watching the girls.  A lot of time it's done after they're sleeping (which use to be my quiet time)
3. Josh had to to to Calgary, and high river for work this week to check out the Alberta flood damage.
4. Baby C is teething, and has had a fever of 40 degrees for the past 4 days. She's been having a hard time sleeping which means I don't sleep.  Last night I made it to my bed at 4am, which was better then the night before at 5am.
5. And to top it all off on Wednesday I got hit by a bus in front of E's school on our way to swimming.  So I spent all day yesterday dealing with that. ( filling out a police report, going to get estimates on the car, contacting the bus company).

So my question to myself is "when will this week be over?  Will next week be better?"  Oh yes, and my mom has only been gone 2 weeks, I'm only half way until I'm saved.

Poop

Yes, I mean real poop.  I guess every mom has some kinda poop story to tell.  Mine isn't that great but I'll share it with you anyways.  I will not be posting any pictures on the post, because I'm pretty sure most of you don't want to see it.

So this afternoon when I was putting baby C down for her nap, M was wandering around playing. She was suppose to be taking her nap, but wouldn't go down.  I saw her walk into my room to go to the washroom, but I didn't think anything of it because she does that all the time.  When baby C feel asleep me and M went down stairs to pay.  It wasn't until about  half an hour later when I had to go to the washroom when I made a discovery.  I saw a pair of pants sitting on the floor of my washroom, I look closer and the underwear was still there,  but there was also a huge chuck of poo attached.  I then looked in the toilet and saw probably about half a roll of toilet paper with poo smeared on it.  I then walked over to the girls washroom, and that toilet was also  filled with poo smeared toilet paper.  I called M upstairs and asked her what happened.  "Mommy, I had to poo, and I didn't want you to get mad, so I wiped my bum myself and cleaned up.  I even got myself new pants". So I cleaned up the mess. (I threw her poo stuck underwear in the garbage).  I thought it was all cleaned up, but as I was about to go downstairs, I see little spots of brown on the carpet from my room to the bathroom.  Ahhhhhhhhhh, I looked closer IT WAS MORE POO.  There was about 7 spots.   More cleaning for me.  It was so gross, but it's all cleaned up now.

Long weekend at kananaskis

The last time I was at kananaskis I was going as a counsellor and we were camping at Mt.Kidd.  Fast forward 13 or so years and I'm back (but this time staying at the hotel and bringing along 3 little girls) for a wedding.

You know your getting old when your attending a wedding of one of the kids you counselled.  Most of our friends are already married, but why did we have so many weddings this year?  When we were in university we were counsellor to a group of junior and high school kids. They have all grown up, graduated university, working and now getting married.   I'm so proud of all of them. They have grown up to become such great men and women of God.  I don't think I could have asked for a better group of kids to work with.   I know in the last few years, when I started having kids, I lost contact with many of them. Yes, we do say hi to each other when we pass by, but I do miss those years when I actually got to spend quality time with them.  The last few months I kept thinking I should call them up and get together to catch up, but with my busy schedule I haven't had the chance.  One day I will set up a afternoon date with them, but I hope it's sooner then later.

Thanks C&J for a great weekend! The girls had a blast!

My baby is now a first grader

6 years ago I was pregnant with my first child. Today is her first day of grade one.   Where has the time gone.  It's crazy how fast they grow up.  I still remember her as a little tiny baby keeping me up at all hours of the night and having to pace back and forth in the hallway to get her back to sleep.  She has grown to become such a great and caring big sister to M and C.   She is now my sweet independent little girl.  Today she came home with a letter saying she is the graduating class of 2025.  That seems so faraway, but I know within a blink of an eye we will be there. 

Wishing you all the best, and good luck! Hope you have a great year in grade 1.  I know I will be missing you at home.

Strawberry chocolate popsicle

M wanted to make popsicles.  So we decided to make strawberry chocolate milk popsicles.   She did everything herself.  She was so proud when they came out and they were 2 colors.  All we used was strawberry nesquik syrup and chocolate nesquik syrup mixed in milk.

Baby Chef

Most Fridays my parents in Law come and watch the girls for a bit so me and Josh can go out.  They just got back from their vacation the day before, so we figured we would make our outing short.  We decided to go to Southgate.  We were sitting in the food court eating, and it totally brought us back to our university days.  We would go to HUB mall for Lunch and go to Edo.  We would order 1 sukiyaki beef and double the meat for $1, and 1 order of rice with sauce.  We would then split the meat and veggies.  So funny what students do to say a dollar.  J was laughing and said see now more then 10 years later we can afford 2 meals.  After we inhaled our food, we started walking around.  Not much to buy, but some how we ended up at Sears (yes, I know the old people store, the store only our parents shop at).  I went to the baby section and was looking through their clearance stuff and found " the baby chef food streamer/warmer/chopper"  It was half price, and since C is starting solids I decided to buy it.  Yes, I know she is my 3rd, and I probably don't really need it, but why not.  She deserves some new things too, right?  After we bought it, we figured it probably time to go home.  We had already left them for almost 2 hours.

So the first thing I made in it is sweet potato with apples.  It only took 10 mins to steam and cook the sweet potatoes, and a few minutes to puree.  It was so quick and easy and didn't make a months worth of food like other baby food makers.  YEAH a great buy!

Pirate Day at the beach

My sister told E about Pirate day at the beach a few weeks ago, she was so excited and has been eagerly waiting for that day to arrive.  Finally that day had come, it was this past weekend.  E and M got all dressed up in their pirate outfits and we headed over to my sisters place.

 There was a lot of cars already parked in the parking lot, so we ended up walking there from her house.

 When we got there, there wasn't much planned.  All they had was a bouncy house, and a dragon boat ride.  I was worried the girls would be disappointed.

But the girls didn't think anything about it.  They still had a lot of fun and why wouldn't they.  They got to dress up as pirates, jump in the bouncy castle, had popsicles and play in the sand.  I guess that's all they needed.  Just shows how our expectations changes as we get older.  The girls had a blast.

Kale Chips

I kept hearing people around me raving about these super yummy and healthy Kale chips they have been making.  So I decided to give it a try.  I went out and bought a bunch of Kale, and made the chips.  They were amazingly quick and easy to make. 

Here's what you need
1 bunch of Kale
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

1. Wash Kale and tear the leaves off the stem with your hands and into bit sized pieces.  Place into a salad spinner. You have to make sure it is dry, because it won't crisp as well.

2.  Place bit sized pieces into another bowl.  Add oil and salt and mix well
3. Place onto a baking sheet and bake at 350F for 15 minutes.

What's for Dinner? Beef and Broccoli

Here is a very easy and simple dish to make for dinner.

Here is what I used.

• Sirloin Beef steak
• broccoli
• oyster sauce
• corn starch
• garlic
• oil

1. Slice up beef and set aside.  Cut and wash broccoli.

2.  Heat up oil in a pan, and add minced garlic.
3.  Add beef sliced, fry until their brown
4.  Add broccoli, and a little bit of water (about 2 tablespoons) and cover for about 2 minutes to cook broccoli.  Make sure you don't over cook, or the broccoli can become a little mushy. 

5.  While the broccoli and meat is cooking, get a bowl and add 1 heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce, and about 1/4 cup of water and mix well. (if you like a lot of sauce you can always double it)
6.  Add sauce to pan, and let the sauce thicken. 
7.  Plate and serve with steamed rice. 

Nail polish.

It's been a crazy week since Josh started his summer class.  Oh by the way, along with 3 girls, my husband has also decided to go back to school part-time to finish his MBA. 
This week he is taking a intensive summer class, so the whole coarse is squished into 1 week.  He had a lot of group work and presentations. I guess the one plus to taking this class, is 1 less night class he has to take during the rest of the year. 
So with  Josh being crazy busy with school stuff, Baby C has been a little bit more fussy as well.   I think it might be her little teeth coming in. Its been sooooo much harder putting her down to sleep.  When she's tired she doesn't want to play with anything, if you try to put her down, it's a full out screaming cry. She just wants to be held.   She has also become a very light sleeper, so any loud noise will wake her up.  I was trying to put her down for her nap today, so I took her upstairs to my room, and told the other two to keep busy.  They kept coming into my room, asking me stuff or checking if baby C is sleeping yet.  But each time they come in, she pops her head up to see who it is, and its back to square 1.   Then, 30 minutes goes by and no interruptions (yeah baby C fell asleep).  I go into the play room.   So how does a 3 and a 5 yrs old keep busy and quiet for so long?  Nail polish.  They decide to paint M's nails. They did a pretty good job for their first time painting nails.  They manage to get none on the carpet. But I can't really get mad at them, because I did tell them to stay out of my room and keep busy.  Oh well I guess it's just one of those days.