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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Yes, it’s today, the fifteenth day of the eighth moon of the Chinese calendar. Tonight the children in the neighborhood will walk around with lighted lanterns (hence its other name, Lantern Festival) while their elders sit around a table and eat mooncakes (hence it’s also called Mooncake Festival) while admiring the full moon above.

I have treasured childhood memories of playing lanterns with my neighborhood friends on this moonlit night every year when I was growing up. My grandmother used to prepare a small feast to celebrate the Mid-Autumn although technically it’s always summer here.

We’ve kept up the tradition of celebrating on a small scale since my kids are too old for lanterns and we’re not big fans of mooncakes. Nothing special for dinner tonight except for this yeem kok kai, or salted herbal chicken which a friend brought us from Ipoh as a gift.

It looks like ordinary pak cham kai, or steamed chicken but this had been marinated in salt and steamed in aluminium foil with dong gui and some other Chinese herbs. It smelt really good when I opened up the package. The chicken itself is salty with a strong herbal flavor. Yumm.

Hehe, fooled you! I saw these Egyptian dates on sale at Tesco. Usually the loose ones look at bit dried up and that’s why I seldom buy them.

But these ones looked fresh and moist so of course, I jumped at the chance. My favorite kind of dates are Medjool but in the absence of, these Egyptian dates would do just fine .

They are so inexpensive that I’ve since gone back and bought another few more bags of them.

Health benefit-wise, dates are very fiber- and antioxidant-rich. So they’re good in helping reduce blood glucose and cholesterol levels, not to mention a real energy booster.

Once upon a time, I used to watch those 7o’clock Hong Kong family serials on TV and the thing that struck me most is how frequently the ‘families’ are shown drinking or talking about drinking soup and tongsui.

Tong sui literally translates to mean sugar water, or sweet soup commonly eaten as a dessert or during tea time. It’s a big feature in Cantonese meals and is considered to be a comfort food drink.

One of my all-time favorites is leen chee tong sui, a Cantonese term for lotus seed soup. I love it when they serve it as dessert in the last course of wedding dinners.

It needs just a few ingredients.

• a cup of leen chee or white lotus seeds
• a cup of pak kor or gingko nuts, shelled and skinned
• 2 cups dried longans
• a handful of pak hup or lily bulbs
• rock sugar to taste

Fresh gingko nuts come in a shell. You need to crack that open with a nutcracker and soak the pods in hot water to loosen and remove the skin.

Bring a pot of water to boil. Throw in the lotus seeds, gingko nuts, dried longans and lily bulbs. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer on low for 2 hours or until the ingredients are soft. Then add rock sugar to taste.

Lotus seed tongsui can be served hot or cold. I prefer mine chilled because I’m always trying to beat the heat. So I either dunk in a handful of ice cubes or stick a bowl in the fridge.

This is a soup that’s not only yummy, it really healthy too. Lotus seeds strengthen your kidneys and spleen. Gingko nuts boost your memory.

Longans are high in iron content so they’re good for your blood, dizziness and insomnia. Lily bulbs are good for coughs because they strengthen your lungs.

Oh, and I usually add sueet yee or white fungus as well. But I’ve run out so I didn’t this time. The white fungus adds a crunchy texture to this fruity, nutty combination and makes it doubly yummy.

You can also throw in a small handful of red dates to sweeten the whole deal. If you do use red dates, remember to reduce your rock sugar.

I remember many afternoons spent in my girl friend’s kitchen in California pigging out on bagels as we chatted and gossiped and laughed. Sweet memories! That was when I fell in love with bagels.

I finally came across some bagels recently at Yamakazi, a bakery tucked away just two doors away from the Cold Storage at the new underground bridge between Midvalley Megamall and the Gardens.

Like a desperado, I quickly grabbed 3 bagels - Raisin, Blueberry (left) and Poppy (right) - as if the shop is going to run away . Turns out these bagels weren’t anything I remember bagels to taste like. The search is not over. I’m back to square one.

If you don’t look at these carefully, you wouldn’t know they are lollipops. Aren’t they the prettiest and most unlikely looking lollipops?

At first, I thought they were those finger puppet thingies. Of course the ones I played with when I was a kid were very simple ones sewn out of leftover fabric by my grandmother.

DH bought these from his trip to Japan. You can probably tell from the kimonos they’re wearing. And they’re all different flavors too. Oishii desu ne!

I’d never have thought lollies could look like this good. They’re just too pretty to suck. Obviously my kids think so too because these have been sitting pretty in my fridge for quite a while now .

When I was a kid growing up in the city, we often had tongsui, a sweet soup, for tea. I always looked forward to the red bean soup or green pea soup my grandmother would boil for hours over the charcoal fire.

I was rummaging through my pantry and found 3 types of beans I didn’t know I had. Often I start out with all the good intentions of cooking this and that, and then I get so busy I’d forget all about them.

So I decided to use up all the bags of beans I had. Drastic, I know but then I’m notorious for coming up with all sorts of weird concoctions with whatever I happen to get my hands on!

I can’t say what proportions of each I used that time. But to make things simple, let’s go with 1 cup of each.

• 1 cup black-eyed peas
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 cup red beans
• water enough to cover the beans/peas twice
• a few pieces of dried mandarin orange peel
• sugar to taste

Simmer on medium heat for approximately 2 hours or until the beans and peas soften and open up. Feel free to add more water if it starts drying up. Again if you want more soup, then add more water.

Add the sugar last. You guys know me, I don’t believe in too much sugar so this is where I usually tend to under-sweeten rather than do a sugar overload.

Sometimes I make this for tea-time on my vegetarian days. You can eat it hot. I like mine chilled either in the fridge or with a couple of ice-cubes if I’m in a hurry. It sure beats the blistering hot afternoons.

My kids want something to snack on while watching the Olympics. Since we don’t happen to have crunchy snacks around, I suggested making them chicken fingers and french fries. There was a huge resounding ‘yay’ from my kids!

I first made these chicken fingers a couple of weeks back. I was doing a post for Four Foods on Friday about oven bakes when the sudden inspiration for this recipe struck me like lightning.

The chicken fingers turned out to be an instant hit with my kids ! Okay, tell me, which kid doesn’t like crispy, crunchy boneless chicken pieces??

The recipe is very simple. I just use chicken breasts cut into broad strips and marinated salt, sugar, pepper and chilli powder for an hour now.

Again I’m using the ‘grandmother’s method’ of not measuring the ingredients but just using approximates. If you like spicy, add more chilli powder otherwise tone it down, it’s all up to you.

Then I drizzle a little cooking oil over the pieces to lightly coat them. Then dredge the pieces through a combination of flour and finely-grated parmesan cheese. Line up the strips on a greased tray and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or till golden brown.

Served with french fries, the kids tell me it’s just like eating McDonalds or KFC! Thing I love is these are oven-baked so they’re not greasy. They’re crisp and the parmesan cheese is what makes it taste so-oo good. Great Olympic finger food!

We were walking past Secret Recipe and noticed they had a poster up about their rm10 set lunch, apparently meant to bring a smile to those whose wallets are still reeling from the ridiculous price of eating out these days.

So we thought we’d step inside since our tummies were growling and the poster was beckoning to us.

There are 3 choices of set lunch each with a different style of chicken, rice and salad and an ice lemon tea. The girls and I had the Mushroom Chicken…

… while my son had the Black Pepper Chicken. Between the two, I should’ve chosen this instead of the Mushroom Chicken. At least it had a slightly spicy kick to it instead of gooey blandness.

To wash it all down, the kids went to pick out a couple of cakes. We only ordered two slices since I’m quite adverse to eating cake that’s 70% cream. I prefer cakes with more cake and way, way less cream. The very creamy Chocolate Fudge Cake…

… and Chocolate Strawberry Cake!

Now I’ve never seen cakes served lying down on their side before. Maybe this is a new presentation style, I don’t know, but I almost needed a compass to get my bearings on which is the top of the cake and which is the bottom.

Call me fussy but it does matter to me being able to distinguish the top of the cake from the bottom. So yes, I want my slice of cake served upright so I can get a visual taste of it first before my taste buds do. What do you think?

When I was pregnant with my two older kids, I used to run across the road from where I worked and order my favorite sandwich from Oliver’s Super Sandwiches during lunchtime.

I tell you, I’m such a sucker for their very substantial sandwiches crammed with fresh veggies and meat that I’ve always wanted to replicate them at home. But of course, not quite to the extent that they pile up theirs sky high.

Cramming a club sandwich into one mouthful to be quite a challenge, even more so for the kids. So I have my homemade club sandwiches less bulky, hence less likely to unhinge anyone’s jaw .

I just toast 3 slices of bread (white for now, till I can somehow convince my kids to like wholemeal). Butter the bread lightly.

Then I start layering one slice of ham, then sliced cucumbers, the second slice of bread, one slice of cheese, then sliced tomatoes, and finish off with the last slice of bread.

Stick a toothpick right through the center to hold all the layers together. Slice the club sandwich diagonally with a sharp, serrated knife and it’s all ready to go into a lunchbox or a growling tummy. Sweet !

Skye stays back after school a few days a week, and I have to bring her a lunch box on those days. I know it’s a drag staying back on stifling hot afternoons so I try to cheer her up by bringing her surprise lunches that I know she loves.

This means I have to pretty much cook up something different each time. That’s why I started a new category for lunchbox ideas for the lunches I’ve been packing for her.

The other day, I was making chicken nuggets and needed french fries to go with them. I don’t normally do fries at home. I figure they’ll never taste as good as the ones at McD so I might as well buy from there.

But this time, I had a bag of frozen french fries in the freezer, the first bag I ever bought to try.

It doesn’t take long to deep-fry them, just about 5-6 minutes max.

See, they turned out very nice and crisp, not greasy even though I drained them in a strainer and didn’t use kitchen rolls to absorb the remaining oil afterwards. Skye loved it. Trouble is I can’t remember what brand french fries these are.