My cousin’s kids practically grew up on macaroni and cheese. She swears it’s so easy it’s not even considered cooking. She throws a handful of cheese over some macaroni and sticks it into the microwave oven.

My kids have always refused to eat anything that even looks like mac and cheese so I’ve never had the occasion to make any. Never mind, I guess it’s not too late.

This week, Steev, my eldest, has suddenly decided he’s got a thing for mac and cheese after tasting it at Friday’s twice last month. I do agree it does taste pretty good but my girls still wouldn’t touch it.

My recipe is actually pretty simple. Here’s what I use:

• 5 handfuls of macaroni
• 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 teaspoons cornflour
• butter
• salt and black pepper to taste

I get a pot of water boiling. Salt it a little and add the macaroni. Meantime, I grease a deep baking tin with butter. When the macaroni is soft, I pour it into the tin.

I make a roue with cornflour and water, and pour it in. I would use milk but because of the recent melamine scare in China, I decide not to. So in goes the roue over the macaroni in the tin.

Then I pour the breadcrumbs in. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well with the mac. Top off with the cheese and bake at 180 degrees F for 25 minutes.

The smell is heavenly. Steev gobbled up this entire tin of mac and cheese for lunch. I admit the end result isn’t as rich and milkily cheesy as it’s supposed to be. Next time, I’ll use milk.

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I don’t know why but I’m invariably drawn to the the mushroom section at the grocery store. Each time I walk by those shelves, it’s as if the mushrooms are calling out to me .

Well, I was innocently walking by the mushroom section again last week and suddenly I heard someone or something going ‘psst pssst’. I glanced over and saw these huge gray oyster mushrooms staring at me.

It only requires a few ingredients:

• 100 grams gray oyster mushrooms, washed and sliced thickly
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon mixed herb powder
• dash of parsley
• salt and black pepper to taste

First I saute the garlic in butter over medium heat till the garlic browns and I can smell the fragrance.

Then I add the mushrooms and mixed herb powder and saute for another few minutes. Season to taste, sprinkle on the parsley and I’m done .

That was quick. It took me barely 10 minutes to whip up. I serve them as an accompaniment to my pasta. This time, I had them with spaghetti olio.

As you know, I’ve been searching for a few good bagels. They aren’t that easy to find around here but ever since I introduced my kids to them, we’ve practically gone on witch hunts for bagels.

Lately, we chanced upon the newly-opened Vienna Bagels on the lower ground floor of 1 Utama’s new wing at the spot previously occupied by Auntie Anne’s Pretzels.

We were just in time to catch their opening special where we buy one and get one free. My kids picked the Italiano (top right), Katsuo (bottom right), Sparkling Cheddar (center) and Dark Flakes (left).

Notice how the cheesy ones are rather burnt and messy. They look like they came out of an amateur kitchen, neither very professionally done nor pleasing to the eye.

Vienna bagels are also rather small, about two-thirds the size of what I would consider a regular bagel. I didn’t try the sweet bagels but I tasted the cheesy, savory ones and they are definitely way too salty.

Having said that, I just had to put up a picture of the box because I love the design. Lastly, I should add if you’re trying to decide between bagels and doughnuts, go for the bagel! Bagels are healthier being boiled, then baked while doughnuts are deepfried.

I make the simplest spaghetti in town. I don’t have the luxury of making my own red sauce so I cheat a little by using pasta sauce in a bottle. It tastes good, saves me time, serves my purpose, so what the heck !

What I use is:

• spaghetti, enough for 4 persons
• 350 grams or about 2 cups of Prego pasta sauce of your preferred flavor
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, chopped into small chunks
• 6-8 cherry tomatoes, halved
• olive oil
• parsley

I start off by boiling the spaghetti in lightly salted water till al dente. This shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes.

While that’s happening, I happily cut the onions, carrot and tomatoes. I cut the carrot into small chunks and blanch it first for a reason.

Carrots are hard and take longer to cook. By blanching it, it’ll be half cooked by the time it joins the rest of the ingredients in the pan.

I drizzle some olive oil into a non-stick pan on medium heat and saute the onion till transparent. Then in go the tomatoes and blanched carrot chunks, followed by a good shake of the pasta sauce from the bottle and a sprinkle of dried parsley.

No, I don’t use the pasta sauce straight from the bottle, uncooked. Even though the pasta sauce is supposed to come with onions, garlic and mushrooms, I like to add more of my own.

Sometimes I add more herbs and some sugar to tone down the tartness of the fresh tomatoes. On a good day, I’d throw in broccoli flowrets and French beans as well. Notice I don’t add any salt at all because that’s already in the bottled sauce.

So yeah, that’s it and it took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Lunch is served.

This is definitely a great recipe to have at short notice. We observe two vegetarian days a month and sometimes it’s hard finding vegetarian dishes the kids like. At the same time, since the kids love this, it’s a good way for me to reduce our meat consumption.

Most of the time, I use ladies’ fingers in my chicken curry but I like them stir-fried as well. Ladies’ fingers, also called okra, is one of the more versatile vegetables and lend themselves well to a variety of cooking methods.

The ingredients you’ll need for this very simple yet tasty dish are:

• 12-15 ladies’ fingers, sliced thinly at an angle
• 1 large red chili, sliced thinly with seeds removed
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• cooking oil
• soy sauce
• salt and pepper to taste

I normally cut off the pointed tips of the okra to keep the slices consistent. That’s just me. You can keep them if you want to, no biggie .

I drizzle a bit of oil into my wok on high heat and throw in the garlic to flavor the oil for a few minutes. Since I’m working with high heat, I have to be quick.

In go the chili followed by the ladies’ fingers. I give it a few quick stirs and add a wee bit of water and a drizzle of soy sauce to help the cooking process and so the veggies won’t burn.

Season with salt and pepper and it’s ready to serve. Goes great with rice. It couldn’t get any easier than that!

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.

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.

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.

Yesterday was the first day of the sixth moon on the Chinese calendar, a vegetarian day for me. So I made vegetarian spring rolls which, by the way, would be a tasty appetizer for your 4th of July party too.

To me, there’s always something mysterious about a springroll because you never quite know what’s inside until you take the first bite. I like mine vegetarian because, for one thing, it’s healthier and for another, it only needs three main ingredients.

Depending on the crowd you’re preparing for, you’ll need:

• 1 packet spring roll wrap
• 1 medium-sized Chinese turnip or jicama (see picture), shredded
• 1 carrot, shredded
• 1 clove garlic, diced

It’s very simple. First, I heat up some oil in my wok and lightly saute the garlic. Next, I add the carrots and turnip and saute for about 5 minutes, finishing off with a dash of salt, pepper and soy sauce to taste.

I usually let the filling cool off on a plate for a bit. It’s easier to wrap when you don’t keep burning your fingers .

Wrapping a spring roll isn’t hard at all. Just lay out the wrap on a flat surface and place 2-3 teaspoons of filling about 1 inch from the edge nearest you and to the left and right of the wrap.

The edge nearest me is where I start working from. Lift that edge and fold over the top of the filling. Then fold the left, then right side and roll forwards until you get a sorta cigar-like roll.

Seal the loose edge with a dab of water or egg white all along the edge. If I have to, I just press it a little to make it stick, otherwise the spring roll might burst open half-way through deep-frying.

Heat up a cup of oil in the wok. Deep-frying requires that the oil be very hot. If the oil is not hot enough, the spring rolls will absorb more oil and become greasy and heavy which also makes it very fattening.

Deep-fry till light brown and drain off excess oil on a sieve or a piece of kitchen roll. That’s it. All ready to be gobbled up . Even more yummy served with my homemade chilly dip recipe (it’s at the bottom of that post).

We go vegetarian two days a month on the first and fifteenth of the Chinese moon. Though I’ve been doing this all my life, it was only in recent years that I realized it’s healthy eating.

At the mere mention of the word ‘vegetarian’, people tend to shrink back and think bland and boring. But quite frankly, vegetarian food isn’t and doesn’t have to be.

I mean, look at this yummy vegetarian curry bursting with tofu, cabbage, ladies’ fingers (okra), long beans, and a ton of Indian spices.

There’s 2 types of tofu in there - taupok (or what I call, tofu pockets, which is the round brown piece) and foopay (or tofu sheets, which are the flat brown sheets). It’s anything but bland and boring.

This is what I had for lunch two days ago. Vegetarian curry over plain rice noodles fried with cabbage and carrots. It tastes sooo good!