Book Review - Hearty Congee by Amelia Liang

For Asian mums like me who is getting tired of cooking the same old porridge for your baby, check on this book. They have 58 dishes of congee of different types, right from the cantonese style to those with chinese herbs to those normal day to day congee. I have personally tried cooking Beef Congee with eggs, Lotus Roots Congee with Red Dates, Oatmeal porridge with raisins, chinese yam with frog, frog congee with lily bulb etc for my SMALL FAN before (when he is less picky).

I especially like their explanation on the purpose of the different chinese herbs, for example, ginkoo helps to reduce phelgm, lily bulb helps to norish lungs etc. But I must warn that it's quite an expensive book for just congees.

Book Review - Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron

For mum who has just started cooking baby food for your babies and wanted to cook from scratch, can check out this book. This book will tell you exactly how to cook, how to keep it, for how long you can keep the food etc. For example, how long can you keep a pumpkin once it's cut? How long should you cook brown rice, with how much water, how to freeze it, for how long you can keep it? etc..It also list the nutritional content of the food and provide you with a lot of healthy recipes like baking french fries, making breakfast cereal (from scratch) etc. But I must warn that the recipes wasn't very tasty to me but it's really natural and healthy.

Vegetable Puree Recipes

Here's some ways to use your vegetable puree, beside putting it in baby's porridge.

Here's 2 a recipes that my SMALL FAN likes.

Vegetable Cheese Toast

• 1 cube of Puree Vegetable (any vegetable you have, I normally put Kai Lan or Cai Xin)
• Cream Cheese (I use Philadiphia Cream Cheese but you can use any type of cheese, tried cheddar cheese before but it gets burnt very easily and I felt that it's very salty)
• 2 slice of Wholemeal Bread

1. Defroze the vegetable puree, then spread it on the wholemeal bread
2. Cut bread into small cubes
3. Cut cheese into small pieces and place it on top of the bread
4. Toast bread for 5 minutes or until cheese melt
5. Serve Hot.

Egg Fried Rice

• 1 Egg
• 1 cup of cooked brown rice
• 1 cube of vegetable puree
• 1 clove of garlic
  
• sausages or fish cakes (or whatever meat your kids like)

1. Chopped garlic and stir fry it in olive oil. Take out the garlic when it's fragrant.
2. Pour in the cooked rice and stir fry until dry.
3. Dig a hole in the rice, turn heat to high and pour in one beaten egg, let is cook for a few second, then stir in the rice a little at a time until all the rice are coated with the egg.
4. Pour in the vegetable puree and sausages and cook until fragrant or until meat is cooked and the rice is dry.
5. Served warm.