~ Warm Lettuce Salad

Taken from:

Tiff's

Description:
Casual tri-coloured dish to hit the daily fruits and veggies intake~

Ingredients:
4 lettuce leaves, torn
1/2 C frozen mixed vegetables
2 imitation crabsticks, sliced
1 tsp soysauce
1 C water

Directions:
1. Place all ingredients in a pot and bring to boil. Simmer for 5 - 10 min till lettuce is soft. Serve warm.

Remarks:

After my banana muffin feast as breakfast, I felt that something was missing - the fibre-laden group! Hence I dug out some papaya to eat, and apart from that, I also cooked this simple veggie dish. It's a mini feast for the gut as well as for the eyes!

~ Fat Free Banana Muffins

Taken from:

Allrecipes

Description:
Guilt-free spongy banana muffins~

Ingredients:
1 egg, beaten
2 bananas, mashed
1/4 C milk
1 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 C sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp banana essence
1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 160 deg. Lightly grease or line 5 muffin cups.
2. In a medium bowl, combine egg, bananas and milk. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, salt, sugar and baking soda. Stir banana mixture into flour mixture. Pour batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 35 to 40 min, or until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Remarks:

Yes they are really soft, but there were small mushy uncooked spots inside my muffins, and the muffins loved their the paper cups so much that I lost like 25% of each muffin just by trying to get them out! It's my mistake to not grease the paper cups (used paper cups as my muffin cups were too big, and that my muffin tin was too small) as they were quite thin and couldn't even hold the weight of the batter. I shall get muffin cups of appropriate size next time when I visit Phoon Huat.

I tried baking the remaining batter in a loaf tin, but the insides just wouldn't cook without the outside burning. Lowering the temperature wouldn't help much either. I'm so getting used to eating mushy and uncooked portions (the texture was somewhat like that of kuehs, chewy chewy) that I don't find them weird anymore! Oh ya, the sugar content seemed rather high to me too, shall minus 2 tbsp next time. However, the loaf was easier to be remove from its aluminium foil as compared to the muffins.

I guess I'll just need more practice with non-fat recipes.

~ Potato Rice with Ti Wan Choy

Taken from:

Mum's

Description:
Fragrant mushroom rice with chunky potatoes and tender chicken bits, served with stir-fried ti wan choy~

Ingredients:
-

Directions:
-

Remarks:

Mum cooked this for dinner today! I blogged it down as potato rice is one of my favourite dishes! And geesh, I was mentioning about Ti Wan Choy being in the fridge in the morning, and now it's in my tummy!

Anyway, I can't help but notice, that I really have the special knack for producing weird images with my food presentation! Doesn't the picture resemble the dopey countenance of a brown-skinned person (mushrooms as eyes, veggies as hair and potato as ears)?

~ Toasted Mediterranean Sandwich

Modified from:

Allrecipes (just got the idea from a few recipes)

Description:
A medley of roasted Mediterranean vegetables sandwiched between toasted bread~

Ingredients:
2 tbsp tomato sauce
2 bread slices, toasted
1 slice of cheese
1 tube eggplant, sliced
1/2 medium carrot, sliced
1/4 medium cucumber, sliced
1 tsp butter/olive oil
Pinch of pepper

Directions:
1. Toss vegetables in butter/oil with a pinch of pepper, and roast in the toaster/oven at 180 deg for 10 min, stirring halfway through or when necessary.
2. Spread tomato sauce on both toasted bread. Place the roasted vegetables and cheese on one of the bread and cover with the other. Serve with a handful of lettuce.

Remarks:

I had a craving for sandwiches in the morning again, so I had to come up with something.. But definitely not peanut butter sandwich again (though I really love to). So I pulled the fridge door open, and took out some of the possible ingredients that I can add to spruce up my sandwich and make it exciting. There were some tube eggplants, cucumber, carrots, lettuce, ti wan choy (a greens which I do not know what its called in English), bean sprouts, and I thought of some roasted veggie sandwich. After referring to online sites to check for possible combinations, I launched onto this mission :) It turned out pretty well, just that I needed to roast my veggies for a longer period and lesser time for my bread which got a bit charred. The eggplant conferred texture, the carrots sweetness, the cucumber and lettuce crunch, the cheese cheesiness, tomato sauce moisture, and toasted bread crispiness - a harmonious and wholesome breakfast treat!

~ Almond Cranberry Biscotti

Modified from:

Allrecipes

Description:
Low-fat almond-flavoured biscotti, made savoury with added cranberries and orange zest!

Ingredients:

1 C + 2 tbsp flour
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 pinch salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 C almonds, chopped
1/2 C cranberries, chopped
1 1/2 tbsp orange zest
1 egg, beaten
1 tbsp milk
1 1/2 tsp oil
1/2 tsp almond extract

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 160 deg. Grease and flour a baking sheet.
2. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, almonds, cranberries and orange zest. Make a well in the center and add the egg, milk, oil, and almond extract. Stir or mix by hand until the mixture forms a ball.
3. Separate dough into 2 pieces and roll each one into a log about 8" long. Place logs on prepared baking sheet and flatten so they are about 3/4" thick. Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 min.
4. Cool slightly, and remove from baking sheets. Slice diagonally into 1/2" slices with a serrated knife. Set cookies on side back onto the cookie sheet and bake for 10 min for each side. Finished cookies should be hard and crunchy.

Remarks:

The cookies were too hard!! I think I baked them for too long a time! Should have just stucked to the original instructions for the baking times. But I really had to lower the temperature as my cookies were burning before they are dry. I would like to slice them into thinner strips, say 5 cm instead of 1/2" too. Also, the cookie batter was really sticky, so wetting hands is a must when handling the dough. Despite the really hard texture (I do not know if they are supposed to be that hard or not), they were crispy and it was quite a sensory delight for me :)