"Tang Yuan" aka Glutinous Rice Balls

Today is the day to eat the glutinous ric balls also known as "Tang Yuan Day". I dont have time to make the rice balls myself especially at this stage when I am already 7mths preggie. Couldnt tahan standing too long so I just bought the ready made ones from the supermarket and cooked the soup myself. I bought 2 types of ready made ones, one with filling inside and the other type without.

Ingredients (for 6 pax share):

- 2 packets of glutinous rice balls with fillings
- 1 packet of plain glutinous rice balls (without fillings)
- 1 small ginger (usually used a medium sized but some of my family members do not like the taste of ginger so I just added a small piece to have the "spicy" taste)
- 4 small pieces of coconut sugar
- 2 big tablespoons of white sugar
- 1 pack of pandan leaf
- water

How to cook:

- Cook 1 pot (average sized pot) of water
- When the water is boiled, add in the plain glutinous rice balls.
- When the rice balls float to the top, it means its cooked.
- Use a strainer and sieve it out and put it in a big bowl of water. This big bowl of water must be suitable for consumption and at room-temperature.
- Repeat the same procedure for the glutinous rice balls with fillings.
- Cook an another pot (slightly smaller than the 1st pot) of water.
- Add the pandan leaf and ginger into the water to boil.
- When the water is about half-boiled, add in the coconut sugar.
- Then add in the white sugar when the coconut sugar has dissolved.
- Stir the water for a while and off the fire.
- Finally, sieve the rice balls and add in the soup, and its ready to be served.

PS: If you do not have coconut sugar, you can replace with brown sugar. I personally find white sugar a little bland. Anyway, this recipe is given by my cantonese mother :)

Fried Vegetarian Bee Hoon

I was at home alone with my little girl on Monday. This was the first time since I got preggie. Anyway, since I'm at home, I decided to cook something. We had pork ribs porridge with potatoes (Little girl requested for potatoes herself so I got some from ShopnSave and added in as one of the ingredients) and fried vegetarian beehoon for dinner. I forgot to take the picture for the porridge so I will just put up the recipe for the fried beehoon.

Ingredients (3 pax share):

- 1 packet of beehoon (tai sun brand, I particularly preferred this brand))
- 1 vegetarian canned food (refer to picture below)
- 1 small cabbage, chopped
- 1 carrot, medium sized, sliced
- Button mushrooms, average sized about 8-10 pieces, sliced
- Black fungus, average sized about 3-4 pieces, sliced
- 2.5 tablespoons of soya sauce
- 2.5 tablespoons of vegetarian oyster sauce
- 2 garlic, average sized, chopped finely
- 2 onions, average sized, chopped finely
- 3-4 tablespoons of cooking oil
- water

How to cook:

- Soaked the beehoon and black fungus (separately) in the water for 30mins.
- Mixed the soya sauce and vegetarian oyster sauce in a bowl. Added 1/3 bowl of water into the mixture and stirred till the oyster sauce dissolved.
- Heated the wok, added 1 tablespoon of oil and fried the garlic and onion.
- When the garlic and onion started to get crispy, added in the cabbage and carrot.
- Poured half a bowl of water and the gravy from the vegetarian canned food, stirred the vege, and left it for 5-10mins.
- Then added in the black fungus and button mushrooms, left for another 5mins.
- Scooped the dish and left it aside on a plate.
- Heated the wok with 2-3 tablespoons of oil.
- Added the beehoon, poured in the soya-oyster sauce mixture and fried till the beehoon turned soft. (If you find the beehoon too long, cut it before you poured into the wok)
- Finally, poured in the vege canned food and the cabbage dish fried earlier.
- Keep stirring till the ingredients are evenly spread around the beehoon and its ready to be served.

Note: You may add in lettuce instead of cabbage. The only difference is you don’t have to fry the lettuce, just add in when you have completed the dish (can garnish the dish too).