Dong Zhi Tang Yuan (Glutinous Rice Balls)

Happy Winter Solstice (Dong Zhi 冬至) everybody.


I got up early this morning to make some tang yuan (湯圓) which is enjoyed by many Chinese families, normally celebrated around 22 December.

Together with Hubby and the little one, we made some. To me they all turned out beautifully, does not matter that they are different or odd sizes but made as a family.


This is a simple recipe, made enough for three of us, please double, triple, quadruple...the recipe to fit your family. 

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Santa's Fruitcake

A Christmas fruitcake

I have a 20 year-old recipe shared by an elderly aunt. I've been making this fruitcake for the last 6 years for Christmas and Chinese New Year too.

It's not complicated, not too sweet or oily but flavourful and colourful. Don't worry if you don't have rum, I used brandy here. 

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Hello December 2011

Should be "Hello Christmas"… which is more like it! 

I’ve just got back my laptop after having it being classified “Requires Hospitalisation” for some major repairs. I wish I'm smarter then all I needed to do would be to hook it to a life-support machine, cut it open, change some organs, prescribed some antidote...run some tests and voila! 2 follow-up checks and everything will be fine...no more amnesia!

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Muffins...muffins again

Chocolate Chip Cranberries Nut Muffins and
Chocolate Chip Walnut Muffins


Using the same recipe here, I made more muffins with dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries and chopped almond (almond nibs).


Chocolate Chip Cranberries Nut Muffins

Same recipe
Substitute strawberries with
1/4 cup dried cranberries (chopped)
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips and another 1/4 cup for sprinkling on top
1/3 cup toasted almond nibs or chopped almond


I stirred in dark chocolate chips, dried cranberries and nuts into the dry ingredients before pouring in the wet ingredients.


Sprinkle with more chocolate chips on top before popping into the oven to bake.

These muffins are really good, soft and fluffy and have subtle crunchy nuts.


Another, variation : Chocolate Chip Walnut Muffins
Substitute Almond Nibs with toasted chopped walnuts

It's time to get some nuts into your child's diet... and not just for children but good for adults too. :-)

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Funny #1 - Husband Day Care Center

Feeling Monday blues? :-)


This is a very different posting. Nothing to do with food but I found something just too funny! 

I saw these pics and knew I just gotta share with you. You may have come across these. :-D

Wife on retail therapy mission does not need to feel guilty about abandoning hubbies at home or drag them along on shopping sprees, or to carry the shopping bags. Hubbies can happily spend time with their drinking buddies in the pub/bar. What a great marketing concept too! Seen around Ireland, Hawaii, Philippines, Thailand… :-D

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Have a good laugh and a great week ahead! :-)

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Cooling Chinese Sugar Cane Drink

As the weather is not easing up with hot dry spells and occasionally granted some scattered rain in the afternoons and some hazy days, my good neighbour, Popo J gave us some Sugar Cane (In Cantonese, “Chook-Cheh”) from her garden to boil to cool down our bodies.

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Homemade Beef Pepper Rice Teppanyaki-like Style

We have been visiting Pepper Lunch for their Beef Pepper Rice once too often. It's really yummy and pretty addictive!… I’m embarrassed to admit, it’s something like 2-4 times in a month in the last few months …sigh!... Max’s favourite (at the moment!)

So, Daddy decided to make Daddy’s Homemade Beef Pepper Rice, his own version! :-D

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Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

Sori, this posting is a little late... :-(

Wishing all a very 

Happy Mid-Autumn and Lantern Festival.

I’ll bet most of you had a wonderful family-friends reunion with lots of good food with mooncakes, water caltrops, baby yams to the accompaniments of softly-lit Chinese lanterns and children chatter-laughters as I did at my Mom’s place.

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Strawberry Muffins

Breakfast and school snack box gets more interesting this week with these fluffy muffins. I tried these muffins after having read the good reviews and adapted slightly. Daily snack of bread with jam spread, peanut butter, nutella, ham-eggs is getting boring and "uncool" as I was duly informed by the little one…sigh!...oh, the fussy one :-)

As strawberries are his favourite and his Dad's, I decided to make some Strawberry Muffins.

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Chicken Thigh with Dang-gui

Quick dish

Chinese sometimes incorporate herbs into their cooking for their nutritional benefits as well as enhancing the flavour.  Here, I’ve chosen to use dang-gui (a powerful blood tonic) together with chicken thigh.

The chicken being steamed wrapped in aluminium foil, where the flavour produced is fully-contained within, resulting in chicken essence gravy, lightly salted with bitter-sweet-acrid taste of aromatic dang-gui and slightly sweet wolfberry.

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Okra with bacon

Quick dish
I seem to be positing lots of easy, quick dishes, especially for working moms. :-) I hope this is helpful...

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Nutella Swirl Pound Cake

I made this some months ago when some friends came over for coffee. Being too busy at that time I forgot completely later about posting it.

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Oven-grilled Chicken Wings

We had some nice chicken wings last week. These yummy snacks were so popular, we had to wait 40mins for just 3 BBQ wings at the local hawkers center! There's a long queue for these in most places.

So, I decided to make our own… and it’s not too difficult. 

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Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins

Here are some good looking polka-dot muffins which will delight little kids, and adults too!

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Appliance Review - Elba Electric Food Steamer

I share sentiments with most Kitchen Bosses (~_^), all gadgets and appliances make kitchen management so much easier and faster :-). 

Here’s something that I took for granted till somebody mentioned how useful the electrical food steamer is.

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Stir-fry Beansprout

My son shocked me one day with request for beansprout! But, he is not fond of veggies!!!

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Fruity Snack

Fruit Yogurt Parfait

Antioxidants, fruits, yoghurt, Vitamin C, ….and the healthy diets….and so on so on… J

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A Bowl of TLC Goodness Noodles

My Mom used to make Mee Suah Soup (In Cantonese Mein Seen Tong) when we were young and sick or just recovering. It’s soft, easy on digestion and comforting. I loved it then and still do now.

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Chinese Steamed Yam Cake (Wutao-kou)

This has always been on my To-Do List and finally I got it done! And taste good too, if Hb may say so... (biased, probably?) :-D

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Sunrise Peach Muffin

Why Sunrise Peach Muffin?

I got up at 6.00am, prepared the ingredients, made them and got them out of oven just at sunrise for breakfast on Saturday morning. :-)

hibiscus from my garden

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Appliance Review - Kenwood Mixer MX270

This is an independent product review and I am not paid for this review. This is solely my opinion from using this for some time.

I bought the MX270 a year ago after having ‘broken’ 2 units earlier.

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Fried Rice with Ham

What's for lunch, Mom?

Sounds familiar? Like most mothers, weekend is the time to catch up on housework, laundries/ironing, stocking up pantry and putting your love into the kitchen to feed the army…haha, in this case, an army of 3 only! :-D 

Here’s one simple and quick lunch fix.

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No-bake Cheesecake with strawberry sauce

I’ve been staying off cheesecakes, red meat, fast food, fried stuff, nuts/seeds for 2 months, actually it’s 9 weeks! I’ve been counting ‘cos I’ve been craving cheesecakes! :-D

You see my annual blood test was due. It may sounds like cheating…? ‘Starving’ myself silly from high-fatty food, junk food, permitting myself mostly veggies for lunch :-D

My report shows liver and kidney functions fine, cholesterol level still good, uric acid level within permissible level. Yay! I have some allowance to clog my arteries :-D and so I went for one of these yummilicious sandwiches – Steak Sandwich!

As I was saying about craving for cheesecake, I made this...

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Beef Pepper Rice @ Pepper Lunch

We tried something new last weekend on a trip to Sunway Pyramid instead of our regular haunts. Pepper Lunch - an individual CIY (cook-it-yourself) teppanyaki meal.

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Summer’s best... simple pleasure

Pan-scorched Corn Cob

You can enjoy an indoor grilled corn cob without an outdoor BBQ any time. Here’s what I did.

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Pig Kidney Soup

This is an old family recipe, made by my Mom when I was young. I remember having this hot and gingery soup.

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Sweet Sour Prawns

For many, prawns are their favourite but not my young guy. I’m trying to cook prawns once a week, trying different style…sigh!...yes, to get the little one interested in them. He always pick them up and remove them! L

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Hawkers-style Noodles in Creamy Egg Gravy

Dinner in 30-minutes.

My Hubby and son are great fans of noodles. Here’s one simple Hawkers-style dinner that is more a convenience than one that requires skills and can be ready in 30 minutes. And, I can pack the little one off for his music class on time. Some hawkers serve this in small woks and call them Little Wok Noodles.

Noodles in Creamy Egg Gravy

(Servings : 2)

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BBQ Pork (Chinese Char Siu)

A most popular Chinese dish, well known in the East and as well as the west is Char Siu or BBQ Pork, and perhaps more popular is BBQ Pork Rice (Char Siu Fan).

I personally feel the BBQ pork pieces should have a thin layer or two of fats, moist, tender, grilled or BBQ to perfection, slightly charred with sticky juicy sweetness. Now, that is what I call Char Siu.

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3-Tenors Saturday

I woke up to the robust tenors of Carreras-Domingo-Pavarotti! Never mind that I don’t understand a single word except, mamma mia and dolce…:-) The combo of the 3 greatest tenors filled our home from Marc’s AV station.  So sad that Pavarotti died of pancreatic cancer in 2007, and I’m one of the mourning fans. I'm glad I still have the CD.

You can also get this CD from the Ad box on the left.

Right after a quick breakfast, I felt energetic enough to punch some dough! Strange that I get this feeling each time hubby plays the 3-Tenors… and I have a suspicion hubby is trying to hint to me that he wants me to get my hands dirty and sticky…

Haha…nothing Italian or Spanish, I’m afraid…just,

Chinese Steamed Red Bean Bun (or popularly known as Tau Sar Pau), sori for the misleading heading... :-)

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Japanese Tofu with Mushroom

This is one of my favourite dishes and found in many Chinese restaurants. Sometimes, it is served on sizzling hot plate. This is also a kid’s favourite, as the lightly fried tofu is fragrant and silky soft inside and the gravy goes well with hot plain rice. This is my home-cook version,

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A long absence...

I took a leave of absence for a few months if you have noticed. 

I have just recently got back to blogging. I have stayed away from blogging, taking a break to put things into a better perspective. Actually, I found blogging a hazard…as one blogger described it. I couldn’t agree more with her.

Please don’t get me wrong… I love blogging and the net-friends around the world are just wonderful! They are supportive, encouraging, some inspirational…some are kind as to share tips.

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Rita’s Basket – a new look!

Rita’s Basket has a new look… yeah, having settled the little guy in bed, I got to work on my blog.

I’m no expert in the blog-techno-widget stuff but I think I got a decent and simple one up. After moving this and that and here and there, reinstalling and cleaning up and updating… I was quite lost. I mean, literally, some stuff are lost. My utmost and sincerest apologies, even the FOLLOWERS are missing now. So, I’ve reinstalled and hopefully somebody ‘comes’ in… to check-in @ Google Friends Connect.

I hope I do not encounter any more technical glitches…sigh!

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