Janeping and Kids

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T09:35:00.000-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day to you! It's time to indulge chocolate dipped strawberries! However, I am not a big fan of chocolate so we'll just eat the strawberries without the chocolate ok?

We celebrated the Valentine's Day a little early this year as my morning routine normally involves rush rush rush during the weekday. So on Sunday, I made my favorite heart shaped breakfast for the men (hubby & son) in my life. It's actually very easy, just need to have couple of cookie cutters which I have plenty from my previous cookie making obsession that didn't last very long lol!


Bacon, pineapple, kiwi, bread, and egg in the middle!

Made it with a pressed cookie cutter

For Valentine's Day eve, I made black pepper sauce ribeye steak dinner, completed with asparagus, mashed potato, and homemade TangZhong dinner rolls. Both hubby and son cleaned their plates!

See how soft and fluffy the TangZhong roll is

Steak with black pepper sauce

This morning, I some how managed to have few minutes, so I quickly made some more heart shaped breakfast for my son. He sure loves it!

Egg, orange slice, turkey and ham sandwich!

Tonight, we plan to make another heart shaped dinner, maybe I'll post some more pictures tomorrow! It's nice to be able to go out for candlelight dinner. However, when you have a kid with bedtime at 7:30, it's really not much you can do. Since I do enjoy cooking, I guess these will have to do for now. It's also very rewarding when your kid's face light up after seeing the heart shaped cute breakfast that mommy made just for him! You can even hand the cookie cutters to the kids and have them help out! Enjoy your Valentine's Day!

New Year, New Hobby

2012-02-03T09:52:00.002-06:00

New year, new hobby, what's my recent obsession? Crochet and knitting! Before this recent rediscovery the fun with yarns; the last time I touched a pair knitting needles, I was still in high school! It's been a long time (Yes, I am old, don't mention it though)! Since Xmas, I've made 3 scarves, 1 infinite cowl, 1 cupcake coffee cozy, 1 valentine mug cozy. Too bad, I don't have pictures of all of them. But here's some that I have!

Infinite cowl


Kid's fun scarf


Valentine Heart Mug Cozy


Valentine Heart Mug Cozy on the mug

White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats

2011-09-29T10:32:00.000-05:00

I finally have another chance to try making more cookies. I've been wanting to make more cookies so I can try decorating them and I was so happy when I saw it was my kid's turn to bring snacks to school this Thursday. I was torn between making Halloween theme cookies and the rice krispie treats. So I asked my son what he'd like. He said rick krispie treats. Here we are with White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats. The original recipe was adapted from Cookies and Cups. I really like her creative ideas and her wonderful decorated cookies. I am not as good as she is but I hope at least my kid and her friends would appreciate the snacks that I made for them. My son even stayed up late because he wanted to help decorating the cookies. Did I mention that this is my first time making icing, decorating a cookie with piping bag, tips and all that. It didn't even cross my mind what if I fail piping the stitches. I am glad it turn out ok even though not perfect. But at least you can tell these are baseballs right?...I meant...you can right? Please tell me that you can!

I used the cocoa pebbles krispie treats recipe that I made the Spiders and Owls. I tripled the batch to have enough for 25 cookies. I also found out, if you are running short, you can actually put the scraps together in the mold and pressed it tight. I got 3 cookies out of scraps. Since I didn't have any white candy melts, I used white chocolate instead. To achieve the smooth consistency, I added 1/2 ts veg oil to the melted white chocolate. I did half batch with and half batch without the oil (the first half batch I didn't think about it). The 2nd half batch was much easier to coat the cookies as the white chocolate is much smoother.

White Chocolate Cocoa Pebbles Baseball Treats

Ingredients

25 Cocoa Pebbles Treats cookies
5 oz white chocolate melted (I use Ghirardelli classic white choc chips)
1C Meringue Powder Buttercream icing with red food coloring (I also added 2 drops of lemon extract in the icing, it smells wonderful)

Directions

I made the cocoa pebbles treats, let it cool, cut up, covered with white chocolate. Then I let these dry over night. On the 2nd night, I mix the red coloring into meringue powder buttercream and try piping for the first time. I thin down the icing with 1 TB of water while I was mixing color into it. It just seems a little bit too thick to me. It looks more for covering the cake rather than be using in the piping bag. Then I used the trick that I learned from Karen's cookies by putting icing on a piece of plastic wrap then into the piping bag. It's a lot easier than fill the piping bag with icing and much easier clean up too. I piped on the 2 lines first for all cookies then go back and add the stitching details. It was easier as the first 2 lines were already dry. I didn't have to worry about mess it up while adding the stitches. Well, they weren't perfect as Cookies and Cups' but hey it's my first time piping and I think it was OK.

Cocoa Pebbles with white chocolate

Lines added

Finished baseballs

Megan's first Major League Baseball Game - KC Royals

2011-09-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

Hubby won 4 tickets to the KC Royals game Tuesday night. So we took the whole family includes grandpa and Megan with us to the game. It was Megan's very first MLB game. It was a nice evening and a little chill after the Sun went down. Our seats were by the first base so it was pretty nice. Megan did really well through out the game. She finally had enough by 6th inning (way passed her bedtime). Poor baby just couldn't sleep as it was very loud. Every time she dozed off, Royals would score or a hit so the fans were cheering like crazy. Megan woke up and repeat. We finally decided to leave after 7th inning as Royals led by 4 to 0. Don had tons of fun too. He was shouting, clapping, booing at the end. A great night for the family!

Cocoa Pebbles Treats

2011-09-21T12:45:00.002-05:00

It's probably not a good idea to change hobby but hobby is a hobby right? Thinking about the recent years, I went from making Bucilla Xmas stockings to jewelry making to the latest - cookie making/decorating! I know my son would definitely enjoy my new hobby than the previous ones. So I left work early to have anniversary lunch with hobby at Pierponts at KC Union Station. The food was decent and prices seem reasonable as well. Maybe we were there for lunch so it wasn't as expensive as we expected. I happened to have a Groupon that I bought few weeks ago. We ordered Calamari, fried steak, coffee & ancho sirloin, ice tea and still have money left for a dessert. Hubby suggested ordering a creme brulee to go. I went home and my boy just came back from school. He was hungry. So he ate part of his daddy's fried steak and the creme brulee for dessert. I asked him to give me a bite, he said no, it's mine! I guess the creme brulee was very good! He did share with grandpa though, grandpa is always his favorite person!

Since I was totally in the cookie making mode. I picked up my daughter and went for shopping. First we stopped by Hobby Lobby and picked up the Hello Kitty cookie cutter. I plan to make some Hello Kitty cookies for my baby girl's first birthday. Then we headed to Michaels to check out more baking items as I have some 40% off coupons! I found a circle cookie cutter set, some popsicle sticks, and a Halloween mini cookie cutter set. Of course, I won't be using them all at once but I do plan to use them in the coming weeks! We also stopped by grocery store to pick up some necessary items that I needed to make the cocoa pebbles treats for. One thing that completely escaped my mind was that I was supposed to pick up my son an hour ago before my shopping ended. I called and was relief that my husband had already picked him up from his afternoon trip with grandpa.

The recipe for the Cocoa Pebbles Treats was adapted from Cookies and Cups. Of course I don't have everything that I needed i.e. tootsie rolls (never liked them). I used giant pink marshmallow for the fangs and beaks. You can see them in the pictures. I also don't feel like making so much sugar item at one time as normally only my son and I would eat the sweets that's not in form of cakes in my house. So I halved the recipe and came up with 7 cookies. I made 4 spiders and 3 owls. I also made 2 little stars out of the scraps and put them in a sandwich bag with a note that said - "You are my super star, I love you! Mommy" for my son. I left it at his seat on the dinning table so he would see that when he sits down for breakfast. Of course that made his morning

Monday night, we made some homemade Leeks and Pork dumplings for dinner. As usual that we used store bought wrappers. But we had some extra filling left. My dad mentioned it'd be nice if my mom was here so she could make some wrappers. I think to myself, why not? So I dig out my mom's recipes and found there's one for dumpling wrappers. I cut the recipe down to 1/4 and that was just enough for the fillings that we had left. Here's a picture of them after cooked!

Chinese Dumpling Wrapper

Ingredient:
4 C of all purpose flour
2C of water
1 ts salt

Instruction:
Mix all in a big bowl. Knead until a dough ball form. There shouldn't be any flour left in the bowl, flour shouldn't stick to hands nor the bowl. Dough itself looks smooth. Cover and let it rest for 30 mins to 1 hour. On lightly floured surface roll the dough into 1/2-3/4 inch thick stick. I only work on dough a little at a time and keep the rest covered. Once the stick is formed, cut it with a butter knife or dough cutter into 1/2 inch. Roll the 1/2 inch dough into ball and press down. Using rolling pin to roll them into circles. Make sure you keep dust some flour on them so they don't stick together. You can either cover them with a kitchen towel while you roll out the rest or make dumplings as you go. I made the dumplings as I go to avoid having to cover them or dry out.

Another busy weekend

2011-09-15T09:55:00.000-05:00

I love how I write about the weekends when the weekend is coming soon again! Life is busy with 2 kids, can't blame me right? :)

So what did we do in the past few days? We had some free Chick-Fil-A for breakfast on Saturday. After that, we headed to Sar-Ko-Par Park @ Lenexa, KS for the Spinach Festival. Do you know Lenexa was once hailed as the Spinach Capital of the World back in 1930s? I had no idea and I don't even notice anything special about spinach in Kansas. Anyway, the festival was full of arts, crafts, kiddo games, and fair food. We arrived just when the baby crawling contest about to start. I quickly registered Megan for it. She just woke up from a nap so needless to say...she had no idea what's going on and of course didn't win. Oh well, at least I had fun I guess. I assigned Don to take pictures of his little sister and he was too busy cheering for her and forgot about it. After the race, Don and I went around the kids zone and he played few games. He did beanie bag toss, ring toss, mechanic surfboard riding, and got a ghost draw on his arm. Since we had a circus to go in the afternoon, we didn't stay too long after that. Don did ride the surfboard like 50000 times though!

Saturday afternoon, we picked up Daddy from the house. Don, Daddy, and I headed to downtown KC for the Ringling Bros circus show. It was the 2nd time Don see a circus however it's the first time watching Ringling's. Don said it was the best show of his life! I guess it all makes sense as Ringling's claims that they are the GREATEST show on earth!

Heart attack weekend

2011-09-06T14:34:00.001-05:00

We had a fun and busy Labor Day weekend. It's a long weekend yet it felt so short when it's over. We didn't go anywhere on Saturday. We stayed home and I cleaned the house, made some BBQ chicken and cornmeal muffin. The cornmeal muffins that I made last time was so good so I decided to make it again but only use half of the recipe so we don't have too many leftover. One mistake I made...I cut everything in half but forgot to cut the sugar in half. The result...equally delicious but more like a dessert cornmeal muffins.

Sunday we planned to visit a restaurant that we've never been to in KCMO downtown area but the restaurant wasn't opened (we assumed it wasn't as no one answered the phone when we called). So we ended up going to Stroud's which is another restaurant that we've never been. Stroud's is famous for its pan fried chicken. They started back in 1936. The meal includes the chicken dish, 2 sides, a soup or salad, and cinnamon buns. We ordered chicken fried chicken, chicken platter (wing, thigh, leg, breast). The sides were fries, cottage fries, and green beans. We also got a soup and a salad to share between 4 of us. The chicken was crispy and juice. It also doesn't have any fat like you normally would see in other fried chicken. It's pretty tasty but not salty enough (we also usually eat pretty low in sodium). It's different than the regular fried chicken I'd say. The price is a bit high for fried chicken but it's like a special treat so once in awhile I think it's ok.

Chicken noodle soup, pretty yummy

Green beans, nothing special even it has meat in it.

Chicken Fried Chicken, pretty good

Cottage Fries

Fried Chickens, wing, leg, thigh, and breast

On Monday I made some BBQ ribs as a farewell to the summer. I marinated the ribs over night with my own creation of seasonings (see recipe below). Then I put it in crockpot on low for 4 hours. It cooked while kids and I were out shopping. I came home and saw it is about done and moved it to the grill for 20 mins or so while brushing more BBQ sauce on it. It turns out pretty well, meat is tender and juice, flavor is pretty well too.

BBQ Rib

Seasoning:
1 TB fresh minced ginger
3 cloves garlic (minced)
2 TBS Mrs Dash or your own favorite seasoning
2 TBS grounded coriander
1 TS cayenne pepper
1 TB dried bayleaf

Mix garlic and ginger, rub it on the ribs
Mix the rest of the seasonings, rub it on the ribs eventually, make sure you coat both sides
Leave the ribs in a covered container over night in the refrigerator.

On the day of grilling
Take the ribs out of the refrigerator and put it under boiler for 10 mins per side (450 F) so it browns on both sides. Then move the ribs to the crockpot for high 2 hours or low 4-5 hours.

In the crockpot add the following on top of ribs
1/2 cup of water or stock (I use water)
1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce (I use Baby Ray Honey BBQ sauce)
1/2 C - 1 C of ketchup

Grilling - prepare grill medium low then grill the ribs for 15-20 mins per side while brushing more bbq sauce on it. Dig in!

Catching Up

2011-09-01T15:13:00.004-05:00

Wow, almost 2 months gone by and I haven't even realized it and left this page unattended. It was a busy summer for sure. It's too short and a lot of fun. :)

We enjoyed the time that we spent seeing relatives and friends at sister in law's wedding. We definitely enjoyed the time that we spent together @ KS with mom. I truly missed my mom and my brother.

School has started again, Don is now officially a first grader. I can't believe how fast he's grown. He's improved a lot on his reading over the year. I believe he'll do fine in school.

Megan went from barely crawling since last post to now almost walking in short 2 months. She also finally got 1 baby tooth. She still eats like a champ and never seems having enough. She eats fruits (watermelon or cantaloupe and banana), pork rice porridge with veggies, organic baby yogurt with fruit or avocado everyday. She loves to eat everything else that we are eating but she's on a pretty good diet with our special homemade baby food for her.

The weather is finally cooling down a bit. I think I'll start baking again. I made some rib eye steak, garlic broccoli, mashed potato, and cornmeal muffin couple of days ago. But we were too hungry so we just ate without taking any picture. It was pretty good consider both kid and daddy at everything.

The cornmeal muffin was super easy, I don't think I'll ever go back to Jiffy ever again.

Here's recipe with modification from Sweet Cornbread.

Sweet Cornmeal Muffin

1 cup flour

1 cup cornmeal

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1 cup of milk

1/3 cup of butter (2/3 stick)(soften)

Cream both sugar and butter with electric mixer, add egg, salt, mix well, add milk, mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix well flour, cornmeal, baking powder.

Alternate mix wet mixture and dry mixture into another bowl (you can do this mix by hand, I use the electric mixer).

Let the batter sit for few minutes.

Prepare muffin tins, I lined mine with cupcake liners. Preheat oven to 400F. Fill the muffin tins 2/3 full (the batter should be enough for 12 regular size muffins). Bake @400F for 14-17 minutes or until the toothpick insert comes out clean. I baked mine for 16 minutes. If you are making mini muffin size, reduce the time to 12-14 minutes. Keep an eye on it, when it turns golden brown on top, it's ready. Store in an air tight containers for up to 3 days. Enjoy!

July

2011-07-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how the time flies by this year. Suddenly we've passed the half year mark. In couple of more weeks, my mom, brother, and sister in law will be here visiting. We'll all go down to Texas for my other sister in law's wedding. It's going to be fun. I miss Texas. I can't wait to see one of my best friend either. I haven't seen her in almost 2 years!

4th of July weekend, we were way busy on doing stuff in the house and out shopping. Totally forgot to take the picture of Megan in her 4th of July outfit. I guess the picture will have to wait a little longer. My weekends are packed from now until August. Oh well, busy is good I guess!

Love sidewalk sales

2011-06-24T16:37:00.002-05:00

I was never a big fan of sidewalk sales, I guess I just didn't have the need/urge to check out the good fines from sidewalk sales. I stopped by a local baby boutique (Mady & Me)'s sidewalk sale yesterday. All I can say is I wish that I had more time and I am glad I have a little girl. I got several outfits from CachCach for babies, Haute Baby, and couple other brands for a grand total $108! Can you believe that? 40-75% off rocks!

Here's one of the dress that I got for my baby girl

There's also a 4th of July Let's go fly a kite outfit that I really like. You'll just have to wait for pictures on that one! I love shopping for my baby girl, big sales makes it even better!

Lawrence, KS

2011-06-19T07:55:00.000-05:00

It was a fine Saturday afternoon. We've decided to go and visit Lawrence, KS as we've never been and we live just about 30 minutes away from it. Since we've never been there and didn't really have a chance to look up what's fun, what to do there. We took it as an adventure just get in the car and drive. I pulled up the gps on my phone and get a rough idea as where to. Technology is so nice these days.

We drove to Massachusetts Ave and decided to park the car and take a walk. There are many antique shops and way too many bars on Mass ave. It does have a great college town feeling which I kind of miss it these days. We walked for couple of blocks and saw a Starbucks. At this point, we were pretty hot. There was a ColdStone Creamery next to the Starbucks. I asked Don which one would he rather go, he picked Starbucks. We sent grandpa to get the car while we enjoyed the air condition and iced cold coffee/water at Starbucks. Don also wanted a Blueberry muffin so I got one for him. After he's halfway through the muffin, he asked me, mommy, can we go to next door after I am done with muffin? Ha ha ha....no, that's cheating Don, you can't get BOTH the muffin and the ice cream!

We took some pictures while relaxing at the Starbucks

Baby wants some coffee too! I dress her in Kaiya Eve's ruffle top, Gimboree's ruffle skirt, and 4th of July Toe Blooms

Mudpie Tres Jolie sun hat

Big brother and his loosing tooth smile

We saw some playground while driving around. Don wanted to play there so we stopped and took more pictures! It's a park near the Douglas County Court House.

Toe blooms

We went to Panda & Plum Garden for dinner. It's our first time there, the owner is pretty nice. They are a little over friendly in American's standard. They adored the 2 kids especially the Princess. It's a family business with 2 sisters, a brother. They found out that we were from Taiwan too so got very excited. They kept stopping by and chated (I think it's more like they want to see Megan). One of them fed Megan while the other one sneaked in a kiss on her cheek....Needless to say, I appreciate their friendliness but I had to give Megan a good bath after we came home. We didn't come home until 9pm last night. It was a pretty fun afternoon. We didn't have time to see other parts of Lawrence so I think many future trips will be possible.

I made some white chocolate macadamia nut cookies for hubby for Father's Day after kids went to bed. It's my first time making it and I think they turned out pretty well.

Megan's first "meaty" meal

2011-06-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

My mom kept suggesting to start my daughter in real food. Which means, not just the veggies and fruit puree that she's been eating. She wants her granddaughter to eat meat, veggies, and rice! So here we have the pork rib rice porridge. Since I don't have any rice already cooked, I made the rice porridge in the rice cooker with some sweet potato. Then I cook pork rib soup with corns (for us). Once both are done, I picked out 3 small pieces of meat and chopped them up. I put the meat into the rice sweet potato porridge and added some finely chopped leafy green and cooked it for another 10 mins or so. I let it cool a little bit and gave Megan a little bit to taste. She seemed really like it. Even I tried, it's still too much porridge that she won't be able to finish all in 2 days. So I put them in Baby Bullet's freezer container and freeze them! I really think that I made a good decision on buying the baby bullet system. It's pretty handy!

Pork rib rice porridge in baby bullet freezer tray

Rice porridge (left), peach pear puree (right) in baby bullet mini cups

Weston, MO

2011-06-15T13:23:00.001-05:00

We finally decided to make a trip to visit The Red Barn Farm in Weston, MO over the weekend. We left home late morning so we decided to have lunch first then visit the farm. As soon as we stepped into the historic downtown area of Weston, MO. It felt that we entered a different world. Everything was so pretty and different. Even the road signs looked nice (too bad that I didn't take picture). We decided to have our lunch at Avalon Cafe which is one of the restaurants in Weston with great reviews. Avalon Cafe was the White Lace house back in 19th century. It was restored in 1994 and became Avalon Cafe. The outside of the house is still white and full with flowers/plants around it.

Inside it has 4 dinning area and 1 outdoor patio dinning area. Each dinning can sit about 8-15 people. It was small but nice.

We ordered an Avalon Salad (greens with heart of palms, artichoke hearts, blue cheese, roasted almonds, strawberry, and cantaloupe) ,

Shrimp and Sausage pizza,

and Filet of Beef Tenderloin with roasted golden potato, sweet potato, purple cabbage, saute mushroom, snow peas, beans, and bourbon sauce.

We went down to the downtown street for a walk after the meal. There's an old hotel called The Saint George Hotel which opened in 1845.

Don and I also visited the museum but didn't take any pictures. Other than lots of antique shops, couple of hardware stores, and couple more bars, there weren't much in the downtown area. We did find a little park with fountain, it was pretty and nice. But a couple were picnic right next to the fountain so I couldn't take any pictures.

We finally decided to head to The Red Barn Farm. It was just few minutes from downtown. The view was great, it was pretty. A big farm with a country store, a house, a hen den, some geese, some goats, horses, apple trees, strawberry field, etc. Here are some pictures of my beautiful children in the farm.

The Hen Den

Papa goose doesn't want use get close to his babies!

T-bone game

2011-06-09T19:04:00.000-05:00

We went to the KC T-Bone game today for work picnic. We all had a lot of fun. The weather was pretty nice, hot but with breeze. We found seats in the shade after picnic. Megan managed to take a nap so we stayed awhile. Don enjoyed cotton candy. That's his #1 favor at ballparks.

I made carrot and sweet potato puree for Megan yesterday. She had puree with Stonefield's baby yogurt for dinner tonight. I think she really likes it. I also mix in some rice cereal for extra nutrients. The baby yogurt is whole milk with peach puree. It actually tastes pretty good. The only weird thing about it is that her poop would have a light peach yogurt smell the next day (it actually doesn't smell bad). Don had spaghetti and meatball last night. I added lots of veggies into the sauce - tomato, shredded carrot, red bell pepper, onion, mushroom. Here's some pictures.

steamed carrot and sweet potato

carrot and sweet potato puree mix

Spaghetti and meatballs

D & M

D with Sizzle

Baby Bullet

2011-06-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

So what is a Baby Bullet? It's actually a baby food processor/blender. It's made by the same company as Magic Bullet. My baby is 7 months old, I finally ordered my baby bullet when she was about 6.5 months. I am glad that I did. My mini food processor isn't small enough to make the smallest amount of the food for her. The short cup makes about 4 oz baby food each time. Which is enough for her for 2 days.

I've also found out that Baby Bullet is available at Bed Bath & Beyond now, so get a 20% off coupon if you are going to get one!

I've made blueberry puree, green bean and peach puree, avocado puree, pear puree with it so far. I also make banana puree, or applesauce but I just use a spoon and a mesh strainer for those.

Batch Bowl

Individual storage cups

Short cup & Storage cups

Avocado puree and green bean puree

First post

2011-06-08T14:18:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about writing my own blog for awhile. I probably won't have the time to write it daily but I'll try at least few times per week. I haven't decided what I am going to write about but most likely it'll be around the kids, cooking, and maybe vacation/traveling. I might also do some products review based on my own experience after using them.