My parents recommended getting an Instant Pot during the holidays. Apparently, the thing is all the rage and my parents had had an asian branded version for years and just kept it in storage. One my mom's friends said they should break it out and try it and since then, my parents have never put it away.
So I got my own. I love that you can do so much with it. It's mainly a pressure cooker, but you can saute in it and use it as a slow cooker. I have only started to use it for a couple of months and still not regularly, but even with my limited experience, I am very please with it. Here are a list of things I've done with it:
Hard boiled eggs. I will never cook hard boiled eggs in any other way again! The shells are SO easy to peel off!
Spaghetti squash. I stick the squash in whole with some water and set it to 30 minutes and make the sauce in the meantime. After that, just cut the softened squash open, scoop out the strands and mix with the sauce. Easy peasy!
Braised beef. Get some nice, fatty beef and saute it in some sugar until caramelized. Then add some sauces and cook until tender, for us it was about an hour. I used ingredients to make a red-cooked beef: http://redcook.net/2008/04/28/red-cooked-beef/
I also used the braised beef to make beef noodle soup. Just add noodles in and cook for about half the recommended noodle cooking time.
I've also cooked steamed veggies in it. We were having Jamie Oliver's milk chicken and I dumped a couple of packets of steaming veggies with sauce into the Instant Pot and within a few minutes of cooking time, they were ready!
The last thing I made were salmon and asparagus packets. Basically salmon over asparagus drizzled with a tiny bit of olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and wrapped in foil. I cooked the packets for 15 minutes and everything came out fairly perfectly!
Going forward, I am itching to try out some pasta recipes and the yogurt function. It supposedly can also make jiu niang, which is this fermented glutinous rice dish that is wonderful in the winter with a poached egg.
Yay for my Instant Pot!
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Pothos
I am a killer of plants. I have killed so many plants, it's impossible to say how many I've killed. I do not have a green thumb, but I keep trying anyways! There is one plant that I have yet failed to kill and that is my pothos plant.
It has survived in my bedroom despite low light conditions and severe neglect. I have forgotten to water it for a month or so, often forgot to open the shades to give it light and basically ignored it for a good long while. The leaves got droopy, but it is still alive! I finally got around to watering it recently.
So I just want to say that if you have got a black thumb like it do, give the golden pothos a try! It's otherwise known as Devil's Ivy.
It has survived in my bedroom despite low light conditions and severe neglect. I have forgotten to water it for a month or so, often forgot to open the shades to give it light and basically ignored it for a good long while. The leaves got droopy, but it is still alive! I finally got around to watering it recently.
So I just want to say that if you have got a black thumb like it do, give the golden pothos a try! It's otherwise known as Devil's Ivy.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Not been cooking regularly
Since having the baby, I've not cooked regularly. At times, I have the time, but no energy. My parents brought a lot of food the first month and pretty regularly after that, but it's still not like we were getting a home-cooked meal every night and day. So the hubby and I ate a lot of delivery. We are lucky that the delivery places in our neighborhood are so varied and delicious! Even so, after a while, you get tired of it.
So I've been slowly trying to get back into the habit of cooking more regularly. I even tried this food delivery service, Plated.com, for a while. The company creates weekly recipes and you can choose which ones you want and they will deliver the ingredients, pre-portioned, to your door. What I realized was that the cook times are a bit deceptive. It doesn't include food prep time. So if you don't have knife skills and are trying to mince the garlic and ginger, the start to finish time may be longer than the stated time in the recipe. Same with the whole washing of the veggies. Still, the cook times are pretty accurate and the recipes have been very enjoyable so far. I still don't think I can manage to cook every night, but I would like to cook at least twice a week. The nicest thing about this service is that it allows me to try using ingredients I don't normally use. It has a fairly wide variety of recipes and we have enjoyed eating most of the dishes so far.
Cooking just twice a week is a rather low bar considering there are seven days in a week. However, that makes it easy to exceed expectations. I have been enjoying cooking when I can, and trying not to beat myself up too much when I can't. It's a work in progress and I just have to keep working at it.
Since time and energy has been an issue, that means that the recipes I'm willing to make are limited. Anything that's fast, easy and uses up a limited amount of dishes becomes very, very appealing. I also don't want to make anything that requires a lot of prepping. The best kinds of recipes are the kind where I just dump everything into a pot and it's ready to serve in 30 minutes.
A recent favorite is baked fish over veggies. Just line a baking sheet with some vegetables and put a fillet of fish on top. Salt and pepper everything and drizzle everything with some olive oil and bake at 350 degrees F. until the fish is done. Depending on the thickness of the fish, this can take anywhere between 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Ta da! Dinner is served!
One pot pastas are also a recently loved discovery. Just dump everything into a big pot and stir and stir until the pasta is done. There are plenty of recipes online, but just make sure to get the amount of water to pasta correct. It is also important to stir almost constantly to keep the pasta from sticking.
Well, I hope other parents of young children have had better luck than us on this front. Best of luck and happy cooking!
So I've been slowly trying to get back into the habit of cooking more regularly. I even tried this food delivery service, Plated.com, for a while. The company creates weekly recipes and you can choose which ones you want and they will deliver the ingredients, pre-portioned, to your door. What I realized was that the cook times are a bit deceptive. It doesn't include food prep time. So if you don't have knife skills and are trying to mince the garlic and ginger, the start to finish time may be longer than the stated time in the recipe. Same with the whole washing of the veggies. Still, the cook times are pretty accurate and the recipes have been very enjoyable so far. I still don't think I can manage to cook every night, but I would like to cook at least twice a week. The nicest thing about this service is that it allows me to try using ingredients I don't normally use. It has a fairly wide variety of recipes and we have enjoyed eating most of the dishes so far.
Cooking just twice a week is a rather low bar considering there are seven days in a week. However, that makes it easy to exceed expectations. I have been enjoying cooking when I can, and trying not to beat myself up too much when I can't. It's a work in progress and I just have to keep working at it.
Since time and energy has been an issue, that means that the recipes I'm willing to make are limited. Anything that's fast, easy and uses up a limited amount of dishes becomes very, very appealing. I also don't want to make anything that requires a lot of prepping. The best kinds of recipes are the kind where I just dump everything into a pot and it's ready to serve in 30 minutes.
A recent favorite is baked fish over veggies. Just line a baking sheet with some vegetables and put a fillet of fish on top. Salt and pepper everything and drizzle everything with some olive oil and bake at 350 degrees F. until the fish is done. Depending on the thickness of the fish, this can take anywhere between 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Ta da! Dinner is served!
One pot pastas are also a recently loved discovery. Just dump everything into a big pot and stir and stir until the pasta is done. There are plenty of recipes online, but just make sure to get the amount of water to pasta correct. It is also important to stir almost constantly to keep the pasta from sticking.
Well, I hope other parents of young children have had better luck than us on this front. Best of luck and happy cooking!
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Some things I learned with my first baby
The first year with my baby was grueling. There were many things I had to learn and expectations to let go of. There were times when I felt like I was tested way beyond my capacity, stretched far too thin, and yet I am still here. I have survived thus far.
Depression is no joke. It was very hard for me to deal with everything and all the changes at once. I needed help - and I don't mean just counseling. I mean I really needed solid help around the house and the baby, which I wasn't getting at first. Spending hours scouring the internet for advice also didn't help.
So the first thing I had to come to terms with was the state of the house. The place was going to get messy and disorganized. Things I had planned on reorganizing or fixing up were probably not going to get done and I need to learn to just leave it alone indefinitely, for when I finally do have the time and energy.
The next thing was that just because there is time to do something, doesn't mean I have the energy to do it, or that I should do it. Yes, there is laundry to fold and yes, there is food to cook. However, giving birth and taking care of a baby all day and night, every day, took a lot out of me. I had to learn to be okay with just grabbing clothing from the clean pile and folding them whenever I got around to it and my husband and I ended up ordering out way more often than I'd like to admit.
I also need to think of myself. This is something I still struggle with. Whenever my husband would force me out of the house to get a break, I would spend my time shopping for the baby or I would rush back to check on the baby. That is not a break. That is me unable to let go of the guilt I felt for wanting a life outside of my child. It's not healthy and I still find it hard to think of myself without feeling some bit of guilt. I need to learn that taking care of myself doesn't mean I'm not taking care of anybody else. I need to really learn to understand that taking care of myself means I can better care for others, and that making sure that I'm mentally and emotionally healthy doesn't mean that I'm taking something away from my family wellbeing. I can say all of this logically, but I don't feel it, so that is something I need to continue to work on.
Then there's the baby. She cried a lot. She cried so much that I felt like there was almost never a time when I wasn't hearing her cry. In fact, she would be fast asleep according to the baby monitor and I would be in the basement trying to not hear her noises and I would still be imagining that I can hear her screaming. It was horrible. I heard her even when I wasn't hearing her. I still do that at times, but it is getting better. My biggest issue with depression was that she cried so much, and it was one of my triggers. I can't stand hearing her scream or cry, which babies do a lot.
The thing is, she wasn't colic. She just had a lot of opinions and objections. She was easily over-stimulated, and she'd cry if she felt like she wasn't entertained enough or getting enough constant attention. She felt that she needed to be held and rocked ALL THE TIME! The clinginess was truly horrible. Our initial mistake was giving in to her all the time. In retrospect, we may have encouraged some bad habits that didn't encourage independent play, but I feel that we have since worked to correct that... at least a little bit. She can play by herself now as long as either I or my husband is close by.
She is fun to be with now. She is no longer some creature that only takes and never gives back. She is interactive now. She giggles and smiles and teases us back. She lays her head on us and blows us kisses. She toddles around babbling happily and loves trying to steal my smartphone. She is, so far, well-behaved in restaurants and loves getting attention from strangers. She is still annoying sometimes, but I feel much more connected to her now than when she was first born. I feel like after her first birthday, she has really blossomed into a person I can relate to.
I am still exhausted all the time, but not nearly as exhausted as when I had to wake up every hour or two to feed her. I feel like I desperately need a vacation where all I do is sleep all day and be left alone. "Alone time" is hard to come by, if at all. That is another thing I have had to learn to live without. However, I plan to get this one back eventually.
Depression is no joke. It was very hard for me to deal with everything and all the changes at once. I needed help - and I don't mean just counseling. I mean I really needed solid help around the house and the baby, which I wasn't getting at first. Spending hours scouring the internet for advice also didn't help.
So the first thing I had to come to terms with was the state of the house. The place was going to get messy and disorganized. Things I had planned on reorganizing or fixing up were probably not going to get done and I need to learn to just leave it alone indefinitely, for when I finally do have the time and energy.
The next thing was that just because there is time to do something, doesn't mean I have the energy to do it, or that I should do it. Yes, there is laundry to fold and yes, there is food to cook. However, giving birth and taking care of a baby all day and night, every day, took a lot out of me. I had to learn to be okay with just grabbing clothing from the clean pile and folding them whenever I got around to it and my husband and I ended up ordering out way more often than I'd like to admit.
I also need to think of myself. This is something I still struggle with. Whenever my husband would force me out of the house to get a break, I would spend my time shopping for the baby or I would rush back to check on the baby. That is not a break. That is me unable to let go of the guilt I felt for wanting a life outside of my child. It's not healthy and I still find it hard to think of myself without feeling some bit of guilt. I need to learn that taking care of myself doesn't mean I'm not taking care of anybody else. I need to really learn to understand that taking care of myself means I can better care for others, and that making sure that I'm mentally and emotionally healthy doesn't mean that I'm taking something away from my family wellbeing. I can say all of this logically, but I don't feel it, so that is something I need to continue to work on.
Then there's the baby. She cried a lot. She cried so much that I felt like there was almost never a time when I wasn't hearing her cry. In fact, she would be fast asleep according to the baby monitor and I would be in the basement trying to not hear her noises and I would still be imagining that I can hear her screaming. It was horrible. I heard her even when I wasn't hearing her. I still do that at times, but it is getting better. My biggest issue with depression was that she cried so much, and it was one of my triggers. I can't stand hearing her scream or cry, which babies do a lot.
The thing is, she wasn't colic. She just had a lot of opinions and objections. She was easily over-stimulated, and she'd cry if she felt like she wasn't entertained enough or getting enough constant attention. She felt that she needed to be held and rocked ALL THE TIME! The clinginess was truly horrible. Our initial mistake was giving in to her all the time. In retrospect, we may have encouraged some bad habits that didn't encourage independent play, but I feel that we have since worked to correct that... at least a little bit. She can play by herself now as long as either I or my husband is close by.
She is fun to be with now. She is no longer some creature that only takes and never gives back. She is interactive now. She giggles and smiles and teases us back. She lays her head on us and blows us kisses. She toddles around babbling happily and loves trying to steal my smartphone. She is, so far, well-behaved in restaurants and loves getting attention from strangers. She is still annoying sometimes, but I feel much more connected to her now than when she was first born. I feel like after her first birthday, she has really blossomed into a person I can relate to.
I am still exhausted all the time, but not nearly as exhausted as when I had to wake up every hour or two to feed her. I feel like I desperately need a vacation where all I do is sleep all day and be left alone. "Alone time" is hard to come by, if at all. That is another thing I have had to learn to live without. However, I plan to get this one back eventually.
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Goals for the new year
As per tradition, people like to make resolutions when the new year begins. I am no exception, and like many people, I often don't follow through. However, the new year is a time of optimism and there is nothing wrong with beginning a year with optimism. So here are my resolutions for this coming year.
- Lose 10 pounds
- Cook more than twice a week regularly
- Do something for myself, by myself at least once every two weeks
- Feel better enough to stop therapy
- Exercise at least 15 minutes each day
- Get baby to be okay with playing alone in a room for extended periods of time
- Get baby socialized by enrolling in more classes
- Learn to cook more of my mother's dishes
That's all I got for now.
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