Yummy Homemade Breads And Pesto Sauce

My mil spent her entire day in the kitchen to whip up something really good for us last week. She started work at around 4pm and the work ended at 11ish pm.

Here are the products of her labor of love and her passion in cooking and baking:


3 jars of pesto sauce to be used as bread spread and for pasta. She made extra and stored a jar in the freezer so that we can eat it when she's away again soon.

3 loaves of purple sweet potato bread and 3 loaves of walnut-figs rye bread.

Essentially Homemade

Here's what I love having for breakfast :


Homemade multi-grain bread with homemade pesto sauce and homemade hazel nut bread spread. YUMS.... so yummy, so healthy, so homemade and chokefull of fibre and nutrients. Some of you will go "OMG, how can she swallow that stuff in the morning?" but iLove! I honestly prefer this to a packet of nasi lemak, kuih or curry puffs.

Homecooked Dishes And Homemade Bread

This is a backdated post.

My mil cooked these dishes the week before she left for Hong Kong:




Chinese basil leaves omelette.


Stir-fried celery, yellow capsicum, fresh lily bulbs and sweet peas.


Pork chop with big onions and green peas sauce.

On another night, she cooked these dishes:

1) 2 types of steamed minced pork (one is with egg and the other is with preserved veggie - toong choy)
2) stir-fried yam with dried shrimps. She wanted to cook the yam with pork ribs but found out at the eleventh hour that there's no more pork ribs!
3) 'tai yee mar kar lui' (braised gourd with dried shrimps, left over char siew from lunch and glass noodles. I have no idea why this dish is called tai yee mar kar lui, which literally means second aunty's daughter is getting married, when translated from Cantonese to English lol!.


Braised Pork Ribs With Organic Japanese Pumpkin and stir-fried leek flowers on another night...

The flesh of the organic Japanese pumpkin is dark orangy/redish. Very tasty and creamy.



2 loafs of pumpkin bread made from organic Japanese pumpkin, organic sunflower seeds and kampung chicken eggs (free range chicken).


2 loafs of orange bread. The ingredients are orange rind, 1 medium sized bottle of marmalade jam, butter, milk, flour and free range chicken eggs.

Now that she's away in HK again for a few months, I gotta start cracking my head again to whip up tasty dishes that will whet my 3 fussy eaters' appetite, sigh...

Red Wine Infused Cranberries And Walnut Rye Bread

My mil baked 3 loafs of red wine infused cranberries and walnut rye bread last week. It was one of the tastiest breads I had tasted. But the process of baking the bread is rather tedious and long. The day before, she made the first batch of dough and let it prove/ferment in the fridge for 17 hours. The following day, which was 17 hours later, she made another batch of dough and mixed it to the first batch and let them prove for another 45 minutes before putting the dough into the oven for baking. She also boiled the cranberries in a pot of red wine on a stove before adding the cranberries into the dough.

The final dough fermenting....

The delish bread, fresh from the oven. The aroma of hot bread fresh from the oven can really make your tummy rumble!



Bursting with red wine infused cranberries and walnuts. It's so tasty that we don't even have to put any jam or bread spread on the bread. Yesterday, she baked carrot bread with sunflower seeds. I hope she will bake this cranberry-walnut bread again this week!

Cakes And Breads Everyday

This week, here's what my mil baked :

2 loafs of organic Japanes pumpkin bread with sunflower seeds (I had forgotten to snap pix of the bread)...

Banana muffins....




A batch of crunchy butter almond flakes cookies....

.... which were polished off within 3 days.

And 2 days ago, she baked 3 loafs of rye bread with red wine infused cranberries and lots of walnuts. I shall pix of the bread in my next post.

On top of these, hubs' aunt baked these lemon-poppy seeds cuppies and carrot-walnut cuppies, all with reduced sugar and gave them to us.


Next week, she's going to bake strawberry swiss roll and a new type of bread. Oh gosh, there is NO way, absolutely NO way I can shed off the stubborn 2kg. I tell ya, my jelly belly is getting wobblier by the day!

Homemade Multi-Seeds And Grains Bread

Before my mum left, she made a loaf of multi-grain and seed bread using our Kenwood Breadmaker. She put in ground almonds, roasted green soya beans, chickpes, pumpkin seeds, pecan nuts, flaxseeds, wholemeal flour, an egg, milk powder, butter and lemon juice.

Verdict : smells and tastes very good. Very wholesome too! Goes very well with her homemade kaya.

My Wholesome and Simple Lunch

This is my lunch almost everyday. Homemade bread with Steffi's sugar-free peanut butter or kaya (LOVE kaya but don't always eat it as it's fattening), avocado or organic jams, sugar-free black sesame jam (another of my favourite) or tuna fish.

A ripe avocado in halves, ready to be scooped out to be spread on the bread or directly into our mouths (the gals love avocado).



I had this yesterday. Fresh Avocado on toasted homemade bread with peanut butter and organic strawberry jam. Thankfully Alycia and Sherilyn also love Avocadoes as they are very nutritious and packed with good oil, Vitamin E and other vitamins and minerals.


Read more about avocado here.

What's That Nice Smell?

A few days ago, I baked a loaf of bread for the gals. After I had returned from my morning jog, I quickly prepared the ingredients and dumped everything into my breadmaker so that the gals and I can have fresh hot bread for lunch.

When the bread was almost ready, the sweet aroma of bread wafted up from the storeroom next to the kitchen. It's as if one has walked into a bakery. Alycia asked me what the nice smell was towards lunch time and I brought her to the storeroom where the breadmaker was. She was delighted to see a fresh loaf of bread in the breadmaker.



The gals and I almost wolfed down the whole loaf of bread for lunch.

Healthy Homemade Nutty Cheddar Cheese Bread

First, just measure and dump all the ingredients into my breadmaker.



All the healthy bread ingredients in the breadmaker.



Add in a small wedge of smoked cheddar cheese from HK.



Switch on my Sanyo breadmaker and ......



2 hrs 40 mins later..... a delicious fragrant loaf of nuttylicious bread, just in time for lunch.

I was in a mood to bake this morning so after I came back from jogging, I quickly baked a loaf of 'healthy nutty cheddar cheese bread' for the gals just before they woke up. Took me only 20 minutes to gather and measure all the ingredients and another 5 minutes snapping the pix. Even dumped in 2 tablespoons of my gals' Sustagen chocolate milk powder for added calcium and DHA/ARA and protein. Instead of putting the usual 2 tablespoons of butter, I substituted it with 1 tbs of butter and 1 tbs of cheddar cheese that sil no. 2 brought back from HK on Monday. The result.... a yummilicious, nutty, cheesy, chewy bread that both my gals couldn't stop asking for more to munch for lunch.