The Household COO

Welcome to my blog. These are the memoirs of an undomestic goddess who went from a high flying corporate career to stay-at-home-Mum. Join me as I learn about Chinese culture, how to cook and decorate a home. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This is a recipe adapted from one of the free recipes by The Sneaky Chef.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup plain flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 3/4 cup carrot and sweet potato puree (1 medium sweet potato, 3 medium carrots, 2-3 tablespoons water)
• 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter

Method:

1. Peel carrots and sweet potato and blend with water in a Vitamix.  (If you don’t have a high power blender, steam of boil them in water to soften them first).
2. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celcius and grease a muffin tin.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
4. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until well combined,
5. Whisk in the oil, sweet potato and carrot puree and peanut butter.
6. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet and mix until flour is just moistened (don’t over-mix or the muffins will be dense).
7. Scoop about two to three tablespoons of batter into the large muffin cups until half full.
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.  I think I should add that the Sneaky Chef recipes tend to over cook when following their recommended cooking times and temperatures.  The original cooking time was 25-30 minutes, but mine were done in less than 20.

Personally, I felt this recipe was a little too “healthy” tasting for something that is supposed to be health food in disguise.  If I had to make them again, I would:

• add some walnuts
• add a little more sugar or top them with cream cheese frosting
• replace the whole wheat flour with plain flour.

As it is, I don’t think I’ll be in any hurry to try this one again.

A couple of nights ago, we were having dinner at Nandos in The Alpha Angle.  While waiting for our food to arrive, I suddenly had an attack of the cravings – something I hadn’t felt since I was in my first trimester.  Anyway, the craving was for cake and upstairs, conveniently, was Secret Recipe.  To be quite frank, whenever I think of Secret Recipe, I think of cheesecake.  Not any of their other cakes, but specifically cheesecake because I don’t like many of their other cakes.

Thinking it might have been the hunger pangs speaking to me in a rather unhealthy way, I thought I would wait until after dinner to see if I still wanted my cake.  Well, I did.  So off to Secret Recipe we went…

After looking through all the cakes on display, I settled for one called “Hazelnut Cheese”.  Since no one had ordered it, the cake was whole and I couldn’t see the inside but I figured the name “Hazelnut Cheese” left little to the imagine.  It was basically a hazelnut flavoured cheesecake with possibly some hazelnut pieces in it.  Sounded good to me.

Imagine my shock and surprise when this arrived:

This looks like a Hazelnut cream cake, not a cheese cake!  Rarely in my right mind do I ever order cream cakes because I don’t like cream.  I took the cake back and told them, “This isn’t a cheesecake.”

The staff replied, “Yes it is.”

Are you f***ing kidding me?  You call this a cheesecake?

“Oh, the cream is cream cheese,” they say.

Right… Let’s take a closer look at that “cream cheese”:

Let’s just give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it really is cream cheese frosting in there, that still doesn’t change the fact that this is NOT a cheesecake.  Carrot cakes have cream cheese frosting but that doesn’t make it a Carrot Cheesecake.

Some idiot in Secret Recipe really has no idea about cakes.  After that enormous letdown (hey, I’m pregnant with a craving for cheesecake, okay?), I don’t think I will be going back there again…

I’ve been bitten by another shopping bug…  I don’t know whether to get myself one a Baby KTan camouflage wrap:

An Ergo Sport baby carrier:

Or the Ergo Organic Blue baby carrier:

Ah… choices, choices, choices…

I am leaning more heavily towards the Ergo because of what I read about the Ergo being better designed to provide the correct sitting position for optimal hip, pelvis and spine growth.   That, and the fact that it transfers the baby’s weight to yor hips which is better for your back.

I like the Ergo Sport because the fabric is supposed to be lighter and more breathable – good for the warmer climate in this country.  But I like the pockets that the Ergo Organic blue has.  Plus, it’s blue – Gavin’s and my favourite colour.  I’m not particularly fond of black because it’s a mosquito magnet – not particularly attractive when we have to worry about dengue.

There are other colours to choose from, too.  So what should I get?

After reading about The Sneaky Chef for hubbies, I decided to try out one of the The Sneaky Chef recipes for children on my son. It was titled “Brainy Brownies” and contained spinach as one of the healthy ingredients.

Since I had excess spinach left over, I decided to try making my first ever “Green Smoothie” using the Vitamix. As it happened, the internet was down at the time so I couldn’t look up any useful “Green Smoothie
recipes so I came up with my own. It was surprisingly very palatable. Despite the very green colouring, I didn’t even notice the spinach flavouring in it.

Looks like I should make myself more Green Smoothies…

As odd as it might sound coming from a former vegetarian, I have been struggling to eat my veggies of late. Ever since I became pregnant, the thought of eating veggies makes me want to gag. Yeah, go figure… Anyway, this is an excellent way to sneak in those greens without wanting to throw up.

So here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup of spinach
• 20 Red Globe grapes
• 2 small bananas
• 1 Navel orange
• A handful of ice cubes

Method:

Blend everything in the Vitamix (starting on low speed and moving quickly to high speed) until smooth – use the tamper stick to push down the spinach as necessary.

Serve and drink.  Yum.

I’ve always griped about my hubby’s unhealthy approach to his diet – that and the fact that he seems to put on about as much weight as a pregnant woman whenever I get pregnant because he claims to have “cravings”.  Unfortunately, after the last pregnancy, I lost the weight but he didn’t.

Now that I am pregnant again, I do wish there were some way to get him to trade in his unhealthy snacks for something better.

And then my SIL2 told me about a book called “The Sneaky Chef” by Missy Chase Lepine.  It was actually in reference to the fact that my son is a picky eater and this might be the way to get him to eat his greens without having to go to war over it.  I was very intrigued when I heard that you could make chocolate cake with hidden veggies in it.  Goodness, why didn’t someone come up with this idea sooner?

Anyway, while visiting their website, I discovered there is also a book for the husbands:

The only pity is that the food is Western and my hubby is a Chinaman to the core.  He has to have rice in most meals and it has to be Chinese style rice – not risotto or biryani or whatnot.

And to be fair, he does eat his veggies. It’s just those damn in between meal snacks…