I am again saved by meal prepping or advanced cooking today. I was running late into preparing lunch for my kids so I decided to get one of my freezer meals which is Pork Patang Humba.

I heated up this dish that I cooked in the Instapot some four days ago. Patang humba is a favorite in our household. This one though has a twist! I meant it to become like a sliced Pata Tim style of cooking but I forgot to put star anise and I ran out of kailan and bok choi (pak choi), so it became a humba instead.

Anyway, the good news is my family still liked it. My biggest baby insisted that it is Humba, and so as long as he eats well, then so be it. It is Humba then!

Super Easy Instapot Pork Humba Recipe

If you are wondering how to cook it, just tenderize the pork hocks or pata beforehand. Then make a sauce out of pineapple juice, brown sugar, dark soy, good quality oyster sauce, some pepper and laurel leaves.

Simmer the sauce in your Instapot, then add the pork hocks. Cancel the ‘saute’ mode, and pressure cook on high for 12-15 minutes depending on how much hocks you are cooking. Wait for your Instapot to display LO10 at least before releasing pressure. As for me I just leave it to naturally release steam so that the hocks could sip in more of the flavors of the braising liquid.

If your family likes sticky sauce, then get the hocks out of the Instapot and add slurry to the braising liquid, and bring it to a boil. Season the sauce to taste, and adjust according to your preference — you may put in more sugar if you want or salt if you think it needs more. Do what makes you happy!

Traditional humba recipe cooked in the instapot!

Of course, as I always say, if you want to stock some freezer meals in your refrigerator, then all you have to do is to double up the recipe. Freeze the other batch in a freezer-safe zip loc container label it with the dish’s name and the date of packing, and you are all set. You will have instant meals that are nutritious and budget friendly. No need to call for delivery yet!

Thank you for stopping by and if you are on the lookout for more easy recipes, hope you can check out our blog’s food, mealplans, and recipes section.

Food for the soul

At this point, I hope you could also allow me to share with you one of my favorite bible passages. It is from the Book of John:

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” JOHN 10:27-28

Thank you for spending time with me, and I hope you and your family will have a peaceful day ahead!

A happy homemaker is a Happy Pinay Mommy!

The post Saved by meal prep: Instapot Pork Patang Humba appeared first on Happy Pinay Mommy.

How to make easy pork siomai

How to Cook Easy Pork Siomai

How to cook easy pork siomai: The ingredients are easy to find!

• 500 grams ground pork
• 1 pack siomai wrapper
• 1/4 cup minced carrots, split into mixture ingredient and garnish
• 1/4 cup minced turnips
• 2 strips of spring onions finely chopped
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 1/2 cup cheese
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce (or more)
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 egg, beaten

1. Mix all of the ingredients except for the beaten egg and the wrapper.

Just mix all the ingredients (except the wrapper of course), you can use your hands to thoroughly mix it up. Fry a bit so you can taste the seasoning level, and then adjust the seasoning accordingly.

My daughter wraps siomai much better than me!

Bring steamer into a boil, brush your steamer with oil, arrange the siomai pieces and steam for about 20 minutes.

Tadaaaaa. Siomai that you can have anytime at home!

One of the reasons why I wanted to make homemade siomai, is that I could have siomai ready anytime for merienda or quick meals.

You can make about 36 pieces of siomai for every half a kilo of ground pork

The post Easy Pork Siomai Recipe appeared first on Happy Pinay Mommy.

Weekly Meal Plan for July 6-12, 2015. Photo Credits

Hi Fellow Mommies!

Pardon the 36-hour delay of posting of our Weekly Meal Plan. I hope this post is not too late to help you plan out your meals for the coming week. It was a very busy week in the home front for me as my whole family is still reeling from the flu we all contracted the other week. (You may want to read this if your baby has colds right now)

Anyway, without further ado, here is our Weekly Meal Plan for July 6-12:

Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan July 6-12, 2015

Related Posts:

• A Busy Mom’s Guide to Preparing Daily Meals
• Previous Meal Plans for the Week
• Seven Ways to Save on Grocery Shopping
• Happy Breakfasts for Kids
• Cooking with Toddlers

Anyway, about the meal plan, I am really craving for tinolang halaan, but I really do not know which supermarket carries it fresh. Maybe I just miss those Sunday lunches when after my mom comes home from her weekly palengke shopping at Farmer’s Market, we would have either the tinolang halaan, or the hilabos na talangka.

I do not even know if I could do that for my family. Oh well, in time.

I ventured into putting in Palitaw as one of this week’s meryenda, because I have always wanted to have a palitaw making activity with Achi. I have always enjoyed making palitaw and bilo-bilo with my inay back then, but since I do not know how to make ginataang bilo-bilo yet, the next best thing is making palitaw. Apparently, you can just buy the glutinous rice flour from Shopwise, have coconut shavings from there as well, and buy sesame seeds. I am so excited, because i am sure Achi will enjoy rolling and flattening those glutinous rice balls!

Anyway, most of the meryendas i included for this week can be store-bought, as I have yet to acquire my dream oven. In time, fellow mommies, you will just notice that I am suddenly posting baking experiments and channeling my inner Anna Olson. When that happens, #alam niyo na.

Till our next meal plan, ladies!

Here is a video you may want to check out, cooking my cravig du jour, tinolang halaan:

https://happypinaymommy.com/2015/06/21/where-can-you-buy-cloth-diapers-in-manila/

The post Happy Pinay Mommy’s Weekly Meal Plan #4 appeared first on Happy Pinay Mommy.

Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan #2. Photo Credits

Hi Mommies,

As promised, here is our weekly meal plan for next week. Hopefully it would guide you on what to shop for this weekend, and batch cook (if you are into it) for the coming week.

Like what i usually say, i try to include meals with ingredients that are already in our pantry of freezer to be able to save on grocery shopping.

Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan Number 2

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Related Posts:

Meal Planning 101

A Busy Mom’s Guide to Meal Preparation

Cheap and Cheerful Lunches for Kids

Quick Meryenda Ideas

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I try to include as much vegetables as i can, and i figured one of the best ways to incorporate veggies so that they could be eaten by my little familia is to incorporate a lot in the main meals, like in sinigang or tinola. Instead of just putting in sayote i try hard to put in malunggay and sayote, and in sinigang, all the veggies that can be cooked with it like gabi, talong, kangkong, and raddish. I also try hard to include a lot of meatless meals (i have here some recipe for meatess meals), in my meal plan for the week.

As usual i am trying hard to have healthy and quick breakfast for the family. I want of course my whole family to have nutritious food. Ill try harder next time to commit to a week of no convenience food, but as a part-time work from home mom with no help this feat is kinda hard, so feel free to substitute healthier recipes.

Here’s a video of one of my favorite TV Chefs Claire Robinson preparing a yummy bacon and egg salad. Will try this soon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhXx7khyTDk

10 meals in less than 20 minutes

The post Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan #2 appeared first on Happy Pinay Mommy.

As promised, ill be sharing with you my weekly meal plan to help you in your daily food preparation in the coming week.

Ill try hard to post my weekly meal plan every thursday or friday, in time for your  your grocery shopping for the weekend.

A Weekly Meal Plan makes it easy for us to prepare food for the family. Photo Credits

A few disclaimers though:

Like what i said my post on meal preparation (which you by the way, can read here), we are still a work in progress when it comes to eating nutritious meals. I try hard to incorporate as much vegetables and fish as i can, but i am only human that i still fall for convenience foods in my meal planning activities. Hopefully you could see progress in the weekly meal plans that i will be posting. The operative word, dear mommies, is HOPEFULLY.

ALSO, not everything in the meal plans i will be posting are made from scratch. As you may already now know, i don’t have help so i take advantage of delicious and HOPEFULLY nutritious convenience foods. I will endeavor to let you know which of the meals here are convenience foods.

It will also include left-overs for some meals so that we don’t waste food. Typically if we like the viand, we are okay with eating it again

So without further ado, here is my weekly meal plan number 1:

Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan number one

Hopefully, this will help you can just print this out if you and your family will like the meals that are in there :)The convenience food that are included in this weekly meal plan are the following:

1. Mamon, Lava Cake, Oatmeal with Choco Chip Cookies– we don’t have an oven so i definitely could not bake these myself. Soon oven, soon.

2. Longganisa — We love this brand that sells Regional Longganisa

3. Bottled Sardines — The Spanish Tomato Sardines are just yummy and comforting whether with rice or pandesal.

4. Corned Beef — Hihi we just love a brand of chili corned beef with white label

5. Vienna Sausage for the french toast breakfast

6. Tocino (we like the young, fatless and salitre-free tocino endorsed by one happy comedian)

7. Of course a healthy convenience food — YOGURT

8. Canned Tuna for the pasta meal

I hope you could also stop by the COOKING page of my website, for some easy to prepare meals. also wrote about saving up on grocery shopping, and you may wanna check it out here, and for the Pinoy Market version, you may check out the money-saving tips here.

Hope you could share as well your easy to cook recipes with us, just like what i did here.

What is your go-to recipe?

Here’s a Youtube video of one of my favorite chefs, the very down-to-earth boy logro cooking our family comfort food — SINIGANG:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN9zYWs2klw

A Busy Mom’s Guide to Daily Meal Preparation

The post Happy Pinay Mommy Weekly Meal Plan #1 appeared first on Happy Pinay Mommy.

Save time and money with meal planning. Make it a regular habit and you will have lower grocery bills, and you will not fret as to what to cook for a specific meal and day.

Meal Planning continues to be one of my friday night or saturday morning rituals. i always want to make sure there is enough food and ingredients in the house for the rest of the week because for me, doing grocery errands in the middle of the week, is not just a hassle — it is an expensive chore that makes me buy things that are not within the budget. (related story: seven ways to save on grocery shopping)

So as a working mom, coming up with a meal plan, has some sort of became a form of discipline for me. Plus, it guides on me on what items i should be buying in the grocery. you may also want to check out out meal preparation guide for busy moms here, where meal planning plays a big role.

Some years ago, me and my fellow working moms in the office ( i have written about these ladies here), have lunch and talk about our meal plan and the recipes that are involved. We usually exchange recipes, and the fun part is we bring over ‘meals’ during our mini-pot lucks every end of the month so we can sample each other’s specialties. If you are clueless about quick recipes to prepare, i have some here)

Meal Planning as a Discipline

Meal planning also helps you stick to healthier food alternatives. You can schedule healthy meals daily (or every other day), and by re-reading your list, you can check yourself if you’ve been eating too much red meat or processed food. If you or anyone in your family is following a strict diet due to health or fitness reasons, meal planning will also help you stick to that diet.

In my case, it also gives me a peace of mind. Peace of mind knowing that i wouldn’t be rushing every morning to decide on Little’s lunch for DC, what H and I are having for breakfast, what id be bringing to the office for lunch, and what id be reheating for dinner. I say reheating because we do batch cooking every weekends. It also saves money because you save on take out/delivery/eat out options knowing that you have food at home.

Besides, meal planning is not rocket science, and most western moms have their own way of coming up with one. Some go to their trusted websites for recipes to try, some scour their recipe files, some do recipe exchanges during forums or IRL discussion with friends.

Tips in Meal Planning

For me, i start it off by examining the Ref/Freezer and pantry for food that can be cooked for the coming week’s meals. after that i then encode the meals on my meal plan. I also consult Little and H for meals that they may like this coming week, and of course, ask myself, what id like to eat.

From there i derive my grocery list, then head to the grocery, and do batch cooking during weekends.

in my case, i write on a notebook all the recipes we usually cook so that i could just easily choose during meal planning sked.

this week this is what we are having. 6 Breakfasts: omelette, red egg and tomatoes, fried eggplant and spanish sardines, pancakes and sausage, bacon and egg, sauteed spicy tuna over white rice/toast.

Here is a sample meal plan you can have for your family meals next week.

Meals, simplified.

Since i don’t have help, our lunch is also our dinner. So here are the 6 meals: Tuna penne pasta, tofu and mushroom in oyster sauce, pork belly sinigang, Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Pasta, Little’s Milky Macaroni and Bacon, and the last one probably bolognese pasta or EAT OUT.

I also have emergency staple meals at home that i make whenever I am in super rush or there’s suddenly some company in the house.

So if you don’t do meal planning, i strongly encourage you to give it a try. it will also make the kids and your husband more involved in the meal planning so that you’d not be left all alone wondering what to feed them.

So what is your strategy to simplify meal prep for your family?

Here is a video of one of my favorite chefs, Chef Boy Logro, cooking a great freezer meal, the pork adobong tuyo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW_zGNAVX9k

Club 501

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