Easy One Pot Pasta

Again, I repeat myself, being a full time working mom (FTWM), I am always on a constant lookout for yummilicious one pot meal where my boys and husband can get all the right nutrients in one dish; carbs, proteins, vitamins, irons etc etc

I came across in IG where a fellow IG-ers shared a one pot pasta. It looks delish! Replicated the same dish over the weekend, knowing Zachary loves pasta with his cheese. In my attempt to fatten him up, he needed more carbs and proteins for muscle built up. Since the last bout of hospitalisation, he is now at 15.6kg which is too too too light for a 6 year old.

It is really easy! Throw everything in a pot, pour in sufficient water, depending on how much broth you want for your pasta. Let it boil/cook for 15 minutes. Voila > good looking and delicious meal.

Don't you love the colors of it? I used smoked duck (bought from Mmmm), tomatoes on vines, basil leaves and mushrooms. You can add other ingredients of your choice, i.e chorizo, meats like chicken, pork. Basil gives the dish the extra oompphh.

Dish out and serve with grated parmesan!

On top of the pasta dish we had, I bought these bamboo clams from Sheng Siong for $18. It was way cheaper from what we usually eat at seafood places like Jumbo or Seafood Paradise. I split the batch to two; one steamed with mirin, garlic and ginger and another stir fry with chilli paste.

Meal Planning & Air Fried Pork Chop

Sorry for the lack of updates. Being a FTWM (Full Time Working Mum) is no mean feat! Now that my boys stopped going to my trusted babysitter's place, my MIL came to my house on a daily basis (weekdays) to help look see look see my boys as well as cook/monitor my helper to cook dinner. Planning what to cook on a daily basis falls on my shoulder. The first 2 weeks my MIL will lug daily groceries to my place and I guess it is pretty tiring for her to walk under the hot sun everyday lugging heavy stuff. So I will head to the wet market every Sunday and buy a week worth of groceries to store. So planning daily meal need to be done by Saturday evening. Eh.. it's no easy task hor. I have to make sure there are variety in the meals, my sons get balanced carbs, proteins and vitamins during dinner time. Not to mention, them being soup junkie, just like me, need to have different soup on a daily basis. I rotate the soup every 2 weeks so it is still okay.
Thankfully there is this website, NoobCook that is a great source of inspiration for me!

This is how my weekly meal planning looks like. I started updating the amount I spent per week on dinner. I find it really useful to track how much we actually spend on food. Hehe..

I bought some pork chop over the weekend from my trusted butcher at the wet market. I marinated it with the similar recipe my mom always used, maybe with some tweaks on my own.

Air Fried Pork Chops (serving size: 5)
Ingredients
10 slices of pork chop
1 egg
1 tablespoon of corn starch
1 tablespoon of Hua Tiao wine
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
1 teaspoon of salt
dash of white pepper

How?
- Clean the chops and using the back of the cleaver, pound each chops to loosen up the meat. This is an alternative to using meat tenderizer.
- Marinade the pork chops with all the ingredients above for an hour, preferably overnight. I marinated mine since Sunday until Tuesday. Yummy..
- Preheat air fryer to 190C. I lined my air fryer with baking paper to collect the dripping marinade.
- Arrange the pork nicely on the basket. Set timer to 5 minutes.
- Flip the pork chop and air fry for another 5 minutes.
- To get charred edges, I increase the temperature to 200C, and air fry for 2 minutes

The result, yummy pork chop that is healthy too!

This dish takes less than 20 minutes to prepare and less than 30 minutes to cook and serve.