Leftovers and Dumplings

There's nothing I love more than the sight of brightly colored foods, and I'm always treated to that whenever my parents come over to visit.

Here we have stir-fried julienned carrots with chicken, julienned potatoes, purple cabbage and stir-fried palm vegetable (forgot the name).

This kind of food goes down nicely with rice.

And there's no reason to not indulge because it's mostly all healthy. That's probably why we never got fat when we grew up.

The next day we made some dumplings. Now just to let you know our family is a bit of a dumpling snob, because we used to make it every Sunday (when most families hit the diner to McD's for their Sunday brunch).

We like our dumplings handmade, from the dough to the innards, using nothing but the finest ingredients. This one is made with seafood, eggs and dill.

I still haven't learned how to make the dough from scratch, probably because I don't know how to use the rolling pin ><

 

But hopefully one day I'll be able to turn raw ingredients into this plate full of delishness:

 

Just a note about boiling the dumplings, you have to actually "boil" it three times for the perfect consistency and chew. First fill up your pot with water just barely covering the dumplings. When the water comes to a boil, drop in the dumpling, one at a time, giving the water a swirl counterclockwise as you do it. Then when the water comes to the second boil, add more water and more dumplings. Continue to do so for another boiling.

The next day we had some simple leftovers. The one on the top right is called 8-treasure rice, a mixture of glutinous rice with cranberries and dates.

Then one of the weekends Hubby made this crockpot chicken with a pre-mixed Moroccan chicken mix. It was surprisingly pretty but, albeit a little greasy.

Just a side note: make sure you have enough people to finish the chicken, because we made one pot and couldn't finish it until a week later.