Sweet Potato Soup

I cooked this sweet potato soup today because I had a craving for it (no, I'm not pregnant: non-preggies can have cravings too! :) ) and it's such a cold and rainy day today that I decided that it was a perfect day for this hot dessert. Besides, I re-introduced the yellow sweet potato to Alicia yesterday and she's in love with it again... so I thought she could have some of this dessert too!

Just an aside, Alicia had some cold dessert for the first time yesterday - a mango-based cold dessert (we met up with my hubby's colleagues (my ex-colleagues) last night). She usually detests cold food but for the sake of the dessert, she actually tried to overcome that barrier. :D Anyway, she had quite a few sips of it and then decided that she had had enough.

Alicia's response to this sweet potato soup? Extremely keen and happy! She kept saying "more! more!" while pointing at the bowl of dessert even though her mouth was already stuffed full with sweet potato. lol... Well, she still doesn't like the orange sweet potato so we gave her only the yellow ones. After awhile, she wanted to self-feed this dessert: it was a mess!!! She tried to spoon out whole spoonfuls of the soup to drink and that of course meant that she dripped the soup all over... well... time to bathe her anyway... :) and not forgetting to brush her teeth!

You can read more about the goodness of sweet potatoes for babies here.

Sweet potato soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 huge orange sweet potato
• 2 yellow sweet potatoes
• 1 handful dried longans
• 4 slices of ginger
• yellow rock sugar to taste
• 1L water

Method:

1. Skin the sweet potatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.
2. Rinse the dried longans.
3. Bring the water to a boil in a pot.
4. Add all the ingredients (except the rock sugar) and simmer for 12-15min (till the dried longans have puffed up and the sweet potatoes are soft).
5. Add rock sugar to taste.

*Do not add too much ginger as it causes the soup to be 'spicy' - unless you like it that way :) Since I was intending to give it to Alicia, the soup has definitely gotta be not spicy!

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut sweet potato into small cubes.
• Avoid over-use of ginger.

Crockpot chicken stew

Cooked this on the day we went to Sentosa... just chopped everything up (except the chicken) and dumped them into the slow cooker and we were off to Sentosa and I didn't even need to worry about what if I don't have time to prepare dinner when we get home! :) Isn't the slow cooker a wonderful invention? lol...

Alicia's share (I shredded the chicken and cut up the mushrooms and lightly mashed up the carrots and potatoes):

You can serve the stew in this manner for the younger tots.

Crockpot chicken stew

Ingredients

• 3 chicken thighs (deskinned, deboned, visible fats removed)
• 5 big white button mushrooms (remove stem)
• 1/2 large white onion
• 3 thin sticks of leek
• 2 carrots
• 4 small potatoes
• 400-500ml water or stock
• cornflour

Seasoning (after cooking's done):

• light soy sauce
• ground white pepper

Marinade for chicken:

• oyster sauce
• Lee Kum Kee chicken marinade
• brown sugar
• ground black pepper
• cornflour

Method:

1. Marinate the chicken.
2. Peel the carrots and potatoes then cut them into small chunks.
3. Slice the mushrooms, leek and onion.
4. Place the carrot and potato chunks into the slow cooker first, followed by the leek and onion then the mushroom, chicken and water/stock.
5. Cook on low for 6hours.
6. Remove some potato chunks, mash and return to the stew .
7. Add in the cornflour to further thicken the stew if the stew's not thick enough.
8. Remove toddler's share before adding seasoning.
9. Serve hot with rice.

Alicia's response was rather lukewarm again... I think she may not like the taste of leek so the next time I shall try to remove it and add maybe tomatoes instead.. :D

For toddler's consumption:

• Serve as shown in picture above for young tots.
• For older tots more accustomed to larger chunks and more textures, simply cut the potato and carrot into smaller pieces and tear the chicken into bite-size pieces.
• If your tot is fond of mushrooms as well, cut the mushrooms into small bits to prevent choking.