This recipe is another popular dish in my household. It is my version of meatloaf. While, I do make the traditional meatloaf, this is one of my favorite dishes to prepare cause when I make it – there is always extras for another day and it’s a big hit especially during parties.

Ingredients:
2 lbs. Ground Pork
Small onion (chopped)
2 Carrots (chopped)
6 cloves garlic (chopped)
1 egg
3 tbsp. flour
Salt and Pepper to taste
4 hard boiled eggs peeled and cut into 4 (Lengthwise)

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients except for the hard boiled eggs (they will be used as a filling).
Divide mixture into 5 portions.
Place the sliced hard boiled eggs inside the meatloaf. You’ll have to watch the video to see how I do it.
Wrap each portion in aluminum foil. Watch the video above to see how I wrap it.
Steam wrapped meat loaf for 15-20 minutes.
Remove aluminum foil wrapper and pan fry the meatloaf in a pan with some oil – just enough to brown the outside.
Let fried meatloaf rest for 7-10 minutes before slicing.
Slice the meat into 1/2 inch pieces at an angle.
Serve with Sweet and Sour Sauce or Ketchup.

Tip: You can add raisins, cilantro and sausage in the meat mixture if you wish. If you are not serving them all in one meal, you can freeze the steamed meatloaf – just make sure it is completely cool before you freeze it. Do not remove the foil before you freeze. Thaw the frozen meatloaf before you pan fry.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave me your question in the comments.

For more recipes, visit Family Foodies.

This is how I make eggrolls at home. This is very popular in any asian home especially during parties and potlucks. It’s very addicting!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lb. ground pork or ground chicken/turkey
2 carrots (chopped)
1 small onion (chopped)
1 egg
2 heaping tablespoons flour
Springroll Seasoning Mix (You can buy in asian market or asian section of your local grocery store) If you can’t find any … you can use salt and pepper for seasoning
Eggroll/Springroll Wrappers
1 small bowl filled with water (will be your glue to seal eggrolls)
2 teaspoons of flour (in a bowl)
Vegetable or canola oil to fry your eggrolls
Sweet and Sour Sauce for dipping (can be found in asian store or your local grocery store)

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl – this will be your filling.
Thaw your eggroll wrapper.
Separate your wrappers.
For each wrapper, use one tablespoon of filling.
Wrap your eggrolls – watch the video on how I wrap them up.
Cut eggrolls in half and dip cut end on flour and then deep fry. (this is to prevent filling from spilling out of eggroll)
Fry until golden brown.
Remove from oil and let them stand on one end on a paper towel lined container.
When cooked, you can dip in sweet and sour sauce – ENJOY!

Tips:
Make sure to make them rest standing up to drain oil to one end and into the paper towel. This will keep it crunchy.
To heat up eggrolls, you can stick in oven at 350 degrees for 5-10 minutes.

For more recipes, visit Family Foodies.

I have been a blogger since 2002. It is safe to say that most of my readers know what a blog is but for those of you who are newbies, according to Wikipedia, a blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in a journal style and is displayed in a reverse chronological order. It’s basically an online diary. Blogs are popular and will continue to be – it’s because they are pretty easy to set up, use and maintain.

People blog for different reasons. Most bloggers do because they want to express their thoughts and opinions about certain things while some just want to tell their stories. Here are some reason why I blog:

- I use my blog as a means to stay connected with my friends and family who are far away.
- I like to share information or knowledge in a given topic.
- I blog to make money- I either get paid to write or through the ads that are on my blog page.
- I blog to promote my business, service or product.
- I blog to review products.
- I blog for fun.

Blogging allows us to practice the freedom of speech and gives us a platform to share our opinions without hesitation. We write on our blog, and we publish our posts and instantly, our thoughts are available for others to read – simple as that. There are so many things we can do with our blogs. We are not limited to only text. We can add and share photos, videos, audios, notes and more.

Here’s one benefit I can see with blogging – in today’s world, everyone gets so busy that we seldom have the chance to sit down and think about what is going on. Blogging allows us to reflect about our lives and the present. When we start to blog, we are forced to observe life from another perspective thus allowing us to appreciate what we have.

I love to blog and I subscribe to a lot of blogs – I have met so many people and have learned so much because of this. Which brings me to my question for you … do you blog? If you do – why? Join our meme and answer this question. Post your answer in your blog and link back to Mommy Community. And we can all visit each others’ blog to learn about the reasons behind our blogging.

You can copy our special graphic below and add it to your post –

Here is the html code to use.
<a href="http://mommycommunity.com/2009/02/07/why-blog/" target="_Blank"><img src="http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg230/mcowner/why-blog.jpg"/></a>

As always – I enjoy giving some link-love so add your link to your post answering the question “Why Blog?” on our “Mr. Linky” below. Oh, and don’t forget to leave me a comment too!

Happy Valentine’s Day – here’s another freebie for you … 4 Easy and Fun Valentine’s Day Recipes you can make for your sweetie/s. To download, simply right click on the ebook graphic below and click on “Save As” or “Save Target As” and save in a folder in your hard drive. Enjoy!

Feel free to spread the word about this awesome freebie!

There are few roles in life that have as much mythic lore written about them, spoken about them, and imbued in them as motherhood. Strangely enough, however, there are some truths that no one ever mentions, a few key points that get left out of the established narrative on motherhood.

The First Odd Truth: Everyone Is Pretty Much Doing It Right. Can you imagine this as a headline in a parenting magazine? All we ever hear or read about are tips on how to do things better, and the Hollywood narrative in movies and television suggests that all we do as mothers is sit around and compare or criticize other mothers. But in the grand scheme of things, the fact that our species, homo sapiens, has been around for 200,000 years suggest we are doing things pretty well. World population doubled from 1959 to 1999 (6 billion). Crime rates are dropping (really). And while it is important to seek out new ways of doing and improving our lives and those of our children, the differences between mothers who use a sling more than a stroller, mothers who breastfeed or formula feed, mothers who give birth in a hospital or at home – those are small differences. Excepting those situations of abuse or mistreatment, most everyone is doing this motherhood thing well. Including you.

The Second Odd Truth: Motherhood Is Both Macro and Micro. What is hard about motherhood is that unlike almost any other job, it is extremely contradictory. You are the boss, and yet you are constantly challenged by your “subordinates” in ways that would get a person fired at work. You are bringing new people, new life!, into this world, and cleaning pureed peas off the floor. You are managing a large and complex budget, while digging for quarters in your purse to feed the parking meter next to the playground. There are few jobs that require you to be both CEO and janitor at the same time, and on both physical, mental, and emotional levels. This is part of why motherhood has such a strange history: it is often dismissed as not being a “real” profession while revered as an almost holy role and responsibility. Remembering that motherhood operates at the opposite ends of these two extremes helps keep a healthy perspective on both bad days and good ones.

The Third Odd Truth: Science Is Not As Much Help Here As We Might Like. We have become accustomed to how much science has answered difficult questions about our minds and our bodies. Consider what scientists know about DNA, depression, and allergies. So it is strange to become pregnant or have a young child and find medicine somewhat falling down on the job. The reality is that the gold standard for medical discovery – double blind, clinical trials on human beings – runs up against some serious ethical problems when you are talking about pregnant women and young children. An adult can consent to trying a radical new drug, but can an unborn baby or a 1 year old? Should their parents have the right to consent for them? This ethical and legal quagmire explains why medical science does not have as many answers about pregnancy and babies that we as mothers might like. Even determining the effects of cold medicine on a fetus is fraught with difficulty. And yet at no other time in our lives do we want – and need – medicine to give us answers to make our babies and ourselves as healthy as possible. One of the best ways of coping with this odd truth is to go into pregnancy and the first year of parenting knowing that you will rely more on your instincts as a mother during this period than during any other time of your life. Start listening to those instincts, taking notes early on of problems, and documenting your concerns. You will find that this vigilance pays off both in terms of peace of mind and, if something medically serious truly is wrong, a quick and accurate diagnosis.

What odd truths have you discovered about motherhood? Let us know! We want to hear and benefit from your lessons learned!

Amanda is a former diplomat who used to negotiate trade deals. Now she negotiates with javascript, web graphics, and her toddler while running the her company, Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting, and proving anew each day that international politics and parenting are different versions of the same profession.

Extra (Hour)dinary Parenting: We Specialize in the Business End of Parenting