All posts by wena

One fine day in 2003, I decided to start a food blog to tease my sister and my mother who were both living in the USA. Somehow, along the way, I ended up feeding a lot of people just via the food pictures that I put up everyday. In 2005, I decided to take a break from blogging and just take it easy. So there were sporadic posts from my travels in the US as well as Germany and England. Now in 2009, I'm trying to pick it up again and start chronicaling my journey towards a better lifestyle that is more healthy than what it currently is right now.

: : Lunchie in Miri: :

Ok, so the no-salt diet is not exactly that easy when one is in a different house. I’m now in Miri for a week and finally managed to have a lunch where I can make my own lunch. So here is a simple lunch that I normally eat during work and would have prepared the night before. Although this time, I made this during the day itself.

Hmm…preparation was easy. The multi-grain mix was the one that needed to be pre-soak an hour before as well as the frozen fish. The fish, I put them into water to defrost and in an hour, it was compeltely defrosted.

So, the finish food looks like this :

Carbo : 2 spoons of multigrain mix
Protein : Fish cook with garlic and tomyam
Veggies : Stir Fried Sweet peas + Oyster Mushrooms with Garlic

The multigrain was a pre-mix grain mixture I got from a supermarket that was imported by Taiwan. I think the name of the manufacturer was Sungrass Farms or something like that. It was pre-soak in water for an hour and cook in a pot until soft and most of the water has dried up. It’s a bit grey because of the black glutinous rice in it. It doesn’t taste too bad but I guess it helps that I cut down a lot of salt.

I love sweet peas. It’s great to eat and not so dried up. The oyster mushroom also helps because it doesn’t smell too strongly. Then again, the garlic helped a lot too. The garlic was chopped into small bits and stir-fried in a teaspoon of olive oil until it was slight browned and fragnant. Then I put the sweetpeas in and about 10 seconds later, the mushroom. Add in about 1/4 cup of water, a dash of pepper and about 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar for taste.

One thing I didn’t check was for leftover lemongrass and I think there was none. Anyway, have cut some garlic slices and totally forgot to put in some shallots. I rub about 1/2 teaspoon of tomyam paste on the fish. I put some water into a frying pan and poached the garlic + 1/2 teaspoon of the tomyam paste. Then added in more water and brought it quickly to a boil before I added the fish. Then I covered the pan and every few minutes, turned the fish so that it gets cook. I top up the water when it got too low. It turn out pretty nice and the fish tasted like it was steamed. The only problem was that I underestimated the salt content in that one teaspoon of tomyam paste so it ended up too salty. So, next time, it’s going to be 1/4 teaspoon of tomyam paste. I didn’t finish the fish and kept half for the next day.

So, this is a really nice meal. But, I now have to exercise hard because I’m heading out for dinner with parents to have crab and a favourite prawn dish that I can never get it done right in Kuching. Gulp!

: : Heart Update : :

One thing about writing a food blog is the irony of health problems that suffices later in life. Knowing that I haven’t been eating as healthily as I should have, nor exercising as much as I should have, the day finally came when I got hit by a big whammy.

Just after Chap Goh Mei, on 13 Feb 2009, I got diagnosed with stage II hypertension (151/108) at the age of 31 years old. It came at a time when I had just made some promises to my mother that I would finally make the decision to try to lose weight again. I suppose one could say that God has perfect timing, not to mention the perfect situation that will finally make me stick to my diet which is my health.

On 13 Feb 2009, I weighed in at about 105 kg. After taking a check of my food intake and putting in some exercise with the added pinch of a bad flu for a week, I now weight 98 kg. A drop of 7kg in about 7-8 weeks. Not bad for a girl who is now eating salt-free food.

So, this blog will undergo a change just as life changes as time goes by. I started this blog with the goal to tease my sister and my mum in the US. Now, it’s going to be a blog of my cooking experiments with no salt with Granny looking on like a sports commentator.

I still have a long way to go in the journey of weight loss but it’s getting there. Plus, I never knew that so many people were so concerned about heart problems until I told them that I had one.

Ah well. Let’s see how it goes.

: : Busy weekend : :

Yeah, it’s been busy as I tried making carrot soup from scratch since I couldn’t find a pumpkin to make pumpkin soup instead. Now I understand why these soups are so hard to make fresh i.e. not using ingredients from the can.

I took the recipe from a book titled “Just 5 Things” from a Singapore Publishing Company named Page One. I modified the recipe abit :

2 Mandarin Oranges
1/2 kilo of Carrots (grated)
1 large onion (sliced)
Few stalks of fresh coriader
Some Thyme & Oregano (a wee bit)
1 teaspoon of Curry Powder
1/2 teaspon of vegetable stock (postnote : probably added in too much)

First the oranges. I should just have juiced them next time rather than try to peel the skin off. The thing about Mandarin Oranges is that there’s so much fibre in them, unlike Clementines or Satsumas. Anyway, I removed most of the segment skins and seeds and blended the sacs together. Then poured it together with the grated carrots and onions and the rest of the ingredients and boiled them for awhile until they soften. Then blended everything together and reboiled. I’m amazed that there was literally complete 4 servings as mentioned in the book.

Now the curry powder, because I forgot to ask Granny where she put her Chicken Curry Mix, I used her Fish Curry spices instead. Oh well. Still though, the hint of curry is just nice but it would have been better with pumpkin soup.

Now this is really the lazy men fare. Fettucine tuna but I got very lazy because the carrot grating just irritated me to bits.

1 large tomato
1 can of “No Salt” Tuna by Ayam Brand
1 medium onion
Oregano
Olive Oil
Boiled Fettucine
1 tsp of capers (rinsed to removed the salt in them)

Lightly fried the onion in olive until soft. Then added in the chopped tomato as well as the tuna and oregano. Then because it didn’t seem that tasty, I added in some rinsed capers. >.> Ok, the capers were salty so I guess the label was misleading.

: : Making Carrot Soup : :

1/2 kilo of carrots grated. HALF KILO!!!

I now have more respect towards those chefs in the kitchen who has to do so much grating and cutting just to do a blended/cream type of soup.

At the moment, the soup is being cooled down so that I can zap it into the blender and see how it taste like in the end. Keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out alrite >.>

Oh, and surprisingly, it came out pretty sweet considering that I haven’t added any sugar inside. I did juice up 2 Mandarin Oranges so it could be coming from that too.