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.

: : Alternate salt mix : :

And apparently, it’s from Reader’s Digest and reposted in Allrecipes.com.

10. Replace salt in the saltshaker with a salt-free mixture. This way you can still use the shaker, but hold off on the salt, says Jennifer Leslie, R.D., a clinical dietitian at the Clarian Heart Failure Clinic in Indianapolis. Mix garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, and oregano together. Grind the mix fine enough for it to come out the shaker’s holes, or buy a Parmesan cheese shaker from a kitchen supply store. Another fun mixture is garlic, onion and chili powder, cumin, dried oregano, and a touch of red pepper flakes.

Sounds yummy. Ok, going to

: : Post Meal pack : :

A few lessons learnt about the food I’ve packed for today.

Apple + Mandarin Oranges + Yogurt
Bad. Too much fibre in the drink and I think I had some seeds floating around. Going to put in more effort in removing the skin and all. Plus, do a more thorough check of the seeds as well. I thought I took everything out but guess looks are deceiving. Also, use only one orange and not two, else the taste is overwhelming.

Salad
Surprisingly, it came out very sweet after settling for a day. Raisins and balsamic vinegar had soak in really well overnight. For a moment though, I thought it was going to be very bland and tasteless like the ones I made before (I didn’t cut the grapes up).

Chicken Sandwich
Again, another suprise. The ginger gave the chicken as really really nice taste and the onions that had caramelized, gave it a bit of a sweetish flavour. And, because it was lightly pan-fried, tasted pretty good, considering that I didn’t add in any other filling in.

Tomorrow to-do list :
Morning – Goto an Organic Food Shop and see what unsweetened dried fruits that they have (and hopefully doesn’t cost a bomb)
Afternoon – Head on down to Boulevard Hypermarket with Granny to have a looksee there.

Need to make a shopping list…

: : Making Food Pack III : :

I shouldn’t be calling the past few posts “Making Lunches” when I’m also making my breakfast.

The last of Grannie’s dragonfruit drink. That’s the purple one

Dragonfruit Smoothie
1 dragonfruit
2 Mandarin Oranges (leftovers from CNY)
6 small ice cubes

This was my desert treat for today for being so good. I should really watch out the sugar level. But at the moment, it’s really very very nice eating all these fruits this way.

Orange, Apple Smoothie
1 Fuji Apple
2 Mandarin Oranges (we just had too many of them leftover after CNY)
1 small pack Nestle Fat-Free Yogurt

My breakfast for tomorrow is that yellow thing on the right. Ok, last time I’ll make an Orange + Apply combination in a long long while. Going to start hunting for bananas, mangos and other fruits that I will put through the blender just to see what will pop up and all.

Chicken Sandwich
1/4 chicken breast
Small slices of ginger
Small slices of onion
White bread from UNACO Supermarket

Actually, the chicken would have been my dinner meal but decided to eat the fried egg instead. The chicken looks brown because I think the onion was cook until it slightly caramelized and gave the chicken that brown color. Believe it or not, there wasn’t any salt in it but the natural sweetness of the onion and the zesty flavour of ginger did help. But I must admit that this kind of fare is not for me for the longterm, so I’ll be looking for ways and means to have a nicer lunch.

Now, one thing that is very good is the white bread from UNACO Supermarket. This is better tasting than the usual bakery bread that is found in standalone bakeries. Now the thing I’m not sure is what makes it so nice, other than the fact than it’s cut very thick. It’s extremely light and fluffy and not at all salty like other bread around. However, I have to start eating wholemeal soon and I’m only just finishing up the leftover white bread.

Weekend coming soon and so I’ll have more time to study what on earth I want to eat for my breakfast and lunch next week. I have a lot of leftover food to think of how to eat. Maybe something with pasta or egg just to finish the bacon but not to overdo it.

Postnote :

Attempt at salad #2. Urgh. I think I’m going to avoid lettuce for awhile and just get the other stuff. Gets extremely boring after awhile.

Anyway, this time, I’ve sliced the salad into smaller pieces. The new ingredients are carrots, yellow bell pepper and raisins. No grapes this time but the celery, cucumber and slice lettuce are there. Oh yeah, this time, I’ve removed the center of the cucumber. I put some balsamic vinegar but I still need something in there. On shopping list : more herbs and spices!!!

2 more days till week #1 of low sodium diet is over. Sina’ was right. Take it easy. Next week, I’m going to bring some soup to work and see if I can last through a lunch like that.

: : Making Lunches Part II : :

I think I know what to do when it comes to low sodium diet but it’s going to take awhile before I get used to shopping for eating for 3 meals a day. This is a drastic change from eating home during dinnertime only.

This evening was an event of getting enough stuff to make breakfast, lunch and a tea-time snack tomorrow. So, just to make it easier, I made extra helpings for the lunch and to bring some break tomorrow. I just hope that I made enough. Still not too sure about how much I should be eating.

Morning : Smoothie

Easy to do since Granny unearth her blender that she has had since 2006 but we’ve never used it. So, it was a homemade frutie smoothie with :

1 Fuji Apple from China
1 Orange from China
1 Nestle Fat-free Natural Yogurt that I paid for 1/2 price compared to recommended retail price.

Blended it all together in the food blender and surprisingly came out sweeter than I had expected. This is considering that I didn’t add in any extra sugar into it.

Lunch + Teatime : Salad with Tuna & Corn Mix

Well, I started out wanting to do a simple Tuna sandwich with a side salad but I got caught up doing it that I made extras.

Tuna & Corn Mix
1 LIGO Can of Corn
1 AYAM Brand No-Salt Tuna
1 tbsp of Kraft fat-free Mayo
1 tbsp of pepper

Well, seriously, anything that comes out in a can would contain salt but I was out of ideas on how to get hold of corn without having to clean the cob. Besides, I’m still trying to work out a way to deal with cooking meat at night for meals the next day.

Anyway, with the corn, I rinse out the corn twice in the futility that a lot of salt would be removed (fat chance). Ah well. This weekend is going to be a major shopping day and exploration as well as discovery of all things healthy and green.

The No-Salt Tuna was a very pleasant surprise but I doubt that I’ll get the chance to eat it that often. I tried to find the link online but it looks like their website doesn’t have a dedicated link to their products. Tasting it, there is definitely the lack of salt presence.

So, finally, the KRAFT Fat-free mayonaise. Yes, it’s low in fat but sadly, not low in salt. Yikes! Hmm….and I think I put a dab bit too much so must put less. Apparently, 1 tablespoon is already about 750 mg of sodium. On the other hand, another website posted the sodium content as only 160 mg. I have to check the labels again but anyway, only added a bit just to give some taste to the mix.

Salad :
1/2 cup sliced lettuce
1/2 cup cucumber (dice)
1/2 cup celery (dice)
1 tomato (dice)
1/2 cup seedless red grapes
1 teaspoon of Balsamic vinegar

I had an incident with the vinegar. Should have used a spoon. Instead, the entire salad got splashed with about 1/2 cup of it. Haha! So, had to rinse the salad and pour it out.

Needless to say that this entire exercise took about 1 hour because I made some smoothie from cucumber + carrot which didn’t taste very nice (and ended up being thrown away). Plus, although I didn’t put it up, as a reward for making the efford to do this, I made myself an ice-blended dragonfruit smoothie (which Granny like).

I foresee a lot of broken blenders in the upcoming days.

And hopefully, I can get more ideas on what to do in the upcoming days.

: : The sodium spotcheck : :

Well, it looks like cooking for low-sodium diets isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

There are a lot of Malaysian Food Products that totally excludes sodium from the content list. So, we know the reason for Malaysia’s number #1 killer, eh? 🙂

Although with A1, I think they may have done a copy and paste of their product to list them all as having less than 2400mg of sodium, from the soup mix to the roast chicken mix to etc.

Going shopping today and see what I can pack for lunch sandwich over the next few days and plan my next week’s meal.

: : Making Lunches Part I : :

Well, let’s just say that I got a big wakeup call to life. So, time to make lunches again. And hunting around for interesting recipes for lunch sure isn’t that easy. Especially when one is looking for salt content in food. That’s when one realises that the Malaysian Food Companies exclude them out most of the time. Only the imported goods from USA have them. Oh well.

Will have to do more planning for this endeavour. Biggest one yet. 🙂