Yesterday during Sunday’s cooking session.
Granny : Wah! You so rajin (hardworking) make shape one ah.
Wena : Ya lor. Ok what…
Granny : Huh! I tell you. You only do one time. Afterward, you malas (lazy) do one.
The last time she said this to me, it was when I was first starting my new diet back in 14 Feb 2009. So, haven’t stop yet.
Brain is on overload trying to think of what to do. For tomorrow, maybe some kolomee makeover. Still got a lot of red rice noodles to finish off.
The one thing I realised about the various bento recipes and pictures out there, is the high usage of forbidden ingredients in the low sodium diet i.e. cheese, ham, processed food. Plus, a lot of the Japanese bento recipes are currently using a lot of sugar in their meals.
I kinda cheated on using ham for tomorrow’s meal but have to seriously cut back on it. Same goes for the sugar. I have to see whether there are some alternatives or other more traditional Japanese-type of recipes that may help. Then, see if it can be combined with the usual Chinese home-cooking that my Granny does.
Although, I’m still trying to top the 5-7 servings of grains and veggies. Am rethinking how to deal with breakfast and slowly cut out milk from the diet. Not exactly that easy.
Ok, getting slightly better at bento-ing but the difficulty is trying not to use ham. Too much salt is not good for Wena. 🙁
The pink apple case is a jelly mould : 10 for RM2.80.
Left mould : celery slices at the bottom. On top are carrot shape food with a slice of ham.
Right mould : A layer of tomato sauce at the very bottom with the middle layer of organic alphabet pasta (60% wholegrain).
Middle : Scrambled eggs wrapped in a mould.
Both apple cases hold the same thing. I was getting worried that I wouldn’t have enough veggies so was trying to just stuff wherever I could with it. Each case holds french beans with some nori seaweed strips as well as a quail’s egg each. On top are carrots and hams. One thing about using the cookie cutters, I’m going to get a soft plastic mallet to gentle hammer the darn cookie cutters. Only a few pieces of ham so hopefully not too bad on the salt intake. Next time though, can’t have it in here. Sigh. Anyway, leftover scraps of carrots and ham went into a peanutty roast terrine at the bottom.
Tried out making a terrine with peanuts, cashew nuts, cheddar cheese, ham, onions, golden mushrooms, carrots, wholemeal breadcrumbs and one egg. Turned out better than I expected. A bit high in calories so have to be very careful when taking a slice.
Doesn’t look too bad, no? I have to check out other terrine recipes, especially vegetarians ones that doesn’t call for cheese or peanuts. Maybe have to start thinking of trying out with beans. Granny said that it’s not something that she would eat too often but she couldn’t stop eating it. Haha!
Tomorrow, have to go and buy a packet of red and brown rice from Umang’s office. Also, on Tuesday, I’ll be getting my bento sets. The cookie cutters had already arrived, now just the containers. Which will probably flipped my Granny a bit considering that there’s already a lot of plastic containers everywhere. I haven’t told her yet about my intention to goto Daiso at the Curve to check out for some bento stuff. I hope that there are still some left in there.
Sloppy work but what the hey. First time beginner. 🙂 Egg filling between 2 honey wholemeal bread. All vegetables except for the cherry tomatoes had been steamed.
Postnote : My 2nd cousin Davin has made this interesting commentary about the 2nd picture.
Is that someone sitting on the balcony of the longhouse looking over the Mountains (broccoli) on the left and Clouds (cauliflower) on the right?
I think I may have found a better solution to portion control than I realised. Because it looks like the Japanese have already come up with that solution. Apparently, all one needs to know is 3 parts carbo, 1 part protein, 2 parts vegetables and select the container based on the volume.
Guide to Choosing the Right Size Bento Box
Translation of how to Select Bento Boxes from Yellow Studio, Japan
So, it looks like the Tupperware lunchbox that I’ve been carrying around is the 900 ml one and what I really should be eating is a 600 ml container.
Anyway, there are lot of inspirations online. Some links are here :
Bento Challenge
Video Games Characters come alive!
Well, have ordered some bento sets from ebay Malaysia. Now all I have to do is wait for them to come but in the mean time, just use what I currently have at hand.
Another article that I wrote on the Health and Fitness Section of the Lowyat.net forums. The original discussion is here.
Introduction
Some of you may know that I’ve been spending the past week with parents and doing a bit of research on diabetes. Somehow along the way, I stumbled across something interesting that touches upon cancer and other diseases / illnesses as well as the impact of exercising regularly. Thinking of parking this post under some of the other posts such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, didn’t quite seem to fit because it also covers the impact of exercises and other illnesses.
It started out coincidently by a book called “”What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You” by Dr. Ray Strand at a local bookstore. Surprisingly, it didn’t turn out to be a boring read but an interesting one, especially from a medical doctor who can explain in layman terms about modern day illnesses and issues. Plus, the approach is different where he admitted that he had been wrong about nutrition supplements and that it took his wife’s disease and cure to finally convince him.
Oxidative Stress
He gave an explaination about a bodily process known as Oxidative Stress which is currently link to modern day diseases. Click here for an explaination about it : http://www.nutritional-medicine.net/oxidative-stress.asp . The fire-place analogy is a good explaination of the process that is hapenning in our bodies. If you Google “oxidative stress”, you will find more info but it’s written in medical terms that it takes quite awhile to digest.
This includes cancer, diabetes, heart problems, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, lung disease, eye problems, arthritis, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative disease (Alzeheimers, Parkinson although his remedy is only to slow down the disease and not eliminate it like the others). What he says is gleaned from medical research evidence and through google searches, there’s a lot of talk about Oxidative Stress impacting people and that doctors are now looking to see how to get the body to react better to such stresses. And that’s where antioxidants come in.