Tag Archives: diet

Coming to the end of 2009

It has been a long and busy year filled with ups and downs. So I wanted to share with you the fruits of my labour. And goodness, it was labourious.

Tada! The next update would be Christmas Party dinners, I should think. 🙂

Montage

Oh, one thing about comments. It’s a total mess at the moment because of the amount of spam that is coming through. Until Mr. Tucks is back from holidays, I don’t think there would be any change to the situation. So if I had accidentally deleted your comment or didn’t let it through, it’s because of the other 1,000+ spam comments. Can’t believe that Russians buy a lot of stuff just by reading spam online.

Prawn Rice Medley

One thing I’ve learnt from Japanese cooks, is that it’s possible to eat a rice dish without having to do much frying. How? Well, easy. Just mix the ingredients together while the rice is still warm. It cuts down the oil and the frying effect.

Then again, I suppose some “food purist” will say that I chopped up the veggies too small that any benefits from fibre is lost. I like eating small bits and pieces. Anything big is so unsightly when trying to eat it gracefully. Haha!

So, I made this prawn rice “medley” (as it’s called in one of my cookbooks, the cooking style of the rice that is). Was trying to get the sharp tangy taste of the ginger out but not successful. Need to use grated ginger juice and pulp methinks.

Lunch : Prawn Rice Medley

I stir-fried the ginger, garlic and onions with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Then added in the prawns along with the Mirin sauce (1 tablespoon). After that, added in the cucumbers and celery for a quick turn around the pot. Then off the fire and mix in the rice and stir stir stir until well mix.

Lunch : Rice Medley with Prawn and Cucumber

The cucumbers were still a bit too big so next time, I’ll chop them up smaller. Also, probably will need to add in more veggies. Still not enough I think.

Anyway, when I heated it up in the microwave at the office, people were attracted by the smell. O.O

Lunch : Lemon Chicken

Lunch : Lemon Chicken

Yep, this was a lunch protein source to make lunch a good square meal. Back in university, a friend of mine taught me how to make the lemon sauce from scratch, rather than relying on the lemon sauce from the bottle. The only problem is that a lot of sugar is needed so I cut out a lot of sugar.

The chicken was pan-fried after being seasoned with pepper. The sauce is made up of purple shallots, garlic and ginger with 1 squeezed up lemon juice. I think I also added in about 1/2 teaspoon of cornflour to thicken the sauce up as well as 1-2 teaspoon of brown sugar. The pink stuff you see there was the result of the onions getting discolored by the lemon juice.

: : Malaysian-made Food : :

This is a bit of thinking post because I have been a bit stumped at times. It’s one of those “guilt-trip” feelings where after watching a TV commercial on “Buy Malaysian Products”, I actually don’t do it much when it comes to food.

Oh, I eat the raw food that are grown locally i.e. vegetables, fruits, meat and fish. It’s just that majority of the seasonings or processed food, I’ve bought imported stuff. And all for one reason : reduced salt or no-salt labelling. Malaysian seasonings or processed food will either have no labels about sodium content or they would put a generic one of “Less than 2,400 mg” (equivalent to 1 teaspoon).

A good example is the Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. The one that is packaged in Malaysia doesn’t have the sodium content. However, the one imported in from the US does. So I bought the one in the US and not the Malaysian one.

A lot of people have also advocated that sea salt is also good because it has reduced sodium in it. Unfortunately, for a person who has a blood pressure condition, any salt intake is enough to get the heart beating. It also isn’t comforting to know that my Uncle Doctor mentioned that Norvasc will make my heart palpitate a bit more anyways. Aiya…

The difficulty about going on such a strict diet was the amount of hearsay that I hear from people. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Relax a bit. Little do they know that I eat enough now to be satisfied. Plus, because my diet is so clean now that taking outside food will give me discomfort. I either have a lot of gas in my stomach causing me to burp a lot or I get heartburn. I get the feeling that friends are trying to tell me to go easier to comfort themselves that they couldn’t do it. Haha! Ah well.

The one thing that is motivating me from going back to bad habits is my skin, to be honest. It’s starting to clear up a lot and if I ever went back to eating uncontrollably, the reddish bits are going to come back. Now that’s something I do not want to happen.

Also, Malaysian-made seasoning in the rare occasions, will give me allergic reactions. So, I tend to keep away from things like Chilli Boh which I suspect has a lot of artificial vinegar/acids inside it or there’s some bizarre chemical in there that’s giving me problems.

In any case, I hope one day that there will be a Malaysian Food Company who is like Del Monte. They took a very strong stand of reducing salt in their products that their competitors just loses out. Whether it’s can products or sauces, it’s reduced. They didn’t always promote their products as reduced salt but when you compare the products side-by-side, they use less.

Now, just to end this post. The number of people who I meet are now surprisingly starting to eat more healthily. It was an eye-opener for me as they came up to me to either say it worked for them or they are enjoying their meals more. So there is some truth at least in this clean diet business.

Anyway, I have had my cheat meal this week already. Lunch with Dad at Sushi King and an ais kacang dessert. Which resulted in me not being able to sleep well at night. Also, a bowl of Sarawak Laksa for lunch yesterday with Granny. So yes, I have these cheat meals but they are rare and in-between. I compensate it later with more veggie and no-carb meals later on. 🙂 It balances out pretty well, if you ask me. 🙂 But I can’t do this for long. 🙂

I’m off the whole week so posting up stuff on the blog again. Next week is back to work so less time to blog.

: : Breakfast salads : :

I find that in order to eat raw salad, I had to chop up the veggies into small pieces so that it goes down better.

The other thing that I find that I had to do was not include lettuce so much. Can’t stand the taste of it too much.

And finally, the salad needs to have a minimum of 4 different ingredients so that I get an interesting flavour.

Breakfast : SALAD again!

This was an experiment with feta cheese. In it, I had fresh cherries, shallots (small onions), 1 glove of garlic (minced), celery, carrot and onion. The size of the container was 200 ml and surprisingly, that amount is enough to last me until lunch time. Not bad for a person who used to have huge carb breakfast meals.

More pics another day. Cheerio!