Friday, May 29, 2015

Food Diary | 001

I took some pictures on what I've been eating since moving back home. Hopefully, using this documentary method, I will be able to know what I'm lacking and what I need to cut down on.

This bowl of noodles is one of the first meals I had when I moved back home and it has napa, which is my favourite veggie of all time.


Fried rice with mixed veggies for breakfast - can't forget about the orange juice for that sugar intake for the morning!


Brunch for before I left for the University. It's assorted veggies with chicken and shrimp, plus rice as a side dish.


This is one of my favourite dishes by Chef Mom: jellyfish with cucumbers and chicken. It may sound off putting to some people, but it's a very refreshing dish that's perfect for hot summer days! Although I don't like cucumbers so I always ask my mom to cut back on them, but they do contribute to that cool feeling for the dish overall. The sauce she uses is a mix of soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar if I remember correctly. 


This was part 1 of dinner some night ago.... It's just more cucumbers and green peas with meat and rice. Although I like the green peas, I can't say much about the rest. It's a nice dish, don't get me wrong, but I really don't have any nice sentiment towards cucumbers. And it definitely wasn't enough to fill me up....


In the end, I had to make part 2 of dinner for myself - ramyun. I commit myself to only eating my favourite Shin Ramyun once a month because it's bad for my body and health, but good for my taste buds. It's a sort of self-discipline that I've managed to keep up for around or almost two years now. Very proud of myself.


This isn't just your average bowl of ramyun where you throw the noodles in to the boiling water and use the flavour packages that they give you. No, no, no, no, no. If that's what you're doing - you need to stop and keep reading.

My recipe is quite simple really:
Step 1: Boil water in a small pot, once boiling, add only the beloved Shin ramyun noodles to it
Step 2: While the water is doing its thing to the noodles, wash and chop some napa into bite size pieces and throw them into another bigger pot of water and have them boil together.
Step 3: Wash some bean sprouts and have them on stand-by.
Step 4: Once the noodles are done, shock them under cold water and drain. Make sure they turn cold! This will make the noodles "bouncy."
Step 5: After the pot with the napa starts boiling, add in the noodles. At this point, you can add in extra ingredients if you wish (i.e. sausage, mushroom, corn, egg, etc.). Then drown it with your desired amount of vinegar (this is the secret ingredient!!).
Step 6: When the napa is almost soft (you can poke through it with chopsticks with no problem), add in the bean sprouts and take out excess water.
Step 7: When the whole thing is about 2-3 minutes away from being ready, add in the flavour packages that the ramyun came in (like the dried veggies and, most importantly, the ramyun powder).
Step 8: Mix well in the pot, and add in more vinegar if desired, and choose a nice bowl to serve it in.

Writing all that made me even hungrier and craving for next month to come already...!! Although the vinegar may take some getting used to, it's a flavour that you just can't stop craving after you tasted it.

Also keeping up with my new found taste buds for addictive Korean food, I had Korean food at a food court. I've been craving Japchae for so long, so I was glad to see that I could order it from there. My mom had the Bibimbap and she liked it, which is surprising because she's so darn difficult to please with food. Whenever I take her somewhere, there's always something that she's not satisfied about, so I've given up trying to recommend places to take her. It's just not worth the unnecessary criticism at the end. This also applies to others - if someone is taking you out to a place they recommend and that they really enjoy eating at, don't just diss the food! It's not only mean spirited and disrespectful, but it's less likely that they'll invite you again to eat elsewhere!


Another dinner was tomato and egg with seafood assortment and broccoli. I really don't like broccoli, but I think my mom really likes them 'cause she keeps making these ugly flower plants!! Did you know that broccoli is part of the cabbage family as a plant, but its "flowering head" (aka the part that looks like a miniature branches and leaves of a tree) is the vegetable part. Either way, I don't like broccoli... at least the other parts tasted good.


Then back to some noodles again. I adjusted the egg so it sort of looks like the moon (haha).


Then some soup that I haven't had for a long time! It's lotus root with beef and it tastes really, really good!


And a dish that I would say rivals Shin Ramyun (gasp! I know, right?!) would have to be wonton soup! It's made from scratch - including the wrapping, stuffing, soup base, and basically just everything by yours truly and my mom!


My mom also learnt how to make pasta. However, this isn't your regular pasta - it's an upgraded Mom version of pasta and it tastes pretty good! The first time she made it was yummy and just perfect, but then the second time she added too much white pepper... still finished the whole dish though!


I think I'll end off this Food Diary here... it's so hard to keep from drooling as I edit this.... I think I'm going to grab a snack to munch on.