Food Diary | 002

This diet is harder than I thought. I have tried to eat healthier by eating more fruits, but it doesn't seem like it's doing much. I have also tried to cut down on my portions, but it's always hard to do considering my mom keeps cooking up such yummy things!

Here are some pictures of the food she made recently that were photo worthy.

This is her veggie and clam spaghetti. It's my mom's own version of spaghetti and it tastes just as good as the typical bolognese.

Continuing with the seafood theme, she made clam chowder shortly after and it was really good. I could taste the seafood with every bite and what's nice about cooking food yourself is that you can determine how much of something to put in. As for me, I like to put in more of my favourite foods, and in this case, clam!

Aside from seafood, I also had lots of different meals with noodles. This is my mom's veggie chow mein. Chow mein is usually a bit dry so I had some orange juice to accompany it.

Another noodle meal: beef hor fun. It's one of my favourite type of noodles (after ramyun, of course) - they're like flat rice noodles and are really soft and chewy.

And can't forget about soup! This is a classic - tomato and egg soup.

 Of course, some healthy sugar was also consumed lately. I like to make my own fruit parfait. I use strawberries, plain yogurt, and honey to make it. I use strawberry slices to make the base, then add a layer of plain yogurt, drizzle some honey, and repeat the process until the cup, or bowl, is full. Since the plain yogurt is really plain and a bit sour, adding the honey really helps and adds a bit of sugary sweet to it.

The cherry tree finally grew some cherries this year and exceeded our expectations. There were so many that we had to store them in the fridge and it has basically overtaken the fridge with its high populace. 

Aside from Chef Mom's cooking, I also ate out with some co-workers for dinner recently. I ordered Pho for myself and shared some calamari with a co-worker. It's been a long time since I've had some calamari and it was just as good as I remembered! Or maybe it was because I was hungry? Either way, dinner was lots of fun and I got to tell some of my puns.

My other co-workers shared some nachos with each other. I'm not a big fan of nachos so I didn't have any, but it looked good.

We also had a potluck at work. I brought homemade kimbap to compete with another co-worker's store bought sushi. It was a difficult competition. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the different kinds of food that was brought because I was too hungry, but I did take pictures of the birthday cake! It was one of our co-worker's birthday so we surprised her with some cake!

The cake was really light and fluffy and was just overall yummy in my belly. I need to remember to ask who bought the cake and where they got it from 'cause it was really, really good!

It's weird how every time I write posts with food in them, my nose manages to remember that smell and makes me hungry for it again as a result. I think I should end this post for the sake of my diet.

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.