My everyday life: week 7

Last week was cold and rainy. Look our raining gear!

I remembered to take pics of my lunch twice last week. YEY~

Indian roasted root vegetables, fried okra and raisin bread.

6 vegetable tart with buckwheat crust at Le Pain Quotidien. Although the tart was delicious, it was too little food, I was starving an hour later and had to run to the cafeteria for a gigantic bagel. 😦

Chocolate protein cake with sunflower seed butter paired with green juice.

grilled cheese with avocado and egg sammie with a new-to-me bread (see below)

This week’s groceries hall from WF and Tj’s

some new products that I’m excited to try:

We went to the outlet on Saturday. Sofia had great time walking around

she knows how to entertain herself

look how cute she is: looking at the price tag in kids section

we found something for all of us. A very productive 3 hrs spent! 🙂

On Sunday: I made pumpkin gnocchi using chickpea flour.

the harvest salad was so amazing that after I finished the leftovers, I made some more 😯

Last but not least, I finally made black bean brownies! Let me tell you, this thing is MUCH better than brownies!!! It’s like eating a decadent chocolate fudge cake! When I was eating, I kept saying: I can’t believe this, this is surreal, why I waited so long to make it!!!!! 

Of course you want the recipe, right? yes, you MUST make this!!!

Decadent vegan black bean brownies (I didn’t follow any recipe but looked severals and came up with my own)

• 2 cups black bean cooked
• 2 large flax eggs (3 T flaxseed meal + 6 T water)
• 1/4 C coconut oil (melted)
• 1/2 C pumpkin puree
• 1 C cocoa powder
• 1/4 C oats
• 1/4 t salt
• 1.5 t baking powder
• 1/3 sugar or stevia baking blend

1. prepared the flax egg
2. blend all the ingredients in the food processor
3. grease 8*8 baking pan
4. bake at 350F for an hour (the stick will not come out totally dry but it is fine, all the ingredients are cooked)
5. cook before cutting

Serve it with greek yogurt or ice cream. ENJOY~

Weekend happening: sleep, eat, gym and repeat

The past few days were total relaxation. Due to Star’s luck of sleep on his business trip, all he wanted to do is to sleep (day and night)! As Erin would say:” Yes, my lord, sleep we’ll do! 🙂 Other than the 5k race on Saturday’s morning and my dearest friend’s birthday party at night, we just stay at home and relax.

I finally convinced Star to join my beloved gym! He’s been sedentary for more than a decade. I encouraged him to exercise more but always failed until now. He has turned 34 few months ago and it became mandatory for health purpose to start exercising, specially with his propensity to have diabetes (his mom has it). So, now he has committed to go to the gym whenever he stays with me (hopefully >3 days a week). So far he’s liking it and I like it even more!!! Because now I don’t feel bad to leave him at home alone when I go to the gym~~~ 😆

While he takes long naps… I bake 😉

for my lord: peanut butter cookies with homemade PB

I used roasted peanut with sea salt. Ground 7 min and done! Nothing else, just peanuts!!!

beat 100g butter with 80g of sugar and 2 eggs

once it becomes white, add 100g peanut butter

add 200g flour

and 1/4 cup of sesame seeds

bake at 375F for 20 min.

I also made multicolored soy milk (soy, aduki, mung and black bean) for breakfast

served with homemade multi-grain bread with butter (above) and PB (below)

It was the last piece of bread… so I’m making a new bread (as I type)

Other eats:

noodles with bok choy, eggs and olive preserved olive leaf

tortilla pizza topped with cauliflower and a pumpkin sauce made with pumpkin puree and tahini

I’ve started to make nutritious soup that takes >4 hours to make. I made black chicken soup with assorted chinese herbs on Saturday and this one on Sunday.

this one has pork feet, black beans, shiitake and red dates. I made sure to take out most of the fat from the pork feet, so what’s left is the collagen. Collagen = beauty weapon against saging!!! All asian girls know that 😉

If you excuse me, I need to look how the bread-making is going and to prepare lunch for my lord. hahaha… That’s how I feel today, most of the days I feel like the queen and he my loyal servant 😉

Q: Are you a soup person? What’s your favorite soup? I’ve never been a soup person, but my acupuncturist told me that soup is good, specially for people with weak digestive system, so more soup for both of us!

Challenge J&J #12 & Dirty Talk

#1 I finished writing the first draft of my paper!!! 😆 If I had to spend one more day on that, I’m going crazy! Obviously, I’ll have to spend few more hours on editing and making it more readable, but that’s going to be easy 😉

#2 Last week’s TCM series touched a dirty topic, but why not? why we don’t talk about it? It’s soooo important to you! If you go to a TCM doctor, he’ll ask you about it in <5 sentences. “do you sleep well? how’s your appetite? are your bowels moving? what’s the consistency?” At first you might be shocked that he’s asking you that, but then after he explains you the importance of it to your overall health, you’ll get used to it. In your second visit, you’ll be talking about “it” with details and all! So, let’s talk.

Q1: How often do you go to bathroom?

I used to be very constipated, like once every 3-4 days. Nowadays, once-twice everyday.

Q2: What’s your trick to make things moving?

I’ve tried tons of methods in old days. These are some that worked for me:

1. soak flaxseed (1-2 tbsp) with 1 cup of water overnight and drink the whole thing first thing in the morning

2. soak dry prune (4-5)  with 1 cup of water overnight and drink the liquid and eat prunes first thing in the morning

3. whenever things gets really bad. I’ll do a mini detox with consists eat only oatmeal cooked with white fungus for a day.

4. coffee helps a lot.

5. EAT! if you eat like chicken, you’ll poo like such.

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J&J #12 @Eat Clean Cookbook: Black bean with Rice

ingredients:

• brown rice
• black bean
• celery
• onion
• olive oil
• S+P

• cumin
• diced tomato

Method: add everything and cook for 1 hours. Done!

It doesn’t look like the picture because brown rice is sticky and the original recipe calls for basmati.

it doesn’t look pretty but it’s really tasty and nutritious!! 😉

accompanied by tofu stir-fry

and asparagus

look what was the helper for paper-writing anxiety?  1 lb of fresh strawberries!!! 😀

It’s soooooo sweet! I love it! But after I finished it, I had a stomach pain! Too much a anything is bad 😦

Giveaway alert:

Nature path granola bar by Krista