Asian flavors & A race?

I used my new running shoes for the first time yesterday!!! I’d say it worth every penny of the 100 bucks!!! 😀 It’s light, it fits perfectly and I can tell that it provides more cushion than my previous nike. 😀

I was feeling weak yesterday, I slept a 2 hours nap (very unusual :shock:). I needed a stress reliever and a mental giveaway (my coding didn’t went well and I was in panic). I ended up doing 4.5 miles, 35’50”, 8 min/mile.

For lunch I made a japanese style meal using these

Soba salad with veggies and bonito flakes! 😀 YUM~~

I’ll definitely make it more during the summer! It’s easy and delicious!

What you need: soba, veggies, bonito flakes, bonito seasoned soy sauce (or just soy sauce), sesame oil, salt and sugar.

Method:

1) cook the soba, rise with cold water and set aside

2) cook veggies with salted water

3) prepare the sauce: 2 part of soy sauce + 1 part of sesame oil + salt + sugar

4) mix everything and top with bonito flakes!

I also made asian “pudding” using cooked white fungus with goji berries

used agar-agar powder + stevia (review to come)

End product!

isn’t it pretty? 🙂

Continued with asian flavors, dinner was chinese. I made steamed fish just like chinese restaurants.

1) Steam the fish (seasoned with salt, cooking wine and ginger) for 7 min in boiling water.

2) Heat 1 tbsp of canola oil + 2 tbsp soy sauce

3) Pour the hot oil to the steamed fish and top it with fresh scallion.

I can guarantee you that it’s AMAZING!!!

assorted veggie stir-fry

porridge made with millet, polenta, goji berries and chinese dates

very satisfying meal~~~ I’m sooo making the fish again tonight! 😀

A race? Yeah~~~ I’m going to run my first 5K today! in <2 hours!!!! 😆  As everything else that I do (like getting married?), it was 100% spontaneous decision. After I came back yesterday from the run, I was feeling the runner’s high and decided that I’d participate the 5k for autism organized by my university!!!! 😀

I’ll be back later with the result!!! 😀 Wish me luck!

Q: when was your first 5K? Stats? not to compare 😉 just to have a reference.

Challenge J&J #4 & Why am I so HAPPY lately?

First, check out my Celestial Seasoning Giveaway!

I haven’t told you guys this, I’ve been feeling full of joy, excitement but at the same time calmness lately. I find everything I do interesting or even fascinating, I feel I can finally LIVE the present. Even in days that I don’t do any progress in term of work, I’d feel okay, and if I squeeze a jog/yoga or read for few hours, I’d be fresh again. Even in days that I wake up at 3AM I don’t piss off, instead I take advantage of it and fully enjoy some reading. I feel more open to people and learned to focus what I like about the person instead of what I don’t like. I feel more indulgent to myself by learning what are my strength, weakness and how to use them to boost the authentic happiness. (I promise to do a full review of the book). As a researcher, I look for reasons/causes of this wonderful feeling: is it this book and that book that totally changed my mind? is the new challenge that I started? is the spring season? I don’t know…. maybe a little bit of everything. 😆 Whatever it is, it’s working!!!

I feel I should write this down because I find that people tend to write/express when they’re depressed much more often than when they’re happy. But why is that? Shouldn’t we record more positive feelings?

okay. moving onto J&J #4 @Eat Clean Cookbook: kasha breakfast pudding

My adapted version used:

• 1/2 cup soy milk + 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup buckwheat
• 2 egg whites
• 1 apple grated
• 1 oz. almond chopped
• pinch of salt/vanilla/cinnamon/nutmeg

1. Bring the milk water mixture to boil

2. add buckwheat

3. grate apple

4. add in the rest of the ingredients to the liquid

5. Bake for 30 min at 350F and boil 5 min at the end

it was AMAZING!!!! I’m speechless! That it was really really REALLY good! I never liked buckwheat until I tried this. MAKE IT! You’ll thank me! 😆

Jess asked me if I’d recommend this book? What do you think? Absolutely!!! If I don’t like it, I’d never started this challenge! 😀

Q: Have you tried buckwheat? What’s your favorite way to have it?

As this post gets published, I’ll be presenting my paper in our department seminar. I’m not nervous/anxious at all. I feel relaxed and confident! 🙂

Challenge J&J recipe #2 & “productive” afternoon

The new challenge got more fun! I’m glad that it brings me excitement as well to some of you 🙂

I made morning berry strata yesterday. It should look like this

ingredients

1. one slice of Rudis honey WW bread

2. Make a mix of: soy milk (1/2 c), 1/2 tbsp coconut oil, 2 egg whites, vanilla, cinnamon, sea salt and chopped almonds (1 oz.). Pour over the bread and add 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries

3. Fridge overnight

4. Bake for 30 min and top with Coconut bliss ice cream

it got really spongy 😉

Although the end product doesn’t look like the original one, but it was good, spongy bread, crunchy almond and the addition of ice cream to the just baked goodie hit the spot! 🙂

Toutou and I had a very “productive” afternoon in term of relaxing us from the stressful work. We went to Bethesda downtown, first thing we did was to have some frozen yogurt! 🙂

and then visited some cute stores

We even jogged for 4 miles! 😆 We felt like super woman afterwards.

And we ended going to WF and Tjs for groceries. This week’s food load

I picked  few new ingredients to make recipes next week: beets, artichoke (are they in season now?)

I got some buckwheat! 🙂 Haven’t had this for years!

Do you guys think that’s a lot of food for one person? Toutou asked me again how I put them into my system. I thought I was normal, but apparently not. What do you think? $50-$60 bill in groceries every week for just one person is a lot?

Q: How was your Saturday? Productive?

I was planning to have another “productive” afternoon today, but I just got an email from my authors, apparently we have <12 h. to submit our paper. 😯 so no play for Coco today.

Q: What’s your favorite way to eat Artichoke?