Food: messy parfait, salad and chinese food

I enjoyed very much this week’s food because they’re easy to make, nutritious and fresh enough for hot weather (over 100F!!! :shock:)

Breakfast continued to be “messy parfait”. I love it so much that every morning after I wake up I look forward to my breakfast! 😉

this combo has 2 chopped nectarine, 1 protein brownie, 1/3 cup cottage cheese mixed with 1/4 cup almond milk and 1 tbsp chia seed

After I finished the protein brownie, I made another batch replacing cocoa powder with 1/3 cup shredded coconut.

this combo has the coconut protein cake, 1/2 cup greek yogurt and nectarines.

And one more combo with cottage cheese, almond milk and chia seed (sit at the fridge overnight), coconut protein cake and nectarines. YUM~~~

I just made another batch of protein cake, this time mango & coconut protein cake

• 1 1/4 cup oats, grounded
• 1/3 cup unsweetened coconut flakes, grounded
• 60g protein powder (vanilla)
• 200 g mango, puree
• 1/2 cup egg white
• 1/2 cup almond milk
• 1/2 tbsp baking powder
• 42g chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup NuNaturals stevia baking blend

Mix wet and dry separately and bake at 350F for 30 min.

Salad is all I crave during this hot weather. So whenever I have lunch at home, I’d make a nutritious salad

this one has chopped romaine, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, tofu, corn and half large avocado. Dressing: balsamic, olive, mustard.

this one used kale and Mama Pea’s sunshine salad dressing

Same salad ingredients as the previous one and the dressing is made using 1 tbsp tahini, 2 tbsp water, 1 tbsp vinegar, 1 tbsp nutritional yeast, minced garlic, salt and pinch of stevia.

And my favorite salad combo this week!!!

made with chopped romaine, tomatoes, cucumber, tofu, 2 boiled eggs, 1 avocado, dressing: balsamic, mustard, nutritional yeast, chia seed and almond milk.

Love the creaminess of extra avocado.

Dinners were chinese food.

#1

A salad made with sliced cucumber, mung bean sprout and mushroom (pic of the can below), salt, sesame oil and pinch of sugar.

napa cabbage soup with homemade fish ball and dry shrimp

sautéed chinese greens with oyster mushroom

this week’s porridge: aduki, mung bean, chinese red dates and oatmeal

#2

with scrambled eggs with tomato

#3

sauteed greens with oyster mushroom and sautéed zucchini with black fungus, fish balls and dry shrimp

#4

soup of napa cabbage, seaweed, dry shrimp and fish balls

I’m loving my homemade meals lately. Although I haven’t been very creative, but I enjoy them a lot. 🙂

Q: What are you loving lately?

Food: summer meals

DC has been really hot last week… we reached 100F several days! So hot breakfast doesn’t sound appetizing anymore. I’ve been having parfait or “messy” breakfast last week and love them!!!

#1 Parfait and chocolate almond milk

layer of quinoa, greek yogurt, peach, more quinoa and walnuts as topping

so refreshing and nutritious

enjoyed every bite of it

#2 A “mess” made with chopped nectarine, greek yogurt and protein brownie

love this combo so much!!!! I have two more brownies, yeah~~~

and a decaf latte with almond milk.

Dinners have been mainly a quick stir-fry, korean side dish and porridge. Last week’s porridge was made with oatmeal and aduki bean

stir fry of napa cabbage, mushroom, dry shrimp and tofu

Another similar combo

celery, tofu and dry shrimp.

A cleaning fridge kind of salad.

A base of greens, sautéed tuscan kale with coconut oil and tamari, top was a serving of broccoli “cheese” pasta bake

Another stir-fry with napa cabbage, tomato, black fungus, tofu and homemade fish ball

Both Saturday and Sunday I had salad for lunch

made with romaine lettuce, tomato, bell pepper, mushroom, 2 boiled eggs and 1 medium avocado. Seasoned with balsamic, lemon and mustard.

Salad is so good with eggs and avocado! Can’t wait to have more!!! 🙂

Q: What’s your favorite summer breakfast and salad?

Taking control of your personal finance

I asked you how do you take care of your finance few days ago because I’m a mess and I have no idea how much I spend in a month. I also asked some friends. Ironically four economists (Ph.D to be) and none of us take care of our $$. Not that we have much to take care of (poor grad student) but at least to have an idea of how much we spend in each category raptly. Shame on us 😦

Yesterday I decided to take control over $$. 👿 How hard can it be? Well… just couple of hours of “research” until I found two very handy programs 😉

The first one is recommended by Gina: Mac iWork Numbers

• Spreadsheets are built on a flexible, free-form canvas. So you can move tables, charts, graphics, and text anywhere you want on the page. As tables resize, objects automatically adjust to fit around them.
• Numbers lets you create categories based on information from any column. It automatically generates a summary row for each category. By using just the summary row, you can collapse, expand, and rearrange categories to organize your data any way you want.

Why I like it:

• It comes with a format for personal finance. You just need to copy paste banking report (summary that you can download from your online banking) into the template and you’ll have a spending summary by category.
• It’s easy to change font/color.
• It’s visually prettier than excel.
• It’s more user friendly than excel.

I’ve created a template. If you need a copy, let me know 🙂

The second one is Pageonce

Pageonce was designed to help you control your finances. With Pageonce you can easily track your bank accounts, credit cards, investment and travel plans, monitor bills and manage your money. Pageonce is available to online or on your mobile, anytime and anywhere you need it.

What’s so good about it?

• It’s FREE, just sign up for an account either online or with your iphone.
• Alerts and notification to pay bills. So, no more late charges.
• You can add all your account: checking account, credit card, mileage programs, utilities, paypal… etc. You don’t need to log-in in multiple accounts and websites to see your transactions, just Page Once 😉
• You can take it everywhere. I just download the iphone app (also free).

I recommend Pageonce for daily use (if you are iphone/blackberry user) and Numbers once a week to keep track of your spending. 🙂

If you’re like me, who never look into bills and don’t keep track of spending, you’d better START NOW. Why? Because things can go out of control, just like what happened to me this month. I got shocked when I realize how much I am spending!!! Some seriously control is needed here.

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Back to eats. Nothing fancy but I did make a new breakfast combo

Baked Apple (Manzana Asada). It’s a classic argentinean dessert. Simple, tasty and comforting.

Ingredients:

• an apple
• 1/2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp sugar
• cinnamon

Method:

• Take out the core of the apple
• Put the butter and sugar in the hole
• Bake at 350 F for 30 min
• Add cinnamon.

I made a mess with a cup of greek yogurt.

YUM~

After a week of random and non standard eats (roasted chicken, indian food and pizza), I craved simple food, mainly veggies.

garlic sauteed chinese green bean

cabbage sauteed with dry shrimp

served with oatmeal porridge

A complete leisure day also involved 3 hours nap 😯 (I woke up at 6AM even though I went to bed at 2AM the night before) and magazine reading. I had more things to do like cleaning, laundry, exchanging fall-summer clothes, etc, but I was lazy and tired. I guess after a big battle, we need some good rest. 🙂

Today’s plan: heading to NYC to hear Gotan Project and play with Maggie!!! 😆

Q: What’s your favorite kitchen gadget/appliance?