Food: dinners and KABOCHA is back!

Dinners had to be quick because I was always tired when I got home, just wanted to eat and visit my couch!

#1: oatmeal, veggie tofu stir-fry

this one has celery, black fungus, tofu, oyster mushroom, seasoned with tamari and sesame oil.

#2: Tortilla pizzas, chopped tomato

#3 porridge and spicy-sour cabbage

cabbage sautéed with oyster mushroom, black fungus, seasoned with chinese vinegar and spicy sauce

#4 Wonton! Let me show you how I made it. My mom prepared the filling before she left so I just need to wrap them

used this seaweed soup for the base

put the wonton in boiling water, cook for about 3-4 min

prepare the soup, add more seaweed and boiled romaine lettuce for extra veggies

top with tons of white pepper. The whole dish wouldn’t be the same without white pepper!

#5: porridge, celery salad and soy bean pancake

For the salad I simply boiled celery and dressed with tamari, vinegar, sesame oil and 1 tsp sugar.

Yummy pancakes!!!

And the biggest NEWS is KABOCHA IS BACK TO MY LIFE!!! After not having it for over 5 months (pregnancy aversion), I finally love it again!

Every night I had a bowl of roasted kabocha for dessert, sooooo good! I don’t think I like it steamed yet (as I used to) but I do love cinnamon roasted kabocha. It reminded me grad-student life, when every night Kabocha was my companion. 😉

I still can’t eat steamed corn. I had it once and felt nausea afterwards. I guess the 5 packages that I have in the freeze have to wait a bit longer. 🙂

Q: Have you reunited with any of your past food love recently?

Tour to my fancy gym & 2 macrobiotic meals

Yesterday I had a very productive day… one that I haven’t had for a long time! 😀 It was intense but short… just 6 hours was enough to make my day 🙂

3 hours in the morning at Caribous

and 3 hours in the afternoon in another Caribou 😉

I always worked at home but lately I found working at cafes with all the noises actually helpful to concentrate on my thing 😉

By 5.30PM I was done with work so I went to the gym. All right… I’ve been going quite often since I joined… but yesterday I went to parts that I haven’t visited yet: the shower, the pool and the steaming room 😆 to confirm that it is really a fancy gym 😉

Take a look:

Da da!!! Let me introduce you the stationary swimming pool

1 pool per person. This is the quit water

and there are two buttons and a speed regulator

one button makes water coming out from sides

the other one makes waves, which is actually the one used for swimming. Basically it works like a stationary treadmill, you swim against the waves.

It looks like easy… but it is not! 👿 It kept hitting me to the walls! It’s hard to find the right spot to swim at so the waves work perfectly against you. If you deviate a little from the course, the wave throw you to the sides. I “struggled” for 30 min and called it a nice debut. I might try it one more time.. but so far I’m not convinced that it really works.

and then I went to the steaming room

it felt soooo good!!! 😆 I should definitely go there more often. All my pores were opened and clean after just 10 min 😀

Free clean towels are provided

the shower

Free body soap, shampoo, conditioner and body scrub 😀

the cardio area

and the weight area

Oh…. I started making meals from the macrobiotic book and LOVE it!!!

First I made a stir-fry rice

Ingredients: broccoli, mushrooms, onions, tofu and egg (the original recipe calls for tempeh and no egg)

brown rice

seasonings: rice vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce and S+P

An easy, filling and delicious meal made in <15 min

For dinner steamed veggies (kale, okra and Brussels sprouts), roasted kabocha topped in a mushroom sauce

a closer look

the sauce was amazingly good!!! I’ll post about the recipe tomorrow, hopefully with the full review of the book 😉

Q1: Do you like working at cafes?

Q2: What do you usually order at cafes? I’ve tried a couple of tea with cinnamon, quite interesting 🙂

Alert: check out Thanks & Giving that Krista is organizing. What a great cause! 😀

Perfect rice!

I’m in love with my new kitchen toy: the rice maker. It makes the most delicious brown rice ever!!! 😆

I have three delicious meals to share today, so let’s start. 😉

Breakfast: fage + aduki beans + coconut butter.

It is delicious and filling. Coconut and aduki is a magic combo. It reminds me the aduki aduki mousse.

Lunch: mashed cauliflower + baked salmon + sauteed mushrooms

mashed cauliflower: 1/2 head of steamed cauliflower, 1 tbsp butter, salt, pepper and 2 tbsp of almond milk. I don’t like mashed potatoes, but I love this! 😀

And the brown rice. 1 cup of brown rice, fill water just at the 1 cup line for brown rice

choose brown rice option

about 2 hours later. the best homemade brown rice ever!!! And I didn’t even soak it! 😯 I was really amazed. Usually I’d soak the rice over night and still don’t get this. I’m soooo happy with this purchase. Thank you, Maggie.

and then I wanted to recreate the squash tofu that I had in Soeun

I forgot the tofu and used only veggies that I had: 2 mini eggplants, chinese cabbage, broccoli and kabocha

steam it for 10 min while I made the sauce: white miso paste (1/4 cup), tahini (2 tbsp), ginger and garlic

all to the food processor + 1/2 cup water

done

heat the sauce in a wok

add steamed veggies

cook for 5-10 min until veggies are done.

Serve

Dinner: veggies in miso-tahini sauce served with brown rice

It was really good (although still not as good as Soeun’s). I enjoy it so much! 😆 I thought I didn’t like rice anymore… I was wrong. Now I want to eat rice everyday!!! 😆

Q: Have you re-fall in love with any food recently?