What’s going into the belly?

Today was a little windy and chilly in Southern California, despite the bright sunlight during the day. Anyway, it was a nice weather to take a nap and off from work..haha. But no, I still went to work. Gotta keep the paycheck coming in right?

Ok now onto my food for today.

MORNING & AFTERNOON
As usual, I got up around 4:45 am to do my Day 89 P90X Lean Recovery week. Gosh, I can’t believe I almost done with my P90X!

- 1 cup of plain soymilk mixed with 1 scoop of Designer’s Whey Chocolate Protein Powder
- 1 medium banana (not pictured, I was too hungry to devour it after my P90X Cardio X workout this morning)
- 1 cup of Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal – I love this thing and I can eat it as my snack. But my body is pretty sensitive to any crackers or dry cereals. If I have a little too much, I’ll develop a canker sore in my mouth, even though I drink lots of water afterward.

After finished my post workout meal, I cut up some fruits for me and my hubby for lunch. Pretty much my day to day lunch is a left over from the night before dinner plus cut out fruits. Pretty simple yet healthy

simple yet healthy

From top left clockwise: pickled cucumber and jicama in lemon juice, sliced 2 small fuji apples, 1 slice of homemade whole wheat flaxseed bread (this is for my breakfast at work, along with my cup of green tea), grapes & orange (for after lunch dessert), and the lunch (brown rice, yu-choy sum veggies, some minced beef and my mom’s homemade chili paste)

And I also didn’t forget to bring my Larabar® Peanut Butter and Jelly, which I got as sample from them. I got total 4 bars to sample, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of the other 2 Yeah, I only have 1 left after I had this for my mid morning snack.

The flavor I had today is Peanut Butter and Jelly. I am not a sweet tooth person and majority of other protein bars I tried were either very sweet or very sticky. This one, however, is DELISH! It has a nice sweetness of the dates and the a hint of tangy from the cherries. I could even taste the cherry pieces in there as well! One thing that I am a little not too fond of it is the density of the bar and also after having it, I feel like my throat feels a little dry and I had to drink 1 1/2 12 oz of water to wash it off. But overall, this bar is pretty good. One thing that I like the most is the simplicity of the ingredients. It only has: dates, peanuts, unsweetened cherries and salt. HOW SIMPLE IS THAT! NO gibberish chemical names, NO unpronounced ingredients, NO evil sugar, NO high fructose corn syrup just to name a few. The sweetness comes naturally from the cherries and the dates! Love it! I’d say this is one of my favorite!

DINNER
I realized I didn’t have much stuff in my fridge so I decided to have a High Fiber Dinner. Yup, the name said it all. I’ll cook a bunch of vegetables and very minor meat. So here it is:

Clockwise from top left: left over minced beef, boiled broccoli and bok choy, edamame, pickled cucumber and jicama, baked carrots, grape tomatoes.

Man those are SOOOOOOO GOOD! I was stuffed and there were still left over too! So I packed them to become my tomorrow’s lunch

colorful lunch!

Hungry yet?

Don’t worry, my hubby also has the same thing. I made quite a lot so even after we packed the food for our lunch, there was still 1 bowl of boiled bok choy and broccoli left.

I remembered I only had 3 slices left of my whole wheat flaxseed bread and my hubby took all of them for his breakfast this morning.

Argh, only 3 left and they were gone after I came back. Hubby took them for breakfast.

So I decided to make an egg white whole wheat pancake! I got the idea from Jessica. It looks so good so might as well I tried it. I didn’t really follow the recipe to the t, but the basic ingredients are the same (egg white (I used 3 eggs because the ones I have are pretty small, wheat flour and milk (I used plain soymilk). I also added a bit of dried cranberries. It made 9 mini pancakes. They were really fluffy and light! I can eat just like that. No need syrup, honey, butter or anything.

Yummy!

 

Food of the day: Minced Beef with mixed vegetables

I got home around 6 pm today, and I decided to cook the minced beef that I marinated yesterday. It turned out pretty good actually.

Minced Beef with Mixed Vegetables

What’s in the marinate:
1/2 cup of orange juice
Garlic powder
Minced beef
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
Marinate the beef for at least 2 hours or overnight for a better taste

Additional ingredients:
Mixed frozen vegetables
Celery stalks (I used whatever left in my fridge today, but it’s totally up to you).
1 clove of garlic, minced

Directions:
Heat the nonstick pan with high heat, add 1 tsp cooking oil. You do not need to wait until it’s smoking hot.
Add the minced garlic and the chopped celery, stir until it releases nice fragrance.
Add in the minced beef, keep stirring
When the meat is half cooked, add in the frozen vegetable mixture. Make sure to keep the pan in high heat so it won’t be too watery
Add about 1/2 tsp of salt and 2 tsp of brown sugar and taste it
Keep adjusting the amount of salt and brown sugar until it reaches the desired taste
Done and enjoy!

Aside from the meat dish, I boiled yu choy sum, some kind of Chinese vegetables that look similar to spinach. It might not be familiar to Western people as it’s considered to be Asian’s vegetables. I love almost all kind of vegetables, from broccoli, carrots, bok choy, yu choy, spinach, just to name a few. However, I am not quite fond of pale vegetables such as cabbage and iceberg lettuce as I don’t considered them to have as much vitamins as the green ones.

So here’s my dinner for today

Clockwise from top right: minced beef, yu choy, pickled jicama and cucumber in lemon juice