Not too bad actually

Thank you everyone for the great comments on my last post! I’m sure I could go thru this situation just fine. Sometimes when you think about it, eating healthy is actually more expensive compare eating junks. But let’s think it this way. We rather spend a bit more on good quality food rather than medical bills and medications, right?

Being healthy is expensive (I translated literally from Indonesian’s famous proverb- sorry if it doesn’t quite make sense).

So speaking about food, what did I have for today?

Breakfast/post workout was exactly the same as yesterday – sweet potatoes and Applegate Roast Beef slices.

Lunch was also exactly the same as dinner..LOL…I know I’ve been having lots of food deja vu lately.
Oven fried taro fries, Oven fried curried chicken fingers and steamed Chinese veggies.

Dessert was the last container of strawberries (gotta get more this Saturday from Farmer’s Market)

Those kept me full until the time I got home and started to get hungry while I was driving home. Luckily, since Hubby K is now temporarily a stay home hubby, he already started cooking some dinner (mainly steaming veggies and reheated some Char Siew) while I made Egg Loaf Frittata.

Too bad I was too hungry to wait for the frittata to be done so I ate without it.

Plus I ate another avocado after I polished off the entire plate.

Tomorrow is finally Friday, (YAY!) which also mean the last workout of this week for me. Weekend, here I come!!

Tell me, what’s your biggest expense? Food? Clothing? Or other stuff?

 

It’s My Friday!

I know it’s only Tuesday, but it’s my Friday and I am super happy although I don’t actually have any plans at all for the next couple days. So why am I so happy, you wonder? Well, let’s just say I’m just happy to be able to take a mental break from work. My brain has been pretty foggy lately and I desperately need a break.

What am I gonna do? Honestly, I have no idea..I’ll just go with the flow. I don’t want to stress out too much planning stuff while in the end it didn’t turn out the way I want it. So might as well just go with the flow so no expectation, right?

Ok so how was my day today? As I’m typing this while sitting on my stability ball, my abs/core is SORE as hell from this morning workout. It’s sore in a good way though. I haven’t felt my abs this sore for a while so it’s a proof I had a good workout today.

Since our microwave is officially unusable now (thank goodness the exhaust fan function is still working), I had to resort to a an old fashioned healthy way of warming up the food: steaming!

1 medium white sweet potato & 2 slices of pan fried chicken breasts

I had another big sweet potato topped with some coconut flakes as my breakfast at work. (no pic but you get the idea). I realized that this white color sweet potato didn’t fill me up as much as the orange or the purple one. Hm…I have to take a mental note on this.

Lunch was really similar to my dinner.

I topped this with slices of a whole avocado – no picture since I was eating with my co-worker (didn’t want to get a weird stare from taking picture of my lunch)

And as a “dessert” I ate about half of this fruit bowl that my co-worker gave yesterday. (and finished the rest after dinner)

Came back home, I was craving for Roasted Curried Cauliflower so I made that.

While I had my oven on, I made another batch of One Pot Baked Mixed Veggies. This time I only had eggplants, zucchini, tomatoes and chopped onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, curry powder and used coconut milk instead of water.


My dinner (last remaining of Primal Chinese BBQ Pork, stir fried grass fed ground beef, Roasted Curried Cauliflower, sliced whole avocado) = DELICIOUS!


How do you warm your food other than using a microwave?
In this modern time, microwave is like a staple appliance in almost every household in the US (as far as I know). Back in Indo, we’ve never had a microwave. My mom usually either pan fry the food or steam them to warm them up. Besides we hardly had any left overs so we usually ate fresh cooked food almost everyday. Besides there are a lot of study saying that microwave destroys part of the food nutrition so it’s better not to use them too often. But for busy people like most of us who work full time, it’s just hard not to use it. Before my microwave broke, I actually didn’t use it that often either (I couldn’t help it at work though cause I didn’t want to eat cold lunch). I prefer steaming for warming up my food as it retains the moisture while microwave tends to dry out my food.

Have a great night!

 

I’m Daring You the Truths!

Hey everyone, how’s your week going so far?

I started mine with a new workout this morning from Bodyrock.tv and go a nice sweaty workout. Despite not eating any dinner last night, my performance was pretty good. I didn’t feel sluggish or lack of energy. It’s true that I’ve been always working out in empty stomach for 90% of the time for the past year, but I usually never skip dinner the night before.
Truth: When you consumed enough calories of the day, your body will naturally not wanting any more food.

Refueled myself with sweet potatoes & grass fed ground beef

Truth: Remember I mass baked sweet potatoes on Sunday? Well, I found out a lot of them are still undercooked, especially in the middle. Solutions? Zapped them in the microwave for about 5 minutes and tada!

Washed and packed berries for me and Hubby K.

Truth: I tend to be greedy in terms of packing my favorite fruits – so you could tell which box is mine

Packed my breakfast as well – 2 small avocado with some squirt of lemon juice, dash of salt and grass fed ground beef

Doesn't it looke like a hack version of Chipotle?? LOL

Truth: I love my own “guacamole” version vs. store bought (which I still had 1 more container in my freezer). For some reason, store bought guacamole tastes bitter to me and my quick version is creamier and has a slight “sweetness” in it.

Lunch was whatever stuff I put together last night I finally got to taste Curried Chicken Kale I made last night. How funny I cooked but ended up not eating any of those until today.

Truth: I wasn’t really hungry for lunch but I still finished the entire box (plus the berries later afternoon)

Dinner was left over Baked Provence Herbs Lamb Shanks and more Curried Chicken Kale. (no pic but you get the idea)

And I also cooked more stuff:
Beef Stew (similar to 7 Spice beef stew but with 5 spice powder and star anise instead plus carrots, ginger and turnips)


Use-Whatever-Veggies-You-Have Stir Fry – the combo this time were asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, green peas and grass fed ground beef)

Truth: I don’t know why I’m still cooking during weekday despite already did meal preparation on Sunday. For some reason, I always cook every.single.day.of.the.week.

Finally got the chance to cut the pineapple that I got last week.

Click to see my post on pineapple cutting tutorial

Truth: I don’t really enjoy cutting pineapple and yet I am still getting it and it will usually take me days to finally cut it before it actually goes bad.

After some macadamia nut overdose yesterday, I convinced myself to write my own Healthy/F*** off scale food using Whole9 template.

The higher they are, the healthiest and I strive to eat them more often. The middle part indicates some food that are not actually that good for your health but not that bad so I’ll eat them on some rare occasions. I put nuts in that scale so I’ll be more mindful consuming them. Finally the lowest area where food that are pretty much that won’t do any good but when it’s the time that I really want it, I’ll just F*** off, have it, savor it then move on. Just like last time I had that flaky buttery cookie.
Truth: I am not even sure if writing it down will actually work for me or against me. Anyway, it’s good to actually put it down on a paper so I could always refer back. Of course the scale might change later on in the future.

Have a great night/day everyone!

 

One week update, hospital facts, some fun traditional remedies

I’m still alive and kickin’ here, in case you are wondering
Thanks for the encouraging comments on the last post. They meant a lot to me . So my typical days recently are get up in the morning, workout (if I have time), go to work, come back home, have a quick dinner, then drive my parents to the hospital to see my bro, hanging out there until we all got kicked out by the security guard because we usually stay beyond visiting hours, come back home, shower, sleep – rinse and repeat. That’s weekdays.

Weekends are pretty similar but add the hospital trips during daytime as well.

My hubby and I had the luxury (pun intended) to have lunch at the hospital's cafeteria because we had to drive my parents there earlier than lunch time and we weren't hungry when we left. Then it was too much hassle go back and forward, might as well stayed there for lunch

Not bad actually and I finished this whole bowl by myself - hubby took a little taste

My hubby had the wraps, which in my opinion wasn’t that great. The wrap was a bit salty for my taste.

Another thing that I had to come up in order to squeeze in as many chores as possible is to prepare a ready to mix bread mixture. Yup, I had to pre-measure all the dry ingredients and put them in the zip lock and set them aside. So everytime I want to make a bread, all I need to do is pour that whole dry ingredients into the bread machine, add the wet ingredients (water, oil and almond meals), press the button and walk away until the mixing and rising is done.

bread dry ingredients in the zip locks & almond meals (almond waste from almond milk) in plastic wrap. All measured up. Sadly those are still sitting on the counter because apparently I STILL DO NOT have time to mix these ingredients in the bread machine and press the button...SIGH.

fresh fruits are always the best meal for me!

Oh and did I tell you that I had the honor to have another meal at the hospital cafeteria for Monday night dinner?

None of the dressings they offered appealed me, so I grabbed the packaged lemon juice and mustard

A closer look of the inside - I had to pick the shredded cheese before eating this. Such a pain

So it’s been one week and you guess they found out what kind of infection my bro is having? WRONG.

They HAVEN’T FOUND anything concrete regarding his illness. Lots of tests, biopsies, cultures and other medical gibberish I don’t understand and they still can’t pin point what kind of infection he’s having. He’s still under TB meds and had lots of antibiotic IVs infused into his body and yet his fever is still hovering between 99-100s°F. His heart rate is insanely high (120bpm-150bpm) for someone who’s only lying down on bed whole day. That’s crazy! Normal people only get that high heart rate when they jog or run! Like me this morning.

Btw, the hospital workers are TERRIBLE! My bro told me yesterday that he was in pain for 15 minutes in the afternoon because some stupid nurse combined his potassium IV together with the antibiotic. A little bit of medical stuff here: potassium IV flow is much SLOWER than antibiotic. Why? Because you could DIE from potassium overdose in a short time! Even with a very slow flow, it still hurts (like a burning sensation on your hand according to my bro).

So guess what? He was in an extremely burning pain on his right arm and been calling up the nurse for help BUT NOBODY CAME!!!! FUCKING RETARDS! I was so mad last night when I heard him telling me that and had to restrain myself to storm up to the front desk and yelling at the staff. But I know better. Do not make enemies at the place where they can create some kind of medical errors to harm the patient. So I stayed quiet. But I did bring this matter a little bit to the night shift nurse, not sure if he got what I meant. My bro said the daytime nurses are the WORST! Gosh, I hope I don’t have to be hospitalized like him. I don’t trust my health to strangers. Sadly none of our family member can always stay by his side to help him get stuff. Just like my friend said, you always need a family member around the patient to get his/her needs. Can’t trust those hospital nurses.

Ok moving on.

I had some fun traditional remedies that I just learned recently. Ever since my brother’s been sick, one of my relative who’s an expert in traditional Chinese herbs been advising my parents with lots of traditional remedies.
Remedy #1:

Dried red chilies

(source)
Place a handful of dried red chilies in a sandwich size ziplock bags and hold them in your hands and put some on your body as well (packaged in a zip lock bag). According to them, it’ll help drive out the fever from your body. Believe it or not.

Remedy #2

Rice vinegar

(Source)
According to my other aunt, soaking your feet into rice vinegar will make you feel less tired after a long walk or something like that. Interesting!

So any other traditional remedies that you’d like to share?

 

Another day off tomorrow, GNU review and calorie intake thoughts

Today I thought would be another draggy day but turned out not really. Work wasn’t crazy busy, but more like an okay pace. Heck I even felt the day went by pretty fast. Probably because tomorrow I’ll have another day off? I had to take a day off tomorrow for lab appointment. I had to be fasting, so no drinking or eating 6 hours prior the exam! Gosh! I could handle hunger, but thirst??? That’ll be tough! The appointment is at 2:30 pm but I have to be there at 2:00 pm. Geez, that means I have to stop eating and drinking by 8 am!
*sigh* Also no exercise in the morning. Even though I have a day off, still can’t really sleep in either or else I can’t eat/drink anything until late afternoon!!

Anyway, after my morning workout, I was super hungry so I chugged down this homemade almond milk with 1 scoop of Designer’s Whey Chocolate Protein Powder. Gosh, I couldn’t remember the last time I had this protein drink. To be honest, I don’t really like the taste of protein drink and if you look at the ingredients closely, lots of weird stuff there. I rather get my protein from real foods.

red bean bread bun from Chinese bakery. so fluffy

Had this as my breakfast at work. The red bean was a bit sweet to my taste but thanks to my bitter green tea, it all balanced out.

Unfortunately, that red bean bun didn’t hold my hunger until lunch time. I packed 2 slices ww homemade bread and had those topped w/ PB around late morning. Bad move! I was sooo full that I couldn’t even finish my lunch! I hate it when I wasn’t hungry at my usual meal time.

But I still could finish the fruits! papaya strawberry post lunch and orange peach w/ non fat yogurt as my late afternoon munchies

Btw, I kept forgetting to put my let me review GNU Foods Espresso Chip Bar that I tried last week.


This bar has a strong coffee flavor! I was expecting a semi sweet bar with a hint of coffee flavor, but that wasn’t the case. This bar is seriously for a coffee lover.  I am not quite a coffee drinker so this bar is a bit too strong for my taste. I was going to have it for my late afternoon snack, but after one bite, I decided to save it for the next day’s morning snack instead. I am quite sensitive to caffeine that I rather avoid having it in late afternoon or I’ll have trouble sleeping.

Lots of steamed veggies for dinner!

chinese veggies (Choy sum in Cantonese or chai sim in Mandarin)

steamed egg plant and carrot

nuked frozen edamame

baby carrots dipped with nutritional yeast

Dessert

yogurt with lots of peaches and some vanilla ice cream

Remember the last post when I mentioned I wanted to gain more muscle weight? Well I’d say it’s not quite easy for me to increase my calorie intake. One thing is I can’t eat a lot of foods all at once and on the other hand, somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s still some “fear” that this extra calorie will backfire on me. I know I can always keep it off as long I keep working out regularly, but there’s still that “fear” that my workout can’t keep up with my calorie intake. Sorry, I know I’m not making that much sense, but that’s how I’m feeling now.