Elmo and Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day or Happy Monday to those who don’t really care for it 😀

I had such a good weekend…lots of good food, hanging out with friends etc.

Sunday was “Elmo’s” Birthday! (actual day is this Wednesday)

I present you: Food porn!

Sort of Primal-approved food that I ate:

baked tomatoes - my friend made it

cocktail shrimps - minus the cocktail sauce

spring mix salad with green grapes and tuna - I had at least 4 bowls of this!

Ribs - too much glaze - only had one

Non Primal approved

Chocolate Birthday cake from Bonjour French Pastry..SOOO FREAKING GOOD! Even for non sweet tooth person like me could binge on this if I didn’t have self control. It was very light.


One piece was good enough..thank goodness!
Probably because I had “pumpkin pie” as breakfast 😀

Nah, it was TJ full fat greek yogurt with yam sprinkled with pumpkin pie spice..but it tastes like eating pumpkin pie

I know I mentioned K and I didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. But I made these for us earlier

sliced banana covered with 100% chocolate topped with Craisin

The bitter taste of melted chocolate balanced well with the sweetness from the banana and Craisins. Love is a mixture of bitter and sweet right? 😀 I wasn’t planning on making these today, so I’d say it was a spontaneous Valentine’s chocolate.

How was your weekend?

Btw the flu didn’t get to me at all and I got rid of it completely. But unfortunately, today someone at work is sick again…*sigh* Seems like I’ll be always inhaling germs in the office. And to top it off, we’ll have rain coming later this week. The weather here has fluctuate a lot. I know it’s nothing to those who’s experiencing snow, but having the temperature fluctuate from spring to sudden winter is no fun.

Have a good week!

 

Who’s the Champion?

I’ve been feeling weird lately ever since last Sunday.

Yes, I’m still sniffing, with some runny nose once a while, a little headache and a bit of scratchy throat. However, I don’t have a fever, body aching, nor coughing. It might be a sign that my body is still fighting hard to ward off the germs out from my body?

We’ll see who’s the champion in the end.

Anyway, yesterday I received Chobani’s newest product that I won from their giveaway: Chobani Champions – Greek yogurt for the kids! 😀

Two flavors: Very Berry and Honey Nana (3 packages) – Woot!

I tried Very Berry today after lunch and it was actually pretty good. At first I was expecting the berry pieces would be under the yogurt but it wasn’t. They were mixed already. It was a bit sweet for my taste but overall it’s a pretty good protein snack on the go 🙂

Thank you Chobani for the package! 😀 It surely took a while to arrive, probably because of the weather.

Anyway, I will bring some for my friend G, who’ll be hosting a party for her 3 year old son’s birthday and D (her sister) this coming Sunday. She just had another baby last month. In Chinese tradition, after a baby is one month old, the parents usually having some kind of celebration called “Red Egg party” (please correct me if it’s wrong). But G and her hubby didn’t have time to host a party. Instead, they gave us a package contained: sticky rice, BBQ chicken leg and 2 red eggs.

I tried a little bit of the sticky rice and mostly I just ate the eggs as part of my breakfast.

Any plans for this coming Valentine’s Day weekend? Do you celebrate Valentine?
K and I won’t be doing anything special. Even when we were still dating, we didn’t celebrate V-day either. It’s kinda lame in some ways but think it this way: why do you need a special day just to say how much you care to that other person? It could be any other day, right? Yeah I know I’m lame. 😛 Besides I rather avoid the restaurant crowds on V-day and have my own home cooked meals 😀

Sorry for the short post, I gotta hit the bed early to prepare myself to this “torture” tomorrow:

Source: Bodyrock.tv

 

Primal Eat Out and Bowling I Can Not

Hi everyone! How’s your Sunday going so far? For those who are in the US, anyone watching the Superbowl? I am not a big fan of sports so NOPE, though the commercials are usually pretty interesting. I heard for a mere seconds of commercial spot, it could cost million $$.

Anyway, today I’ve been sniffing, have scratchy throat and a little lightheaded.
It might be because yesterday I didn’t wear enough clothing when hanging out with my friends. More on this later below. But that didn’t stop me to do today’s workout from Bodyrock.tv. Hope by sweating it out would ease me up a bit.

I’ve been drinking this Chinese sore throat herb syrup to ease it up.

Ingridients: Honey Loquat - just mix with hot water

Anyway, yesterday I was out for almost a whole day.

It started with my morning car service appointment, which I was told would take 2.5 hours (40k service, they had to do some fuel injection cleaner). Good thing they provide free wifi so I brought my laptop 🙂

They also provided free tea, coffee, cappucino etc and sugar loaded carbs.

donuts anyone? Not me, thanks.

Even during my pre-Primal/Paleo, I usually don’t eat sugary carbs like donuts and pastries.

 

I packed my own breakfast instead! A bag of grapes, Oikos yogurt and green tea- which I refilled twice with their free hot water.

I watched Inception on my laptop and I’d say that story is pretty good. Something about a dream. I won’t spoil it for you in case any of you haven’t watched it.

Turned out my car took about 3 HOURS!! I rushed back home, quickly did my workout, showered, ate the last 2 of tea eggs that I made couple days ago and went to the lunch gathering at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.

We got our private indoor patio so it was quite nice. There were total 12 adults plus 2 kids

I was about an hour late, but wasn’t the last one. There were 2 more after me. 😛

They ordered some appetizers. I just avoided anything deep fried, grains and gluten. Besides it was a good thing I snacked 2 tea eggs before I came so I wasn’t super starving and started indulging the carbies.

Chips with Ahi tuna dips - skipped the chips and just tasted the tuna dips - I thought those were tomatoes until someone told me it was raw tuna...eww..I dont like raw fish

Had one stuffed mushroom - not bad

Some chicken taco salad - no wrap for me, just nibbled on the veggies

Totally skipped these:

bruchetta

Pizza

Some garlic toast with pasta dips?

I ordered their Old-Fashioned Pot Roast with oven roasted vegetables – substituted their mash potato & gravy with extra steamed veggies and a cup of fruits.

The pot roast was super tender and tasty! It really inspired me to make my own too. Shouldn’t be too hard. The only thing is I don’t have a slow cooker but I think I should be able to make it with my pressure cooker.

The restaurant gave M, the birthday boy a free vanilla ice cream pie.

Cake for M, the birthday boy.

chocolate coffee cake

Cake for D, our friend who’s going back to Taiwan for good later of this month.

cute strawberry cake

I had a slice of each cake. I know it’s gluten, sugar = not primal approved. But this is when 80/20 rule comes in. There are times that I can cheat a little bit. This gathering is for M’s birthday and D’s going away party. Besides I haven’t seen my friends for about 3 months.

Besides French style bakery is super good! The cake is very light and not that sweet.

I usually don't eat the cream

Our gift for D's farewell

And all we hailed to Lucky Strike for bowling! 2 friends with kids had to leave, so did another one. So total only 9 people left.

But we weren’t so lucky! The lanes were all full and no open lanes until 2 hours later.

Enter smartphones!

After searching around we went to another bowling alley nearby.

I was totally sucked! Despite I am a regular exerciser, I couldn’t even bowl properly! Only got one strike and lots of ZERO! Both games!

first game

me..sniff sniff

None of us were hungry but the day was still early so 7 of us headed to Tea Station.

But for some reason all of my friends ended up ordering some food (err thought you all said you weren’t hungry?)

They also offered me some but I politely refused because I wasn’t hungry. In fact, I wasn’t hungry at all. I had a pretty good lunch and good thing I finished my whole portion. Most people bagged their lunch, but not me. Even though I finished my lunch, I wasn’t feeling sluggish or tired. On the other hand I felt energized. Even watching my other friends having their dinner, while I only drank my Star Fruit tea (the only one of a few of caffeine free drink choices I had here), I wasn’t even craving for it. Being primal surely nice, eh?

Hot Star Fruit Tea - You could ask them to refill the hot water

Dried star fruits

Today I went to stash up my grocery and found this!

anise!

roasted with coconut oil

It tastes like onion to me – without that onion smell. It was ok, not over the top. I’ve been wanting to try this ever since see some bloggers posted about it. But I think it’s not something I’d crave for.

 

Are you good in any sports?
I’m really bad in any kinds of sports, despite I do regular exercise. Anything with hands, feet and ball coordination, count me out!

 

Finally…

Happy Friday everyone! How’s everything? Any plans for weekend?

I will be hanging out with my college friends tomorrow for lunch and maybe bowling. I haven’t seen them for couple months because of some family matters. Anyway, I’m glad I finally can see them again.

Btw I FINALLY got my car’s bumper fixed! After shelling out $500 for deductible, I’ll just wait for the insurance to jack up my policy at my next renewal.

Tomorrow morning I’ll bring my car for 40k service – it’s been overdue! Heesh…I just wanna get the car thing outta my way.

Ok let’s go to the fun stuff.

I took a half day off from work today for an appointment. That didn’t take too long so I figured I wanted to stop by Sprouts Farmers Market — FINALLY!

I’ve heard this market before but I’ve never got a chance to check it out. There’s no Sprouts Farmers Market nearby my neighborhood area and today I decided to go to this one which I’d say kind of close by where I was today. Even that, the drive was waaay out of my usual route.

Anyway, my first impression: It’s like a Whole Foods with Trader Joe’s price 🙂 The place is clean and their produce look very fresh! They also have a bulk bins of nuts, rice, flaxseeds etc. Their staff are pretty helpful. Earlier I saw their Organic fuji apples were not stocked and asked whether they still had them in stock. They happily went to the back to check and minutes later they told me they already restocked the shelf. Woot!

C’mon, when was the last time I could get Organic Fuji Apples for 88 cents/lbs?

These babies ARE HUGE too and they aren’t bad looking either! I restrained myself not to get too many or I’d blow off this month’s grocery budget.

48oz 100% Raw Unrefined Honey for less than $10.00? I’ll take that!

5lbs Organic carrots for $4.49? Sure, bring it here!

88 cents/lbs red seedless grapes. I immediately grabbed 2 bags of those!

For some reason, I COULDN’T FIND ANY full fat Greek yogurt, so I figured I’ll try these 2 brands.

For organic pricing, Sprouts Farmers Market has won my heart. However, since it’s located far from where I live, I don’t think I’ll make it part of my weekly grocery trip. Maybe monthly. It’s a different story if they start to open nearby my neighborhood place though.

Btw yesterday was the actual Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year) and my workplace provided some kind of Chinese sweets for all the employees (geez I was hoping they’d give out the “red pocket” aka bonus)

Obviously I didn’t touch any of those sweets, not my favorite so no worth cheating.

But I scored this Loose Leaf Green Tea from one of the gift basket from our vendor! 😀

And no Chinese New Year meal would be complete without NOODLES!

Noodles symbolize long life in Chinese, so during special occasions (birthday, new year etc) it’s good to have noodle dish. Simple dinner yet very filling and yummy 🙂 Do you notice the ground pork dish? It’s the same ground pork that I used for the dumplings. 🙂

Just stir fry, added some veggies – voila – another dish!

And FINALLY, I made my OWN Coconut Butter – Thanks Katie for posting it!

It is SUPER SIMPLE!

Homemade Coconut Butter (from Chocolate Covered Katie)

Ingredients:
1 package of unsweetened coconut flakes (I used Let’s Do Organic) – I got those from Amazon.com – 12 packs of 7oz.  for $21!

Directions:
Blend unsweetened coconut flakes in your food processor and blender until it clumps up together- like this!

Be patient..just like nut butters, take a little a while sometimes..depending on your blender/food processor

Homemade Coconut Butter!

Any favorite grocery stores that you always go to?
I usually go to ethnic market rather than Vons, Albertsons, Ralphs etc. Since most of my dishes are Asian, I usually shop at Chinese market for veggies. For meat and other stuff, Superking Market, a Mediterranean-Mexican is one of my favorite as well and I blogged about it before here.
I very rarely shop at Trader Joe’s and never shop at Whole Foods (sorry for TJ and WF shoppers – no offense). For me, Whole Foods is like a rip off. Sure they have organic guarantee stuff, but I am not willing to spend my whole paycheck on it.

 

Chaotic Sunday Cooking

On Sunday morning, I got up a little later than usual and I had a bunch of things to do.

So many that I even had to write them down to keep my sanity.

On the list:
– Five Spice Baked Chicken – marinate DONE!
– Cream Broccoli soup
– Butternut squash puree
– Dumplings
– Marinate tofu – press first
– Vacuum/cleaning
– Ab-tastic Exercise Challenge

Obviously, I didn’t finish everything on one day.

Here what I managed to do:
– Five Spice Baked Chicken – baked
– Cream Broccoli soup
– Dumplings
– Ab-tastic Exercise Challenge
– Pressed the tofu

K was kind enough to do the vacuum and cleaning 🙂

Five Spice Baked Chicken (Primal)
Ingredients:
– 2 cornish hen
– 1 white onion -sliced
– 1 Tbsp honey
– 3-4 Tbsp tamari soy sauce
– 2 tsp salt
– 3-4 tsp five spice powder
– 3-5 garlic cloves
– 1 inch of ginger

Directions:
1. Mash garlic and ginger with mortar pestle or food processor
2. Mix with the tamari soy sauce and five spice powder

3. Line the sliced white onions on the baking dish
4. Place 2 cornish hen and rub the seasonings generously

5. Marinate for about 4 hours or overnight.
6. Bake for about 1 hour or until done in 425°F – turn it over once (I reduced the heat to 375°F towards the end b/c the onions start to get burn)

Not quite pretty but taste very very yummy! 😀 It has similar taste to those char siu sauce. Who needs a sodium, msg, processed sugar and chemical added store bought char siu sauce when you can make it your own? The onions gave the sweetness and nothing beats the smell of caramelized onions! Hmmm….

Next…
After I saw Zuzana from Bodyrock.tv posted her Broccoli Cream Turkey Breast recipe I couldn’t wait to try it. As usual, I always HAVE to tweak the ingredients. For some reason I just CAN’T stick to the recipe to the “T”.

The recipe should be very simple but since I don’t like do good with milk, I used my homemade almond milk. I spent at least 1 hour to make the almond milk prior making the dish. But fresh almond milk always taste the best 😀

Cream Broccoli Soup with Chicken (modified from Bodyrock.tv) – Primal
Ingredients:
About 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts -cubed
3-4 broccoli crowns
About 2 cups of almond milk
Freshly squeezed lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
Salt, pepper
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 white onion – minced
2 shallots – minced
2 cloves crushed garlic
1 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp avocado oil

Optional:
– chopped walnuts
– shredded carrots

Directions:
1. Heat up the pan with 1 Tbsp avocado oil in medium high heat
2. Saute onions, garlic and shallots until translucent – add in the butter
3. Pour in the almond milk- bring slowly to boil – don’t over boil – just simmer is enough
4. Once it simmers, add the chopped broccoli

5. Season with coriander, salt, and cumin to taste
6. When the broccoli is soft, turn off the heat and let it cool down
7. While waiting, heat up a pan with 1 Tbsp avocado oil in medium high heat
8. Lightly pan fry the cubed chicken meat until brown
9. After the soup has cooled down, puree it in your food processor

Serve!

Instead adding the chicken into the soup, I decided to keep it aside and add them in when consuming it.

Option: Add grated carrots and chopped walnuts or any other nuts for extra crunch!

The cream broccoli soup might not look appetizing (it reminds me of baby food LOL) but it taste AH-mazing!

Still with me? One more: Dumplings!

Pork Dumplings/ Meatballs (not quite primal due to the gluten in dumpling wraps)
Ingredients:
– 2 lbs ground pork meat (I picked a meat cut and asked the butcher to ground it. I don’t like buying pre-grounded pork)
– 1-2 jicama – minced
– 1 egg
– 3 green onions – chopped
– 1-2 cups of shredded cloud ear fungus
– 3-5 cloves of garlic
– 1 inch of ginger
– 1 white onion -minced
– 1/2 tsp white pepper
– 3-5 Tbsp tamari soy sauce
– 1/2 package of dumpling/wonton wraps (to keep it primal, skip the wraps and just make meatballs)

Directions:
1. Mash garlic and ginger (I used mortar pestle)
2. Soak the dried cloud ear fungus until soft
3. Mix all ingredients (mushrooms, mashed ginger-garlic, chopped jicama, chopped green onions, egg) – season accordingly.



To taste, boil a little bit meat piece in microwave.
4. Wrap in the dumpling skin

place the meat in the middle - not too much

wet the edges with egg white wash or water

fold diagonally

connect the corners together

5. Boil a pot of water
Good ones – boil for about 5 minutes – until it’s floating

Badly wrapped – steam for about 7 minutes or more

Dash with sesame oil – serve!

I froze the rest of the meat mixture for another time. Next time I might just steam the meat 🙂

Remember the homemade chicken broth I made?
It came handy to make this super simple vegetable soup!

tomatoes, carrots, some Asian veggies – yummers!

After all those chaos, I still completed my workout of the day! 😀

Do you always stick to the t when following a recipe?
I can never make same dishes exactly the same. There’s always something a bit different from the last time I made it. Baking on the other hand is the ONLY thing that I usually do it consistently.

How do you and your significant other or roommate divide the house chores?
I usually do most of the cooking and some cleaning, K does most of the cleaning and dishes. 🙂

 

Happy New Year- Welcome to the year of Rabbit!

What?? Another New Year? Thought we just celebrated it not too long ago.

No, actually it’s Chinese New Year (Lunar New Year) and this year will be the year of Rabbit.

Unlike Western new Year, Chinese New Year follows Lunar Calendar, which I am not quite familiar with it either. Just look at wiki for more info – I’m lazy in that way haha.

Anyway, Chinese has their own 12 Zodiac signs which will be rotated every 12 years. Chinese zodiac signs are different from Western ones. The signs are (in this order): Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig.

Ok enough with the blabbing, let’s move on to the fun part: PICTURES!

On Saturday, I had a lunch with one of my former colleague at Tasty Garden in Monterey Park.
I blogged a bit about Tasty Garden before at another location in Alhambra. Unlike that one, the Monterey Park one is bigger and has more stylish interior. And of course the food might be slightly more expensive.



I know I won’t be able to really stick to Primal while eating out (can’t control the sugar/soy sauce/hydrogenated veg oil etc) but I tried my best.

House Special chicken - I mainly finished this (without the sauce)

Beef rib dish - K ordered this and I had some bites

My friend ordered this and for sure this one was totally off limit. I only nibbled a bit on the walnuts.

I can't miss this one! One of my favorite appetizer dish. Gluten is not primal but I don't care. Besides I don't have GI issues w/ gluten. I already avoid it enough so just a day of small bites won't hurt.

I LOVED our table! It’s right next to the big window = natural lightning = gorgeous food pics! Good thing my friend was ok with me taking food pic without calling me a weirdo.
Went to in-law’s place for dinner and sis in law mentioned there was some kind of Chinese New Year celebration in Monterey Park and it was free so we swung by. Lots of pics ahead! 😀

cute hats!

Seriously? The place wasn't that big...

Some Chinese wisdom proverbs? I don't read Chinese..just guessing

lots of food stands

They were trying to sell the FILM SLR cameras

Ooooh kettle corn!! Smells so heavenly! Too bad I couldn't have it...always got sore throat after consuming those...too addicting!

cute chinese outfits!

those are for the dogs

this was the longest line- for the stinky tofu!

hmm maybe K might need this so I can finally ditch my earplugs?? LOL

raffle for free LCD TV

snacked on the last choco balls that I made a while back

Dinner!

Desserts!

Couldn't resist these!! Fruit tarts! - Limit myself only 1. Enough gluten & sugar in one day..lol.

Taro cake anyone? I didn't have any.

Sunday I did lots of cooking but that’ll be a separate entry…it’ll be another recipe post 🙂

Btw on Tuesday we went to in-laws place again for dinner to celebrate Chinese New Year. The actual date is Feb 3, 2011 but according to K, in Teo Chow tradition (my in laws), they celebrate Chinese New Year 2 days before the actual day. That’s new to me. In my family, we celebrate it on the actual day. Some of my Buddhist relatives celebrate it on the New Year’s Eve because on the actual day, they are vegetarian.

We had HOT POT.

Plus other dishes beside it.

Crab meat / shark fin soup ? So good! I had 2 bowls of this

LOTS of food!

I love hot pot. Pretty much just dump whatever you want in the boiling soup. The soup base doesn’t really need any seasonings because after you boil all the veggies, meat etc, all flavor goes into the broth.

Mother-in-law made these Chinese White Sugar Cakes (白糖糕).

It’s mainly made from rice flour, white sugar, yeast and baking powder and steamed. I think she put some green food coloring or pandan extract to make them look green. The cake is not overly sweet, kinda chewy and has a slight sour taste due to the yeast fermentation. I’ve never made this cake before but that’s the idea.

For those who celebrate Chinese New Year: Xin Nian Guai Le! – sorry for my bad Chinese Pi Yin

Do you like hot pot/shabu-shabu?

Have you had taro cake before?