Expect the Unexpected

I am such a bum today. First, my body just refused to workout this morning, even though I was wide awake from my morning alarm. Okay, I thought I’ll just do it after I got home. Nope it didn’t happen. In the end I didn’t workout at all.

But it’s ok. I’ll take today as my rest day.

Despite not working out in the morning, I still couldn’t contain my macadamia nuts mindless snacking after lunch. What’s wrong with my appetite lately? And I think I really should control my nuts intake as I could feel a little bump above my mouth – you know underneath the skin pimple? I couldn’t see it but it hurts when I press it..YIKES!

Got home, I was excited to make Sweet and Sour Fish Fillet for dinner. It didn’t turn out so great, so I’m not bother to post the recipe, but here are the visual cues if you’re curious.

I had to break my own principle here for not using any additional sweetener unless from fresh fruits. The dish was so bland, probably for the lack of carrots which I didn’t have on hand so I had to add some raw honey to balance the sourness of the lemon juice and tomatoes. Plus the fish fillets released so much liquid, combined that with the lemon juice and the tomatoes, the dish turned out super watery!

Presentation-wise: not so appealing huh? Taste-wise: it wasn’t not bad actually. K really likes it and he wonder why I called this dish as a failure. Oh well, I could be a little too hard on myself.

Dinner: Sweet and Sour flaky fish fillet with steamed Chinese veggies and a bit of Scramble Egg with Green Beans and Sausage.

Do you know that I had at least 2 servings of what’s in the picture? (Sounds like I’m a gluttony here). And I also eat my dinner using my pyrex lunch container so I don’t have to wash extra dishes after dinner. Lazy much? Hey, I’m all about shortcut and dish washing is not my favorite chores (well since when I like chores anyway?) Good thing hubby doesn’t mind washing dishes. Ha!

Today’s weather WAS HOT (upper 80s and lower 90s here!) and the forecast said it’ll be super warm this weekend. Call me a wimp, but I had to turn on my AC today or else I’d have hard time sleeping at night. Stuffy room is the worst!

Have a good night! Watch out for the April Fool’s Jokes tomorrow! 😀

 

Catching Up

I’ve been starting to pay more attention to my post workout meal and still getting used to it. Usually I don’t really feel hungry right after the workout so it was kinda weird to eat the sweet potatoes while I wasn’t starving. (It’s recommended to eat post workout meal within 30 minutes after exercise to get the most out of it).

Today’s lunch was not quite different from yesterday

Ate this at work for my breakfast. (Full fat Fage Greek yogurt with strawberries)

I also packed more goodies aside so I can assure myself won’t be starving in between meals.

Yep, I inhaled those 3 mini tangerines right after my lunch then proceeded with the mac nuts. Good thing I didn’t finish the whole container because I was super stuffed! Those nuts are very filling! I ended up not eating the strawberries and ate it when I got back at home before dinner.

Obviously, the chicken dish that I prepared last night turned out ok, though it was a bit too watery probably because I juiced the whole lemon instead of 1/2.

My dinner was super light. K made some tomato with bok choy soup using the homemade chicken broth I made the day before. So just soup, some veggies and a bit of Almond Butter Beef pieces.

And I made a super simple meal for tomorrow’s meal: Scramble Egg with Green Beans and Sausage

Phew, at least I’m not as food deprived as before. Good thing is my brother is currently in his Spring Break so he made his own Minced Pork dish (not primal/paleo obviously) so I don’t need to worry not having enough food for him to eat.

Anyway, time to get ready to bed. Nite all!

 

Buttery Lemon Chicken

Ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs – trim off excess fat as much as possible

2 Tbsp grass fed butter (I used Kerrygold salted butter)
1 lemon (use whole lemon zest, but only use 1/2 of the lemon for the juice)
Salt and pepper
1-2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 chopped onion
2 green onion stalks – chopped – separate the white and the green parts

Directions:
1. Leave the butter on the counter until it reaches room temperature
2. Grate the whole lemon to get the outer rinds

Please note: in the picture above that’s obviously more than 2 Tbsp of butter – I actually used 4 Tbsp butter and in the end it was a bit too much, so for the recipe I changed it to 2 Tbsp butter instead

3. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and garlic powder

4. Squeeze some lemon juice over the softened butter and lemon zest – mix until everything combines

5. Mix the butter-lemon mixture over the chicken – topped with the chopped onions & the white parts of the green onions

6. Preheat the oven to 400deg;F – Bake for about 40 minutes. Flip around halfway.

7. 15 minutes before the end, change the setting to broil to brown the meat

8. Topped with the remaining green onions

 

The Consequences

Thank you for all your sweet comments regarding the outfit that I tried/got. 😀 I know it look a bit weird since I didn’t show my face, but I’m just not confident enough to show my face on the web..haha.

I felt a lot better today thanks to the extra break I took, but my laziness over the weekend came with a high price. I had to run to Costco to restock my protein essentials, or else we’d be starving for the whole week (ok I exaggerate it A LOT, but you got the idea and no I don’t think we wanna live off on eggs for the whole week either) – proof that I undershopped our grocery last weekend..BLAH.

Got these organic boneless chicken thighs, seafood medley (big score) and some fish fillets

Look, another of my new kryptonite – macadamia nuts!! Finally something I could munch on if I got bored hungry in between meals.

I can’t imagine how am I going to hold my mindless snack when the other temptation arrive from Amazon

And I confessed I polished off these banana chips today. God, that thing was super addicting! It satisfied my potato chips craving.

Remember I didn’t do any cooking prep over the weekend? So yeah today after dinner I had to cut and marinate the chicken thighs I got today for tomorrow’s dinner. I am experimenting with my own recipe *fingers crossed* We’ll see how it turns out tomorrow. If it’s good, I’ll share the recipe here and if I didn’t mention anything about it, then you know what happened. 😛

But here’s the sneak peek.

Boy, organic chicken thighs were SO SMALL and not plumped up like the conventional ones.

Oh wait, no pic for today’s food? Oh well it’s the similar combo from yesterday’s dinner 🙂

Tell me, what is your food/snack kryptonite?

 

Roasted, Nuked, Steamed and Mall

First of all thank you for the encouraging comments from my last lame post. Yesterday, I was super lame in my food and cooking. I always tried to minimize dirty dishes as much as possible.Thus my lunch and dinner looked “almost” identical.

Lotus root soup, coconut fish fillet and steamed Chinese veggies

Roasted asparagus with bacon and left over from lunch

I forced myself to take care bills and paperworks.

Shredded all junk mails that has our names and infos. – HATE THEM. Why wasting these many papers for stupid stuff?

In some ways I do feel a bit more productive today, probably thanks to my “extended weekend”. I also kicked my own ass with a total 30 minute interval training.

Post workout I had 2 small yams and I continued with making Almond Butter Beef, which sadly I burned.

Apparently, my laziness was still hovering my head, so I thought of the fastest and easiest way to prepare my “brunch”

Nuked broc and broiled 2 sausages – delish!

Since I got my extended weekend, I felt I had to unplug and unslaved myself from the kitchen.

To the mall, I went!

Tried on some clothing

First and last pic: same pants – bought it
Bought the last pic top
Plus unpictured 2 T-shirts that cost $4.90 each.

Came home and made some Easy Stir Fry Asparagus with Grass Fed Beef (no pic sorry) and also washed my poor burned pan

Good thing of being stainless steel – soak them first, then scrub using metal scour and it’s good as before.

Dinner

Do you like to go to a mall alone?
I kinda enjoyed it because I could take my own sweet time to look and try on different clothing. Also I am glad I decided to just get out from the house and did something different from the usual – kinda try to break out from the routine so hopefully I’ll get my sanity back. Good thing for accumulating a lot of PTOs so I could always take random day off whenever I feel like I need “a refreshment”, as long it’s not a busy time at work.

Have a great week.

 

Almond Butter Beef

First time I saw Almond Butter Beef recipe on Baby Damulag’s post, I’ve been itching to try it. Since I’ve been searching for a different way to cook beef, I gave this a try.

Almond Butter Beef (modified from Baby Damulag)
Ingredients:
2 lbs of beef stew meat
Almond butter (I didn’t measure mine, but roughly around 1/2 cup?)
Salt & pepper
Italian seasoning
Chopped onions & garlic
1 cup homemade chicken broth
Avocado oil

Directions:
1. Marinate the beef with salt, pepper and Italian seasonings (I left it overnight, but an hour should be sufficient)
2. Saute chopped onions and garlic until translucent – mix in the beef


3. Pour in the chicken broth – bring to boil

4. Turn down the heat to medium low – simmer until beef is tender (about 1-2 hour?) – I used pressure cooker so it took me around 40 minutes.
5. Mix in the almond butter into the beef – add salt to taste

From here, be very attentive because almond butter will thicken the sauce and if you’re not careful enough, it’ll get burned! – and that actually happened to me. 😦

 

Tips and Tricks: Precutting the Essential Ingredients

I love reading other people’s tips and tricks in the kitchen, even though it might be re-posted a lot of times, but I still enjoy reading it.

Today I want to share mine: Precutting the Essential Ingredients.
My core ingredients in majority of my cooking are onions (brown, white etc), garlic, and ginger.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to peel, cut and mince all of those, but isn’t it better if you have all of these pre-cut in advance so you can shorten the cooking time?
I also like to save some containers with lids (in this case I saved Fage Greek Yogurt containers) to store my precut ingredients. The size is decent and it’s very versatile. Beside, why would you want to spend extra $$ just for storing your ingredients? 😉 Of course no need to save LOADS of them.

Granted, cutting onions is pretty tricky. It’s a hit and miss for me as well. Sometimes I can go through it without shedding any tears, but there’re times that I had to stop and wipe away my tears and cleared up my nose.

My onion cutting trick:
Hold your breath when cutting the onions. Turn away from the onions when you need to catch a breath. So far it works wonderful for me and I can go on cutting the onions without shedding any tears.

Do you have any cooking tips and tricks? Please share 😀

 

Lotus Root Soup

Since I’ve been wanting to add more tubers in my meal, I made Lily Root (Lotus Root) Soup for today’s meal. Yeah I’ve been having this lazy mood over the weekend, so my weekend cooking has been anything with minimal efforts.

Ingredients:
2 lotus/lily root – cut off end parts, and scrape the sides lightly (no need to use peeler)
Sorry I forgot to take picture of the ones I bought cause I was recharging the camera’s battery. Anyway here what they look like. Thanks for Google. (Source)

2-3 pieces of Chinese dried scallops (usually can be purchased at any Chinese supermarkets- they come in a package) -(Source)

Homemade chicken broth -didn’t really measure the amount – as long it covers all the lotus root -about 1 quart?
Dash of salt

Directions:
1. Boil the whole lotus root, dried scallops in the chicken broth in pressure cooker – about 25 minutes
If you don’t have pressure cooker, might need to boil them a lot longer (simmer)- about 1-2 hours or until the lotus roots are tender. Add some salt.
2. Separate the lotus root from the broth

3. Slice them!

aren't they pretty? Look like flowers hehe

4. Enjoy them with the soup

 

Lack of Energy

Hi all, how’s your Saturday going so far?

I’ve been feeling SUPER LAZY today, though this morning I managed to squeeze in my workout that supposedly for yesterday.

Fueled myself with leftover Costco chicken

Consequences for not eating proper post workout meal (starchy carbs like yams & sweet potatoes): I felt SUPER SLUGGISH, lack of energy, fatigue later on! It wasn’t fun feeling.

So after got home from grocery and other errands, I popped all yams that I got at the store in the oven and nuked one to be consumed right away!
Now I don’t have to worry about tomorrow’s post workout meal anymore.

Got mandarin oranges for $2.99 for 3lbs bag – SCORE! I LOVE THESE THINGS!

I decided not to go with K to his parent’s house for dinner today. Instead I drove myself to check out Sprouts Market Henry’s Farmers Market.

My goodies

Strawberries for 97 cents/box -got 4 so total $4 for 4 lbs -SCORE! Taste wise: kinda bland -unlike the one I got from Farmer’s Market last week (super sweet but it was a whole big box for $11 – I guess it was equivalent of 4 lbs?) Oh well I got what I paid for, right? At least Fage Full fat greek yogurt was $3.79 – MUCH cheaper than Albertsons or Whole Paycheck ($4.99)

More goodies: found pastured raised 100% natural grass fed beef, Applegate bacon and Henry’s brand no preservative sausages! –(gotta keep these for my quick to serve protein!)

Since I already used up our joint account grocery budget this morning for getting grain-fed beef from regular market, I opted to get small pieces of grass fed beef. Now I know I can get grass fed beef from around where I live!

I found my kryptonites

100% dried mango -no added sugar

unsweetened banana chips! I munched LOTS of these in the store

I ate a bit too much banana chips that now I’m feeling kinda sick of it. The dried mangoes were a bit too sweet for me so I couldn’t eat it too much, which was good.

Anyway, I LOVE Henry’s Farmers Market. It’s very very similar to Sprouts Market (very homey, with bulk bins of nuts, dried fruits etc) and the best thing is? It’s much closer to where I live compared to Sprouts. Now I know where to shop for grass fed beef and other organic stuff. Woot!

Something I want to talk about:
I was browsing through my old posts and read what I wrote in the past and seems like I’ve never really had a consistent topic. Some posts I might write about food of the day, some about recipes, some just random stuff like my life etc. Sometimes I wonder, if by having a non-defined blog topic actually a turn off for new readers. Some big bloggers that I’ve seen usually always have one consistent topic in their posts – either being vegetarian/vegans/primal/paleo, informative/education, restaurant reviews, recipes etc. Even this morning, K mentioned that I’m not being consistent. One day I’d be doing certain stuff and the next day my thought would change to something else. – scattered brain?

I’m sorry if I’m not making any sense, but it starts to bugging me a bit and how would I want to continue with this blog.

Have a great night!

 

In the Pinch

TGIF everyone! I’m sooo glad finally the weekend is here. It’s been raining and cold for the past couple days but I heard the weather will be warming up starting next week. Gosh, I hate this drastic temperature change.

Thank you for all your comments on my last fruity post. It’s always fun to read comments from different perspectives. That’s what makes blogging fun, right? 😀

Anyway, I’ve been in a pinch in my meals since yesterday.

Breakfast was nuked 2-4 eggs with some baked sweet potato.

yesterday's bfast - today was pretty similar, just 2 more eggs

Lunch was super blah and I realized I didn’t have any more protein in my fridge (and no I don’t wanna eat more eggs for dinner), so Costco chicken to the rescue!

I seriously need to replicate this so I don’t have to buy from Costco anymore..$4.99+tax? It used to be $3.99+tax. Price just keeps rising up.

And did I mention I missed fish?

I couldn’t find the Alaskan Cod Fillet that I got last time, but saw this one and it was much cheaper ($9.00 vs. $14) so I grabbed it. Do you know what am I going to cook it with?

Of course with shredded coconut – gotta finish those guys so I can order the Coconut Flakes. It’ll be for tomorrow’s lunch so it’s still defrosting in the fridge now.

Today I’ve been feeling sore around my neck area, probably from the overhead press that I did on yesterday’s workout -OUCH. So I decided to take a rest day and do the workout tomorrow. Sometimes I have hard time to take a rest day, because I just have this “guilt” for skipping a workout. The soreness actually isn’t that bad but at the same time I also don’t wanna push myself too much that will worsen the pain.

Btw, I’m having my own “long weekend” as I am taking a day off on Monday. I need a mental break from work and just relaxing at home. I don’t even have any particular plan on that day either. It’s good to just take a day off from regular routine and recharge, don’t you think?

How much is the gas price in your area? It’s creeping up to $4.00 now!! Yikes!

Have a good weekend everyone!