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. 🙂

 

Challenge Accepted!

Recognize the title? It was Barney Stinson’s quote from “How I Met Your Mother“.

How’s your week been so far? As for me, it’s kinda hard to get back into the grind after 2 consecutive short weeks *sigh* But at least I still managed to stay true to my workout schedule, except Monday.

Monday
I took a complete day off from working out, which was something I haven’t done for a month or two I think? Even though I am working out everyday, mostly they’re only 30 minutes max and on some days I only do short mini workouts which only about 15 minutes. All thanks to Zuzana’s workout style 🙂

Yesterday
I got a complete brutal workout which left me totally drenched in sweat despite the chilly morning. It always makes me feel good whenever I got good sweat from my workout.

However, the b-fast wasn’t quite great. I whipped out 1/2 cup of old fashioned oats with 1 cup of homemade almond milk and a dollop of homemade almond butter, remaining Kashi Go Crunch cereal crumbles and nuked it for about 4 minutes.

The oats turned out to be a little too thick and creamy (might be from the creamy almond milk?) After I consumed the whole bowl, I felt a little too stuffed, not in a good way.

I much preferred Monday’s b-fast

A glass of creamy unsweetened almond milk with 2 banana pancakes I made days ago

I made a bunch of tea eggs again on Sunday night and this time I used 4 Lipton tea bags, 2 star anises and a bit more salt. Results? More flavor! Love it!

And I had 2 of these!

Since I didn’t workout prior to the meal, I stick to non grain/starchy carbs and it made me felt great!

Anyway I’ve been obsessed with Banana Nut Squash! Yesterday I made b-nut squash soup with mixed veggies (carrots, cabbage, onions, garlic sprinkled with dried parsley) and with only couple dash of salt, that soup was super yummy!
Taste so good especially eaten in this chilly weather! Hubby loved it too!

So I made another batch of b-nut squash soup for the remained half. This time I pureed them in my food processor, resulting this creamy soup- without any cream at all.

Lately, I’ve been trying to cook without using sugar other than from fresh fruit juices and so far so good.

Braised Sweet and Sour Chicken
2-3lbs chicken breasts – cut in cubes/bite size
2 red apples or any apples – puree in food processor/blender
1-2 tsp salt to taste
1 bell pepper -diced (I used yellow color)
2 very ripe tomatoes -diced
1 inch of ginger – julienne
3-5 cloves of garlic -minced (or more if you are big garlic fan)
3-5 cubes of fresh pineapples
2 scallions -minced (separate the white and green)
1/2 apple – chopped

I pre cut this to save time for the next day

Directions:
1. Marinate the chicken with pureed apple and salt for 4 hours or overnight

2. Heat non stick pan with cooking oil of your choice – lightly pan fried the chicken meat

I got lazy and was in short of time so I just sauted them instead. Not much time left to cook for dinner after you got home from work!

3. Saute the garlic, ginger and peppers until fragrant. Add in the remaining veggies.

4. Frankly I added 1/2 chopped apples (peeled) to give more taste. Add salt and apple cider vinegar accordingly.
5. Stir in the cooked chicken meat
6. Cover the pan in medium low heat for about 5 minutes.
7. Serve with veggies of your choice

with the puree b-nut squash soup..yum! I had 2 bowls of that!

This dish came a bit watery and doesn’t look pretty, but taste good! I love it (and so does K)!

So far I’ve been stayed true for not using any sugar in my cooking and it’s quite a challenge. I might wanna experiment with different fruits like pears, orange or even pineapple!

Another challenge that I’m doing is to not looking at myself into the mirror for 30 days! What it means I won’t trying to look at how much tone my arms/ how much more flat my abs need to be. I will only to look at the mirror if I’m combing my hair, adjusting my shirt and that’s it! This way I’ll be more focus on my work out and diet and I won’t let my physical appearance ruling my life.

Have you challenged yourself for something?

Do you watch any TV shows?
As lame as it sounds I watch “Desperate Housewives“, “How I Met Your Mother” (Neil Patrick Harris Doogie Howser MD was my childhood idol:P) and recently “No Ordinary Family“. Strangely though I never watch these on TV. I don’t have time to commit myself to watch them on their scheduled time so I usually watch them online later. And I don’t own cable TV (not even the basic one) nor TiVo.

Do you like to cram your to do list in one day?
I’ve made 3 doctor’s appointment in one day couple weeks from now. LOL. So glad I finally could cram those in one day so I only need to take 1 day off from work and no need to go back and forward!

Have a great week!

 

Onto the dinner part

Ok here I am again, continuing from the earlier post. Sooo, after peeking into my fridge to figure out what’s for dinner, I made mixed vegetables in chicken stock soup (from boiling the chicken bones yesterday) and stir fry green beans with button mushrooms.
Oh, I also baked one zucchini and heat up Korean spicy seafood and rice cake (it was left over from my brother’s dinner).

stir fry green beans, mixed vegetable soup, baked zucchini, korean spicy seafood and rice cake stew

Dinner is ready!

Looks healthy, eh?

I wasn’t that hungry during dinner, maybe because I had this yogurt mix around 4:00 pm while catching up on FlashForward TV series on abc.com

plain low fat yogurt with dried apricots, dried cranberries and kashi go lean crunch cereals

So for tonight I didn’t even have my brown rice as it might be a bit too much for me. I don’t like the feeling of overstuffed.

Speaking of which, earlier I was mentioning that I made whole wheat raisin-cranberry bread, right? Well, it didn’t turn out as good as what it used to be. Partially, it was my fault for tweaking the recipe a bit. Original recipe that I usually use calls 1 large eggs (or 2 small eggs) and 1/2 cup non fat dry milk powder. Today, I tried to tweak it by not including the egg and the milk powder, reduced the flour by 1/2 cup (even mixed some white flour as well). The result? The bread was a bit too soft. The dough was a bit sticky and it didn’t rise as much.

whole wheat raisin cranberry bread

looks nice but it could be fluffier