What Are We Eating Everyday?

Americans eating daily calorie average is 2700 calories! Mostly dairy and cheese and tons of other things that aren’t so healthy that could be replaced with a better amount of flavor and FUN vegan food choices!

Cornelia Guest designing vegan handbags. As you can see at the Valentino luncheon the other day she’s no stranger to fine couture! She said she’d trade me one for some apple cobbler as soon as they are in.

Deal.Everyone’s doing it! Even Chef Jamie Oliver as he cooked a vegan extravaganza for the Sea Shepherd Crew. Nice.Alicia Silverstone-Cause she’s cool and wants you to be too. Check her website to keep you motivated.



Or You can have your cake and Sunday brunch too! When in Portland, check out Sweet Pea Bakery, fab whoopee pies that I remember plus tasty savory treats as well. See what Quarry Girl, the most famous vegan blogger in the world, has to say about it.

In The Korea Restaurant

Little Korea at Solaris Mon’t Kiara has become the turning point for me and it was a blessing in disguise really. How so? Because we actually planned to have chicken rice at Segambut for lunch. But the plan took a drastic turn from having chicken rice to Korean BBQ because the restaurant was closed.
I might have finally found a Korean restaurant that is able to convince me that Korean BBQ is nice. My previous dining experiences at various Korean BBQ restaurants just to name a few like Daorae and Go-Gung had been mediocre and borderline forgettable.

However, Little Korea is not a surprise stumble as a friend actually mentioned about this place before. He commented that the BBQ pork tastes like char siew and that comment of his stuck in my mind ever since. Korean BBQ that tastes like char siew? That’s new and worth trying alright. Somehow, we knew we won’t go wrong at Little Korea as it was full of Korean customers, which you won’t see of course because this photo was taken just before we left.

If you are wondering, rice, noodles, soups and dosirak (Korean’s bento equivalent) are available here but the BBQ is no doubt the most enticing one. Looking at the menu Ju Mool Luck (Rib Eye in House Marinated Sauce) @ RM68 looks pretty darn awesome so this was my pick. Although the portion looks small, the amount of meat is actually quite a lot after you spread them out on the grilling pan.
　　
There is nothing to fault on the Korean Scallion Pancake‘s taste (RM25) but it could have been much more delicious if it was crispier. Well, that’s just me though.The marbling on the rib eye is excellent as you can see, well worth the price paid. Besides the normal side dishes with unlimited refills, we are also given a steamed egg and kimchi soup. I don’t have too much love for kimchi but the steamed egg was really good.

　　
Anyway, you won’t have to cook the meats yourself as the waiters will do that for you. I am guessing they don’t want the customers to over or undercook them. Also, you have a choice to have the meats grilled in front of you, or they can also do it in the kitchen for you. We of course chose to have it done in front of us lah.

Healthy Food Of Beets and Cabbage

These grungy-looking roots are naturally sweeter than any other vegetable, which means they pack tons of flavor under-neath their rugged exterior. Of course, there are many superfoods that never see the inside of a shopping cart. Some you've never heard of, and others you've simply forgotten about. That's why we've rounded up the best of the bunch. Make a place for them on your table and you'll instantly upgrade your healthy food-- without a prescription.

Beets

Why they're healthy: Think of beets as red spinach. Just like Popeye's powerfood, this crimson vegetable is one of the best sources of both folate and betaine. These two nutrients work together to lower your blood levels of homocysteine, an inflammatory compound that can damage your arteries and increase your risk of heart disease. Plus, the natural pigments -- called betacyanins -- that give beets their color have been proved to be potent cancer fighters in laboratory mice.

How to eat them: Fresh and raw, not from a jar. Heating beets actually decreases their antioxidant power. For a simple single-serving salad, wash and peel one beet, and then grate it on the widest blade of a box grater. Toss with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the juice of half a lemon.

You can eat the leaves and stems, which are also packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Simply cut off the stems just below the point where the leaves start, and wash thoroughly. They're now ready to be used in a salad. Or, for a side dish, sauté the leaves, along with a minced clove of garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil, in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Cook until the leaves are wilted and the stems are tender. Season with salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, and sprinkle with fresh Parmesan cheese.

Cabbage

Absent from most American kitchens, this cruciferous vegetable is a major player in European and Asian diets.

Why it's healthy: One cup of chopped cabbage has just 22 calories, and it's loaded with valuable nutrients. At the top of the list is sulforaphane, a chemical that increases your body's production of enzymes that disarm cell-damaging free radicals and reduce your risk of cancer. In fact, Stanford University scientists determined that sulforaphane boosts your levels of these cancer-fighting enzymes higher than any other plant chemical.

How to eat it: Put cabbage on your burgers to add a satisfying crunch. Or, for an even better sandwich topping or side salad, try an Asian-style slaw. Here's what you'll need.

4 Tbsp peanut or canola oil

Juice of two limes

1 Tbsp sriracha, an Asian chili sauce you can find in the international section of your grocery store

1 head napa cabbage, finely chopped or shredded

1/4 cup toasted peanuts

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Whisk together the oil, lime juice, and sriracha. Combine the remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl and toss with the dressing to coat. Refrigerate for 20 minutes before serving. The slaw will keep in your fridge for 2 days. 

Shared with you My Eating Habits

I gained this weight without being a big partier (I have this thing against crowded rooms that smell like barf) and still going to the gym in a fairly regular way. So what the heck happened? A little something called: stress-induced emotional eating.

Days full of classes, pages and piles of homework, an up and down social life, planning for the future, maintaining a part time job and a bajillion headache-inducing hours in the library is pretty much what my college life consisted of. It’s not like it was all bad, but it certainly wasn’t easy. The only time things were remotely calm was in the dining hall, a place devoted to relaxing, talking and occasionally checking out that hot guy who wore sandals all year round (he was a rebel. It was great).

Also: there was unlimited ice cream, cereal, and hard to define yet amazing blondie brownie things almost every day.

If I could go back to college, I would recognize what I was eating – and why.
Most days, I believed I deserved that extra brownie or baggie of sugary cereal because the previous twelve hours had just been so hard. I had just spent 2 hours taking an American History essay test, or spent all day studying with a group, or watched an ex-boyfriend holding hands with someone else… it didn’t really matter what the genre was, if it had been difficult, I deserved a cup of ice cream.

When I was in college, I was a lot of things, but in tune with my body was not one of them. I wasn’t eating sweets because my body actually wanted them — I was eating sweets because my body craved rest, love, or security, and a brownie was a weak substitute. Instead of asking my heart what I really needed, I figured the hole residing in my gut could be filled with sugar. Because initially, sugar felt great. It was like a giant hug, and I could have as much as I wanted.

But we all know where that type of behavior leads, don’t we? Pants that don’t fit exactly like they used to and a self-esteem that can barely throw a punch.

Rewarding ourselves with empty calories and processed chemicals isn’t really rewarding ourselves at all. But learning to listen to that uneasy feeling, learning to decode the language of our restlessness, now that is a habit which will never do us wrong.

Of course, it’s all much easier said than done, but starting a mindful eating practice while you’re in college will put you light years ahead of most of the population. It’s not about restricting or should or shouldn’ts, it’s about tuning in to your body, asking it what it really wants and how it will feel if you indulge your initial impulse of a double scoop of rocky road. Questions like:

• Am I really still hungry?
• How will I feel after eating that second brownie?
• Is there an activity that would make me feel better? A conversation?
• Am I treating myself with love and compassion with this choice of food?

A different dinner At Over-time

We’ll spare you the details on how little we like brunch or entertaining in the prime of the day. But if we’re going to do it, this is the way we like it: Nothing fussy, everything tasty.

　　

There’s no real art to this, as far as I can tell, but here’s how I did it: Preheat oven to 350°F. Halve six tomatoes, slice one yellow onion, de-stem a dozen cremini mushrooms, and toss it all into a roasting pan. Drizzle very lightly with olive oil, salt, and freshly ground pepper. Place a cooling rack — the kind you use for cookies — on top of the roasting pan, and place one large coil of sweet sausage (or breakfast sausage if you have it), so that the drippings fall into the pan below as it cooks. Bake for 20 minutes, until sausage is mostly cooked through. Remove pan from the oven, put the sausage down below with the vegetables, place the strips of bacon on top of the cooling rack, and return to the oven. Bake for another 20-25 minutes, allowing the bacon drippings (like I said: best not to think about this too hard) to fall into the pan as it cooks. Remove from oven. In separate pans, warm the baked beans and fry a bunch of eggs, sunny side up. Put everything — except for the beans — on a platter, and top with the eggs. Serve with toast. Buttered toast.

If you were to call this a form of denial, you wouldn’t be wrong. Two weeks after coming home, we’re still denying, still holding on. This weekend, in homage to the few days we have our dinner spent in England on the way home from Paris, we had a fry up — cardiologists and vegetarians, avert your eyes — and kicked off our Sunday with an absurd plate of runny eggs, sausage, bacon, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, baked beans, and toast. Of all the unhealthy things we ate in England — to name a few: rock cake, apple tart, banoffee pie, Cadbury bars, clotted cream, rose and chocolate eclairs, scones, currant scones, cheese scones, lamb shoulder, beef roasts, fish and chips, Victoria sponge cake, summer pudding, maple pecan ice cream, etc etc etc — none was more bald in its unhealthiness, or more satisfying, than the fry-up. It’s one unapologetic, greasy, bursting plate of deliciousness.

Go Picnic This Weekend

　　

What does a camera bag have to do with gearing up for baby, you may be wondering? Well, I am going to be getting the Ginger bag (thank you, Epiphanie!), which will be serving as my camera-slash-diaper bag. And I am seriously giddy for the day that it arrives in the mail. Because I have kids and because I am a food blogger, I LOVE having my SLR camera with me, but I hate dragging around my camera bag in addition to my purse. (Plus, my camera bag has no alibi…because it’s U-G-L-Y.) So…I usually end up throwing my beloved camera in my purse or diaper bag, which honestly is not the smartest thing in the world. I shouldn’t be allowed to have a nice camera treating it the way I do.
　　

Ginger is going to be my solution. I only ever carry at most 1 extra lens around (if that), so I’ll have plenty of room for my wallet and diapers and other baby “schtuff,” and the adjustable velcro panels inside will be perfect for compartmentalizing. Plus the Ginger has lots of pockets. I’m a big fan of pockets in purses.

A Thim Dinner Class

Until about 8 months ago, I was the parent of a picky eater. Before you groan at the thought of yet another story about how a formerly chicken nuggets-eating child is now a gourmet, fear not. My five year-old remains such a bizarre—dare I say, contentious—eater that I’ve dumbfounded even the most experienced parents with my tales of his refusals of plain pasta and toast. He has never once allowed a bite of hamburger or macaroni and cheese to pass his lips, and his current favorite food is pea shoots.

And no, I’m not going to boast about his charming, eclectic tastes. Have you ever sat through a meal with a child who eats three pea shoots and then listened to him whine until bedtime because he’s hungry?
So clearly, this is not a story of a boy transformed. Most nights he can be found sitting at the dinner table, thinking up Dada-esque excuses for why he can’t sample anything on his plate. “My arm is very itchy, so I can’t eat anything.” Or: “Your shirt is too blue, Mama, and it’s making me not hungry.” Whatever might happen later to make him change his ways is nothing I can possibly imagine (and believe me, I’ve tried).
What did happen recently is that I had another baby, who, when he began eating solid food about 8 months ago, turned me from the mother of a picky eater into the mother of one picky eater and one child who eats anything. A child who, I should

probably be embarrassed to say but am not because I still can’t believe I actually gave birth to someone who loves food this much, literally snatched a cheese cracker twist out of someone’s hand at a party recently. Slung on my hip, he just whipped his fat little fingers out as we passed her in a doorway and whoosh—it was in his mouth in under a second. He was eating curry at 6 months (only because it didn’t occur to us to offer it to him sooner) and is so excited at the sight of the refrigerator door being opened that he can’t sit still in his high chair.
And here’s the thing: we didn’t do anything different with him than we did with our first son. It seems so clear to me now that all of those hours I spent wondering and fretting about what hand I might have had in turning my older son into such a nightmare at the table were wasted. I could have used them to do so many things, like write another book, or go for lovely evening walks in the park near our apartment, or eat ice cream after dinner. I could have been so happy!