I don't have the luxury of time to put dinner on the table at the end of a workday. I think it is important to eat well and healthily, but I don't want to spend too long in the kitchen on weekdays. I like to have time to relax and spend quality time with my family before I sleep and start the madness again the next day.
I dislike making complex dishes that require many many ingredients, shopping for them stresses me out already! Imagine glancing at the recipe every 5 seconds to see what you need to do next. Hence, I aspire to come up with recipes that require 5 ingredients or less, real food that you can cook and enjoy fast. I would probably leave things like salt, pepper and oil out of the count since these are staples that should be in most dishes.
Stay tuned!
Sunday, 29 July 2012
Monday, 2 July 2012
L'oreal Youth Code Day Lotion SPF 30 Review
ASOS kindly included the L'oreal Youth Code Day Lotion SPF 30 as a free gift with my recent purchase and I was happy to get it since it is something I would be able use. I'm currently a happy recurring user of Eucerin Daily Protection Moisturizing Face Lotion SPF 30 but am always on a lookout for similar products that I can try since I simply love trying out new skincare products.
I've seen the Youth Code commercials but never really paid any attention to it. From its name, I gathered it has some anti-aging effects as well. After trying it on for several days, here's a breakdown of the pros and cons based on my experience. I should note here that I have very oily skin.
Pros
Sleek packaging with user friendly lock pump. The pump bottle has a turn and click lock that I find very convenient, no need to be afraid of product oozing out should you leave it in your bag.
Combines moisturizer and sun protection and anti-aging technology in 1 product. I wake up at 5am in the morning. I will not give up sleep to preen myself, so I am thankful for products that are multi purpose.
Lightly floral scented, easy on the nose
Cons
Makes my skin oily 4 hours after application. It creates a slick feeling I hate and even after blotting, the stickiness remains. Major flaw in my opinion as an oily face makes me uncomfortable the rest of the day.
Price point is rather high. At $19.99 (Target's price) for a 1.7oz bottle, I don't see the value since my 4oz Eucerin costs less than $10.
In conclusion, I regret to inform I would not be a buyer of this product. Perhaps it is more geared towards consumers with normal to dry skin.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Food has to be smelly to taste good
Huh??!!
I realize many of the things I find delicious smells putrid to others. Despite that, I'm unapologetic about the pungent fragrance food from my culture emits. Durians, one of my biggest loves apparently tastes like feet to many. On the other hand, I think stinky tofu is one of the most vile food I've tried, while hubs thinks it's such a delicacy.
For dinner yesterday, I made a fishy smelling vegetable dish that made me wanna eat more rice than I should. Here's my version of spicy long beans with dried shrimps and garlic. This is similar to 干煸四季豆 but with a more southeast Asian twist.
Spicy Long Beans
- 1 bunch of long beans cut into 2 inches sections
- 5 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons of dried shrimps cut into smaller pieces and soaked for about 15 minutes
- 3 teaspoons of your fave chilli sauce
- salt to taste
Heat up about 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok. Throw in the garlic and dried shrimps and fried them for 1-2 minutes till fragrant. Stir them constantly so that the garlic doesn't burn. Add in chilli sauce, you can adjust the amount to suit your tastebuds. After coating the garlic and shrimps with the chilli sauce, throw in the long beans. If you find it too dry, feel free to add more oil. Fry for about 5 minutes until long beans are cooked through. You can sprinkle in a few teaspoons of water to create steaming effect to help soften the beans. Before serving, sprinkle some salt to taste. This is optional, my chilli sauce wasn't very salty so I had to add some for taste. If yours is salty enough, feel free to skip this step.
I realize many of the things I find delicious smells putrid to others. Despite that, I'm unapologetic about the pungent fragrance food from my culture emits. Durians, one of my biggest loves apparently tastes like feet to many. On the other hand, I think stinky tofu is one of the most vile food I've tried, while hubs thinks it's such a delicacy.
For dinner yesterday, I made a fishy smelling vegetable dish that made me wanna eat more rice than I should. Here's my version of spicy long beans with dried shrimps and garlic. This is similar to 干煸四季豆 but with a more southeast Asian twist.
Spicy Long Beans
- 1 bunch of long beans cut into 2 inches sections
- 5 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tablespoons of dried shrimps cut into smaller pieces and soaked for about 15 minutes
- 3 teaspoons of your fave chilli sauce
- salt to taste
Heat up about 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok. Throw in the garlic and dried shrimps and fried them for 1-2 minutes till fragrant. Stir them constantly so that the garlic doesn't burn. Add in chilli sauce, you can adjust the amount to suit your tastebuds. After coating the garlic and shrimps with the chilli sauce, throw in the long beans. If you find it too dry, feel free to add more oil. Fry for about 5 minutes until long beans are cooked through. You can sprinkle in a few teaspoons of water to create steaming effect to help soften the beans. Before serving, sprinkle some salt to taste. This is optional, my chilli sauce wasn't very salty so I had to add some for taste. If yours is salty enough, feel free to skip this step.
Here are some recommendations for chilli sauce. I think they are mostly available in Chinese grocery stores.
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Amped up brown fried rice with kale
Gotta give it to Gywneth Paltrow for giving fried rice such a good rep. I love fried rice, but it isn't exactly a dish that is known to be healthy. When you go to chinese restaurants and order fried rice, you are expecting a plate of rice and other ingredients coated with oil emitting a wok smokiness. But of course, fried rice is like a blank canvas, you are free to put in any ingredients you like and Ms. Paltrow has chosen kale, scallions, garlic and soy sauce.
My love for kale started when I found out it has the highest nutritious value. I was excited to try out this dish since we already eat brown rice almost everyday and I'm always on the lookout for easy and healthy recipes. However, I made some tweaks to it to up the wow factor. Instead of using regular oil, I used a mixture of roasted sesame seed oil and grapeseed oil. The latter has no taste but just to even the taste out. Instead of using soy sauce, I used soy sauce paste. Soy sauce paste has a sweetness to it that I thinks adds another dimension to fried rice. It is important to buy good tasting soy sauce and soy sauce paste as you don't want to end up with a flat tasting sauce that is simply salty. I use the Kimlan soy sauce paste, it should be available in Chinese supermarkets.
(Amped Up) Brown Fried Rice with Kale
adapted from Gwyneth Paltrow's recipe
- 2 and 1/2 cups uncooked brown rice, cooked
- 1/2 bunch of black kale or 1 bunch of regular kale, cut into thin strips
- 1 tablespoon of grape seed oil and 1/2 tablespoon of roasted sesame oil
- 3 large green onions sliced diagonally
- 4 cloves garlic (I love garlic so I used more)
- 1 and 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce paste
- dash of white pepper
Heat up the oil in a wok and put in garlic and spring onions. This allows the wok to take in the smell and taste of these ingredients. Next throw in the kale and fry it till slightly wilted. Put in the cooked brown rice and try to separate the chunks of rice so that each grain of rice can be coated with the oil and the ingredients can be mixed in well. Drizzle the soy sauce paste and sprinkle some white pepper over the rice and stir and stir some more and you're done!
This dish is really delicious, thank you Gwyneth!
Sunday, 27 May 2012
Fire up the grill!
I guess Memorial Day weekend marks the official start of the BBQ season. Encouraged by the good weather, we bought some grill worthy ingredients to celebrate the long weekend.
I chanced upon the Food Network TV app the other day and saw a grilled corn salad recipe that I liked. That went into the menu, along with Korean spicy BBQ pork and salmon for some antioxidants.
While browsing the Friday farmers market at my office building, I saw some beautiful bell peppers selling at 3 for $2. I decided to work that into my grilled corn salad although the regular recipe included tomatoes instead. I also decided to add some avocado since it has such awesome health benefits. Here is my version of the grilled corn salad.
Grilled Corn Roasted Pepper Avocado Salad
- 1 ear of corn, grilled
- 1 bell pepper, roasted
- 1/2 of a avocado
- juice from half a lime
- salt to taste
- coriander
To roast the bell pepper, throw it onto the grill or on your gas stove. Char the outer skin, wrap it up with aluminum foil to steam it so that the skin can be peeled away easily. Dice the pepper and avocado, remove corn kernels from the cob, chop up a handful of coriander, juice half a lime, add some salt to taste, and you have yourself a great and healthy salad to accompany your grilled meats!
I chanced upon the Food Network TV app the other day and saw a grilled corn salad recipe that I liked. That went into the menu, along with Korean spicy BBQ pork and salmon for some antioxidants.
While browsing the Friday farmers market at my office building, I saw some beautiful bell peppers selling at 3 for $2. I decided to work that into my grilled corn salad although the regular recipe included tomatoes instead. I also decided to add some avocado since it has such awesome health benefits. Here is my version of the grilled corn salad.
Grilled Corn Roasted Pepper Avocado Salad
- 1 ear of corn, grilled
- 1 bell pepper, roasted
- 1/2 of a avocado
- juice from half a lime
- salt to taste
- coriander
To roast the bell pepper, throw it onto the grill or on your gas stove. Char the outer skin, wrap it up with aluminum foil to steam it so that the skin can be peeled away easily. Dice the pepper and avocado, remove corn kernels from the cob, chop up a handful of coriander, juice half a lime, add some salt to taste, and you have yourself a great and healthy salad to accompany your grilled meats!
Sam Woo BBQ
We watched a HK movie on Friday night and of course one of the scenes (insignificant one, but of course the one I remembered best) shows this old man buying egg tarts for this old lady. I've never been one to be crazy about egg tarts, but that all changed a few years back when I travelled to HK and had THE MOST AMAZING egg tart that still has me salivating till today. That scene set me ablaze on my Yelp app, searching for Cantonese style egg tarts. Many dim sum restaurants came up, which included Sam Woo BBQ. Despite having lived in OC for several years, I've only been to Sam Woo less than 5 times. Somehow I've always associated it with a perpetually crowded and expensive place (I hate waiting for food when I'm hungry). However, the pictures of Wanton Mee were too good to pass, so we decided to head there for dinner the next day.
Being the greedy peeps we are, and perhaps also because we only had a "just nice enough" portion for brunch, we were hungry at 5pm. I figured this was a good time to go since we'll probably beat the dinner crowd, people who get hungry at regular times. When you get to this Sam Woo location, you will notice it splits into 2, the "Seafood" section and the "BBQ" section. The Seafood section will serve more banquet style food while the BBQ section has their signature Cantonese BBQ dishes and more homestyle cooking. True enough, we were able to get seats immediately. It didn't take us long to decide what we wanted - Beef Hor Fun and Roast Duck + Wanton Noodle Soup.
Our food came pretty quickly, I slurped the wanton soup happily. While it was delicious, I can't help but think with much certainty there's MSG in it. I added the pickled green chili to the noodles and ate happily. For $7.95, you get a big bowl of noodles, 4 succulent wanton with whole shrimp and some ground pork and about 4 generous slices of roast duck. This dish was definitely a winner. We later discovered you can tell them to omit MSG for your dishes, will keep that in mind for the next time.
Next was the beef hor fun. When the server brought it to our table, I was immediately captivated by the wok hei. Wok hei is the trademark smokiness of good Chinese dishes brought upon by cooking dishes over a great heat. I had high expectations of this dish which probably contributed to the disappointment even more. While the sliced beef was tender, it severely lacked ANY taste. The noodles were also just ok. Don't know how you can get this dish wrong when the only seasoning you would need would be soy sauce and perhaps some white pepper. At $7.95, this was a dud.
Despite having a hit and a miss, I'm certain we'll revisit this place soon, I'm already planning my next order, which will include Chinese ham fried rice...mmm..can't wait!
15333 Culver Drive Ste 720
Irvine, CA 92604
(949) 262 - 0888 (BBQ)
(949) 262 - 0688 (Seafood)
Monday, 21 May 2012
Yakisoba Bun
This is not a nutritious meal and it violates carb-on-carb rule, but hubs had it once and liked it so who am I to argue with his taste buds. It makes for an easy to prepare weekday lunch as well. This isn't so much a recipe since it is pretty much putting things together.
Buy a packet of yakisoba noodles from an Asian grocery store which comes with yakisoba seasoning which is a mixture of sweet, salty and tangy, kinda like an Asian BBQ sauce. Prep ingredients of choice to go into noodles. I used napa cabbage and green onions as these are what I had on hand, you can use carrots and other vegs you like.
The noodles will usually be packed into small packets and to make cooking them easier, put them in a bowl with some water and microwave for about 90 seconds. This helps to loosen the noodles which will make your life much easier when you are stir frying them.
Heat some oil in a wok/pan and cook the vegetables first. When they are 90% done, add in the noodles. Mix the noodles and vegetables well and sprinkle the seasoning on top and mix them all together.
Put some yakisoba into a hotdog bun. Add some Japanese mayo and furikake for extra taste. Enjoy!
Buy a packet of yakisoba noodles from an Asian grocery store which comes with yakisoba seasoning which is a mixture of sweet, salty and tangy, kinda like an Asian BBQ sauce. Prep ingredients of choice to go into noodles. I used napa cabbage and green onions as these are what I had on hand, you can use carrots and other vegs you like.
The noodles will usually be packed into small packets and to make cooking them easier, put them in a bowl with some water and microwave for about 90 seconds. This helps to loosen the noodles which will make your life much easier when you are stir frying them.
Heat some oil in a wok/pan and cook the vegetables first. When they are 90% done, add in the noodles. Mix the noodles and vegetables well and sprinkle the seasoning on top and mix them all together.
Put some yakisoba into a hotdog bun. Add some Japanese mayo and furikake for extra taste. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)