Healthy Juice

I used to juice years ago.  At that time my mother in-law was into juicing and she encouraged me to juice for my health.  I juiced for a little while and then in my pantry it went.  I took it out recently and started juicing again but not everyday as it can be pricey as I do recommend using organic produce to juice (The best is to juice everyday and drink it in the morning).  Frankly fresh juice is delicious, I had tried the common carrot + apple, carrot + apple + celery, carrot + celery, carrot + pear + celery, pineapple + mango, carrot + cucumber and this.  As you can see, usually I have carrot as a base.  I am not quite adventurous in my juicing (as thus far no green leafy green or sprout as I eat that in my stir-fry) but I will sure to add some veggie (mostly just carrot, cucumber and celery) into the mix.   Fruit juice alone would be too sweet so my juice would be vegetable base.   Had a glass of this for late afternoon snack and surprisingly it's quite filling.  It made 1.5 glass, my Edda had the other half.  :)

I saw a documentary where a man juice for 60 days to detox and lose weight.  In these 60 days, all he ate/drank were juice from fresh vegetable and fruit.  He also exercised during these 60 days.  At the end of 60 days, not only he lost weight, looked healthy but he was indeed healthier that he no longer needed a long list of medications.   All his numbers were at normal range.  This documentary is called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead", pretty interesting!  This lead to an interesting point, my thought of this is if people are open minded, willing to change their life styles and the way they eat, all the prescriptions for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetic would go down leading to less obesity, heart problem and other diseases.

Added Later: 
I heard that carrot is not suitable to mix with fruit when juicing because it will prevent the absorption of vitamin C.  So, it's best to separate the veggie and fruit when juicing.  Carrot and apple are the only interchangeable items that can be mixed into fruit or veggie juice.  So that our bodies can best absorb the nutrients.  Luckily the above is the most extreme that I had used.  I would suggest my readers to read more about juicing before you start.

Pear, Carrot & Onion Soup

Pear is a cooling food and usually in Chinese cooking, they used Asian pear to make tonic soup.  But for me, I find that the Bosc pear resembled Asian pear the closest as it is crunchy, sweet and juicy and I loved to use it as a substitute.  This soup is made without chicken bone/ drumstick/ pork bone so it is a healthier version without the grease.

Since it is a cooling soup, it's suitable for people who feel heaty or have a cough.  As it is good for soothing the lungs.

Meatless Thursday Dinner

A view of my meatless Thursday dinner.   I only started doing this about 2 weeks ago and I am dropping pounds.  Not much, only 1 or 2 pounds but it's dropping.  I didn't start this to lose weight but just want to eat less meat, so this was a welcoming surprised.

Turmeric garlic brown rice, asparagus with carrot in XO sauce, tofu with frozen mixed veggie and imitation lobster and Chinese fried eggs seaweed anchovies soup.  I believe most recipes already posted in my blog.

Easy Stir-Fried Carrots

Carrot is better if stir-fried it with a little oil.  It is also better if you don't peel it with a peeler but scrape it with the back of your knife and then rinse it.  Just like gobo/burdock root (outer layer is packed with nutrient too).  Since I started to plan meatless meals for my family twice a week, I need to come out with more vegetarian dishes.  Carrot has always been a side ingredient in my Chinese cooking but I wanted to make it a main ingredient so I created this easy dish.  It's really easy and only used garlic and carrot, not to say simple to make too.

Meatless Monday Dinner

I am really trying to eat healthy and prepare healthy and nutritious food for my family.  So recently I started meatless Monday and Thursday meals.  I started cooking meatless meals twice a week, the rest would be fish (twice a week) or white meat chicken.  We eat out on Sat. and Sunday so I am more lenient on the choices.

Meatless meals can be satisfying as well as delicious.  So try it!

Healthy Rice (Black, Brown, Barley and Millet)

I was cooking barley brown rice for my family for a while now.  And then I read that black rice is also good for us, including all the black things like black bean, black woodear and black sesame seeds.  I also bought some millet because of the health benefits that I read.  So, I decided to mix all these grains together.  Chinese believed that barley can aids in beauty like have beautiful skin, reduce heatiness and detoxification, black rice aids kidney, bright eyes and millet aids stomach, etc.

I also read that not everyone can eat millet especially for those that have hypothyroidism or problem with thyroid.  Since I had it before, I definitely watching what I eat.  I would probably use the rest of the millet to make bread or buns instead.  Small quantity is fine, just not everyday.

Now I am alternating barley brown rice, turmeric garlic brown rice, sweet potato brown rice and black brown rice for our meals.  You can find the recipes under Rice.