Black Porridge Dessert

According to the Chinese, black food is a golden food for the kidney.  And taking care of your kidney is very important as it can reverse aging and makes you look vibrant and younger.  A good kidney can erase the sign of aging, black spots and blemishes on your face, and even turn white hair into black hair.  If you maintain a strong healthy kidney, you will have strong bone and bone marrow, articulate, hear well, clear face and jet black hair. Other black foods that need to be noted are black fungus, black mushroom, kelp, seaweed, fermented black beans, black chicken, black lentils, blackberries, black grapes and etc.  Are you impressed?

So, I made a quick and fuss free black porridge for us, using a slow cooker (the idea came from a Chinese source).  I finally found another way to enjoy some black beans besides cooking it in soup.  Since this is sweet, it is enjoy by everyone, even my girls loved it.  Not only this is delicious, fuss free to cook but also extremely healthy.  For the real benefit, it was recommended to have a bowl everyday and you will see result in week 3 +.  I am not sure whether I want to eat it every day though, but probably once a week (good enough for 3 days) as I do cook with black sesame seeds, seaweed, mushroom and black fungus often during the week.

All ingredients can be found at the Asian supermarkets except walnuts.  If you don't see the black slab sugar, feel free to buy the brown slab sugar.  Dried lily bulbs can be found at the herbal aisle in the Asian store.

Samples of Evy's Lunch Boxes

Kimchi Fried Rice with Roasted Seaweed to wrap the rice

Turmeric Brown Rice with Stir-Fried Spinach and Chicken with Wood Ear Fungus and Tofu Knot

Turkey Meatballs Spaghetti

An easy dinner with the baked turkey meatballs that I made earlier.  I liked the whole wheat angel hair pasta because it cooked fairly quickly.  Since this was a quick and easy dinner, I used the Target brand traditional spaghetti sauce, added some chopped red onion and button mushrooms and lastly some spinach to make it more nutrition.

If you look closely, you can see a dollop amount of red chili paste on top of my pasta.  That was my extremely spicy chili paste (that's why a small amount was sufficient) to increase the appetite of this dish.  If you haven't tried eating it this way, try it next time, it's really delicious (given that you can take the heat to begin with).

Vietnamese Shrimps Spring Rolls

I think I wrote about the Vietnamese spring rolls or summer rolls before but never really provided the method of making it.  Since I make this quite often now and have been playing with variety of fillings, I am definitely getting better.  I will show you a picture of my ingredients and guide you along in my next page (if you are a newbie of course).  As for my ever popular peanut hoisin dipping sauce, you can get the recipe here.  I have perfected the recipe, so you don't have to go else where for the recipe, just get it here!

This is definitely an appetizer or snack or lunch (it's great for picnic too) that you can make ahead of time.  It also becomes one of the food that I prepare for Evy's school lunchbox.  I cut the veggie, par-boil the vermicelli and shrimps and make the hoisin peanut sauce the night before.  Then, on the next day, I just have to wrap it with a rice paper and enclose it with a cling wrap individually (so that it won't dry out and easier for her to eat) .  I also pack a small container of peanut sauce for her to dip.

Green Cabbage Kimchi

This green cabbage kimchi came about because I haven't been to the Asian market for a while and I was so out of napa cabbage or any Asian greens for that matter.  I am not even a Korean but I just had to have a big jar of kimchi in my refrigerator these days.  I used to dislike kimchi because of its pungent smell and taste, but while reading about the benefits of probiotic and kimchi, slowly I became to like kimchi especially the homemade ones as I can adjust the taste according to my liking (mostly towards a sweeter taste).

After it is fermented, it doesn't taste much different from the napa cabbage kimchi, except perhaps crisper.  Loved it in the instant ramen and the soup was just sourish delicious!  Read that there is a lot of probiotic in the juice of the kimchi so don't throw it away. Besides the beneficial bacteria for your gut, kimchi is also a great source of beta-carotene, calcium, iron and Vitamins A, C, B1 and B2.

Salad for Lunch

Our lazy and healthy lunch (minus the fried chicken tender)!  These days when I made my Asian Peanut Sesame Salad Dressing, I would double the recipe and keep it in a glass bottle in the refrigerator.  Then, I would pack the salad with dressing on the side for Evy to bring to her school for lunch.  Edda and I would eat that for lunch as well and that's the best way for us to have some raw food into our diet.  As in our Chinese culture, we hardly consume any raw food, it has to be quickly blanch in hot water or in a quick stir-fry.

For this salad, I was trying to incorporate as much nutrients as possible so I added fruit (banana, dried cranberries), seeds and nuts.  Not to forget the cilantro (can remove toxic chemicals from the body).  I forgot to add tomato and Hijiki seaweed.  I finally thought of another way to eat the Hijiki seaweed but on that day itself I forgot to use it.