Quinoa Salad with Black Beans

Have you ever heard of eat your beans, especially black bean?  When organic beans are on sales, I would love to grab some, mostly garbanzo bean, but now I also get some black bean and red kidney bean.  Got to have some beans in the diet right?

According to the Chinese medicine, green bean, red bean and black bean can detoxify the body.  Green bean is cooling so it is not suitable for women during their menstruation, but red bean and black bean are both considered a neutral food.  I have a recipe for these beans detoxification soup which I will share later.  Stay tuned!

This quinoa salad is pretty easy.  Like my recipe here, except added some black bean and cucumber and top it with shrimps instead of mixing it together.

Raw Raspberry Chia Seeds Jam

I first learned about the raw jam at a Prevention magazine.  It was the Quick Strawberry Jam that uses the chia seeds that intriguing me.  So, of course I had to cut out the recipe and glue it on my cookbook because it will be on my to-make-list.  Then, I started seeing other raw jam recipe on my Facebook page, like raw blueberry jam.  I finally got to try it with raspberry because it was sour and I bought too much.  I wanted to buy 4 but my elder being greedy wanted 6, so I bought 6 packages and it turned out sour and no one wants to eat it!!  Ugh!!  So, I got to make raspberry vinegar and this raspberry chia seeds jam with it.

 
This recipe yields about 4 jam bottles.  So, I kept 3 bottles in the freezer, just take each out to thaw in the refrigerator overnight before using.  One I keep refrigerated and ready to use and I read that it should last 2-3 weeks.  This works as a fruit spread too and can be used in anything.  Hmmm....maybe I should use it to make some cupcakes!

This is definitely a quick way to make jam and healthier, with a dose of omega-3 from the chia seeds, but I still prefer the traditional method.

Vietnamese Style Grilled Beef

I don't buy pork and beef in my house anymore.  As you can see in my blog, I hardly have any new beef and pork recipes posted in recent year.  I bought some recently because my husband wanted to eat grill beef when we go camping.  But since I hardly ever buy beef, I had no idea which cut of beef to buy or which cut is good for which.  Anyway, that picture was taken when we did the Korean style BBQ on our campsite.  But we had Vietnamese style grilled beef and Malaysian style satay chicken instead. :-)

Dairy Free Superfoods Muffins

This is the upgraded version of my healthy muffins.  I am making this dairy free because lots of health conscious people don't drink milk.  I am in the transition to change it to almond milk.  The almond milk that I want to make myself.  However, if I can't find raw almonds on sales or gotten lazy, I would buy the one that is non-GMO verified with minimal ingredient list.  Anyway, this dairy free muffin was created because I was out of almond milk and needed to find a substitute.  So, I thought why not tried it with water?  Tada!  It worked beautifully and turned out moist and delicious. Lesson learned:  We don't need milk to make the banana muffin moist.

One of this muffin with a cup of coffee, you are super charge for the day!  Try it and feedback to me ya!  This muffin is delicious!
 

Chicken Burger Sandwich Lunch Box

Homemade dairy-free bun with the same fillings, organic romaine lettuce, Whole Food all-natural rotisserie skinless chicken breast, natural cheese with ranch and Lingham's chili sauce or organic ketchup.  Sides of fresh fruit and half an boiled egg.  Sometimes instead of boiled egg, they would get a little snack like mooncake, homemade brownie, hawthorn flakes, homemade granola, one dark chocolate, etc.

Pre-wash your romaine lettuce and grapes the night before.  So, on the day itself, you just need to assemble it. Quick and easy!

This is the lunchboxes I prepared for them this morning using the same nondairy buns but with added poppy seeds and rolled oats.  I added pickled radish and carrot into their sandwiches too.

I loved this new BPA free lunchboxes that I got them.  I wanted this so that it would sit nicely into their lunch bags, so that it won't be messy.  With the double deckers, it can fill lots of food.  Just that I don't think they can finish everything during their 10-15 minutes lunch time.  I got them at TJMaxx if you are interested.

Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes

I don't buy potato unless it is on special occasion and organic.  To me is why eat potato when you can eat the superfood sweet potato?  In the Asian supermarket, we can buy all sort of different colors sweet potatoes, from purple, yellow to orange.  I like to buy the purple variety because not a lot of time we get to eat purple color food.  But for adding to curry, yellow and orange colors sweet potato is preferred.

I was planning to make a pot of curry chicken and just so happen that I had some sweet potatoes that were starting to sprout so of course I had to eat it quickly.  Thus, this idea was born.  I loved it a lot because it added an extra sweetness to the curry.  Next time if you have a choice, always pick the superfood!