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.

Korean Red Pepper Sauce (Goit-Chu Jang)

I was fascinated while I was reading the Dok Suni cookbook.  In her book, she mentioned that her mother used to make the red pepper sauce, then store it in a jar, refrigerated, and used it in cooking or served as a dipping sauce.  This red pepper sauce is a staple seasoning for many Korean dishes and it is made with red pepper paste.

I didn't know there was such thing as red pepper sauce, I always thought it was the red pepper paste that was served a the dipping sauce.  My bad!  Anyway, as I was curious I wanted to make it and tried it myself.  I thought it was kinda bland so I added sugar and sesame oil.  You can experience with the first four ingredients and do a taste test and see how you like it, if you think like me then add the sugar and sesame oil.  :)

I used this in my Korean BBQ meal.  Take a piece of red leaf lettuce, add a piece of grilled chicken, add some seasoned radish, seasoned beansprout, soy sauce anchovies and top with this red pepper sauce, wrap it nicely and in the mouth it goes.  How good is that?  I also used this sauce in my bibimbap.  Yummy!