: : Chicken Salad : :

Yes yes, another scrumptious (don’t frown now, the lines may be permanent) salad.

This time, instead of ham, I added in some chunky pieces of chicken into the salad as well as some Cajun seasoning. The vegetable ingredients were the same as yesterday’s salad but I added in some tomatoes this time. When cutting up the tomatoes, I removed the seeds and the soft bits so that the salad doesn’t get too soggy.

It came out tasting quite good but the Cajun seasoning would have tasted better with the chicken if I’d had marinated the chicken meat overnight and then later grilled/sauteed it rather than mixing it with already boiled pieces of chicken.

On another note, I’ve lost a total of 17 lbs (7.7 kg) after weighing myself today and this was immediately after lunch! Feeling good now. Getting there after all the effort.

: : Template : :

I am thinking of changing the layout to this blog. Nearly 12 months of the same colours.

Well, will think how to do it later.

: : Eating Healthy : :

And you bet it’s all about eating healthy. Well, to a certain portion of people it is. In fact, I never used to like eating salads that much because it was always so bland. But now, I know how to make salad that I like.

One of the many salads that I’ve been eating the past 4 weeks (can’t believe that it’s been that long!) is a basic salad that I make using strips of ham, lettuce, celery, cucumber and mangkuang @ hikama/jicama. I mixed it with some dried dill but my mistake with this salad was adding too much cummin seeds. Then again, I shouldn’t have added it in at all.

But! What is the secret to a good salad? Well, seriously, I do not know. All I know is that I love COLD salad. And, it must be very very cold so that the vegetables are extremely crunchy. I tend to keep salads in the fridge overnight so that when I eat it in the morning or for lunch, it’s so crunchy and surprisingly sweet as well! This includes the celery and cucumber. Mangkuang @ hikama/jicama is always sweet anyway.

I notice that the vegetables get partially iced up. Well, only slightly as it doesn’t taste too ice-y but just nice to give it a firm taste. I also notice one thing about eating celery : do not eat it immediately. There is some after taste after cutting it that I’m not at all sure what it is. However, after chilling it in the fridge for a few hours, it tastes a lot better.

The only problem with making salads overnight is that a lot of the water comes out of the vegetables. In the picture above, I got at least 1/4 of a cup coming out which I had to pour away. Other than that, no complaints from me.

And, would you believe that what you see in the picture was all I ate for lunch? I still sometimes feel hungry late in the afternoon but it’s bearable. And, I feel a lot better after I got over the sugar and carbohydrate cravings.

Yeah, it’s not for everyone. Am I a good-food-eater? No way. I ate a plate of indian rojak today that was just divine. Ah well. Not to mention crabsticks. So, there you go.

: : Salads, Delia style : :

I’m scouring the net for more recipes on salad. Suddenly found a nice way to eat salad : REALLY COLD!! Now I realised why I never seriously got into the salad bug. It’s because the salad were never cold enough. Now, suddenly everything that is green tastes so sweet when it’s been in the fridge for some time.

Anyway, found some salad recipes from Delia Smith’s site. She’s seriously amazing and her recipes look so easy to make. Having said that, I bought a recipe book about 2 years ago at half price at the local bookstore (couldn’t believe that it was half price). It’s the Delia Collection : Book One but unfortunately, it’s mostly eggs, potato, rice and baking bread! However, she does describe in great detail how to cook the egg properly. Oh yes, it’s not easy to just simply fry an omelette.

One of her recipes on a rice salad looks pretty good to eat and to make for the next IMBB organized by Pim. No, I’m not making this but it reminded me of another of my Granny’s recipe that we haven’t had in a long long time. So, think will do that instead. Until the 23rd of May!

: : Waste Not, Want Not : :

One thing about us Chinese folks is that we would eat nearly all parts of a pig. Like this soup of tripe. What is tripe? It’s part of the stomach lining which is soft and chewy but not tough that you cannot bite into it. It’s easy to cook it as a soup but one needs to cook it with black peppercorns. It would also take a long time to cook so one needs to put the pot under a slow fire. The picture was taken last year during one of the lunch outings.

The problem with cooking pork tripe is that one would have to get it from a Chinese butcher who would have already treated the tripe such that one doesn’t need to prepare it before cooking. Granny’s gone to bed already so couldn’t ask her how it’s done. All I remembered was that it involved alot of washing and squeezing out the water. There’s probably something added into it to ‘clean’ the tripe but offhand, I can’t remember what it’s suppose to be.

But, it’s still a very yummy dish. Granny sometimes cooks it at home with some chicken or pork meat to add to the flavour of the soup. Yum!

: : Juicy : :

Ah! Haven’t had this in a long long while. Let’s see, it’s been 4-6 months now since I had a sweet tasting watermelon. I’ve not hit the craving stage yet so so far so good. Other than cheating on fried ice-cream and sushi over the weekend.

Seriously have to take more food pictures. My archive of unused pictures is getting used up pretty fast these days. On another note, Blogger got a new facelift and I’m impress. Very very nice.

Tomorrow is another day so this little gal is off to have a bit of rest. Cheerio folks and have a great week ahead!