Oatmeal with 0 sugar

Here again I'm talking about Oatmeal. Honestly I am becoming to like it!! Ok, now... I have previously mentioned about the oatmeal that contains 0g of sugar. Before trying the non-sugar oatmeal package, I researched on how to make the non-sugar oatmeal taste good. Here I found an interesting website all about healthy recipes. Then I tried it. It wasn't bad at all!! It's my breakfast almost everyday now.

How I like to eat is, based on the recipes, to add some organic raisins and probably one tea spoon of honey. I sometimes add a little bit of organic soymilk that my boss at work makes by herself. It's so good and very healthy!

One day my boss made an ultimate healthy non-sugar oatmeal for all the employees for the breakfast. I added some slices of banana and organic raisins. hummmmm yummy~

I am so glad that I have discovered another healthy meal!

Oatmeal

I've been exploring oatmeal. The other day I noticed that the instant oatmeal I was eating had 10g of sugar per package. I thought it's a little bit too much for just one package, isn't it? According to wikipedia, it says "the type of instant, boil-in-bag oatmeal that is common in America, has many artificial additives, an extremely high content of carbohydrates (about 70% carbohydrates and 167 calories per bag), and a fairly low content of oats in itself. This sugar content easily makes up for the other health benefits of the oatmeal, and makes the end result an unhealthy breakfast."

That is exactly what I am concerned about. Oatmeal should be very healthy but it turns out an unhealthy meal if you don't pay enough attention to what contains. Eating oatmeal isn't always good but considering what contains in it is more important.

So I went to the Wholefoods near my place and looked around. What a surprise! There are so many oatmeal packages that contain lots of sugar! So I chose the one with 0g sugar. I don't know about the taste, so let's see if I would like it or not.

This incident reminds me of something; the bitter the taste is, the healthier it is. My mother always said that when we had to take medicine, "if it tastes awful, it means the medicine is good." Because if you think about it, if it tastes sweet for taking medicine easier, that means it's added sugar. ugh.... At least this oatmeal should be healthy... hahaha

Soba again!

Yes yes, I'm so lazy to cook sometimes, so I cooked soba again. But this time I added spinach, green onion, egg, sesame seeds, and different types of seaweed such as wakame, nori, and tororo combu (shaved kombu). This meal was really healthy.

Stomach Upset

After lunch with a little bit too sweet french toast with sausages on the side, I started feeling sick. It's more like I wanted to throw up. I knew what it was... It's a simple stomach upset that I sometimes have by depending on my body condition. In addition to my body that had been slightly tired, I ate a little too many sausages that were a kind of too oily.

Because I love sausages, I totally forgot that I was not young anymore when I could eat as many oily sausages as I wanted and had been eating very healthy food for a quite long time that my body could not digest such food.

I took a pill of live acidophilus but I guess one was not enough this time. I didn't get better. I could've taken one or two more pills but I didn't. It's simply because I knew it would be better sometime soon. Sure it was! 4~5 hours later(!?) Bingo!!

I wasn't planning to eat dinner but decided to boil some water and put spinach and edamame (soy beans) in it. I ate them with katuo bushi (bonito fish flake) with some sesame seeds and a bit of ponzu shoyu. My stomach was settled.

I knew my body needed more green.

Oatmeal

I remember one of my co-workers at the previous company liked oatmeal and discussed about it with other co-worker who didn't like. I had never tried because it didn't look good. I mean I hardly ate cereal at that time either because I didn't grow up that way and cereal was like a snack rather than "meal."

I have learned that cereal is actually good for breakfast because there is a lot of fiber and balanced nutrition. I just have to carefully choose the ones with less sugar.

Now after 4~5 years later from the discussion my former co-workers had, I've finally tried oatmeal as breakfast. The reason was the other night I was searching healthy food and happened to find out how good oatmeal was. My co-worker I currently work with at a company always eats oatmeal in the morning and it still didn't look good, but I was thinking, "since it said very healthy, actually healthier than cereal, why do I just try it?" So I did. I liked it at the beginning, but the more oatmeal melt in the hot water and stickier it got, the harder I could eat. I mean I finished them all but I had hard time to eat at the end.

The funny thing is that I eat natto. It's very sticky, smelly and weird taste, but I still like it. My roommate at that time loves food and he wanted to try any kind of food as just an experience, so that he knows what it is and can talk about it from his own experience. I understood because I am the same. So I let him try and he made such a funny face while eating natto. He said he didn't mind the smell and taste but the stickiness. I was thinking while experiencing the first oatmeal, "wow, this is how he felt when he was easting the natto. And I actually AM making the same funny expression on my face while eating the sticky oatmeal!!"

I think it's all about the psychological mind. If you think it's weird, then it is weird and it doesn't taste good. So I will try again with a happy thought. Actually as my co-worker does, I shall put the half package of oatmeal with hot water and the rest after, so that it's all fresh before getting mussy. What do y' think?

Tsukimi Soba with A Lot of Vegetables

I cooked soba (Japanese noodle made from buckwheat flour) tonight. The soba is supposed to be one of the healthiest food among other noodles. When I was young, I didn't like it at all because it didn't taste as smooth as other noodles were. In other words, I didn't like the taste:(

But since I become more conscious about my health, I start eating more soba. And the more I try, the more I get used to eatting it.

Tsukimi soba is soba noodle with a raw egg in the bowl of hot soup. It calls tsukimi soba because the raw egg looks like the tsuki (moon) and it makes you feel like you are "viewing the moon" (tsukimi) in the soba noodle.

I added lots of spinach, sesame seeds, small fried shrimps, and a few sliced agedashi tofu in the bowl. I made soup by myself and it wasn't bad. Actually I enjoyed tonight's dinner:)

Of course, my desert after the dinner was grapes with yogurt. hmmmm yummy~

Just Grapes with Plain Yogurt

I came home really late tonight (around 11:30 pm !?) and never had a chance to eat at all since 2 pm for lunch today. Now it's too late eat any heavy meal, so I've decided to eat just some grapes with plain yogurt.

Saba with Brown Rice

As I've mentioned, we had a sushi/sashimi party yesterday. We brought tons of fishes for this party, so there were some leftovers. Even though we gave most of them to our friends who joined us, there were still some fishes left. So I brought some saba (Mackerel) home with me.

Yes the dinner tonight is something with saba. I went to Wholefoods to buy some spinach (you definitely need some green to break down the oil that comes from the fish) and some grapes for the leftover yogurt.

I'd cooked brown rice mixed with 18 different types of grains a week ago, made it like balls wrapped and frozen them. So I took one of the chunks and heat it up with small dried shrimps and an egg. While cooking saba, I boiled water and put some spinach. I ate spinach with some sprinkles of katsuo bushi (dried bonito fish flake) and put some ponzu. Once everything was ready to eat, I washed some grapes and put yogurt on them.

This was my dinner tonight. It's very healthy, isn't it?

Sushi/Sashimi Party

It was a wonderful Sushi/Sashimi party we held with all our friends to show our appreciation for their continuous and loving supports today. Fortunately we have a friend who is a professional sushi chef, so he cut all fishes we provided, made some sushi out of them, and decorated everything very beautifully. It's an art on each dish.

What we ate were: Of course Toro (BLUEFIN TUNA), Shiro Maguro (ALBACORE), Maguro (TUNA), GREEN MUSSEL, Unagi (EEL), Masago (CAPELIN ROE), Ikura (SALMON ROE), Hotate (SCALLOP), Ebi (SHRIMP), Tako (OCTOPUS), Izumi-dai (TILAPIA), Tobiko (FLY FISH ROE), Hamachi (YELLOWTAIL), and TUNA GROUND.

Additionally our friend and I made some Inari Sushi and the other friends brought a lot of fruits and deserts. We were all laughing and eating almost everything for hours and hours.

My business partner and I were so blessed to have such fun and lovely friends who had shared this beautiful moment with us.

Thurkey Day

Thanksgiving day is one of the biggest holidays for people in the States. I know there are several friends of mine who get together with families and celebrate this holiday more than Christmas. Unlike me, lots of my friends love to cook, so they start preparing from the day before or definitely from the early morning. I'm sure they have their own special recipe for cooking turkey. To the readers, do you have the BEST recipe you are proud of??

Hiyayakko (Chilled Tofu)

Well, I wasn't really hungry and didn't feel like I wanted to eat any big heavy meal after running over a mile. Luckily I had a pack of tofu that I bought a few days ago to eat on that day but I didn't and some very fresh wakame (seaweed) that I got from Hokkaido, Japan. Yes, my lovely dinner for the last night was hiyayakko (chilled tofu) with wakame on the side.

Preparation:

Rinse tofu, a) wrap it with a sheet of kitchen paper, b) put it on a cutting board and c) a slightly heavy dish on top of the wrapped tofu, and wait for 10~15 minutes. d) Cut it however the size is, put some katsuo bushi (sliced smoked skipjack tuna) and sliced green onion on top of hiyayakko. I added some sesame seeds on top of everything last night. Place some wakame on the side, put e) some ponzu shoyu and now ready to eat!!


Reasons/Tips:

a) Wrapping tofu with a sheet of kitchen paper is my idea. I just don't like the mess the water would be all on the kitchen counter.

b) You can use a shallow bowl instead of a cutting board to keep the water coming from tofu in the dish and you don't have to waste a kitchen paper to keep the water in.

c) Placing a dish or another small cutting board as best on top of tofu is for hiyayakko, you want to take out water from tofu; otherwise the tofu is too watery. (You don't have to do it if you cook. This applies only for hiyayakko.)

d) I've recently preferred cutting smaller pieces, so that it's easy to eat. But typically it's much bigger size, like maybe just 4~5 cuts. But in this case, you have to cut it by yourself when you eat. It's too much messy for me:(

e) Some people prefer regular shoyu (soy source) instead of ponzu. I use ponzu is because it's might lighter and it contains vinegar, so it's much healthier.

Carbohydrate food and changing the diet

I've been trying to avoid any carbohydrate food such as rice (especially white rice), noodle, pasta, and bread. All those are my favorite. The reason I've been "trying" to avoid them is because the food contains starch. I still don't know exactly why starch is so bad to our bodies yet, but one of my friends told me to reduce the amount of consuming the starch when I had the issue with acne on my face. I'd started increasing the amount of fruits and more pure greens while reducing carbs, then all the acne was gone. So whatever the reason was my friend told me was right. It worked. I assume, though, that the starch changes to suger while duygesting and if you don't do enough exercise, all suger from the starch stays in the body. So no matter if I don't eat snacks that contain high suger, I'd still consume it from food. Also I think the starch clogs everything that causes the problems.

It's very interesting discovery for me. Now whenever I see pimples on my face, I look back at what I'd been eating for the last few days and change the diet immediately. Acne is coming from the inside of your body. Check with your diet and start cleansing the inside of your body by eating lots of fruits and pure fresh greens. I bet it works!!

My Ultimate Snack

I've been recently hooked on with the "snack" with grapes on top of yogurt. awww.... it's so yummy~. I eat this dish after the dinner or during the meal when I'm hungry. In this case, I can avoid eating junk food and eat something healthy. You should try it but make sure you choose PLAIN yogurt. Mine is organic grapes and plain whole mike yogurt, but it doesn't have to be grapes. The season is getting over, so I have to see what fruits would be good with this particular yogurt. I finished all grapes now, so I gotta go to Wholefoods to buy some more fruits!

More healthy food at www.MistLifestyle.com

Sashimi for lunch

I had a lunch with my friends, one of whom is a sushi chef. He prepares sushi for his family every week and the lunch was made by the leftover from the last night his family left. It's an assembled dish with white rice, miso soup, natto (fermented soy beans) that were prepared by the other friend, cucumbers, tuna, tilapia, saba (mackerel) and abocade that were brought by him, the sushi chef. What great dishes I could have for lunch!! We had such fun time talking and eating the delicious food.

Do you eat Sashimi? Come visit the site @www.mistlifestyle.com

To Begin with...

I've been trying to eat as healthy food as possible such as vegetables, fresh greens and fruits. But the tricky is once I go out for dinner, I tend to consume more carbs, which I'm trying to avoid unless I exercise as twice or three times as I do now! The good thing is that I don't feel to crave for fast food, junk food, snacks, coke and sodas, alcohol, and recently meat.

Because I've been lately going out a lot and eating dinner outside, which is so unbalanced nutrition, I try to eat just vegetables and fruits if I can stay home for dinner.

The other night, I went to a Wholefoods nearby my home and bought spinach, some grapes, and plain yogurt. I boiled water and put the whole bunch of spinach in it. Once it got soft, I took it out and washed it with cold water. i cut it in one inch each and ate with Japanese Katsuo Bushi (dried bonito flake) and a little bit of soy source. On the side, there was a full of grapes in a bowl on top of plain yogurt.

I was just happy with this simple dish for a night. I should stay at home more, so I can eat healthier and better food.

Do you like Japanese food? Go to www.mistlifestyle.com

Living A Healthy Life

It is easy to say but difficult to take an action to live a healthy life. But my passion is always there; staying healthy myself and help people to be healthier. This is a part of the reasons my business partner and I have established this company. We hope it grows to keep spreading a word to as many people as we can that being healthy is the most important to do in your life.