Cooking up a storm!

Everyone loves cooking now in my house. I think cooking now requires creativity and everyone in my house loves challenge. In the last two days, I made Lentil soup for the first time. It was simple and tasted great. Bert made cheese brocoli soup for the first time too. Tonight, Joshua decided to make something to go with his steak. He made corn bread. It tasted very good!!! I always know that he can be a very good cook when he wants too!

Add ingredients

Argue with Daddy about instructions:)

Add a little cajun spice:)

Ready to bake it

Yummmyyyy!!!

It was very good!!!

My Hungry Girls

Saturday is usually a swimming time this time of the year. My two girls, Anna and Jenny, are very good swimmers. They have a very good swimming team. Every time after swimming, they are extremely hungry. Today is no exception.
Luckily, Daddy had made lasagna for Joshua's robotic team. He saved wo big plates for the girls before he took the 4 trays he made to the Robotic. When we go home, Anna dived in immediately. She even did not take off her jacket! I wanted to take photos to show Daddy how much they loved his lasagna. But I wasn't quick enough. I think they literally swallowed the food in a time faster than their fastest swimming record!

Anna even did not take off her coat!!

"Yummyyyy! The best food I ever had!" 

Jenny could not hold the plate still for me to take a photo. She was too anxious to wait!

I managed to snap a few photos..

Yeah...got to lick the plate too:)

Veggie Lasagna

I am home sick with sore throat. Normally when I am sick, I would have chicken soup. Now I could not have chicken soup so I had chicken broth. I know that would not be something a true vegetarian do. For me, that is good enough. I want to feel better.
As a result, I slept most of the day. By 3 pm, I was fully awake. I had a bowl of the curry veggie soup Bert made last night. Arghhhhh...all better.
So I had time to cook. I pulled up a eggplant lasagna recipe, but I miss too many ingredients. In the end, I kind of invent one of my own.

1 eggplant, cut into thick slice. Bake in the oven on both side with Pam spray.

-2 small zuccuni and 1 pepper, sliced, saute in olive oil with garlic (a lot)

- blend garlic, basil leaves, italian seasoning, salt and pepper, olive oil. Add can tomatoes.

-

-layer spaghetti sauce and cooked lasagna noodle and other ingredients. Starting with spaghetti sauce, the noodles, then eggplant, garlic tomatoe sauce, then noodle, spaghetti sauce, noodle, cheese.

- Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.

Yummmmyyyyy!!!

Chicken Soup for the Sick

My throat is burning!!! I got sick. Normally, when I got sick, I would have chicken soup. Now I am on a this no meat diet, I guess chicken is out of question. I wonder if vegetarians are more prone to be sick.

But getting well and stay healthier is more important than sticking to my diet plan. I neve said I could not have chicken broth. So instead of chicken soup, I am having chicken broth. Bert made the broth with real chicken and then remove the meat. I made sure that I took only the liquid without any meat or even the oil on top of the broth.

Hope this will help with my sore throat.

Besides eating chicken soup, I also like to treat myself with an egg pudding. It is a traditional Chinese dish. With one egg, beaten. add some water to make it one cup. Put it in the water to steam it at low heat for 5 minutes. Spicy it with soy sauce and seasame oil. It cures any sore throat!!

Of course, sleep. Sleep a lot to get a thorough rest.

With 24 hours, I am feeling 100% better!!

Join the big losers club

A few people at work started a Big Losers Club. For 10 weeks, we will see who can loose the biggest percentage of body weight. I know I could not win, but I joined anyway.

For one thing that I could not win because I started low on my weight. The first two weeks of no meat diet had gradually reduced my body weight. I lost all the weight I gained during the Christmas break. On the weighing-in day, I weighed 140 lbs in the mornign, though I registered 145 lb with clothes and shoes on in that afternoon. My idea weight would be 125 lb. If I could loose 15 lbs in one year, that would be great. However, in 10 weeks, I don't see myself having a chance.

Short after the weighing-in, I had my birthday. Toby came home. It made my day. We had a great weekend together. We all went to see Anna and Jenny swimming in Jenison. After the swimming, we went out to eat. The kids picked Red Lobsters. We have not eaten in Red Losbsters for a long time. I was surprised to find out that the food there really high on fat and oil. I had hard time to pick out what I wanted. Granted they are all seafood, but I still think these butter sauteed and deep fried seafood is no longer my taste.

The service was slow so I had too many Red Lobster dinner rolls!!! Yuk, I think I can blame the weight gain the next day.

Birthday Surprises

Turning 50 is not easy for me. For some reason, the number just seems too big for me. 1/2 an century??? You got to be kidding!! I can't be that old.

Anyway, when I am suffering, Bert got to surffer with me. I put a lot of crankiness on him. Poor thing! How could he still love me?

He tried the hardest to give me surprises. First, he planned to have a get away with me. I did not like it. Like I said, I was cranky! I wanted to have a birthday with the whole family. This is easy to say than done because Toby is now in school and has a different break schedule than the rest of the family. The earliest break he has is his spring break which is in the middle of school time for Toby, Anna and Jenny. Needless to say, I did not expect there would be anything we could do to celebrate my birthday the way I wanted anyway.

I knew too little. I got surprised in many ways. I think I had the best birthday ever. 50 is not bad after all.

First of all, I got a surprise email from a colleage who accidentally cc'ed me an email with the title of "Potluck for Sue's Birthday". It was supposed to be a surprise. This colleage did not pay attention and accidentally cc'ed me. So I thought I found out. Naturally, my co-workers were not happy about me finding out, but we had laugh about it.

However, what I did not know was the date of the potluck. I thought the potluck was on my birthday, the 14th. What I did not know was that the pot luck was one day before my birthday. I actually got surprised needless to say. As a tradition, I got roasted by people in my group. My pictures were  posted everywhere in the company. Now everyone knows I am 50!!

On the day of my birthday, Bert told me that we would go out to have dinner together. He stalted me by asking me to meet him at 6:30 pm at Wild Chef. He then called me saying I need to go home to meet him at home to go together.When I got home, I was surprised that my house is full of my friends. Bert had skipped work on that day and cleaned the house and invited my friends for a surprise party. I felt so loved!!

The best part yet was Toby came home!!! He had no school on Monday so he came home. We, indeed, had a birthday celebration with the whole family.

Needless to say, I had the best birthday celebration of my life time!!

Pescetarianism

Pescetarianism? I have never heard of it before. Unfortunately, it is a word that is used to describe what I am doing with the way how I eat. This is just too weird.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Pescetarianism is the practice of a diet that includes seafood, and excludes other animals. In addition to fish and/or shellfish, a pescetarian diet typically includes some or all of vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs and dairy. The Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the origin of the term "pescetarian" to 1993 and defines it to mean: "one whose diet includes fish but no meat".

Now it just shows how hard it is to invent anything new nowadays. Nevertheless, I don’t think I am doing this to be an inventor.  I don’t know why I am doing this. As I am doing it though, I think I re-define the meaning of why I am doing it too. Since my lunch yesterday, I have been thinking that by doing what I am doing, I can really experience how a true vegetarian’s life would be like when they go out to eat. I took the convenience of ordering from a menu with many non-vegetarian dishes. When I have to cross these out of my selections, I realized that my selection is very limited.

I went to eat Chinese food with my boss to discuss some business that we could not find time to do other times. As I walked into the restaurant, I said to myself: here is the test to see how many selections I could find in this Chinese restaurant. To my surprise, there are actually many. There was a section on the menu called “Vegetarian Dishes”. I was very impressed!! Instead of Guongbao Chicken I normally ordered before, I had Chinese Vegetables with Tofu.  The soup comes with the lunch special. I asked for Hot and Sour soup. I never paid attention to if it had meat or not in their Hot and Sour soup before.  . I was thinking that if it had meat, I would just not eat it. I was surprised to find out that there was no meat, just egg and Tofu!

My fortune cook said: “Your road to glory will be rocky, but fulfilling.” I have no idea what it means.

Once again, my dear husband made us some delicious food for dinner. I did remember to take a picture before digging in. 

Fried shrimp, Foreign Devil Rice, Indian Curry with Tofu, Green bean salad and cantaloupe.

Weight Monitor: 141.5 lb at 7 am.