Love and Hate Affair.. With Gluten.

Picture from http://thisiswhatyoudream.blogspot.com
The thought came to me the way fresh baked bread fills the air. If I lived another sinful day of lust and gluttony, I'm afraid the guilt will be too much for me to handle. Seriously, it feels like the weight of every dish I've cooked here has surfaced to weigh me down before I can go on any further. I must stop immediately or else my days may be numbered.
It all began at the end of last week, one ordinary evening I could not sleep, my stomach poofed up feeling so full. What did I eat? The same stuff I've been eating the last ten years. Why was this happening all the sudden? My mind was thinking up of all the possible ailments. Sure I bloat after every meal but this was ridiculous. From my upper abdomen all the way down to the pelvic region was cramping actively. I couldn't sit, walk, and laying down did not make a difference. I had never been in so much pain for as long as I can remember.
Scared stiff, I googled my symptoms and quickly jotted down in my journal the awful sensations in hopes that I will make it through the night to look back upon. The past questions of other bloated people revealed that eating bread and pasta may be the cause, and right then it hit me, I remembered my History 12 teacher who was allergic to gluten and ate rice bread. No!!! I thought this was going to be the end.
I make it through that night rubbing the swell, imagining that it was erupting from the inside. When I awoke I knew I had opened my eyes because the pain was still there. It did not help that my toy sized dog pounced on my belly. As the hours went by, the pain stopped. I felt hungry but knew I could not go on eating the same foods anymore. Noodles. Just noodles, that's what I've eaten for the past week; egg noodles, udon noodles, wheat noodles. And sandwiches, or bread to dip in my curry, potatoes on the side, maybe it was the sugar in my coffee. I don't know exactly, nor have I seen a specialist to deal with it. Just hoping that it was my body's way of giving me a wake up call.
This experience has brought me to make a Lunar New Year's resolution: Live Without Gluten. Not just that slimy stuff that's found in flour, but I'm going to cut back on the potatoes and refined sugar too. I spent the last day unable to make up my mind on what to eat because everything I want to eat has been killing me slowly. I'm eating rice topped with a chicken and vegetable stir fry. I ate a banana for dessert. I drank herbal detox tea. On the even brighter healthier side, I am excited to be putting all my knowledge to work now; going to start recipes with diuretics, high fibre, whole grains, protein, fruit and honey to sweeten. It is never too late or early to redesign your diet.

Hột Vịt Lộn : Not For The Faint Of The Heart

It definitely is one of those things that you have to be brought up with. Like durian, shrimp paste, pickled crabs, and even cheese, for some a duck embryo is just too much of a taste risk to try let alone swallow. It does not smell foul (though the ones that do are considered even more of a delicacy), it is a perfectly harmless food. Unless you swallow the egg whole.

In Vietnamese cuisine, we eat our under developed duck embryos with Vietnamese coriander and muối tiêu chanh which simply means salt pepper lime, our favorite dip (next to fish sauce). The coriander is peppery to balance the richness of the egg. Salt and pepper is a must for everything and in Vietnamese cuisine lime is also a staple.

I position the round end of my egg up in my shot glass. Why a shot glass and not my hand or the egg carton? Because I love it that much.

Crack the shell open at the top.

Theres a bit of membrane covering everything, break it open. Slurp the broth, it's heavenly.

If this picture is too much, keep scrolling, it gets better.

You can see the yolk and something unidentifiable.

Dig.

I am not sick. You are just living in a box. Get out of it and try this!

# 2 Fail: Species Identification

I went to the local farmers produce market.. I wanted to buy a butternut squash to stuff ravioli with. There was a big box of assorted squash, each only $1.75! I recognized acorn, spaghetti and butternut. The butternut were all significantly smaller yet they cost the same, so I found this random one that I thought was butternut. The color was similar.

So I take my squash home and do some googling, what in the heck did I buy?!

Cut the ends off.

This end had a weird fat stem that looked like turban squash on top.

how cute a pumpkin!

a flat end ables the gourd like squash to stand upright.

much easier to peel as well

pretty

flip and continue to peel

this moment changed everything. cut in half lengthwise

why are there seeds throughout the entire squash?

butternut squash only accumulates seeds in the bottom of it's oblong body!

I notice the flesh is not very starchy but I cut, cube, and cook it anyways.

In a pan I added 1/4 cup water to the unidentified squash steam and prevent sticking, and cover it with aluminum foil, sealing the edges.

Cook for 30 minutes in 350 degree oven.

wonton wrappers are fast and easy alternative to making pasta

mashes easily

but it isn't starchy like acorn and butternut. it didn't even have a distinctive taste or flavor, just plain mush

i even put it back into the oven uncovered to see if that would draw out some moisture. nope

a bit of nutmeg and cinnamon, where did i come up with that?

i ruined it completed with the spices. smelt amazing but it was bittertasting.

i spoon this brown concoction onto a wrapper.

this is one style of pasta, brush egg white around the edges and seal with another wonton wrapper.

this one is simplier, one sheet folded in half, still brushing egg white

pretty?

boiled it, tasted terrible. Epic Fail.

# 1 Fail : Incubation

The ability to execute something new and unplanned to boost your over confidence is not worth the humility of your hastiness. This picture of a cup containing unidentifiable substances my readers, is my attempt at making home made yogurt. The really sad part about my yogurt making is not the wasted half gallon of milk or 70 cent cup of plain yogurt I used as starter or my parent's entire can of sweetened condensed milk, not even the hours I spent checking, but in the saddest fact about this project was that my mother has been making yogurt for me since I was a wee tot and I didn't listen to her.

Most home made yogurt recipes tell you to heat up the actual mixture and let it sit in a warm place for a couple hours. I did the opposite. I poured my cold mixture of milk into cups and placed them in a hot water bath. A path that I wish I never went down. Seen here in the picture, my cup of starter and can of sweetened condensed milk.. both of which could have been used for so many fail-proof recipes.

Ingredients:
I used 2 litres of 2% milk, rich and creamy, homogenized would make delicious yogurt, I wouldn't know.
1 can of sweetened condensed milk for sweetness!
1 cup of plain yogurt because you need the live active bacteria to grow in your own yogurt.
Easy peasy right? Or so I thought.

I mixed all of those ingredients together in hopes of a tangy Vietnamese style treat.

I filled 11 coffee cups with this delicious cold mixture. The cups placed into my roasting pot. Here comes the biggest mistake...
I poured boiling hot water into the pot so that it filled nearly up to the rims of the cups. The yogurt itself should remain body temperature which means the environment it bathes cannot scorch it!

I even incubated them in a warm oven. The hot water stayed hot for an hour or so, it slowly dropped to warm.. and I noticed 2 hours went by and only the tops of the cups have thickened. It's recommended you let it sit in a warm place for 6-8 hours depending on desired tang and thickness, I wanted tangy thick yogurt. 12 hours went by and I all had was clear yellow liquid with floating white specks. Failed.

Mother Tongue.

September Sky

Taken at 7:28pm September 8 2010.

about half an hour after these were taken, a thunder lightning storm erupted, the sky got dark in minutes and power outages were happening.

Mom's Hangover Antidote

Watch this: Fleetwood Shore
... do you see why I needed this the next morning?

Ingredients:
-Juice of 2 limes
-2 tbsp sugar/honey
-1/2 cup of brewed tea
-ice
-fill the rest with water or sparkling soda

A Delicious Mourning

A vegetarian meal my mother prepared for her father's death anniversary. He passed away in 1977, her family has feasted every single year since. 

Incense are a must have.

In Buddhist tradition it is better to mourn with vegan food than meats because no animal was harmed in the sacred ritual.

Flowers complete the set up.

Mom's vegan soup.

I pretty much ate half the batch of soup mother cooked that day, so maybe a gallon was mine? I did not watch her cook it but I'm guessing that I know exactly what went it in!

Ingredients:
-Water
-seaweed
-julienne carrots
-shitake mushrooms
-soft tofu
-parsley
-black pepper
-salt

Sounds pretty bland? Not one bit. When you soak dried shitake mushrooms, you reserve that rich brown liquid to use as broth. Mom might also have used vegetable bouillon cubes/powder. Cook everything but tofu, carrots and parsley. Carrots and tofu can go in after you rapid boil the seaweed. Parsley and pepper to taste.

Isn't this beautiful? Fried tofu with lemon grass and pineapple.