I must confess that I had soup my day 1 detox. 

After writing the day 1 detox, I got hungry, and felt cold. I guess I just ate cold food, No, fresh living food only and also quite small amount unlike me. I normally eat at least 4 times more than that. also we are having quite cold summer this year in Sydney :( 

so I wanted to have something warm, also filling…so made kale, enoki, daikon and buckwheat soup

1. Cook the buckwheat in a boiling water until cook. Set aside. 
2. place water, daikon ( Japanese radish ) and vegetarian Asian stock in a pot and bring to the boil and reduce heat and simmer until daikon is cooked. Add light soy sauce to taste. 
3. Fry the enoki mushroom in a sesame oil.  Set aside
4. Put cooked buckwheat, enoki and shredded kale in a bowl and pour the soup over. 

I was bit weak yesterday but I felt much better after having soup. Only problem is that I had two big bowls of soup…oops! 

Just in case you are not familiar with enoki…

Enoki mushroom

Enoki mushroom is very popular mushroom in Japan. we put is in miso soup, stir fry, hot pot…and more! 

I  saw some recipes that using enoki in raw in Australia but I really don’t think it is a good idea. not tasty at all and even taste horrible. 

The best way of using enoki is ” pre fry” the enoki with sesame oil. It add beautiful sweet taste if you fry. 

I used to add enoki directly in stir fry, omelette or soup. Then I was told that ” pre fry” technique, gosh, that is right, it is much nicer! 

When enoki is raw, looks a lot but once they are cooked, they shrink a lot :( 

If you can’t use it up, you can always freeze after frying, or keep in fridge for a week. 

I have green smoothie every morning. I truly think that this habit is the best habit I have at the moment. 

Ingredients are fruits and green leafy veggie + seeds + alkaline water 

No sugar or daily! full of goodness! 

For seeds, I have been putting only chia seeds but these days I start to put both chia seeds and flaxseeds ( linseeds ) Flaxseeds are much cheaper than chia seeds but contains more omega 3 than chia seeds, so why not add some! 

Seeds are more ” active ” when soaked…Seeds are in sleep so need to wake up them to enjoy the maximum benefits. So soak night before or first in the morning.

Put 3 TBSP chia seeds and 2 TBSP flaxseeds in alkaline water.

( I have a jar that make alkaline water )  

Today’s fruits- ripen banana ( with sugar spots! ) and pears. This combination hasn’t changed long time, actually since the flood hit Queensland. Luckily bananas are not $14 per kg anymore but still $7.99 or little more, so have been putting expensive banana ( my boy friend doesn’t care the cost of banana…) and cheap fruits to compensate the price of banana…

And kale, of course!!!!! 

Kale is quite strong compare to other green such as spinach, parsley, lettuce or silver beet. Whenever use kale, we put extra banana or pear to make the smoothie ” drinkable” 

jar is absolutely full! 

Super drink full of fibre, antioxidant, protein, vitamins, minerals, omega 3,6,9 !!!!!

Lovely way to start the day xx

By the way,  vita mix, the super blender is the key to make ” drinkable” green smoothie. I highly recommend this. 

Here is the recipe for tangy tahini sauce. It goes well not only steamed kale, but also other steamed veggies like spinach, broccoli, beans, cauliflower, oh, potato will be good, too.  

Tangy tahini sauce

Ingredients 

2 TBSP hulled tahini

1 TBPS lemon juice

1 TBSP water

1/2 tsp sea salt 

Method: simply mix all ingredient!!!! 

It is VERY important to use hulled tahini. If you use unhulled one, it is bit bitter. Also using good quality tahini. 

I tried quite a few brands but Carwari one is the best one! This brand uses the top quality sesame from South America. Most organic tahini in Australia are made from Chinese sesame. Seriously smell of sesame is absolutely different! not to mention taste. 

Anyway…this sauce is quite thick and strong so doesn’t need to put too much. 

All you have to do is steam kale and toss with tangy tahini sauce! 

EASY! and goes with Japanese meal 

-Japanese healthy lunch with kale- 

Yes! I am still eating kale. 

I felt like Japanese so I cooked Japanese lunch.  It’s vegan and gluten free :) 

See…I can sometime cook more than one dish for lunch like Japanese people do! 

Steam kale with tangy tahini sauce - It is Veronique’s favourite way of having kale that was commented in my Facebook page 

Thank you Veronique for the inspiration!

I made Tahini sauce with Tahini, lemon juice and salt. EASY!  Just toss with steamed kale. I used curly kale today.  

Brown rice cooked with chickpea. 

I am trying to eat as much as legume for myself and Mr bean boy friend. I am not big fan of legume but I am crazy about rice, so I can eat legume happily in this way.  I cooked chick pea and brown rice together with pressure cooker. No hustle for cooking chickpea separately!  I put my favourite herb on top to make chickpea even more appealing for me :) 

miso soup with lots of potato and buk choy 

Teriyaki tempe with vegan mayo 

This vegan mayo is really good! I bought from ” The cruelly free shop” 

I am so proud of cooking healthy Japanese dishes….because I normally cook only one or two dishes maximum! 

My Kale week is still going on :)

Today, I cooked Japchae, the Korean noodle. 

Japchae is a popular Korean noodle dish made from sweet potato. Yes, it is GLUTEN FREE noodle :) stir fried with thinly sliced carrot, onion, spinach and mushroom seasoned with sesame oil, soy sauce, salt and sugar. Pretty simple! 

Dried Korean sweet potato noodle - boil for 10 mins before frying

Today’s Japchae

Kale, carrot and enoki mushroom

Kale is like spinach so no problem at all! 

Normally sugar is used for seasoning  but I used ” agave syrup” today for healthy option. 

Lower GI than sugar and contains full of nutrients unlike white refined sugar! 

Japchae is tasty either hot or cold. It is great to bring to office for lunch :) 

Another lovely kale cooking :)))))

This week is the kale week! 

Yuko told me her favourite kale dish is saute kale with lots of garlic in my Facebook page. 

so why not garlic rice with kale! 

Quite simple..

Kale, olive oil, sea salt and pepper  …and rice! of course! I used brown rice. 

I chopped kale stalk finely. I quite like Kale stalks. very crunchy! 

The key to this is fry the garlic very slowly to infuse the flavour into oil! gotta be patient! 

Then add rice and fry well then add sliced kale leaves and stalks.  Season with salt and pepper. 

Sprinkle extra raw kale stalks on top! Easy and healthy :) 

I have been having green smoothie every morning for a year now.

I love putting kale in my smoothie because kale, the king of veggie is the best eaten in raw, and chewed very very well to absorb maximum nutrients ( my super blender do much better job than my chewing! ) then I realised I hardly ever cooked kale… how silly! When I posted about kale in my Facebook page, I got a few wonderful suggestions now I am inspired! 

so this week, I bought 6 bunches of kale at local market.  Kale here is always $2 per bunch, quite cheap here. 

Quite big kale this week…stalks are longer and leaves are wider. I  wonder what happened… double sized!!!

Also bought curly kale 

I found a little fellow in kale… well, it shows they are really  ” chemical free ”  ( not certified organic ) 

Better start cooking soon! 

When I went to health shop in Potts point to kill my time, I found a kale chips packet. 

It is RAW kale chips. 

Raw means here is not heated over 46C ( 115F ).

This chips is dried low temparature to keep enzymes, nutrients and minerals. Especially enzymes are very important to treated at low temparature. 

We will not find one enzyme in cooked food because they are destroyed when heated above 46C! 

Kale, the king of green veggie is now become chips that still keep all the goodness in perfect shape ! 

I was quite exited because I bought dehydrator that dries food at below 46C LAST DECEMBER and HAVEN’T USED YET!  If this chips are quite good, finally I got motivated and use my expensive dehydrator..

closer look 

Taste? well, my first bite was quite disappointing…I certainly didn’t get enough motivation to use my dehydrator… I kept eating eating…..hasn’t changed my mind..

then I ate when I was really hungry…well, it’s good! 

I might use this to make my first kale chips….

at the same time, making kale smoothie which I quite often do for breakfast is much easier…sounds horrible but not too bad at all ! and then, making kale chips allow me to eat more kale because if I eat 50g of kale chips, it means that I am eating 200g fresh kale……

big ornament in my kitchen …but hopefully it will be in use soon…