I know that foods with the word instant in the title are totally out of fashion these days, but I’ve chosen to write about this one anyway. What is ‘roasted nuts powder’ anyway? And what does it have to do with me? You might be thinking. Well, if you are a busy person who hardly has time for breakfast or lunch, this might be just the item for you. I’m not a busy person, and I have loads of time for breakfast and lunch (not to mention dinner!) so I haven’t been drinking this lately, but there was a time when I snacked on this drink (does that make sense?) several times a week. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Korean’
Korean instant nut and grain drink
Aloe Vera gel & juice: a favourite ingredient
Hello, dear, dear readers! If you’re seeing this sentence, that means you are still checking here for posts, and I thank you sincerely for that. I have been AWOL again, and I don’t even have a good excuse. I still think about and plan blog posts often, but have been having difficulty transforming those plans into actual, written entries.
In the past few weeks I’ve done a lot of reading, quite a bit of cooking, gone ice-skating twice, and drank a lot of tea. C & I spent Valentine’s Day in the Emergency room at the hospital (we are fine, just couldn’t get into a clinic!) which was interesting, but certainly not fun. We are not vegan (or even vegetarian) but we have been eating lots of vegan & vegetarian meals lately. Out of sheer laziness, we’ve also been eating out a few times a week. Since it has been raining and/or snowing all week here, I haven’t been buying as many groceries as I usually might. Consequently, we’ve just been using up the contents of our cupboards and fridge.
Sujeonggwa: Korean persimmon punch
Let’s continue on today’s Korean kick, shall we? This is something else that I first tried in Korea, and have never seen here in Canada until I tried making it yesterday. It is essentially a strong ginger and cinnamon tea, sweetened with sugar and then dried persimmons are put in, to be steeped for a day in the fridge before drinking. The dried persimmons swell up and become as soft (or softer) than fresh persimmons. The punch is topped off with a few pine nuts before serving.

necessary materials: cinnamon sticks, sliced ginger, dried persimmons
Boribap: brown rice & barley
Note: I used the Korean word because I was first familiarized with boribap and other ‘mixed rice’ in Korea, where grains are commonly mixed together before cooking, to give greater variety to the diet. In Korean bori is barley, and bap (or bop, pap, etc.) is rice.
Lately instead of regular white or brown rice, we’ve been enjoying boribap, or rice cooked with barley. I love this combination. We use a short grain brown rice which is a good substitute for sticky white Japanese or Korean rice, and the barley cooked with it gives it a ‘toothsomeness’ that brown rice on its own lacks. Besides that, barley is a healthy grain that is high in soluble fiber and is known to help slow down glucose absorption. This is beneficial because it prevents the spike in blood sugar levels that usually happen after eating simple carbohydrates. This makes barley an especially healthy grain for individuals with type 2 diabetes, or hypoglycemia (like me).
A ramen-esque noodle soup
Today at lunch I thought I’d better have something yummier than what I had yesterday. Yesterday’s lunch consisted in a few crackers with almond butter, an apple, and little else. It left me feeling deeply unsatisfied, not to mention shamed by my own laziness.

the raw materials
Before we start cooking, I have a confession to make; I really like instant ramen. There, I said it. It’s full of MSG and bad fats, it sort of makes my stomach hurt, and has no vitamins or nutrients to speak of, but alas, I like it anyway. I have a problem, and I’m trying to stop.
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Boricha, or summer’s last (& first) hurrah

ice-cold boricha, ahhh...
It’s really hot here in Montreal today.
No big deal, it is summer, right?
I mean really hot. The sort of hot where everything looks hazy. And where I (who normally walk fairly quickly) am forced to walk as slowly as possible (especially while carrying groceries… I hate carrying things) just to keep from sweating through my clothes…ewww. (more…)



