Be healthy

Or die trying. The irony.
I decided to step up my healthy lifestyle by changing my dietary intake. After all, it's pointless to exercise but feed your  body with crap.

Can you guess what this is? Yes, a sandwich :D Sandwiches aren't particularly exciting unless you have great ingredients such as avocado and smoked salmon. However, being cheap frugal doesn't mean you have to endure boring sandwiches.

We are all probably well acquainted with Gardenia bread that's (apparently) so good that you can eat it on its own. However, try not to go for the white bread. Instead, opt for the whole grain version instead as it's the lesser of two evils. I know, I know, white bread is more delicious and softer than the dry, harsh whole wheat bread but the secret is ....... toast it! Any bread once toasted tastes almost the same. Slap on some butter on some fresh toast and let the butter melt onto the bread. You'll forget that you are even eating whole grain/wheat bread. If you still can't get over it, continue eating your white bread and die fat.

Line up slices of cucumber. Top it with the mashed hard boiled egg. You could add salt and pepper to the egg for flavor but for the love of God, no mayonnaise please. Don't worry, the first few days of eating clean and healthy will feel like such a drag but once your palette gets used to it, you'll never want all those artificial flavors anymore.

Trust me, it's better than not eating for few days. 

My masterpiece :D My single egg was enough only for 1 toast so I added raisins for the other. Although technically raisins are dehydrated grapes, it's not such a good idea to binge on them because of the high sugar content. As a matter of fact, don't go crazy over fruits because as healthy as they are, unused sugar just ends up being calories and that translates to fat. Or at least, that's the long story short.

Instant miso soup with stir fried four angled bean and brown rice. Soups are a good way to fill you up without loading up on as much calories unless your soup is oily. It tricks your tummy into thinking that you have enough but really, it's just liquid. The beans were stir fried with some garlic, onion and dried shrimp. Added few dashes of soy sauce and salt for flavor. But if you have been eating clean for awhile, everything starts to taste quite flavorful even sans flavoring. Trust me, you'll enjoy food more.

The same beans but the rice has been cooked with stalks of spinach. I never like eating the stalks of vegetables. They can be quite hard (compared to the leaves) and chewy. After turning the leaves into soup, I was left with a bunch of stalks. Not wanting to throw them, they ended up being cooked with my rice, turning into a nice mush, a nice way to get more fiber into the body.

I know of people who throw away the meat once the soup stock is ready. I cry whenever I think about it especially when I am hungry.

Miso soup, fried fish paste and hummus. After tasting some good homemade hummus, I took on to do it myself. It is actually not that difficult, maybe tedious. However, there really is only that much of hummus one can endure before you go crazy.

Super cheat meal. Not cheating in terms of the calories but I didn't really cook this. There is the usual miso soup. Oh yea, I bought a box of those paste and brought some to the office. So, for lunch, I'll take a scoop of the paste, add hot water and give it a good mix. The pork is actually stewed pork belly, complete with the skin and fat. Like super fat. Someone else gave it to me and it took me awhile to eat it.

I cooked the yee mee by putting it in a bowl of hot water and let it have a go in the microwave for a minute. Same goes for the lettuce. Added Domino's chilli flakes for flavor. Don't be a hero like me and empty 2 sachets of it without tasting. Those things may not pack much heat on your pizza but when it's on something that has no strong flavor, the heat becomes really prominent. So spicy and hot that I was almost breathing fire. But chilli is good to lose weight so suck it up.

A pancake recipe that calls for two ingredients: eggs and banana.
No way right? But yes, it was all the rage. I don't take bananas ordinarily but the recipe was interesting enough for me to try. Plus my office hands out free bananas so it wasn't as though much effort was required. Somehow, it turned out to be quite a failure. For starters, I don't like bananas. The pancake turned out to be a bit more mushy since you don't have much of a binding agent (usually flour). You could add more egg but that'll mean loading up on the carbs and cholesterol too. It was also very sweet and the banana flavor was very strong in the end product.

This would probably pair well with some savory. Just make sure that you really like bananas before trying this.

With the onset of the fasting month, my healthy diet routing went into hiding. There is just too much of food to be had at the Ramadhan bazaars. Plus it was just once a year. This is the curry chicken rice. For once, my miso soup didn't go well with it.

Lately, I haven't been cooking anything healthy as my finances don't quite permit. Do you have any good cheap healthy eating habits to share?