That’s what the doctor #3 told hubby recently. Not only to avoid seafood, but all meat and egg. Heh, great timing, can’t we start after we’ve finished up the pork and beef meat in our fridge?

All because of this itchy rashes that hubby had since one month ago. Yes, one month, two doctors at the same clinic – both general doctor not specialist – giving general assumption (allergic to something, sweat, etc).

Getting slightly better but not fully recover. Good thing it doesn’t spread to other person, I’m safe so far. Else it’s not funny to see the two of us scratching our body part all day long.

So last week we went to doctor #3 at different clinic. He said it’s eczema, most probably allergic to something, but what is that something we don’t know yet. He just said, eat the medicines that he gave and be vegetarian for a week, then come back for further check up.

We’re doing it, so we bought a few vegetarian food from supermarket to replace the meat consumption. The above pic is our first try, sweet and sour veg rib.

It reminds me of the vegetarian foods at Cemara Asri temple back in my hometown. It’s been a while since I last visited that place.

Gotta update my must-eat list, cause November is coming real soon!

While I still stayed with my parent, every night my Mum surely asked us: What do you guys wanna eat on tomorrow? Sometimes Mum ranted that she ran out of idea of what to cook. Not sometimes, but very often, a lot more than she mentioned about weight loss pills for women. Ah, the dilemma of a housewife that I didn’t understand. Never thought it will happen on me too.

But now, I find myself asking this what-to-eat/cook-for-today kind of question to hubby on every morning, aside from the work stuff. The circle of life, heh.

Now that we have so many meat (from hubby’s trip) & vege stock in the fridge, we still face the headache. Too much choice hurts, that’s why less is more.

So instead of planning our meal firsthand like usual, I told him that I’ll just close my eyes and grab whatever meat from the fridge. Then we decide how to cook from there. I did and what I grabbed was minced meat.

In the end, here’s what we have, all in one bowl – cabbage, broccoli, prawn, minced meat, fillet fish. Covers up the rice.

Lesson of the day: When in doubt, don’t think or plan further. Be spontaneous and see where it leads you.

Hubby had an outstation trip for the past few days, but he’s back yesterday.

I have the weekend all by myself, where I got to date Rainie Yang’s latest Taiwan Idol Drama – Drunken To Love You. I’m on episode 10 now, new episode is released on every Monday, ugh.

When I’m alone, I have the laziness to cook cause.. hello? spend so much time to prepare just to fulfill one person’s stomach. Wasting time. That’s why I’m wishing for a tablet/pill that can be eaten when I’m busy or lazy to cook.

On Sunday, I just didn’t feel like cooking rice and proper meal anymore. So, easy way out, a mee-hoon soup! With Maggie cube + whatever that I like; in this case carrot + green bean + beef meatballs + left-over beef meat.

And, he came back home with all these frozen meats (refer to above pic) occupying more than half of his luggage. Thanks much to my mother-in-law, we can skip our weekly grocery shopping. Oh wait, vege is finished, so yea, gonna shop for that.

Nope, not MSG, in fact we never use it ever since we both started to cook on our own. So, what’s the secret recipe?

*Drumroll* It is this ready-made crispy prawn chili, sold at RM6 or so. We found it while doing grocery shopping at local hypermarket. Was searching for a real spicy chili/sambal; something like belacan #ohnomnom ; to spice up the food as we’re too lazy to do the sambal ourselves.

Sometimes we eat the crispy prawn chili as-is, just like chili sauce. But most of the time, we use it for cooking – refer to the above picture. One tablespoon for a dish is good enough.

I used to dislike stir fried okra a.k.a ladyfinger (the vegetable on above picture). But not anymore, now it tastes a lot better with the prawn chili.

We can never get bored of this chili

According to lunar calendar, today is the Dragon Boat Festival (read the history on wiki), where we get to eat Zongzi / sticky rice dumpling / better known to me as Bakcang (from Hokkien dialect). It’s one of the Chinese tradition that I always look forward to.

All the while my Grandma is the one who makes the bakcang and I just eat, that’s all. Such an ignorant girl, I know. Cause everyone kept on saying that it was so hard to wrap the bakcang (into a pyramid shape), can’t be too tight or too loose otherwise it will be blablabla.

So I kept that mindset and never bothered to try. Besides, I pictured that bakcang is made by Grandma/auntie (elder people), not a youngster or kids stuffs. Heh.

Last week I realized that Dragon Boat Festival will fall on this week (today). Being away from both side of parents means we only have two options: to buy from outside stall or do it ourselves.

I didn’t know where the courage came from, I suggested to hubby to make the bakcang ourselves, with zero knowledge. Cause I still prefer homemade bakcang, it’s Zongzi day after all. On normal day, I’m fine with any bakcang that is purchased from outside stall.

In the end, we made the bakcang together with hubby’s friend – our master whom taught us how to wrap the bakcang. It was quite hard at the beginning but I was getting better in wrapping it. It’s not that hard like what I thought.

The preparation

We used total 6kg sticky rice. On 2nd round, we wrapped it mostly using the large lotus leaves, hence the jumbo family size.

After 4 hours of boiling, the hard work pays off! It tasted not bad, except not enough meat (too much rice) and the rice’s color isn’t dark enough. No worry, there is always next time for improvement.

On Sunday, we have our own bakcang making session at home. Just the two of us. This time, we used 1kg rice only. Enough for 20++ bakcang.

So proud of myself for finally taking a small step out of my comfort zone. I have a whole new mindset towards the making of bakcang now. I’m also glad that we’re keeping the tradition. I already pictured us making bakcang with the kids in the future, muahaha.

Today’s lesson: If you have a negative mindset towards a product/activity based on public opinion only, I encourage you to step out and experience it yourself. We need a break thru once in a while.