Prepare for the finals, eat for the brain

Final week is around and everyone needs some brain food to finish the unfinished. My personal choices are tootsie pops (chocolate flavor), venti caramel latte with whipped cream and oreos (preferably with less cream). Obviously, these are not official brain foods that can give your energy a boost. I read an article from the internet today and it gives us more insight on the topic.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/brain-food-eat-for-productivity.html

Though it may sound strange, Chinese have the concept of brain food as well. But the traditional Chinese brain food may not suit your (or my) appetite. There is a belief that if you want to improve the function of a certain organ, one should eat the same organ of another animal. So here you go, broiled pig brains. I have never tried it before because my mum, who is not a very good cook and sort of cholesterol phobic, never allows such food in our house. But judging from its texture, it may not be very delicious.

p.s. for better performance in bed, use your imagination.

No more Kung Pao and General Taos!

If you are tired of the Chinese takeaway and want to try out some real Chinese dishes (Cantonese dishes indeed), here is a real simple one I stole from my aunt.

Chicken wings in Shrimp Paste

serves 8

What you'll need:
2 lb chicken wings
Boiled white rice

For the flavor:
3.5 tbsp shrimp paste
1 tsp dark soy sauce
1.5 tbsp ginger wine
1 tbsp sugar
cornflour

1. Mix all the seasonings.
2. Clean and dry the wings.
3. Marinate the wings with the seasonings.
4. Leave the wings in the fridge for an hour.
5. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in the wok.
6. Shallow fry wings until golden and crispy.
7. Serve the wings with white rice.

It's lunch time!

Food price is soaring! At least that is what I read from the paper... So to save some coffee money for my roadtrip in May, I have made up my mind to bring my own lunch to school from now on. Not a very good cook and with the limited kitchen utensils, packing an appealing and healthy brown bag is harder than I thought. ( No more soaky salad and doritos!) But msn.com has some good lunch box ideas that we can all borrow. My top picks are the avocado tea sandwiches and thermo ready smoothie. They are easy to make and they look great too. Please click here for the article.

What did you have for lunch today?

Chicken soup or soup in Chicken?

I read from the paper yesterday that most chickens we bought from the supermarket are injected with broth. It is not any illegal trick done by farmers to increase the weight of the poultry. It is permitted by the government.

The article does not explain why the government allows such practices. But the intention of the farmers is obvious: increase the poultry weight and maximise the profit. Not that profitable for the consumers though. While we think we are getting a healthful lot of protein and vitamin B from our chicken sandwiches, what we may be getting is indeed some extra salt and pepper. I do not know if this practice is common throughout the agriculture industry worldwide but this is the first time I have ever heard of it. I know farmers inject growth hormones to make chickens grow faster. But injecting broth? Not until yesterday.

I wonder if they do the same thing to the beef or fish or lamb too. Hope not.

Thoughts on Earth Day

To celebrate Earth Day, my roommate and I have decided to do a few things to conserve our resources:

1. Turn on either the heater or the air conditioner, not both at the same time. ( Yes, we should turn off both indeed.)
2. Toss the newspaper in the recycle bin, instead of the trash can across the hallway, for the sake of convenience.
3. Buy less 100 calories packs. Hopefully, the aluminium packaging we saved will not turn into fat around our waists.
4. Stop buying and using air freshener and hair spray. Okay, hair spray is permitted under certain emergency circumstances.
5. Print notes and readings on double pages. Estimate the chance of reading the readings before printing them.
6. Eat less beef and cow products. (I learnt from the last neighbourhood newsletter meeting that not eating beef alone can save us a signifciant amount of CO2 produced. )
7. Start doing what I have just put down.

A healthier version of Coke?

I am not talking about Coke Plus here. Yesterday in my econ lecture, our professor told us that Coke in the United States uses high corn fructose syrup instead of sugar in the production. That's why Coke is so much cheaper in the States than in anywhere else ( The high demand is of course another factor. ) and it tastes different from other countries' versions as well. But the issue is high corn fructose syrup is said to be very unhealthy to our body. I have heard reports saying that high corn fructose syrup leads to faster blood sugar rise after being absorbed by our body than sugar. And this dramatic up and down will lead our body to crave for more sugar in a short period of time. That's why some people say that high corn fructose syrup is the reason behind obesity and other weight issues. I do not know if that is true. But it is probably a good idea to cut back on Coke before I go home where they have the "healthier" version of coke...