So I know ramen overall is not the healthiest food option....but I LOVE Ramen, and noodle soup in general. After all, the key to maintaining health is moderation, so a bowl of instant ramen every once in a while won't hurt.
I have also progressed from a broke college student to a broke grad school student, which means the struggle is extra real, which means I have to resort to frugal living. Either way, I decided to do a series devoted to trying different types of ramen found in Asian grocery stores. So obviously, I'm doing this for science.
Ramen #1: JML Artificial Stew Pork Flavor
Price: $0.69
So this ramen came with 3 things: a soup base packet, a dried vegetable packet, and a packet filled with what I can guess is meat gloop for extra flavoring.
This is the end product. I added some sardines and pickled radish. I didn't have high hopes for this ramen because it was the cheapest and I've never heart of it before. ACTUALLY, it was pretty darn good!!!!! It actually tasted like Chinese pork soups and reminded me of home, which for 69 cents is a steal, and it comes with a substantial amount of ramen.
The best tasting and most affordable Korean BBQ I've ever had! I had to break my vegan streak for this one. 24.99 for all you can eat Korean BBQ, appetizers, and sushi rolls, all made to order. New favorite place in Orlando!!!
So I made this whole wheat vegan rosemary garlic lemon bread (say that 5 times fast). Let's just say...it was hard to resist saving some for later. Feast your eyes on this.
Bread making is not something you do when you're in a hurry, unless you have a handy bread machine conveniently in your kitchen...but I'm a broke college student so I can only dream about owning one. Bread making has also been my recent obsession, especially when I learned how to "veganize" many types of breads.
Actually, the individual steps by themselves really don't take long...it's the waiting that is time consuming. However, if you're in a hurry, there are plenty of recipes out there you can google that can make this whole process easier.
What I've found is that after you learn how to make bread and try it out (successfully lol) yourself, you can really appreciate the idea of bread and how stupidly easy and cheap it is.
The scariest part is working with yeast. The first time I tried working with it....i killed it :( Yeast IS AN ACTUAL LIVING ORGANISM...and you're sacrificing hundreds of these little guys to make your bread, so appreciate those little ones! Realize that if you put in water too hot or handle the yeast poorly, they can DIE and make your bread all sad.
So for this bread I followed this Martha Stewart Recipe, so go ahead and refer to it while I put my progress pics here and any adjustments I made (I made a few hehe):
Here is my yeast that is proofed with honey instead of sugar and my dry ingredients all mixed together in another bowl. Instead of 1.5 cups of all purpose flour and 1 cup of whole wheat, I switched it around because I wanted more whole wheat. (this can result in a denser bread that's not as fluffy/light so keep that in mind)
This is the rosemary I used. I swung by the local farmer's market and saw a whole crapload of fresh rosemary for a little under 2 dollars. Either way, I chopped up a lot more rosemary because i had more than enough to spare and I loooove rosemary. The whole leaves are set aside to garnish the top of the bread :)
So this is my dough ball in the bowl after mixing everything together and as you can see, the whole wheaty part is pretty obvious here. I added a little bit of lemon juice as well as some minced garlic because....it sounded like a good idea.
So this is what the dough looked like after letting it rise for the first time....it looked like it was going to exploooode.
And the final rise after I rolled it out and set it up on the pan.
I must admit, this bread was AWESOME. I guess I went a little overboard on the rosemary, BUT it was absolutely fantastic when i made tiny sandwiches with this bread because you don't even need many extra flavors since it's all in the bread!
I tried the same recipe again but used a bread loaf pan instead of free-forming it on the tray artisan style because i wanted more of a bread loaf so I can make all my coworkers jealous at work hehe, and it turned out very nicely :)
This is the best grilled cheese bread btw. So simple yet so flavorful, and probably cost me about 2 dollars total. If you're spending a lazy Sunday at home or are spending days long trapped inside and studying like me, this is a great thing to do on the side, with an even better end result when you eat it!
I just thought I should post a little update on my life, especially since I was pretty MIA for the past year or so due to me picking up the duties of another similar food blog for my school newspaper, but I graduated and I am in full swing and ready to give this one some TLC again :)
So.....big news: I'm turning vegan. (or at least I'm trying my darn hardest to)
Now, WHY on earth would I do such a thing, commit such an American gastronomical crime?! I'll give you my top three personal reasons:
A vegan diet is REALLY REALLY REALLY good for your health in terms of prevention of chronic illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc. and I have a personal history of 2 of those. Interesting thing is the best way to prevent or even reverse these ailments is to change your lifestyle, mostly the way you eat. Read The China Study, a comprehensive analysis on nutrition. My mind was blown.
I love animals too much and since I can't be a vet due to substantial animal allergies, this is the next best thing. I'm not talking about the act of killing an animal to begin with, because that's just how nature works, but the way the farm and meat industries work disgusts me to the point of me actually willing to turn down meat.
The most important reason in my opinion, and the most enticing reason is that IT'S CHALLENGING. Now I'm not a cooking n00b so I've done a lot of kitchen magic in my life, and yes it can get boring. NOT WITH THIS. IT IS SO HARD TO COOK WITHOUT MEAT, EGGS, OR DAIRY. But it's do-able, especially because we made a whole mess of meat, egg, and dairy substitutes, and that's what counts. AMURRRICA. And this challenge = accepted.
Don't get me wrong, I may cave every once in a blue moon and get the fried chicken or the steak or the seafood because...well, I'm a foodie. But after watching a documentary (initially as a joke, then it got surprisingly addictive) called Vegucated and reading The China Study as well as googling the cons of this diet (which there are virtually none), I think I'm up for the challenge and I would hope you would consider it too for the animals, the planet we all live on, and most importantly for yourself. *drop mic*
The impact was so large that I feel guilty and kind of sick looking at meat, which is so unlike me...but the plus is that from now on I will be expanding my blog entries so that it will be as vegan friendly as possible (as well as meat friendly)!
Look at this infographic about the impact of what we eat!
Now the next challenge is getting my family and boyfriend to eat more veggies haha.
Onion Pancakes! Another Round of Asian Comfort Food. (Vegan friendly!)
My grandpa and mom used to make this crispy treat when I was growing up! The ingredients are super simple: (serves 1-2, makes 3 cakes)
green onions aka scallions (as many as you want, for this recipe I used about 4-5)
a meat product (I used ham, you can also go without meat for all you vegans out there, Chinese peeps typically use a special sausage called lap cheong)
all purpose flour (although I am almost 100% sure you can sub for whole wheat flour if you want more fiber)
water
salt to taste
So if you're like me and you like more stuff in the pancake and less of the carb part, you can fill it up with more ingredients! I started off with cutting up the ingredients and putting it into a mixing bowl so I could see how much "stuff" I'm eating and gauge how much flour I should add:
Now the fun part! You add flour and water until it comes up to an almost pancake batter-like consistency, and since I want less batter and more of the insides, I tried to limit the amount of flour I added, which came up to about 2 cups. Then, slowly add in the water and mixmixmixmixmixmix, add more if needed until the consistency looks a bit like this:
If you want you can add more flour and water to achieve this consistency, making sure to keep in mind that flour makes it thicker and water makes it more runny. Add salt and now pop a bit of that baby onto an oiled pan!
I have the stove on medium heat, and this is a large pan so the cake is going to be a good portion in terms of size. once you pour the batter onto the pan, try to spread out the mixture as far as possible without creating gapes in the cake so that you can make it super flat. The flatter the better because you get maximum crispiness that way! Once it's golden brown you flip it over and smush it so that any residual batter can ooze out and make it even flatter
Repeat until both sides are at the desired crispiness, then the hardest part: wait until it cools down before you nom it up.
