Asian Vegan

Nian-gao: Advancement for Year 2006

2006-01-02T21:34:00.000-08:00

The above is a macadamia curry soup. We used this as a soup base for noodle soup using brown rice spaghetti noodle. The stuff floating in the soup is taufu pok. Taufu pok is fried tofu but it has a springy texture with more air holes than the usual tofu. It really looks like a sponge. The spongy texture of the tofu helps to absorb the soup in the tofu. So when you bite into it, the soup oozes into your mouth. I kinda of like this soup because it has macadamia nuts, it's great! Vegans and vegetarians can have this soup too.

We use gram flour (also called besan flour or chana flour or chick pea flour) to fry the orange yam and the sweet potato together. In between the yam and potato is nian-gao (made of glutinous rice flour, rice flour, coconut milk and brown sugar). Nian-gao is a must have Chinese New Year cake. Nian-gao literally means more improvement or advancement each year. Yup, this is what we hope for 2006. Both vegans and vegetarians can enjoy this dish too.

Flexitarian

2006-01-01T18:31:00.000-08:00

Some of you may already know this, but it may be news if you don't, we are not vegans. "Asian Vegan" is actually a misnomer, a name I came up with before I was less informed about what "vegan" actually means. Although we are fully supportive of the vegan lifestyle and what veganism stands for, we do not want to misrepresent ourselves as being vegans, because we are in fact not vegans.

Many of us are aware of the benefits of following a vegetarian diet. However, most meat eaters out there, for one reason or another, are not willing to strictly abstain from meat, regardless of the benefits of vegetarianism.

We have an answer for you. To those vegans or vegetarians who object to what I am about to promote, do remember that if 2 people consume half the amount of meat they are now, it is equivalent to 1 person become entirely vegetarian.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our new blog:
http://flexitarian.blogspot.com

We will still update this blog when we have vegan dishes to post. However, for our regular day-to-day postings, we will do that in the new flexitarian blog.

Christmas 2005

2005-12-26T20:03:00.000-08:00

We went over to my parent's place for Christmas. They literally live 5 minute drive from us (I think my mom..."influenced" us to buy a place nearby, hehe). We had a nice time, ate dinner, drank a little wine, chatted and did the usual gift exchange. Christmas down in L.A. tends to be a lot louder and chaotic, 'cause our extended family are all down there. But this year it's just us.

Phan's beautiful, but she's very camera shy and she won't let me post photos with her in it. So I have to settle with this, the only photo without Phan in it. Here's my mom with my siblings and me. From left to right: Chris (21), Brandon (13), mom, and me. My dad's the camera man. Happy post-Christmas and pre-New Year everyone.

Peacock Lane

2005-12-23T21:54:00.000-08:00

We took a stroll along Peacock Lane. It's actually not too far from our restaurant, just a few streets drive up. It was crowded, with alot of pedestrians and drivers moving through the street, enjoying the Christmas carolers, Santas, horse carriages, and the general festive atmophere.

To those who are not familiar to Portland, Peacock Lane is a street in the SE Portland neighborhood where everyone puts up holiday lights and decorations every Christmas. It has been a tradition for as long as I can remember. I've taken a few photos:

Notice the abdominal snowman in the picture above. No wonder they call him the abdominal snowman, check out his abdomen!

I think we passed by at least 4 Santas. I bet the kids didn't know there are actually 4 Santas, and they all live in Portland!

There was this guy in a neon robe doing his part to add more colors to the illluminated street.

Construction, Part I

2005-12-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

Click here to see a few snapshots of the construction underway at our restaurant.

Going for a Walk

2005-12-18T18:53:00.000-08:00

Our friend, Janet, had invited us over for a vegetarian potluck lunch on Saturday. We met some of her nice friends and everyone had a great time. After filling our tummies, we all went for a walk in her very scenic Lake Oswego neighborhood. Admittedly, I wasn't too excited about taking a walk in the cold, windy weather at first, but it was good excercise and I got a chance to snap some pictures.

We passed by a farm house that looks like it could've come out of "Little House in a Prairie". The pond there is all frozen.

One of the homes in the area had mules or donkeys (I can't tell which it is). They're very gentle creatures.

Extra MSG

2005-12-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

Extra MSG, a Portland food blog by a devoted foodie who goes the extra mile to check out the different cuisines in every corner of Portland and beyond, was kind enough to vote Asian Vegan his best Vegan blog. That's cool, thanks!

Dessert and Salad

2005-12-07T22:08:00.000-08:00

These past weeks, we have been practicing cooking using the same sauces to establish a standard for our food taste. This is the reason why we are lacking of new pictures to show except for the ones here. We had a dessert made from soy ice-cream, tapioca and palm sugar syrup. We also had a sweet salad with grounded deep-fried wanton skin, deep-fried mung bean noodle threads, soy sauce, palm sugar and Kinta special chili sauce.

Phan just had her birthday yesterday. I gave her blue flowers, a singing balloon and fruit pie. I am too poor now to buy her the new Xbox, so she takes a raincheck haha.

Btw, Phan and I also like to wish BabyBokChoi's husband and Fish Fish a very happy birthday too.

Kinta Restaurant

2005-11-24T14:15:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, we're finally on our way to getting our building permits. Construction will start very soon. Sorry for the lack of updates, as we've been quite busy lately.

To separate our personal blog from the restaurant's, I've created a different blog that you will find on the restaurant's website. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, our restaurant's website:

www.KintaRestaurant.com

There you will find Kinta's information and menu. You will also see the new blog in the "What's New" section. Be forwarned, although Kinta Restaurant is both vegetarian-friendly and vegan-friendly, it is not entirely vegetarian.

More Food...

2005-11-06T14:51:00.000-08:00

Nowadays we are actively taking pictures of our food so that we can use them as "window dressing" for our restaurant. We did get to eat these food after the pictures were taken although the food become a bit cold cause the camera man took too long haha.

This is a noodle dish with tomato and curry spices gravy. I would say it is a version of the tomato curry but minus the turmeric and coconut milk.

This is noodle with peanut satay sauce. We added fried gluten to this dish.

This is barley, beancurd and palm sugar dessert. It is best eaten warm.

Food Pics!

2005-11-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

It has been awhile that we have posted any food pictures. You can blame Phan haha. She is close to losing her sanity but she hopes that she will not lose any of her hair. She doesn't want to be hair-less *sniff*.

The presentation of these food is not much to brag about (yet) but please enjoy the joyful colors. Have you ever eaten such colorful dishes before?

This dish.... does not have a name yet. We are thinking and thinking (everyday). Hope one word, two words or more will come forth from our tired brains haha. This nameless dish has a special chili paste sauce, turmeric and coconut milk. Dennis tested the dish and gave it two thumbs up. The flowers are also edible. The flowers do have a very unique taste. It is difficult to describe that taste but it is one of those acquired tastes.

We are lucky to have other testers to test this dish. Boy, these testers slurp up everything and left nothing to wash. This is our favorite dish; Lemongrass Miso Noodle Soup. A special secret sauce is added to enhance the flavors of this soup. One of our testers is still working (very) hard to find out the special secret sauce. Too bad for him.... it is a "SECRET" sauce, you know what I mean.

Dennis said that the decoration for this dish was BORING. After he said that, he had to tuck. A flying pan just flew past his head. Don't worry. We did not have to call the ambulance. He did like the flavor of the soup. It is curry noodle Malaysian style. We make the curry paste from scratch and yes, we add some of our special secret sauce too.

It is the Hubbard Hubbard season. Have you eaten Hubbard squash before? I like this squash the most. It tastes like hard-boiled egg yolk. Instead of using yam, we used the hubbard squash to make the daikon radish "cake". It is not really a cake but because it looks like a cake, we call it a cake. It is really mashed up daikon radish and hubbard squash which we steamed, sliced and topped with mushroom, peanut and sesame. It is best eaten with SriRacha chilli sauce.

Our friend Bob is a great gardener. He planted some Anaheim green chilies. We stuffed them with Vietnamese pepper gluten and hubbard squash. After steaming them for a short few minutes, we served them with a sweet and sour sauce. Bob said that they were good. Next to the green chilies is a deep fried wheat wrap stuffed with vegetables.

These are fried wantons stuffed with hubbard squash and Chinese gluten.

All these food are vegan and halal.

Join the Revolution

2005-10-28T22:34:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of having a business school within the city is its access to the networks of business executives. In our executive briefings course, the school would invite an executive to be the guest speaker. For today's guest speaker, we had the Director of Advertising for Apple Computers. It was good, he talked about the great advertising campaigns Apple have had in the past, including the famous TV commercial that Apple did during the 1984 Super Bowl, and the "Think Different" commercial. He also mentioned about Steve Jobs' visionary zeal.

I just think Steve Jobs is an absolute marketing genius. Quite frankly, I think his far-reaching visions are revolutionary, and way ahead of his time. From promoting the world's first widely accessible computer (Macintosh) that had a user-friendly graphical interface (which Windows later copied), creating a highly successful animation company (Pixar) that put computer animated films on the world stage, and changing the way we purchase and listen to music (iPod), I'm simply at awe of how Steve Jobs revolutionizes entire industries.

By the way, Steve Jobs is almost a vegetarian; the only meat he does eat is fish.

(picture from Newsweek)

Slugging Along...

2005-10-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

Most of the architectural drawings are done. Tomorrow we're meeting up with the architect to go over where we want the ceiling lights to be so that he can complete the last of his drawings. We'll still need our contractor to do the mechanical and plumbing drawings.

We're also meeting with the contractors tomorrow to look over their contract and sign off on them if they look okay. We've already checked the contractors' backgrounds and references, they seem fine.

Lastly, we're meeting with the city health inspector so that he can look at our layout plan and sign off on that. It'll be a busy day tomorrow.

The other week, we got the business insurance stuff taken cared of. The focus now is on getting the building permit as soon as possible. How soon will that be? We shall see.

Anticipation

2005-10-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

I spent most the weekend redesigning our restaurant homepage. What is the web address? Can't reveal yet! Hehe. What is the name of the restaurant? Can't reveal that yet either! ^_^

I've even created a new blog and it's fully integrated into the restaurant's homepage. In 2 or 3 weeks, you will see it all. The restaurant's name and website (with it's own blog), and photos of the building and location. For now, just sit tight, we're getting there. :o)

Keys!

2005-10-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

Restaurant Update:

We got keys to the property yesterday. Our architect is working on the drawings and preparing for the building permits. We're still waiting for more contractor bids to come in. Hopefully, we'll be able to select a contractor within the next 2 weeks and have our building permit within 3 weeks.

I won't reveal the actual location and post up pictures of the property until we actually get the building permits. Technically, our lease is contingent upon us getting the permits, so no unveiling our location for now. We'll let you know in a few weeks! :o)

Oodles of Noodles

2005-10-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today we have 3 noodle plates for you. First up is a non-noodle dish. We got a few different varieties of potatoes from the farmers market. I don't remember their names, but one type's pink, another's yellow, and the other's purple. Each has its own subtle difference in taste and texture.

We had tomato base curry sauce with fresh corn to go with the potatoes.

This is udon noodles on sauce flavored with miso, chilli, and lemongrass.

Here we have stir fried wheat flour noodle flavored with mushroom, soy, and sesame sauce. Mixed in are nappa cabbage and chanterelle mushrooms.

Lastly, we have soba noodle with shiitake based sauce. The sweet tomatoes went well with the dish, as it lightened up the taste with its refreshing sweetness. You can see the tomatoes came in different colors: red, yellow, orange, green, and purple. I was surprised to find that the orange and green ones were very sweet (like a fruit).

Restaurant update:

We have gotten back the final draft of the lease from the landlord and have signed it. On Monday we're handing over the signed lease and deposit check to the landlord. We're also meeting up with the architect at the property so that he can check the place out before starting the architectural drawings.

The Stars

2005-09-27T17:51:00.000-07:00

You see them in magazines and movies all the time, but did you know that they're vegetarian? Yes, some of your favorite celebrities that you would never suspect are in fact vegetarians. So here's a quiz for you to test your vegetarian IQ, which one of the stars listed below are NOT vegetarian? (These images were taken from various sources on the internet)

Alec Baldwin	Richard Gere
Brad Pitt	Leanardo Di Caprio
Pamela Anderson	Christina Applegate
Natalie Portman	Shania Twain
Homer Simpson

The answer is....(drumroll)...the only celebrity above that is NOT vegetarian is.....Homer Simpson! Or is he? Is cartoon ham considered vegetarian? Hmmm...

But yes, the rest of the celebrities listed above are indeed vegetarians. And now you know.

Farmers Market II

2005-09-25T21:45:00.000-07:00

After meeting with a general contractor we went to the downtown Portland farmers market again on Saturday. There weren't many new mushroom varieties yet. I asked the "Mushroom Man" when the white truffles will come in, and he said that they don't start coming out until around mid October. We did see Maitake mushrooms this time though.

Here's one of the mushroom guys. Same dude we took a picture of right around the same time last year. On that table is a mound of Chanterelles. No one has found a way to cultivate these mushrooms yet, so they're always harvested in the wild. Oregon harvests 500,000 pounds of these every year. They also happen to be the state mushroom. Chanterelles are prized in European cuisine, and they're known as "girolles" in Italy and "pfiferrling" in Germany.

Pictured above is Maitake. I've seen a lot of herbal supplements made from Maitake, although I'm not sure what they're supposed to promote, healthwise.

Downtown Portland's farmers market is situated right on the park blocks of Portland State University. Pictured in the background above are several vendor tents next to the university's alumni house.

Dishes:

Below are two dishes we made from some of the mushrooms we bought.

Sometime last year, fish fish, had recommended we prepare mushrooms as tempura. So here we have tempura Lobster mushroom with stir fried vegetables and crispy tofu.

Here we have noodles with brussel sprouts and three kinds of mushrooms: Shiitake, Maitake, and Chanterelles. Everything tasted so fresh. Nothing's better than organic vegetables and wild mushrooms straight from the farmers market.

Restaurant Update:

We sent the lease contract addendum to the landlord and hope to be able to sign the lease later this week. Several construction contractor bids came back this week and the numbers look good for the most part. We'll meet with one more general contractor this Wednesday.

Mushroom Season

2005-09-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's the beginning of mushroom season, with the first harvests for wild mushrooms having just arrived. Phan and I went to the farmers market today to buy some.

Can you guess what kinds of mushrooms are these?

The big orange one on the left is lobster mushroom. This one's nice and firm and it does sort of taste like lobster. They're selling for $8/lbs. The mushrooms on the right are Chanterelles, they're $6/lbs. The ones on the bottom are Matsutake, the most expensive, at $32/lbs.

Aaah, wild Matsutake....I wonder what Phan will make out of this. I'm still waiting for the white truffles harvest to come in. Maybe next week.

Tadaaa! The matsutake made its home on this soba noodle atop a bed of crisp organic lettuce, accompanied with purple and red potatos fresh from the farmer's market. The potatoes were baked with grounded coriander and fennel.

The matsutake was out of this world. It was absolutely sumptuous, with flavors bursting with aromatic reverie. Mmmm, delicious. We have to get some more.

Restaurant Update:

Our lawyer have looked over the lease contract and he will be working on writing addendums to the contract this weekend and have it available to us by Monday. Once we receive the addendums, we'll review it with our realtor next week before we send it to the landlord.

Sunday Dinner

2005-09-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had some friends we met from NorthWest Veggie over for dinner. After dinner we watched a wonderful Japanese film, "Tampopo", a comedy about a lady who puts her heart and sweat to make her Ramen eatery successful after she took it over from her husband who passed away.

Here are the lucky diners, ready to start the meal.

Here's a picture of Bob, happy with his bowl of Phan's noodle soup. If you had a bowl of Phan's noodle soup, you'd be happy too!

For appetizer we had gluten meat wrapped in crispy fried bean curd on top of sweet tomato & jack fruit sauce.

The first entree was a miso lemongrass soup. Very flavorful. It had the wonderful aroma of lemongrass, the sweetness of Thai tom yum soup, and the richness of Japanese miso soup. Green veggies and tofu stuffed with eggplant accompanies the soup.

The second entree was fried thick rice noodles. Forgot to take a photo of this one, oops!

For dessert, we had black glutinous rice with tapioca, purple yam, and coconut milk. It was mmmmm delicious. Just the right amount of sweetness, and the texture was divine; firm but not too firm, with a certain chewiness to it. Had some more later that night.

On an update on our restaurant, we're finished with the lease negotiations for the new location and just received the lease contract from the landlord. We've sent the contract to the bank for review and if they approve the new location, we'll have our lawyer look through the contract before we sign it. In the meantime, we're also having our contractors bid on the construction work for that property so that we'll have contractors ready when it's time to start the renovation.

Gonna Pump....You Up!

2005-09-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

Today's Quiz

Okay boys and girls, we're going to take a little quiz here. Which one of these buff dudes is vegetarian?

Buff dude #1

Buff dude #2

Buff dude#3

The correct answer is....(drum roll)....all three of them. The first buff dude is vegetarian and the other two are totally vegan.

These pictures are taken from VeganBodyBuilder.com. The first photo is of Zachary Hocker, the winner of the 2004 PETA Sexiest Vegetarian Alive Contest.

How the heck do these guys pack on the muscles on a vegetarian diet? Awhile ago, I wrote a post on sources of vegetarian protein, you can check it out there. Like their meat-eating counterparts, to bulk up, vegetarian bodybuilders spread out their meals to 5 or 6 a day and do their weightlifting workouts 3 to 4 days a week. They also make sure that their meals are protein packed, which is not a problem on a vegetarian diet. And like their meat-eating counterparts, vegetarian bodybuilders consume nutrient-rich food that provides enough carbs, vitamins, minerals, and fats. A certain amount of fat is needed, because some vitamins cannot be absorbed without it (fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E, and K).

I just want to get the word out that, yes, bodybuilding on a vegetarian diet is a viable option. And a healthy one at that.

Now...back to our regularly scheduled program, some pictures of yummilicious vegetarian food. The first one is spinach curry, second is crispy tofu with broccoli, and the third is fried purple string bean (which turned green after cooking).

Suburbia

2005-08-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Downtown Portland is filled with a wide array of high-end, ethnic, and independent restaurants. If I ate at one different restaurant every single day, I wouldn’t be able to cover all of them in a year. The population, although a fraction of that of Seattle, is nevertheless fairly dense, which is able to support an abundance of restaurants. As dense as it already is, new sky-rises housing several hundred condo units continue to be built. This has a lot to do with the environmentally friendly land-use laws they have here in Portland, where there are strict boundaries of where land can be developed, forcing developers to build taller buildings instead of sprawling out.

Further out in the suburbs, the restaurant scene is much less interesting. Restaurants in the suburbs, catering mostly to families with kids, consist of mostly generic chain restaurants. The same is true with shopping.

However, there are some new interesting developments coming in the suburbs. Lately, there has been a demand for more unique boutique type of retail establishments in the suburbs. Several new shopping areas are being constructed, leasing to higher-end and specialized retailers you wouldn’t find in a typical mall. The ambience of these outdoor shopping area look like idealized vision of European streets, complete with background music played all along the alleys of boutique shops. I feel like I’m in a movie walking through an artificial French village that was setup by Hollywood. Fake but “nice”.

The place that we go to nearly every weekend, ‘cause it’s closer to where we live, is Bridgeport village. We're normally in the bookstore, because Phan is obsessed with their Manga selections and I like to checkout the health books and science and business magazines. On the weekends, they have live bands playing mostly acoustic music upstairs.

Below are a few photos that we took of parts of Bridgeport last week.

Below is P.F. Chang's at Bridgeport. Here's what I'm talking about when I refer to generic chain restaurants. The decor, both outside and inside, is impressive, but the food doesn't meet my standards (some of it, to me, is inedible). Who am I to complain though, people must like their food 'cause their average annual sales for each restaurant unit is $5.5 million USD.

The China Study II

2005-08-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

In the last post about "The China Study", I provided an introduction and some data on the US current health issues. Now I'd like talk about the Chinese diet. Dr. Campbell did a study on China after Chinese researchers revealed their results from a nationwide survey initiated by the premier of China, Chou EnLai, who was dying of cancer at that time. The survey covered 2,400 counties in China and 880 million people, 96% of their population at the time. The results showed that cancer in China was "geographically localized" with some counties have cancer rates 100 times more than other counties. This was a shocking contrast. In the U.S., a difference in cancer rates between two states that are a magnitude of 2 or 3 times would make major news headline. Now here was a study that revealed differences of up to 100 times between different geographical areas in China!

Dr. Campbell himself wondered why was it possible to have such massive variation in cancer rates among different counties when the ethnic genetic backgrounds were relatively similar from place to place. To find out the answer, Dr. Campbell, Dr. Junshi Chen, Dr. Junyao Li and Richard Peto of Oxford University did a comprehensive study on the dietary and environmental conditions in that country. They looked at how the Chinese in the rural and semi-rural parts live, what they eat, what is in their blood and urine and their cause of death. Dr. Campbell discovered that the diet in the rural China is mostly plant-based diet.

Here is where I will digress.

The rural Chinese are not vegan nor vegetarian. The traditional diet in rural China consists of mainly grains, legume, and vegetable; meat is used sparingly only to flavor the dishes and not as the main course. Rural farmers often cannot afford to buy much meat. The rural Chinese do consume more meat during celebrations and festivals which happen once or twice a year. Vegetables, legumes, and rice are the common staples. These farmers grow their veggies in small farms with night soil. In the past, the rich often had more rice than the poor and the poor had to eat rice porridge mixed with sweet potatoes. They also often had steamed sweet potatoes only.

My grandma lived in China until her father moved the family out of China during the Revolutionary War. My grandma was our family cook. She only used one third of one pound meat for the six of us. She always made sure that we had vegetable dishes. We ate fish quite often. Tilapia was cheap and easy to get. She raised her own chickens and only when the chicken matured, we had chicken dishes. It was always one chicken divided between four people at lunch and the same chicken for six people at dinner. What we consumed a lot was white rice. On average, we normally ate 2-3 bowls at every meal. Her advice was always to eat more white rice than dishes. In contrast, my uncle's advice was always to eat more meat dishes than white rice. His kids were twice the weight of ours. My grandma also forbade us from eating junk food. I never found anything wrong with this diet as my brother, sisters and I grew up healthy. However, this kind of diet is hard to find in US as the meat portion for every meal is huge and meat is always the focus of the meal in restaurants. I have been in US for eight years and startin last year, I realized that I was not as healthy as before I came here. By switching my diet from plant focused to meat focused caused a lot of bowel problems and stress to my body. This is the reason why I support a vegetarian diet. It is the same reason why I support the diet encouraged by Dr. Campbell in "The China Study".

In China, there was what my grandma called the "rich people disease and poor people disease". Dr. Campbell called the diseases "Diseases of Affluence due to nutritional extravagance and Diseases of Poverty due to nutritional inadequacy and poor sanitation." The rich have money to spend on meat, seafood and poultry dishes everyday. Their dinner table is always twice or three times the size of the poor family's dinner table. Their tables are covered with plenty of meat, seafood and poultry dishes. The poor seldom get to have this kind of lavish dinner. Dr. Campbell's research shows the rich's common diseases are cancer (colon, lung, breast, leukemia, childhood brain, stomach, and liver cancer), diabetes and coronary heart disease. The poor's common diseases are pneumonia, intestinal obstruction, peptic ulcer, digestive disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, parasitic disease, rheumatic heart disease, metabolic and endocrine disease other than diabetes and diseases in pregnancy.

By the way, regarding the uncle who I mentioned earlier who followed a heavy meat-based diet, it was sad to say that he died in his mid-fifties. His children decided to change their diet. Both of them eventually achieved normal weight.

Now for some pictures of healthy and delicious food!

We made a fried bun for the Northwest Veg to try out. The fillings are mushrooms, cucumbers and dried gluten stir-fried in a palm sugar and plum sauce.

Here is a stir-fried veggie in a miso-bean-chili sauce.

The next dish is dry-fried tofu stuffed with broccoli and served with bamboo and sweet tomato sauce.

The China Study

2005-08-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

A good friend recommended a book for us to read. The book is called "The China Study" by T.Colin Campbell, PHD. As per The New York Times review, this book contains "findings from the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease, are challenging much of America dietary dogma." As per my review, this book helps us to understand what our bodies need to sustain a healthy life and what elements cause our bodies to breakdown. I will start of with an introduction of the author and next will be an introduction of the book. If I have time in the next few days, I will write more about the book.

Dr. Campbell was borned in one of the farms in northern Virginia. Therefore, he is very familiar with the agricultural practices in US. However, he greatly disagrees with the current ways that the food is grown and raised in this country. He has been lobbying in Washington, D.C. to fight for changes in the agricultural practices. Why is he obsessed with changing the agricultural practices? His obsession is from the effects of his 40 years of nutrition research. Dr. Campbell is Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. "He has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers. "The China Study" was the culmination of a twenty-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine." He was also involved in the discovery of "dioxin". "Dioxin" was first discovered in chicken feed. This chemical was part of the herbicide 2,4,5-T or Agent Orange, that was used to destroy food fields and forests in the Vietnam War.

Dr. Campbell came across the following most basic questions that we ask ourselves everyday.
1) Should we buy food that is labeled organic to avoid pesticide exposure?
2) Are environmental chemicals a primary cause of cancer? Or is our health "predetermined" by genes we inherited when we were born?
3) Do carbohydrates really make us fat?
4) Should we be more concerned about the total amount of fat we eat, or just saturated fats and trans-fats?
5) What vitamins, if any, should we be taking?
6) Do we need foods that are fortified with extra fiber?
7) Is fish important to our diet?
8) Will eating soy foods prevent heart disease?

According to Dr. Campbell, although there is plenty of information and opinions out there, however, very few people truly know what they should be doing to improve their health. It is because most of the results from research are buried under a clutter of irrelevant or even harmful information - junk science, fad diets and food industry propaganda. I find this is true based on the following facts.

Fact 1: In this modern era dominated with advanced food technology and high-level of food science knowledge, the American Cancer Society statistic studies are showing that male in US has 46% (1 in 2) chance of getting cancer. Female in US has 38% (1 in 3) chance of getting cancer. Click here to download the statistics file. US government funded a program called the "War on Cancer" for 30 years, and the above fact is proof of how effective this program is.

Fact 2: While the probability of getting cancer is growing, something else is also growing at the same time. Waistline! According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 31% of the adults 20 years of age and over in US are obese, 15% of the children aged 6 to 11 years and 16% of the children aged 12 to 19 years are also obese. Click here to download the statistics file. When these children grow up to 20 years of age, the 31% number will be even bigger.

Fact 3: It is common belief that if we get a fatter pig, the meat is always better cause everyone gets larger portion to consume and there is more lard to enhance food flavors. However when a human body gets too fat, it is not for the better but for the worst. The human body becomes sick and diseased. Doctors are called in to help. Doctors do not guarantee a cure but will most likely fill the sick body with drugs or cut one or two parts of the body to stop the disease. The sick and diseased body is now exposed to chances of death due to adverse drug effects, unnecessary surgery, medication errors and hospital borne infections. Dr. Campbell listed a study by Mokdad, Ford and Bowman whose research on "Diabetes trends in the US (1990-1998)" indicates that diabetes among people in their thirties has increased 70% in less than 10 years. 34% of diabetics are not aware of their illness. The effects caused by diabetes are heart disease and stroke, blindness, kidney disease, nervous system disorders, dental disease and limb amputation. According to the National Vital Statistics Reports, no. 1 killer of humans is diseases of the heart, no. 2 is cancer, no. 3 is stroke, no. 4 is chronic lower respiratory diseases, and no. 5 is accidents. Although it is not listed in the National Vital Statistics Reports, as per a research by Starfield, medical care is actually no. 3 killer right after cancer. Click here to download the statistics file.

Fact 4: The Chinese believe the number 4 means death. Hence fact 4 relates to death but an expensive death. The source book of health insurance data: 1999-2000 indicates that a trillion dollars was spent on health care in 1997. The cost of healthcare is predicted to cost 16 trillion dollars by 2030. In the years before the existance of healthcare insurance, people only paid as and when they sought a doctor. Nowadays, we have to pay more than $800 monthly for a basic family insurance to guarantee us a lower payment when we do seek a doctor. Since 2000, premiums for health coverage has risen by 59%. “The cost of family health insurance is rapidly approaching the gross earnings of a full-time minimum wage worker,” said Drew Altman, President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “If these trends continue, workers and employers will find it increasingly difficult to pay for family health coverage and every year the share of Americans who have employer-sponsored health coverage will fall.” After pouring or being forced to pour so much money into our healthcare system, we should be surrounded by the best of the best healthcare providers in the world, right? Wrong. According to the World Health Organization report, we only rank 37th in the world's best healthcare performers. It hurts us alot when we look at our paychecks and the money deducted for healthcare. It hurts more for the tens of millions of people who cannot afford medical treatment when they need it. Click here to read more about the rising costs of health insurance.

Based on these 4 facts alone as pointed out by Professor Campbell, we must be supporting a wrong trend at this moment. Instead of moving towards the right direction, we are being lead to a cliff and eventually fall into an endless pit with no means of getting out except dying. However, Professor Campbell points out that by having the right knowledge of what our body needs and what makes our body breaks down will give us a chance to make a right choice. The "China Study" is not a book about diets. It is an eye-opening book based on facts and these facts can be used by us to make right choices to keep ourselves healthy, rich and most of all, to keep our body happy which we all deserve to have in this chance of a lifetime.

You can buy the book from Amazon.com .

Dinner Parties

2005-08-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

Lately we've been cooking for small dinner parties, serving both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. The response have been great. Not only does it give us a chance to get feedback on the dishes and get the word of mouth out about our food, we've been able to meet some very interesting and friendly people. In our dinner parties, we met a cook from Four Seasons restaurant in New York, a widow of a bowling celebrity, a former U.S. senator from the east coast, a professor of University of Portland, and organizers from NW Veg. We've met a very nice couple from NW Veg who had helped invite these friendly guests.

Here're some of the dishes we've made recently.

Here we have rice cooked in coconut milk and turmeric, accompanied with fried seaweed beancurd wrap stuffed with gardenburger patties, mushroom, and chinese ear-wood, tofu stuffed with cucumber and grilled orange, yellow and red sweet bell peppers topped with peanut satay sauce and grilled eggplant wrapped with pandan leaves. When this picture is taken, the peanut satay sauce and the veggie curry has yet to be added to this dish.

We have rice vermicelli and soba noodle topped with a mushroom ketchup soy sweet spicy sauce. On the side, we have the fried crunchy beancurd stuffed with Vietnamese pepper gluten and a veggie called basella or malabar spinach or saan choi (Chinese) or poi (Indian). This veggie has a slippery texture similar to okra.

This is boiled the tofu and peanut in a soy sauce and tea leaves stock. We had leftover basella or malabar spinach which we boiled with chili, lemongrass and homemade veggie broth to make it a side soup dish.

This is a yam, split pea, tapioca and coconut dessert.