Pantry/Diet/Changes/Health

I would have to state that my pantry was stocked with the most exotic items in my neighborhood. It's not like Hong Kong I could just go down the stair to the wet market to obtain anything I might need for cooking dinner tonight, every drive away to gather these chinese specialty items are 25 minutes one way drive; 50 minutes round trip. I have all sorts of stuffs from dried herb to preserved vegetable or salted fish or dried shrimp paste, I have it all in my pantry. There is no such thing that I could buy 2 block of Fu Yu (blocks of fermented tofu). I would have to buy a whole jug here. As time goes by, I stocked the pantry.

However, after a few years I realize my diet has changed. I still love the super spicy food or extremely salty bite that goes into traditional cantonese style of cooking. But I decrease a big volume of processed food which I ate all the time in hong kong, now I might eat those a few times a month. Instead of cooking with peanut oil, I cook with olive oil; instead of frying the food, I bake or stir-fry most of the food; instead of cooking the vegetable, I make a salad with different dressings. Nowadays, I could not live without an oven.

I still make my own stuffs, like I would make dumpling planning different fillings; I made my own XO sauce and the whole house smell like shit, as Victor would say. ^_^ The only one ultimate weapon to chase him out of the house is to heat up the wok, with hot boiling oil then dump a piece of salted fish in there, wow that smell would drive him away for a few hours!

Well I have not try opening up a fresh "Durian" yet, perhaps that smell would get a stronger effect on Victor's nose.

Never thought of changing my diet but it happens naturally base on what's available here, I cook a bit more healthy now than before. I was never a big fan of flavor enhancer such as chicken-powder or MSG, my mom always told me those chemical is very bad for you, so I used ton of herbs or spices and work on the balance of flavor. Right now we are leaning more toward a Mediterranean diet mix with Chinese, I cook a lot of fish, shellfishes, poultry, twice a month I make steak so it's red meat, not that healthy but a good source of iron. Seafood is very fresh here and I love stone-crab, when Denise visited I had her try it and she loves it too, she could not believe the idea of harvesting stone-crab was a sustainable fishing style --- the fisherman caught the crab in bulk, take off one claw each crab then throw the crab back into the sea, in 6 months a new claw would grow back, hey we get to eat and we did not kill the crab.