A Few Vegetarian Chinese Dishes

The key to coming up with dishes like these is to not be afraid to experiment and substitute. Use whatever ingredients available, as long as the flavors go together. It takes trial and error, but if you cook often, you'll get the hang of it.

Eggplant and enoki mushroom with carrots and bulb onion.

Puffy tofu with Shanghai cabbage and bean sprouts, over rice.

Puffy tofu and eggplant over soba noodles.

Preparation for Xian noodles and cabbage

One of my favs: Xi'an noodles and cabbage in hot oil. A recipe from the ancient capital of China.

Preparation for a silken tofu salad. Since I'm allergic to soybean and sesame (the main traditional garnish), I add a lot of vegetables to reduce the amount of allergens I'm eating.

Silken tofu salad, with soy sauce and sesame oil, plus whatever veggies you want to add.

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Staying the Path

Sooner or later, every exercise plan stumbles upon obstacles, such as work demands, travel, weather, or injury. Following are the ones I encountered over the past five years. I will address each in turn in later posts, along with my response to each challenge. Finding the time to exercise. Schedule disruptions such as illness, travel or extended work commitments. Monotony: Boredom from doing the same routines and running over the same trails. Being a single-parent: I have shared custody of my daughter, which imposes the added challenge of integrating my exercise with my parenting. Weather: a significant factor for exercising outdoors. Trail conditions: ice, rain, mud, potholes, construction closures, etc., can interfere with our planned activities. Injuries. Specific adaptations because of lifestyle. For example, I live in a townhouse, so end up doing stairs twice as often as usual, while my work involves sitting in front of the computer for long hours. These ha...

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My mother's recipe, and a favorite of my daughter. Needs no baking. The idea is to arrange layers of tea biscuits (known as petit beurre , which can be found in Middle Eastern grocery stores, among others), with alternate layers of custard and chocolate pudding in between. Instead of custard, which is hard to find nowadays, I substitute any kind of pudding I like. Layer cake with chocolate, tapioca, and custard. Shown below is my latest with layers of Kozy Shack chocolate and tapioca puddings, and a powder pudding mix that I combine with milk over heat, like custard. I skipped the eggs on the last one, to give it more of a custard consistency that hardens when cooled. Depending on the shape of your baking tray, you may need to cut out parts of some of the biscuits. I used a 9"x9" tray. I also recommend putting the chocolate pudding at the bottom since it's thicker and will hold the consistency better. Once the layers are arranged, cover the tray with foi...

My Health Journey

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