Lunchbox Wednesday- Simple Salad

I had a couple of ideas for lunch in mind when we went to the market last week, but due to unavoidable circumstances, they either got eaten by my other family members, or I didn’t have one more ingredient that I needed. So…. when all other more exciting lunch plans fail, just throw together a salad!

Inside the lunchbox:
* Cos lettuce:
Precut on Sunday when I had just bought it. Precutting veg saves a whole lot of time. Just keep them in a tupperware in the fridge and don’t wash the leaves until you want to eat/cook them because wet vegetables spoil quickly.
* Yellow bell pepper: One of the highest sources of Vitamin C
* Tomatoes
* 1 hard boiled egg- for protein
* Olive oil and coarsely ground black pepper (not pictured because I didn’t want to dress the salad until just before I start eating)

Did it meet my “Healthy. Nourishing, Satisfying. and EASY PREP!” requirements for a lunch-on-the-go?

I think so! Again, you may question the “satisfying” part. Well, because I put in about 2 1/2 cups of salad leaves, by the time I got done with eating all that I was pretty stuffed. On top of that, I ate lunch with my dad, and he bought some fried rice from the mamak (haha!) and we shared it between ourselves, but I couldn’t finish my portion because… like I said… the salad had stuffed me before the rice. No kidding!

Some Thoughts on Fish (and especially salmon)

Photo credit

Much has been said about fish… My earliest recollection of fish being a “healthy food” is dates back to the good ol’ early nineties… I was probably no more than five years of age, and my grandpa used to tell me over the round dinner table that I need to eat fish if I wanted to be smart. Fish was brain food, he said. And so I ate it. How exactly it helps your brain, I didn’t quite know.

Fast forward almost fifteen years or so… All the parents and elders STILL say, “Eat your fish ahhh… it’s good for you!”

“But Mum… what’s so good about fish???”

Well, for one, it is a good source of lean meat. Not necessarily protein, because fish only contains about 24% protein. But it’s a source of meat and protein nonetheless.

Since I started studying about food and nutrition, the most talked about fish seems to be salmon. Salmon is frequently extolled for its high Omega 3 fatty acid content because EPA and DHA (derivatives of Omega 3) are:
1. essential for many body functions (must be derived from food because your body doesn’t manufacture it)
2. anti-inflammatory (prevents and counteracts inflammation, which is one of the biggest causes of health problems today)

Before you enter “EAT MORE SALMON” in your mental list of things to do, let me just give you a few things to take into consideration:

1. Salmon fish live in the cold Atlantic and Pacific oceans, obviously not very close to Malaysia
2. The only way for us in Malaysia to get salmon is to import it
3. Ever since the spiked interest in Omega 3 (and sushi, i might add), demand for salmon has risen significantly
4. Most salmon in Malaysia is farmed. Yup, fish can be farmed- and by “farmed”, I mean that they are bred specifically for food. Farmed fish do not swim around much, and live in polluted waters. Unlike wild salmon which feed on eat krill, they are fed fish oil and fish meal (ground fish meat).
5. According to this source, farmed salmon are actually gray in colour, but they have a pigment added to them which makes them pink.
6. Salmon have been found to contain high levels of PCBs (which are stored in their fats) and heavy metals like mercury (which harms our brain), cadmium and lead (which is then stored in our bones) due to all the pollution in the ocean.
7. This source reports specifically about Norwegian farmed salmon, which the fishmongers from my market happily sell.
8. If you really want to eat salmon, try looking for wild salmon from Alaska- and if you do find it… tell me where you did

*sigh* All that sounds so depressing, doesn’t it? I felt kinda drained having to type that out for you guys to read. It’s like I’m the bearer of bad news or something… urgh. But don’t be too sad. That’s just salmon. There are so many more fish out there which can still be eaten quite safely.

One of which is the mackerel! Mackerel fish are relatively small fish, which is great because the bigger the fish (ie: salmon, tuna, cod), the more likely they are to contain toxins from the ocean. The Atlantic mackerel contains more EPA than wild salmon, and has significant levels of DHA as well.

Interesting skin pattern, huh

Other varieties of mackerel that I’ve seen in the market are the Mackerel Pike (used alot in Japanese cooking), and our good ol’ ikan kembung (Chub Mackerel). I’ve never seen a King Mackerel, but it is a really big fish (hence the “King” in the name) so again, it would be best to apply the wisdom of “small fish are safer than big fish”.

Japanese Mackerel

Alrighty, that’s all I have to say now. I hope this blog post is helpful!

Lunchbox Wednesday

“Lunch. What to eat for lunch?“
That’s a frequent question that runs through my mind almost everyday. Lunch in my home isn’t like dinner. We usually cook for dinner. Often times I’m not home during lunchtime, so I can’t exactly whip up something over the stove or open the fridge to prepare something complex. I’m usually rushing on the way out, so I don’t have time for lots of cutting up and etc. So what do I do for lunch? Sometimes I’m lazy so I just grab whatever’s convenient, or sometimes nourishing food is simply nowhere to be found. So forget about those times. Like I said in my previous post, I try to eat healthy when I can.

What is eat for lunch is pretty important to me. Almost as important as breakfast is. It kinda almost determines my afternoon- sleepy or alert… or hungry!
I was almost going to say, “Forget it, I’ll just buy rojak” on my way out this morning; but I did a quick mental scan of what was in the fridge, and I managed to come up with this!

Inside the lunchbox:
*Carrot sticks
*Cucumber sticks
*Steamed sweet potatoes
*Homemade almond butter (made with yummy coconut oil)

I was already on a time crunch as I woke up late this morning (eek!), so this was great because there wasn’t much prep to do. Carrot and cucumber skins were already grated off since we used them for dinner too, so I just needed to cut them into sticks… sweet potatoes were pre-cut by Mum last week (pre-cutting food is a great timesaver!) so I just needed to pop them into the steamer… and the almond butter was leftover from something I baked last week.

Some of you might be thinking, “That’s all you’re having for lunch?! No wonder you’re so th…..” Whoa… hold your horses, friend. Let me explain:
Here’s my requirement for a good lunch:

Healthy. Nourishing, Satisfying. and EASY PREP!

Healthy (check), nourishing (check), satisfying (check- because of the protein in the almonds, and natural fats present in the almonds and the coconut oil that I put in the almond butter). Easy prep (check- This was done in about 10 mins).

If I’m hungry later, I may eat a pack of Iko biscuits which is… not so fantastic… but at least my lunch was mostly good. If I had more time to prepare, I could have cut more cucumber and carrots, but that’s all I could do within that time… so I’ll work on the “not so fantastic” part later.