[Veggie Kitchen] Oriental Chestnut Rice

Here is something easy for the lazy saturday afternoon. Chop the veggies and pan fried them with seasoning until light brown. Toss them with rice, water, soy sauce, sesame oil to the rice cooker.
Within half an hour, ta da! The dinner is ready!

Recipe
Red peper - 1/2 cup
Onion - 1/2 cup
Mushroom - 1/3 cup
Chestnuts - Pre water boiled
Rice - 1 cup
Garlic - little
Carrots - little  
White pepper powered - little
Sesame oil - 1 tea spoon
Soy sauce - 2 tea spoon

If the kids are choosy, you use pumpkin instead of chestnuts. Both of them contain good carbs.

[Tea for the day] Detox Tea from Just Herb

According to Chinese herbalism, Spring is the time for detoxify. If any of us can make the most of this season by sleeping before 11pm, a healthy year is promised.  Too bad it is already 1am for me. As believed by Chinese traditional medicine, 11pm - 1 am is the time when all the blood goes to liver.  Liver is one of the key organs to produce blood and cleans the toxins.

Just Herbs is a Taiwanese brand, their herbal tea uses the imported herbs from the German company, Martin Bauer GmbH & Co.  which is the expert for tea, extracts and botanicals. You can find out more here. Just Herbs have some interesting stuff, I use a lot of their aromatherapy products for meditation and healing purpose. 

[Travel] Spring is here!

Wherever you are at this moment, have you noticed the weather has become a bit warmer? Shanghai has rises averagely from 0 degrees to 10 degrees. HK and Taiwan rises from 10 to 20 degrees.....Who can say No to Spring?

It is the flower season in Taiwan, the speciality of these few weeks are the Sakura and Azalea. Let's enjoy the natural beauty......

 

[Tea for the day] Simplylife Cafe at Festival Walk

Time to escape from home for some adult time. Today we had a relaxing girls' high tea at my favorite cafe, Simplylife.

Love the way they display the cake.
Aren't they like pieces of art inside the display box?

Unrefined sugar. A choice of brown or white.

Smiley face and two thumb ups to knick off the year.

Mushroom and spinach on toast with crispy seasoned chips. Yummmm....

[Veggie Kitchen] Spinach Sushi Roll

Try my girl's favorite dish. This dish is vegetarian with spinach, sesame sauce, egg and mock crab stick. If you don't like this combination, you may also try avocado, egg, cucumber and mayo or simply any veggies at your preference.

Pearl rice with rice vinegar. 

Water boiled Asian spinach drained with splash of sesame sauce

Spread rice and filling evenly with a strip of Japanese mayo.

Enjoy the sunset 

[Family] The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery

Before Daddy goes away, we decided to have a family hiking day to the monastery for new year blessings.

The cheeky father and daughter pair were role playing as pirates right before we headed out.

The Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery is a big monastery located on the mountain within 15 minutes walking distance from Shatin Station in HK. The monastery is consisted of five temples, four pavilions, one veranda and one pagoda. It's quite big and worth a visit. It was very peaceful by offering a pythoncidere bath and creating atmosphere of one's buddha land. There are statues for different goddess including traditional buddhist goddess such as Sakyamuni, Guanyi and folk Taoist goddess like TaiShui (Simplified Chinese: 太岁; Traditional Chinese: 太歲; pinyin: Tàisuì) are stars directly opposite of Jupiter. They influence the Chinese zodiac, and are also a theory in Taoism and Feng Shui. 

As part of Chinese New Year tradition, most people go to temples during the festive period ( From the first 15 days of the new year. There is also a ritual to be done to avoid bad luck if your Chinese Zodiac is in conjunction with the TaiShui star. If you have Tai Shui this year it usually predicts the year will be restless and full of obstacles.

View from pagoda

Happy Snake Year

Work by H.H. 17th Karmapa.

Hello everyone! We spent our annual CNY family gathering this year at Macau. The hotel this time is the newly opened Sheraton at the Sands.

A very nice and clean hotel with airy space which doesnt recall the bad impression of traditional Chinese casinos. The smell of money and lust are less obvious there so it's perfect for the kids. With the connected bridge to four seasons and the venetians make it super easy to the shoppes and shows.

One hr away by ferry, during my girl's sweet nap we were in a complete different world. Delicious buffet at 'grand orbit' offered a great variety of food. It's worth the price especially for their desert selections. Italian and Portuguese food are very tasty and impressive there at an affordable price.

They also provide the kids playing area now with large jumping castles at the Sands and the Venetian. So parents do not worry where to keep the kids while playing a few bets.

Shoppes of the four season. love the lights.

Snapshot from La Bene 

Deserts from the Grand Orbit @ Sheraton Macau