I like vegetables in good combination

Formed as a custom in my small family, after some holiday feasts mainly with meat and much protein content there should be usually some lighter meals of mainly vegetables and soya curd ingredients. These can be understood as essential breaks to balance our nutrition regime and keep us fresher with more components from nature that are vegetables and fruits, Through more and more experience by ourselves and our friends around, we have known better the top necessity of vegetables which are much cheaper than meat, fish, prawns or other high-protein food items but not at all less important in our human beings’ mental and physical activities. Moreover, vegetables are surely less harmful and more helpful in many cases, especially for high-blood-pressure cardio-vascular people.

Therefore, for myself at the age 40 as beginning of ageing, I have more highly considered the balanced and reasonable proportions between milk, sugar, meat, fish, prawns etc and more vegetables and fruits, more water amount in our daily meals so as to ensure enough protein, calcium and vitamin content and simultaneously to minimize cholesterol in blood. That’s why such images as the water spinach combined with some other items in the following dishes are also appealing to me:

Have you ever tried cooking this way ? First, fry soya curd into yellow color, take them out. Then, fry some garlic and onions until they turn yellow, next put spinach into the pan, stir evenly until it becomes soft but still keeping green, next put back the soya curd in, put in soya sauce (or yellow bean sauce), add some more garlic and also ginger for more taste.









And hereunder is a special soup with freshwater mollusks and water spinach, it sounds very close to nature. The ways of cooking this soup can be various :

- First way, after deeping the fresh mollusks in water for 10 minutes and washing clean, you can boil them in water and then remain them in their shells (as in image). Next, put the spinach in and boil again, add sauce and seasoning powder and garlic for more taste.









- Another way, after cleaning fresh mollusks, you can take the filling out of the shells and discard the shells. Then cook well the mollusks together with spinach in enough water until the mollusks becomes well-done and spinach turns soft but still keeping green, next add fish sauce, seasoning powder, garlic and ginger for more taste. The sweet flavor is fine and cool, making you feel pure and healthy.









I believe you would have a good appetite with less meat and more vegetables becauce they are really delicious too. Please try these once and probably you would like to do them again !!!

Delicious "Pho Bo" - Thang's devoted care for me

I have never found a “pho bo” delicious like the one I had this morning. Though I did not know where it was bought, it was bought so timely when the weather was cold enough to feel the special delicacy and flavor of this specialty of Hanoi.











You can imagine how it happened when I woke up this morning in the feeling of cold and hunger.









Right at the same time, my husband appeared bringing with him a mess kit containing “pho bo tai chin” still hot and delicious smelling. He was so timely and psychological as he always is. He seemed to know what I preferred to eat in such a cold weather, he surely read what I was thinking that “pho” or a similar warm food was much much better for my lunch than bread or other cold fast food in such a cold monsoon and rainy weather. He knew very well what was good for my health care better than I thought of myself.

Now, sitting beside an yellow rose given me by my husband, feeling warmed in my stomach and in my heart too by my darling’s devoted care, I would like to share to all of you that my happiness is so simple but so sweet. My small happiness is happening everyday and felt deeply by me. I can say I am the happiest and luckiest woman I have known, so I am behaving to Thang so fairly as he has done to me.

Recent New Year Holiday fully enjoyable

Only until yesterday afternoon when seeing my son Tuan happily enjoying his ice-cream at the Fanny Ice-Cream Shop near Ho Guom among other children after our tour around the city centre where took place a Flower Festival on the recent New Year holidays, I just felt that I had completed my duty to him on those holidays.

Though there were many TV programs for children on this special occasion, both I and my husband still felt a bit guilty to our only son if we were lazy staying at home and did not take him to have a tour around Ho Guom – the central area of Ha Noi capital – where a flower festival was organized merrily to welcome the first spring of the new decade – the year 2010.

Only when we were happy together standing beside Ho Guom on the 3rd of January 2010, sharing with each other our fun romance of watching the beautiful fresh flowers still in good order and good display around the lake, we felt the New Year’s coming even warmer and happier.











Hope these images of ice-creams can partly enlight the joys in all of you in the New Prospective Year 2010 !!!

Vegetables - My close friend after Christmas feasts

After the recent Christmas feasts full of beef and chicken and too little vegetable content, at lunch time today I began craving for more vegetables.

The first vegetable I have thought of is tomato.













As read and heard from various information sources, now I know that lycopene, a compound found in tomatoes, is widely touted as a protector against cancer, particularly prostate cancer. But for myself, tomatoes do not only mean good for health but also special for its cool sweet taste and fine-looking succulent pinky-red skin.

Usually I take tomato in salads:








For today lunch, tomato was cooked in a soup with some fish:












Besides, sometimes I also drink tomato juice as a nutrient drink:








Another type of vegetable very special to me for its strange taste is bamboo shoots. We usually fry them with beef. But today as we liked to eat vegetables only, we fried it with tomato and green onion only:





The third and also final item of our vegetarian menu today was cabbage for its cooling quality. The simplest way and for me the best choice is boiled cabbage. In this way, we can first take both boiled cabbage leaves as a main course for our meal and cabbage water as a soup. And it is better if we eat cabbage leaves with fish sauce mixed with boiled chicken egg (shown below):












We can also take cabbage water as a refreshment drink after our meals.





Though each of us knows the benefits of vegetables to our health at a different level, we are all sure that we need them as refreshment and cholesterol-reducing fighter in balance with meat, fish and other protein and fat-high content food stuffs we take everyday.

Here is another more picture of tomato as a small reminder to you of super necessity of vegetables:


Good Appetite for your New Year Holiday !!!

Sunday lunch of some favorites

This Sunday, on the occasion of another successful news in our business, we had a special lunch with a simple menu of low-fat dishes of all our three family members’ favorites.

The first dish was my son’s usual favorite fried chicken eggs - but today made in a different way of soft frying with pork, mushrooms, Jew’s ear fungus, onions for a slight changing taste for him.






The second course is both my darling Thang and myself’s favorite healthy fried soya curd. Today I also made it in a special way which I had just read from a Vietnamese cuisine website.

- In short, soya curd was first well mixed with onions and sweet chilli slices, then shaped into cakes.

- Then these cakes were fried once. Next soaked with a mixture of soya sauce, chicken eggs, green onions and pepper.

- After that, the cakes were fried quickly on the pan once again to be completed.









This dish could be fully delicious only when enjoyed with a carefully prepared soya sauce with green onions, chilli and pepper.

All three of us need vegetables, we know this better and better. That’s why today we chose to make a salad with ingredients mainly cucumber, tomato, some other herbs, onions, added fish sauce, vinegar, a little sugar, seasoning powder.





Finally, we all had rice together with warm Green Chinese Cabbage Soup with Shrimps.









Today, for dessert, we also had a special type of fruit, that is sapodilla plums which my mother-in-law offered us from her garden beside her house in Gia Lam - the suburb of Hanoi city.








As usual, good appetite for Sunday and the whole new week !

Bedding colors- decisive for good sleep

As it is becoming cooler and cooler in Hanoi this season, I have been feeling more and more clearly the truth that the material and colors of blankets, pillows, bed sheets and mattress act an important role in my sleep quality. Every morning, when awake after a good deep sleep at night, I make up my bed quite happily with the cotton-made bed sheets of light, cool and fresh colors being Green and Blue which I have chosen. I also like the third thicker sheet for winter of Light Yellow. All these three colors are calm for my spirits at night, they can slightly massage my mind after a long day. Being a simple person, I do not like to decorate too much, I just added some sheep-fur-made pillows with covers in light red and orange tones together with some light blankets of natural colors of Light Green and Light Yellow on the Green mattress as background, which all creates a good color balance and makes me feel warmer. Besides, we set on the wall at the bed side a simple-shaped lamp quite functional for reading and looking unique. Though small, my bed corner looks so peaceful. It is good for my health, even better than tonic. Everyday life is so simple but sweet to me.

Threatening event to health - valuable experience for passing risk for continued life

Today, at the beginning of Autumn, as my health has been restored to its stable condition, I am recalling and telling you my recent story as an actually threatening and challenging experience which I have overcome and now keep in mind as a very good lesson.

It happened that around the middle of August, as a bad sudden effect of the rapidly changing hot weather of summer, particularly the atmostphere pressure changes, I lost sleep at night, suffered heavy headache and tension continuously for a few days.
And then one afternoon, while doing shopping, I fell suddenly in front of a shop near my house, my face hitting the pavement. My little son, who went with me then, though afraid, still kept calm enough to come back home to call his father. That night and the next day, several partial seizures occurred to me leading to some related lung problems. After trying for me some usual medicines without result, seeing my condition even worse day by day, my husband realized it best to call emergency. He decided to call emergency service from Bach Mai Hospital, one of the best hospital in Hanoi City with high-tech medical equipmnent, good professional and responsible doctors and nurses, and good-quality service. Then he accompanied me in the ambulance to the Emergency Department of this hospital.

As Thang told me later, he was only less worried about me when knowing that the doctors, based on the CT scan result of my head and X-ray image of my lungs, urgently carried out some special cure measures to get me out of the dangerous situation. And me, then as too tired and partly as taken a lot of transquilizers, I came into a long sleep and sometimes like a comatose, so I could not hear anything, could not know anything around during my 2-day stay in the Emergency Department. I only began hearing and knowing the world around me again when moved on bed to the Intensive Care Unit. The first thing I saw was the ventilator plugged into my mouth and nose, that meant, I could not yet breathe normally by myself and still needed this machine as a support. Though well aware of its necessary use for my ventilation, as a too sensitive person, bearing the ventilator’s plastic-made breathing circuits in my mouth and nose for 3-4 days was really annoying to me. Being supported strongly by my darling Thang’s best care for me in the role of a nurse day and night for nearly 2 weeks, additionally encouraged by the frequent visits by my nearly-80-year Dad and the other people, finally I passed the treatment period in the Intensive Care Unit, and the doctors decided to allow me to exit the hospital and continue restoring my health at home.

After the long and boring days with powder milk allowed as the only food for me everyday, with so many tests on me, so many medical equipments lived with, now I feel so happy to have freedom at my home again. Especially I was so moved and cheerful crying when seeing my little son Tuan again. I could not imagine how he had managed himself alone at home for over 10 days when his Dad had been busy looking after me almost all day and night. Anyway he was then smiling warmly and happily to his Mum who just came back. For my first days back home, as I was still rather dizzy and weak when standing, Tuan followed his Dad's guidelines to make his part to looking after and helping Mum in daily activities. He got food, drinks or other things needed to Mum's bed, supported Mum to walk into the bathroom or go around so on. He was also in charge of all the tasks usually done by Mum, for example, washing and drying clothes, preparing instant noodle for his lunch, cleaning floor etc. And at the end of everyday, he typed all these deeds in his diary on his computer. I believe in my position, any mother should be happy when seeing her child do the same.

At the hospital, as it was very strictly limited for patients’ visitors, only one of my friends could come to see me then. But now as I stay home again, things are easy again to my friends. So many friends have come and all of them been welcome warmly. It is only a bit pity that now I am still suffering a light sore throat and find somewhat difficult to speak as a consequence from lung inflammation and bad oxygen circulation of one main artery into my brain, which has prevented me from talking freely. I promise to all of them that I will improve my voice and my health in general in the soonest time possible to welcome them next time with more fun.

Living in the deep sympathy and devoted care by my husband Thang – who is now my hone doctor and cook, with my son as a helpful assistant, with on-going spiritual encouragement by everybody, especially by my Dad nearly 80 but still very optimistic and self-active in work and life, I have been feeling better quite quickly and see my daily life more worth to live. I have been really surprised at myself now not at all scared of illness, instead, I am quite calm and optimistic to take best methods possible I've known to prevent any impact on health everyday (with special attention to avoiding weather unusual changes). I must have a better health to lessen everybody’s worries and more highly respect my own and my close ones'small daily happiness. I am confident that I will be much stronger soon so that I can enjoy cheerful holidays as before!
















Now I have a simple but essential wish of sleeping well every night and waking up well and peacefully in my new-repaired apartment so that I can enjoy breakfasts including milk, fruits... given me by my friends, neighbors and relatives.

From this experience, in practice, I am now determined to improve my health by arranging more time for sleep at night, morning exercises regularly. I must also set up for myself some menus with less hot substances, more cool components, with less cholesterol, more calcium, vitamins and so on. That means I must eat less pork and chicken, and take more fish and seafood, more vegetables, fruits. I have started a regime of taking yahourt daily and find it quite good for my skin and digestion. Especially I must be more strict to myself: I can have some light tea but stop drinking coffee unless very special cases.

Surviving from the risk of danger, I love my life more passionately. And to me now nothing is more valuable than a good stable health. Only with a good health, I can really enjoy life.