Teh Tarik On Hold

I am really a rice and gulai kind of gal, the more "*desa" inspired are the dishes, the more turned on I am by them. But we know what it is like when there's rice...you need a main dish, perhaps a gulai asam pedas or cili padi ( fish or meat), then a sayur dish(maybe kerabu pucuk paku to which you would add pounded dried shrimps for that ooomph or lemak labu), then maybe ikan masin goreng or telur masin rebus, what about ulam-ulam(tenggek burung, bebuas, pegaga, fresh petai, pucuk betik, pucuk ubi), it of course will not be complete without sambal ( belacan or kelapa or tempoyak). And won't it be nice to have that fresh ikan pari that was just hauled off the Straits of Melaka grilled to perfection - cooked crispy on the skin but still moist and tender when you dig under? And who says you have to stop after satu pinggan of rice? It is always polite and customary to "tambah"....and I am very, very polite when it comes to food and eating.

So, after a lot of psyching, tossing and turning, about the changes I need to make to my dietary habits now that I have to "pantang" a few things for a couple of years until my immune system is boosted, I realised that the new "diet-style" is not that bad after all. In the bigger scheme of things they are but minor sacrifices to help myself feel and turn out "good".
All I need to do is eliminate FOR NOW (only) some food items that might sabotage my journey to wellness, change my eating habits (less eating out and be more discriminating about what I order when I do, and most important of all, make some revisions on how my food is being prepared when eating at home.

So as not to have my body feel as though it is being punished, I give myself little exceptions once in a while - like eating out only on Sundays (maybe breakfast at Nirvana or Marmalade) with friends after a good morning walk. Even then it will be thosai and dhall, and plain tea. No roti canai as the Ayur doctor says I should avoid refined white flour( I am already scheming now on how to make my own whole wheat -atta- roti canai if ever I need to succumb to a craving!). No slurpy and frothy teh tarik as I will be driven to wheezing and a semput so serious that it is not worth the Rm 1.20 if I have to be carted off to the ER of Pantai in a RM 400 ambulance.

But as they say, everything in moderation and never, ever feel deprived. There are always alternatives. We just need to be a little creative. So if I have to pantang my favourite beverage of coffee ( in it's many commercial forms) and teh tarik, there is always Ragi Malt which I discovered by chance through the internet. It is nice, and very, very nutritious. I was looking up what Ragi is in Google when I was recently introduced to Ragi Flour, Ragi Puttu, and Ragi Bihun which I have been using in my cooking. No one is able to tell me what Ragi is in English and you don't see it sold anywhere else except in Brickfields. I found out it is "Finger Millet", highly nutritious as it is always milled whole. The grains are tiny like mustard seeds. The taste is rich and nutty. I just loved it and have used it in various ways to cook, whenever I run out of ideas for complementing my rice dishes , with so many pantangs right now.

Ragi Malt is just like Horlicks, and is usually prepared with milk and brown sugar. As I am allergic to milk now, I just used water, boiling it with the ragi flour and adding Manuka honey just before drinking it. I may add a small dose of expresso in future if the craving for coffee hits, and I am sure it will tast as good as conventional cappucino.

It is very exciting, this experimenting with alternative styles of cooking and eating. Had it not been for BC, I would probably not be motivated to try out these new, healthier alternatives. I would not have discovered Sitharam's or Malliga's even though I pass that way countless times whenever I need to go to KL Sentral. So, it has been very enriching and it has really tested and stretched my creativity in the kitchen (usually guided and limited to what is found in cookbooks and what has been handed-down by my mum). I treasure the "hand-me-down" recipes from the family because they are unique and not usually found in cookbooks, and the beauty ( or is it pity?) of it all is they survive even though these hasn't really been formally recorded anywhere .
How does one capture a pinch of this and a handful of that and "sa-cukup rasa"? In any case, now that I have to, even those hand-me down recipes can be creatively modified now to suit my situation.

For Awal Muharam, to celebrate the new year I invited some friends over for tea. My friends know that I am an all-rounder when it comes to food - I am both a goreng pisang and cekodok fan as much as I am a cream tea complete with scones and clotted cream fan. So they did not really know what to expect now that I have so many pantangs, and offered to bring food that they think I can eat. I told them that the idea is for me to "jamu" them for all of their help in the past year and not the other way round. My only request to them is to bear with what I will be serving as Iam keen to introduce them to my alternative and healthier way of preparing my favourite eats. That way they will also know what I had to give up in order to build up my strength and immunity.

I cooked for 10. I was surprised that I had the energy to see through all of the cooking, and later entertaining. Of course the maid helped in the preparation of the ingredients after I showed her how. After much thought and a flurry of activities, we managed to put on the table the following goodies when the guests arrived at 4.30 - Nasi Kunyit with Organic Chicken Curry with potatoes, carrot and tomatoes; Nasi Kerabu ( 15 herbs - most home grown, serunding kelapa and serbuk ikan bilis and not ikan masin) with Sayur Asem ( Javanese dish, my maid's specialty, very nutritious with lots of vegetables); Bubur Hijau-Merah ( my creation - couldn't decide between bubur kacang hijau or bubur kacang merah, so mixed them both and it worked, very sedap!); Ubi Kayu Rebus (served steaming hot with grated fresh coconut and shredded gula melaka - very popular as the last time most had this was probably when they were teenagers!); and the piece de resistance - Wholegrain Cranberry Scones ( made with olive butter, raw sugar and grainy wholewheat flour) served with a choice of olive and real butter for the purists among my friends, with strawberry jam of course. And pink Dragon Fruit to clean the palate while sipping sen-cha (green tea). Yes, that was very brave of me not to offer coffee as at least 2 of my guests are coffee lovers and will always have their brew to make their meal complete. Quite a colourful meal.

It was a success, everyone enjoyed the food and I enjoyed watching them enjoy the food. The Ubi Rebus was a clear winner, it was so simple yet so good. I was overjoyed because I wasn't sure if they would miss the usual cake-house fare that one normally puts out with lots of pretty cupcakes and pastries and fried stuff. My guests left with a little gift I had wrapped nicely for them, a 7-Day Pillbox that they would find handy to take their supplements along when they travel. That too, is very colourful, each 3-compartment daily sub-containers in different colours. The whole thing is about the size of a 250 gram Cadbury bar, which was what I had originally planned to give but thought that the pillbox would be more useful.

A number of the dishes that day was experimental for me, and I will post them in my http://mysecretrecipes.blogspot.com/ blog so I won't forget and in case anyone else is curious to try.
The recipe for the scones is not from Nigella Lawson's or Betty Crocker's or Martha Stewart's. I have this favourite recipe for scones that I got from a tea towel I picked up while visiting Scotland many(20?) years ago. I just needed to modify it a bit to accomodate my present dietary requirements, and it worked fine. I am in the process of experimenting with wholewheat roti canai and buckwheat mee mamak - cuz I do miss my mamak food so!

Note:* I was going to write "Kampung" inspired dishes but chose to use "Desa" instead. I get a trifle annoyed when the word "kampung" had been used in a degratory sense by some ignorant people who probably had not met really nice kampung folks who do not deserved to be insulted by associating the word "kampung" with anything that is less than "cool". I need to get this off my chest and will post an entry soon in my http://lifematters2me.blogspot.com/ blog . Grrrr....

"O Ye, O Ye..!", Fight Cancer with Blood Type Diet

Cat Chit Chat on Chow:
Troy: "Why,oh why, do you look so sad dear Li Po?"
Li Po: "Sigh......I heard Mama Mi is reviewing our diet.....we may find broccoli and other yucky
green aliens in our feeding bowls.....urghhh...."
Troy: "Don't worry princess, if she does that you can have some of my special biscuits, well,
just a bit...'kay?"
Li Po: "Bbbut...that's for your urinary and weight problems, I don't have a weight problem".
Troy:"Rrright....! Well, what are you gonna do?"
Milla:(Eavesdropping in the far corner...)"Don't worry Kak Li Po, I saw some newly hatched
chicks in that box in the garage.....how about if we.....err....err..."
Troy/Li Po: " Eughhhk.....gerrrossszzz!"

(And they chased Milla off the bench!!)
The End.





April 29 (Day 19 post-first chemo)

First thing this morning I looked around me and all over the pillows I could see strands of hair that I had shed during my sleep. I jumped to the mirror and sure enough, there wasn't too much "crowning glory" left on my head.
Because I was made aware and therefore was expecting this, I did not feel any fear or concern, but being human and a woman, it felt really strange to see this stranger staring at me with all but maybe 50 strands of very short hair left! And if I conscientously comb them through, they will also fall off by the end of the day. That will save me a trip to Jeff's, my hairdresser, and would spare him from any discomfort of having to shave my head bald.

My good friend SC came by to bring me some flowers to cheer me up. Three bunches! One bunch to see me through while the hair is dropping. One for the time when I have no hair left ( in 1 or 2 days' time) and one for the time when my hair would grow back ( but months from now!). Kakak has a catering job that her other employee wanted her help with so I made plans to go out for dinner. As I needed to get my weekly groceries and supplies from Bangsar, SMM accompanied me to BV for organic vegetables and we had dinner at the Country Farm Organic-cafe- in- a- store. They have an interesting menu there and just reading about what goes into each of the menu items made us feel healthy and full of goodness even before we started to eat! They absolutely do not use MSG and each item on their menu is packed with up to a least 80% organic ingredients.

I have been pouring over more books on Breast Cancer to increase my personal awareness on how I might want to plan my life during and after treatment. Combined with interesting tips from helpful survivors and friends that I had met at the various support centres, the knowledge opened up for me some options on what I can do to ensure that I plan my diet and lifestyle optimally to support this silent battle. That would be the least I can do and the rest will be up to the Almighty.

There is one book that won my interest. Title? "CANCER - Fight It with the Blood Type Diet" by Peter J. D'Adamo, a naturophatic physician. The contents may not just be relevant for people with pre-cancerous/cancerous conditions but should be helpful for those keen in trying their best to tailor their diets according to their blood types as a preventive measure against cancer. I am a blood type "O" and based on the individualised blood type plans that he had outlined, I am more informed on which foods(and their categories) I should try to take regularly and which to avoid.

Dr. D'Adamo has assigned labels (he calls them Food Values) to the various food categories. Foods (Meat/Poultry, Fish/Seafood,Dairy/Eggs,Oils, Nuts and Seeds,Beans and Legumes,Grains and Starches,Vegetables,Fruits and Fruit Juices, Spices/Condiments/Sweeteners,Herbal Teas,Miscellaneous Beverages ) are labelled as Super Beneficial, Beneficial,Neutral and allowed frequently, Neutral but allowed Infrequently(eg max 2 times/month), and Avoid.

I found this to be very helpful as it helps to reinforce some of the information that I was given earlier though in some cases I ended up having information that might be contradictory. I can only conclude that earlier information may have been a generalised piece of information and not Blood-Type specific. For example, I went gung-ho on Brussel sprouts as some articles I had come across swear by it as a good anti-cancer food. But Dr A'Damo's findings indicate that Blood Type O should avoid Brussel sprouts, while it is Super beneficial for Blood Type B.

It is a helpful book in the sense that for what it's worth, the knowledge allows an individual to plan and decide what to put in her mouth and that at the end of the day, the rule of moderation applies. Some Super beneficial foods for Blood Type O = Cod,Halibut,Snapper,Trout /Lean Beef, lamb,calf liver (yea-like what my friend's Mum said!)/Flaxseed,Walnut/Favabean/ Broccoli, Garlic, Maitake mushroom,Onion, Parsnip, Seaweed, Spinach/ Blueberry, Cherry, Guava, Jackfruit, Pomegranate/Dill, Fenugreek, Garlic, Ginger, Turmeric/Green Tea,Dandelion tea/Sarsaparilla. Phew....!

The lists in between are pretty surprising too, but I was focussing on the AVOID lists and came across items that I had earlier thought would be good for me for example Kiwi ( I had eaten a whole tree I think),asian pear, avocado,catfish (aah, my favourite!), barley(?),wheatgerm(???!), evening primrose oil, peanut oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, pistachio , sunflower seeds, all lentils(????dhall????), alfalfa ( I used to graze on that in my sandwiches), cauliflower, cucumber, leek, shiitake (there goes my mushroom on toast brekkie!),mustard greens (sawi????I have to avoid sawi????I gew up on sawi!),tangerine, honey dew, orange, coconut (not sure if juice or the coconut flesh, both my favourite and highly recommended as a penawar, and now because I am "O" I need to avoid?!), nutmeg, Brazil nuts, Cashews,Chestnuts (I happen to have a few packs of these!!).
Very, very interesting.

The Avoid list is as long as the in-between lists of what can be taken in moderation and granted a number of the avoid items are pretty obvious like cured meats(there goes daging salai masak chilli api), dairy products ( this I heave heard before), bacon ,pickled fish , vinegar (except cider vinegar).
My take is if one is still healthy and want to avoid and try to prevent cancer, it is good to know what to avoid and start avoiding the Avoid list food from now, before one is diagnosed. Once diagnosed, like Moi, then one has to be extra vigilant and must make it a point to include the Super beneficial foods and really, truly, and absolutely avoid the Avoid list foods. Insya Allah that might help with the fight, what have I to lose other than a change in diet and knowing that I am being extra nice to my body, eating for my cells rather than entertaining my lust(??) for food and eating without due care on what havoc it might create to my already vulnerable system.

The good Doctor has also proposed some protocols to enhance immunity and suggested possible supplements as adjuncts during Chemoterapy , Radiation and Surgery recovery .

I am glad I picked up this book at Times Bookstore (RM 50.50-what an odd price) recently, and will text my sister to get a copy as a guide when she plans her diet as it should depend on her blood type too. I have just realised that I don't know what her or my siblings' blood types are. I know both my Mum and Dad are "O". Or what the blood type of my close buddies are. We talk about everything under the sun, but never blood types! And I just have a horrifying thought. What if a family of 4 has all the 4 different blood types? That will be a full time job just to plan the day's breakfast, let alone a whole day's menu.

Jokes aside, it might be worthwhile to review if people close to me are eating according to their blood types. So that it is never too late to make little, positive adjustments here and there. Lately, I have pushed aside peeking into the lives of fictional characters and the pile of books that I had started reading (some reading again like Yang May Ooi's Flame Tree just because I had met her and now reading it not for the story-read it last in 1998!- but more trying to gauge her technique and brilliance in building up the story)are now piling high on my nightstand! My reading diet has certainly changed to non-fiction and hard core health-is- life type of materials over the last month or so. My advice to my friends, look at your lifestyle and READ UP and get to know about potential diseases typically drawn by your lifestyle or genes. So that you are prepared. Not advocating that you must be a pessimist but rather to have all the ammunitions up your sleeves should the unfortunate strike! Remember, God helps those who help themselves.

Now, I will need to plan what to have for breakfast tomorrow....