Cooking Healthy

I have three days off this weekend in honor of Prophet Mohammed's birthday. I'm supposed to be on my way to Hong Kong and California but I've postponed my trip at the request of my boss. I thought it over and decided that it would benefit me to remain 3 more weeks so I could meet with an associate who will be making a business trip from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur for a project I am involved with. I'm interested in the prospect of working in Sydney in the future.

I'm using these 3 days to do something I haven't done in years, something physiologically and gastronomically satisfying - cooking. What's compelled me to do so is the burden on my immune system that I feel lately from living in Kuala Lumpur. This burden is twofold - diet and air quality.

Being a bachelor with many pursuits I do not savor the idea of surrendering my precious time to be in the kitchen cooking for myself, so I eat out all the time. I do my best to make conscious choices and often hear the comment that I'm a healthy eater but I disagree, how can anyone that eats out all the time be a healthy eater when he is constantly ingesting the preservatives, additives, and excessive salt and sugar, that are all companion to commercially prepared cuisine. Also, there is the poor quality of the cheaper produce - less fresh and simply lower in nutritional content being sourced from topsoil depleted by over harvesting of single crops.

Lately my body has been in resistance to the food I ingest from restaurants. At the end of the lackluster meal my body would feel heavy instead of energized and light. I think this heightened sensitivity is due to an overall increased awareness of my body, mind and spirit the past couple of years.

And the air quality has been responsible for a constant feeling of being on the verge of a flu outbreak. It is not my imagination, one just has to look at the air or stick your tongue out to perceive the difference. I have friends that live in Singapore who complain about ailments either skin or respiratory in nature that befall them the moment they arrive in KL, these begin to dissipate immediately when returning home.

Yesterday I bought a vegetarian cookbook. I wanted to cook healthy dishes not typically found on menus and the obvious choice was vegetarian. I chose to make a stir-fry on egg noodles. I wanted something simple and quick; I wasn't going to attempt to outdo the kitchen staff at the Ritz Carlton on my first reacquaintance with the culinary arts. I also resolved to use as many organic ingredients as possible. The recipe called for baby corn, baby carrots, button mushrooms. The sauce was new to me, it called for a large orange and dry sherry to go with the standard oyster sauce. Coriander leaves to garnish.

It took me a long while in two supermarkets - one organic and the other non; but eventually I gathered all the ingredients. I wanted to quit about ten times. And the dish was cooked in a reasonable amount of time, typically in the past my cooking ventures involved at least half a day.

I invited my friend K to come and sample my cuisine, she had studied culinary arts and I figured her immune system would also appreciate a healthy meal. She came with 5 kinds of Haagen Daz ice cream to counterbalance the purity of the meal. She only heaped a small amount in her plate citing that she was still full from an earlier meal.

There is a sense of curiosity and dread that grips the cook on the verge of the first mouthful. I had only a vague idea of what this dish should taste like. To my relief and delight my senses applauded my creation from the first bite, it was my finest dish ever though one of the simplest. My body felt like it was dancing with joy by the end of the meal, it seemed long overdue and starved for proper nutrition that it could embrace wholeheartedly.

Oh, and K had seconds without complaint.