Eating healthily with Grain Bowls~

If you had read about my intermittent fasting post, you know that I had maintained my weight at 63kg since Sep21. Well, the good news is that it is still at 63kg, bad news is that it is almost 3 months since then and it had not gone down a bit. Must be all the chocolate I consume daily >< or because I am getting used to my workout intensity. However I am not a big fan of increasing my intensity, my main fear is that if I cannot maintain the routine, will this cause weight fluctuations. So I had been slow at adding new routines. Well, I will figure that out eventually.

Today I would like to share with you what I had been eating at least once per week and I absolutely love how easy it is to prepare and make. Grain Bowls!

I read up on how to make it here. It really blows my mind. So from the article, the recipe goes:

1. Pick your grain.
I always have brown rice at home. Grains really gives a sweet taste to the bowl and I only ate about a 1/4 cup. I also thought to use potato or sweet potato cubes to replace my grains since to me, they both represent the carbohydrates of my meal. 

2. Pick the vegetables.
You can be really creative with this. My usual will be boiled broccoli cut to mini-trees, boiled carrots or washed ice berg/butterhead lettuce or sliced thinly cabbages, sliced carrots, sliced bell peppers or sliced cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. When I had to use up vegetables that are turning yellow cos I did not cook in time, like xiao bai cai, I would just boiled the vegetable. It is really fun, occasionally I also add in steam corn with the kernels cut out from the cobs. Stirred fried enoki mushrooms in soy sauce is also a delightful addition. 

3. Pick a protein or two.
Proteins are usually chicken breast cut in cubes, marinated with salt, pepper, paprika, cornflour and pan-fried or salmon chunks seasoned with salt or marinated with teriyaki sauce and pan-fried. I usually make the protein savoury to complement the sweetness in the grains or vegetables. I had also added pan-fried tofu or boiled eggs or edamame when I feel like it.  

4. Drizzle on a sauce.
I like to add honey mustard or roasted sesame sauce or thai sweet chilli sauce or mayonnaise. I had tried greek yoghurt too. It really levels up your food but I find that the original flavors of all the ingredients are enough for me so I tend to skip the sauce too.  

In the end, it is how you plate your ingredients that create all the visual appeal on the posters for these grain bowls. So here are my proud creations:

This was super easy to do with canned chilli tuna. No dirty pans to wash.

I stirred fry the chicken with leftover bamboo shoots slices from a steamboat meal the night before. 

Bake spiced pumpkin cubes and pan-fried paprika chicken.

I believe the black chunk are mushrooms chunks cooked with chicken breast slices in Korean go chu chang sauce. 

Added in Korean spicy chilli sauce (to 1 tbsp of chilli paste, mix in 1tbsp soy sauce + 1tbsp sugar + water) to the enoki mushroom

Trying to make a Japanese egg don by adding an onion omelette over my rice.

Baked potato to replace the grains and baked salmon.

I had been eating this at least once a week, it is usually a way for me to use up all the ingredients that are still in the fridge after the weekend and the variety of options that you can come up with. Unleash your creativity and cook yourself a healthy and delicious grain bowl.