Blogging For Fun Friday- Food Transformation

It has been several weeks that I have not joined my Blogging for Fun group for our Fun Friday post. End of the semester is always busy in my end, but now that summer break has just started, I am excited to be back in the grove.

This week, our Fun Friday topic is about food transformation. We pick our favorite food that is unhealthy and fattening, and make a new recipe for it to be healthy. Frankly speaking, I do not think I really have a favorite food that is unhealthy, however, I think the way I eat food is fattening since I eat a lot!

Here are some of my food transformation:
1. Burrito - original burrito usually comes with carne asada (beef asada), guacamole, cheese and sour cream. Instead of beef, we used vegetables, and we omit the sour cream.

Vegetable Burrito by Betchai

Now, the concept is really not that original since there are vegetarble burrito in the Mexican restaurants too. However, their vegetale burrito usually comes with beans, lettuce, rice, guacamole, sour cream and cheese. Since I have no taste for sour cream, I usually ask not to put sour cream in my burrito. The burrito I made above actually has black beans (not in picture), instead of the usual refried beans. Then, I mixed the black beans with grilled mushrooms, grilled potatoes and sweet yam, grilled sweet pepper, tomatoes and 1% milk Mexican blend cheese. I wrap them like in burrito, and heat in oven or in microwave.

2. The next one, is my all time favorite, bittermelon soup. This can not be everybody's food because of the bitterness, but those who have developed a taste for bitter melon and other bitter foods list this as one of their favorites. I have very simple taste in food. I don't go for heavily buttered and creamed dishes. I prefer foods prepared in their own broth.

Bittermelon Soup with Mushroom by Betchai

I think even the original recipe of this one may still not be considered very unhealthy since the ground meat is balanced by the health and nutritional value of bittermelon. In the original bittermelon soup, the buttermelon is stuffed with ground meat. However, since we are not fond of meat, I modified the soup by stuffing it instead with tofu and mushroom, and I added mushroom in making the broth. For me, it still tastes as good as the original recipe. If burrito is a Mexican dish, bittermelon soup is an Asian dish. This vegetable is also known to lower blood sugar, thus in Asia is popular to help in conditions of diabetes mellitus and in infections. When I was younger, my mother would just squeeze the leaves of bittermelon for our first remedy whenever we had cough and cold. I also love bittermelon salad.

3. For something Filipino (my all time favorite cuisine is Filipino as this is the food I grew up with), I modified tokwa't baboy (or tofu and pork). I instead made tokwa na walang baboy ( tofu without pork).

Tokwa na Walang Baboy by Betchai

This dish is made of tofu ( either pan fried or baked ), and then, simply put in the sauce made by mixing soy sauce, vinegar, lime, finely chopped garlic, onion and ginger, and tomato cubes. Usually I add roasted sesame seeds, but this time, we ran out of roasted sesame seeds, so I just put a few drops of sesame oil.

4. And for a combination of dishes, tomato semolina (Indian), tofu a la king ( I am not sure if where did this originate) - which is originally chicken a la king, but I changed the chicken to tofu.

Tomato Semolina ( Indian) , Tofu A La King, Steamed Green Beans and Baked Tofu by Betchai

The dish above that got a transformation is Tofu A La King since the original recipe is Chicken A La King, however, I just made the dish all vegetables.

So, these are the foods that supply me energy when I go hiking or boogie boarding :)

Have a good weekend everyone.

♥♥