Sleep Walking

Yesterday we met up with with a business advisor, Mr. Pruner, from SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) to go over our business plan. We had agreed to meet up with him at a local Starbucks. Before we headed there, I had taken a nap at home, and Phan woke me up about 15 minutes before the scheduled meeting. When we got to Starbucks, I was still half-asleep, stumbling around like a walking zombie.

Although I've corresponded with the advisor via e-mail, I've never met him before this, and I wasn't sure what he looked like. Seeing an old man sitting in one of the tables, I mumbled in an inaudible way whether he was Mr. Pruner. The old man looked up at me looking totally confused. Here was a blur young guy talking to a blur old guy, it was quite silly. Phan asked me whether I was sleep walking. I went to order a cup of mocha, 'cause caffeine was something I definately needed at the time, hehe.

We sat and waited and Mr. Pruner came in a few minutes later. He had owned several restaurants and has extensive experience with the ins and outs of the restaurant business. He was very helpful, and provided us with some great advice. We had him sign a confidentiality agreement and handed him our business plan, which he will review in the next few days.

During that meeting, he did flip through the 50 page plan and made some suggestions. It turns out that our 50+ page business plan is way too long, we'll have to trim it down by half. We'll also need to adjust some numbers in our financial projections. Some of the photos of the dishes that's on this blog was included, and he was quite impressed with how good the food looked and suggested we include those photos on the printed plan.

His experience is extensive, and it was great talking with him. Despite Phan having a Master degree in Finance and me being an MBA student, the real education starts when we actually run our own business. However, I do feel that our formal education did help us think about our future business on a higher level than we otherwise would have, as we are able to draw from the concepts of business strategy that we learned from the classroom and apply it where appropriate.

Well, we'll be hearing from Mr. Pruner within the next few days. Once our plan is perfected, it'll be time to head to the bank. In the meantime, we're busy getting the paperwork together to get incorporated. New Year celebrations for us can wait till next year, heh. :oP

However, we still would like to wish you a very Happy New Year!!! :o)

Name That Dish

We created this new dish out of the blue. We stuff marinated and grilled eggplant and tofu inside the Japanese bean curd pouch. Then we make a meringue minus the sugar but add the salt, black pepper and ceyenne pepper. The meringue is laid around the pouches. Next we throw in the sweet yellow, orange and red tomatoes. After this, we put this dish in a steamer. When it is done, it looks colorful with the meringue looking like golden webs. Before serving this dish, we add a dash of garlic and onion oil and soy sauce. This dish actually tastes great. However we never quite figure out a name for it.

Do you have any ideas for a name for this dish? Drop us a line and let us know what you would like to name this dish as. :o)




One advantage of not eating meat is that you don't have to go through the process of defrosting. Here is a simple dish that anyone can make in half an hour for a hearty brunch meal. It is vermicelli noodle with red miso gravy. To enhance the gravy, we add napa cabbage, soft tofu, shiitake mushrooms, sweet orange peppers, green fresh jalapenos, rice wine and mushroom sauce.




For dinner, we experiment with red miso again. This time, we make a red miso soup completes with yuba (soft bean curd sheets), cabbage, mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots and ginger. We garnish the soup with green onions.

Oodles of Noodles!

It is traditional for Asians to have dishes with either rice or noodles. It is quite rare that we have bread with our dishes. However, I think some dishes will be great with bread. I will introduce these dishes on future postings. This week, we have a lot of different noodle dishes. Most of the dishes here will be served in our future restaurant.

You will see that many of the dishes use the same ingredients. We were testing how many noodles dishes we could make with the same basic ingredients that would result in variety of tastes. This will help us maximize the usage of the restaurant's inventory and minimize waste.

Below we have a stir-fried egg noodle dish. The ingredients in this dish are bean sprouts, rape seed oil veg (Choy Sum), shiitake mushrooms, fried bean curd, sweet orange and yellow peppers and carrots. The sauce for the stir-fry is soy sauce, mushroom sauce, sesame oil and mushroom seasoning. We add cayenne pepper for a bit of seasoning.

The soft noodles, fresh crispy sprouts, flavorful mushrooms, and other vegetables provided good variety of taste and textures that all went very well together. The dish also had that nice "cook from a wok" taste. For those meat eaters out there, it's sort of like the difference between frying steak on a pan versus grilling it in a barbecue. To truly enjoy stir fry, you gotta cook it from a real hot steel wok, not a non-stick pan! :o)




Here we have a veggie noodle soup. The type of noodle used in this dish is rice noodle or banh canh (in Vietnamese). Veggies are great for making soup. To make the soup, we experiment with soy beans, burdock, daikon radish, tomato, napa cabbage and shiitake. The other ingredients are rapeseed oil veg (Choy Sum), bean sprouts and bean curd. For enhancement, we add some garlic oil.

It was great soup on a cold winter day. Very nutritious as well. Napa cabbage, tomatoes, and daikon radish are excellent sources of vitamins C and A, and potassium. Shiitake contains eight essential amino acids as well as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and dietary fiber. Rapeseed oil help lower LDL cholesterol (the bad one).




This is another egg noodle dish with gravy. The gravy is made from vegetable broth, soy sauce, sesame oil, mushroom sauce and rice vinegar. The other ingredients added to boil in the gravy is bean curd, shiitake, daikon radish and tomato. We also added rapeseed oil veg (Choy Sum) to this dish.

Although it has the same basic ingredients as the dish above, the result is quite a different. It's not a soup, and changes to the noodle type and sauce makes it a totally different dish. Quite tasty I may add.




This is a stir-fried curry noodle. If you like curry, you will like this dish. The spice ingredients are fenugreek, mustard, cinnamon, coriander, cumin and turmeric. Other ingredients added to this mix is sweet yellow peppers and jalapeno. The vegetables in this dish are yellow sweet onions, garlic, bean sprouts, rapeseed oil (Choy Sum) and napa cabbage. The rest of the ingredients are button mushrooms, bean curd, eggs and crushed fried almonds. The noodle used is vermiceilli noodle.




Here we depart from noodles.

This is coconut saffron rice dish with dry curry veggie. The spice used for this dish is fenugreek, mustard, cumin, cinnamon and coriander. We add some curry leaves to bring this dish to another notch. The veggies in this dish are napa cabbage, eggplant, tomato, carrot, sweet yellow peppers, garlic and yellow sweet onion. We also added bean curd and button mushroom.

You know me, I love curries, and this one is no exception! :o)




The leftover coconut rice was used for this fried rice dish. We add rape seed oil veg (Choy Sum), carrot, fried soy curd, sweet orange peppers, carrots and shiitake to make the fried rice. On the right of the fried rice is the left over dry curry veggie which I grounded to make into a thicker paste. You enjoy this dish best when you wrap the paste and fried rice together in a lettuce leaf. On the left of the fried rice is an omelet purse. In the purse, there is a semi runny yolk. Another great addition to the fried rice.

To many Asians, fried rice is definately a comfort food. It's also one of my favorites. Oh yes, this one is for the ovo-vegetarians. Eggs are certainly optional, you're in luck, vegans!




When we read that everyone is celebrating the Chinese Winter Solstice, we also make tang yuan to join in the fun. However, Phan being the wild one decides to add German cherries to the red tang yuan. The green ones are screwpine (pandan or la dua) flavored tang yuan with brown sugar in the center.

To those who have never eaten this unique Chinese dessert, it's divine. The surrounding syrup, made of a mixture of rock sugar, palm sugar, and water, is delicately sweet. It's sweet, but not too sweet, just enough that you can sip it. When you chew into the soft rice balls, made of glutinous rice, the melted brown sugar filling sweetly embraces your taste buds. In place of melted brown sugar, some use peanut butter, red bean paste, or sesame paste.

Vegetarian Sources of Protein

There is a misconception out there about sources of protein. Some misinformed individuals believe that the only source of getting adequate protein is from animal meat. Proteins are made from amino acids. Our body is able to synthesize some amino acids, but there are 8 amino acids that our body cannot synthesize so we must consume them in our diet. These 8 amino acids, termed "essential" amino acids, can be taken from eating a variety of vegetables or from tofu.

Dietary proteins are categorized into two groups: complete proteins, and incomplete proteins. Complete proteins contain all the essential amino acids, whereas incomplete proteins contain only some of the essential amino acids. Food that contains complete protein are meat, eggs, dairy, and soy products (e.g. tofu). Food that has incomplete protein are most vegetables, grains, and legumes.

A vegetarian or vegan can get their required source of protein by eating a wide variety of vegetables. By eating a wide range of vegetables, they ensure that even if one vegetable lacks a certain amino acid, another vegetable would have the amino acid that's missing in the other. Soy and tofu are good sources of protein, as they contain all the essential amino acids, just as meat does.

Curry Puff, Noodles, Yam cake, and more!

These are vegetarian curry puffs. The fillings are potatoes and onions that have been stirfried with mustard powder, fenugreek powder, curry powder, chili paste, mushroom sauce, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves.



We brought these to a house-warming party that my coworker invited us to. By the time we got there, the curry puff was cold. These are certainly best eaten warm. No, they must be eaten warm. The layered pastry is flaky and soft, just wonderful. Once your teeth sinks into the inner layers of filling, the flavor of the curry fillings immediately envelope your taste buds.


Below is asparagus stirfried in sweet tomato sauce. The other ingredients are soy products, button mushrooms, carrots, sweet yellow peppers, and sweet orange peppers.




The next one is stirfried yakisoba noodle with shiitaki mushrooms, sugar snap peas, carrots, sweet orange peppers and enoki. The sauce used for the stirfry is a mixture of light soy sauce, mushroom sauce, dark soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, pepper, salt and sugar.

I have a preference for thick, round noodles. The texture just feels more fulfilling. These noodles were pretty good.




Below is steamed yam cake. It is called a cake because it is steamed in a tin pan. Basically it is yam and rice flour. But I have added chopped button mushroom and fried onion to enhance the taste. Then I garnish the cake with red sweet chilies, green onions, grounded peanuts and sesame. We add soy sauce to bring it to another notch.




I like adding a lot of soy sauce to this. Made the taste just right.

South-East Portland

Portland is a vegetarian-friendly town. I especially like visiting the various organic and natural wholefoods stores like New Seasons Market and Whole Foods Market. The customers there seem very different than those at regular grocery stores. It's a whole other atmosphere; people are friendly and humble and they seem to care about their environment. South-East Portland in particular has numerous vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants. There's only one vegetarian restaurant in the area that specializes in Asian food, although it's mostly Indian food. We'll most likely be looking to open a place somewhere in South-East Portland.

We went to eat at Kalga Kafe today. Sorry folks, no photos today, as my digi camera was out of batteries so I couldn't take any pictures. I'll post some next time. In any case, the food at Kalga was great. I forgot the name of the dish that I ordered, but it was a full Indian meal, with little canisters of various curries, naan bread and rice. Phan ordered the Pad Thai. The dishes were quite flavorful and well prepared. For drinks, we both ordered mango lassi. We'll have pictures next time, promise.

New Mixer

We got a new Kitchen Aid mixer the other day and decided to test it out...make sure that it works! :o) It's not a pro version, but works well enough for home cooking. Here we were mixing some egg whites, sure is quicker than hand-beating it!




Our first experiment was making Meringue Cookies. The cookies were flavored with Van Houten cocoa, German cherries, and raisins.




We had some heavy cream and cocoa leftover, so we made a hot cocoa drink with home-made whip cream, garnished with a cinnamon stick. Not sure how many calories are in this, but it's okay to indulge once in awhile. It was sweet, rich, and creamy. :o)




My mom gave us some filo dough, so we decided to make filo pie. The pie filling consisted of herbed basmati rice, tomatoes, carrots, chilis, fried soy, and shitake.




Here it is plated. The dough was nice and flaky while the rice was quite flavorful.

General Discussion Board

Hi everyone,

If you look to the right, you'll notice a new link for an "Asian Vegan Discussion Board". This is a general discussion board.

The reason why I created this is because I noticed that topics don't last very long on the regular blog posts. Once a new post is put up, we move on to another topic. Sometimes we want to spend a little more time talking about certain topics, even when there's a new blog post. Also, the topics on the blog always have to do with the posts. I want us to be able to talk about anything that we feel like for as long as we feel like, hence the creation of the Asian Vegan Discussion Board.

Go on there and start a new topic or respond to a current topic. Enjoy! :o)

Tomato Curry wtih Vegan Mutton

This is tomato curry with vegan mutton. For the curry paste, we used coriander, mustard powder, fenugreek, cumins, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamon, star anise, garlic, shallots, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaf, yellow chilli, orange chilli, red chilli, and coconut milk. We added red and yellow tomatoes, stringbeans, broccoli, carrots, shitake, tofu, and vegan mutton.

As always, the curry paste was fantastic. Very aromatic and with a tinge of spiciness.




Here it is with some rice. The rice was cooked in coconut milk and a bit of saffron for color.

The Influence of Culture

To give a more in depth understanding about my cooking, I should talk a bit about my life. My life is heavily influenced by hawker food. I think I can say the same for most people who come from Southeast Asia. Well, here is a short story about me and hawker food. Hope you enjoy it.

In Southeast Asia, street hawkers are widely known as the source of delicious and readily available cheap food. What are street hawkers? Referring to www.aromacookery.com 's website about the history of street hawker, street hawkers are food sellers who sell food from pushcarts, tricycles, from rattan baskets balanced on the ends of a bamboo pole and from stationary stalls. If they are not stationary, they roam around cities, residential areas and villages. Their presence is easily known when you hear their tooting horns, sound of bamboo or wood banging or their shouting. When I was a little kid, those sounds would always make me run to my father and pester him non-stop to buy from them. I have to say that these hawkers had highly effective marketing methods. Like dogs trained to the tinkle of a bell, I was well trained to their sounds.

According to outside sources, hawker food in Malaysia actually began in the 19th century. At that time Malaysia was already well-known for its spice trading and tin mining. Traders from Netherland, Portugal and England were competing with one another for businesses, thus making the economy in this country grew rapidly. This caused a large number of immigrants from India, China and neighboring isles, who were mostly men, to come to Southeast Asia to work as coolies and petty traders. These immigrants did not come with their wives and were not able to live in a house with an area for cooking. So their main source of food was the traveling hawker who sold food to them. This marked the beginning of hawker food. Even though poor coolies and petty traders disappeared eventually, street hawkers remained so popular that family tended to eat less at home. One good example was my parents. My parents were eating food from hawkers more than from my grandma's cooking. Hence they got plentiful of nagging and complaining from my grandma but still they were so attached to hawker food that they could not change. My grandma always said that MSG (monosodium glutamate) made them into hawker food addicts. Some hawkers might had used MSG alot but in my opinion, since most of the hawkers were just selling one particular dish most of the time that they could easily perfect it to the point that it became their signature dish. For example, some hawkers only sold fried bananas and sweet potato or fishball noodle soup or fried noodle but they eventually developed new type of texture for fishball or new kind of flour for their fried bananas or new sauce for their fried noodle. In other words, they just became better and better at their cooking. Such development was also partly drawn out by the competition that existed among hawkers who were selling the same type of food. As for home cooking, the taste became less interesting due to the fact that we had been eating the same cooking from the same cook since our childhood. There were so many hawkers in any one area that we could move from one hawker to another to get the variety of taste easily. Basically it was our grandma versus many hawkers for my parents' patronage ..... in conclusion, grandma lost to unfair competition. Sad! Eventually I too became a traitor. I adopted my parent's culture of eating more hawker food and less at home. But now I really miss my grandma's cooking because I can never have her dishes again.

Another attractiveness of hawker food is that the food is better served under the starlight and next to a street that’s bustling with people and cars. Based on my observation, asian people like busy things. To them busy things signify life, happiness and prosperity just like youngsters in party mood status. Eating next to a busy street just makes the food more savory or hmmm maybe its the street dust that does the job or is it the smell from drains that is choked with food debris from the stationary hawker stalls.

In some countries like Singapore, the government become concerned with the safety of hawker food. Hence they established hawker centers. Hawker centers are like food courts. Hawkers move into allocated stall areas and become stationary forever. Well one might miss the bamboo sounds, shouts and tooting from horns, but these centers do have better water and drainage facilities. During my working era in Asia, I spent most of my meals at the hawker centers in Singapore, another place to savor great food that is so out of this world.

Continue on next episode.....

Stir Fry Veggie with Black Bean Sauce

Yesterday we made stir fry veggie with black bean sauce. First we deep fried the vegan "chicken" nuggets with corn flour, then mixed it with other vegetables: yellow chilli, orange chilli, red chilli, shitake, sugar snap peas, broccoli, and carrots. If you like onions, you can add onions. The dish was flavored with black bean sauce. The sweetness and mild spiceness of the chilli enhanced the flavor of the black bean sauce.

I liked the texture of the vegetables, nice and crisp. I also loved the flavor of the vegan chicken nuggets. Of all the vegan "meats", I have to say that the chicken nuggets are my favorite so far.




Our other dish was white soft tofu with hot chilli bean sauce. Went well with white rice.

Our Christmas Wish

Yeah! Here is a Christmas tree that has a shining star on top. Maybe we can make a wish. We wish with all our hearts that our dream will come true soon.

PART 1 : Dennis's Dream.....

Dennis dreams to have his own business and mine is to fulfill his. He has experience in computer and customer service. Mine is in finance and food service. After much consideration, we found out that we could combine customer service and food service in a restaurant business. Moreover it is not difficult to start nor does it need any graduate degree to run one. We also believe that we can do better than most restaurants. The reasons being that there is not a lot of Asian cooking like ours and we have abundance of creativity energy. So what else can be that hard for us? Well it is the financing issue that we are having problems with. For a cheap source of financing, we are advised by professionals to seek our close family’s help. Since our parents do not have much faith in running a business of their own, they do not have any for us too. They will have more faith if we can show them the success first. But we will need to start first before we can reach that stage. In conclusion, we have to scratch this source of financing out.

However there is hope (maybe) from our uncle and aunt. Good news is that they support us 100% financially if we open a restaurant that serves vegetarian food. Bad news is uncle’s priority is to get a property for the restaurant at the best deal possible. Now is not the right moment to purchase a property. That means we will have to wait a year or more.

Presently, we think that most likely we have to rely on ourselves. We are still short of some funds but it does not mean that we are at the end of our road. We are revamping our business plan to source for outside loans. We are willing to put in whatever home equity we have, retirement funds and credit cards. We are not giving up at this stage. We just have to work harder so we can make our dream become reality soon. Ganbette ne Phan and Dennis! We can do it!

Part 2 Vegetarian Vision Revealed.......

Originally, it was not a vegetarian concept that we had in mind as we were not vegetarians to begin with. Every meal I had almost 89% was meat. Vege was my least favorite. But I remembered our uncle telling us that if a person cooked vege food and served vege food, that person could achieve Buddha’s wisdom. I am not really a religious person but somehow his words keep reminding me of something. Something about that part of my life that relates the wisdoms of Buddha. When I was a kid, I used to be sick all the time. My parents were too busy working 7 days a week. Only my grandma could take care of me. It was difficult for my grandma to bring me to the doctors as they were not near. So she prayed to Buddha for guidance to cure me. To pray, she had to walk quite a bit to the nearby temples. She was in her early sixties and half blind. Therefore, it was not really easy for her to walk to the temple while carrying me on her back. One time she fell and injured her legs but she still wanted to walk to the temple to pray for my recovery. As a kid I would not understand much about Buddha. But I was forever touched by my grandma’s action. I found her unconditional love, something that is not easily found. My grandma gave me three Buddha talismans, saying that they were the signs of Buddha’s wisdom to guide me. The next time I received Buddha's wisdom was when Dennis's mom gave a Buddha talisman to me through Dennis when I first met him. I received the talisman from his mom even before I met her. A sign that I found Dennis's unconditional love, something that is not easily found.

Uncle's words about attaining Buddha's wisdoms through serving vegetarian dishes make me want to try vegetarian cooking. These words might not be true to most people who are not devotees. But the wisdom in eating vegetables and fruits is true. Based on the current trend of animal cruelty due to massive demands for meat from consumers and the illnesses that animal can easily susceptible to such as bird flu and mad cow disease, it is undeniably safe to adopt a vegetarian diet to stay healthy and to retain a conscientious mind.

Part 3: The Birth of this Blog......

To discover more about vegetarian dishes, we decided to create this blog. We really have so much fun meeting people from everywhere, displaying our cooking and enticing them to try our cooking. In my opinion, a person needs not be a vegetarian or a vegan in order to enjoy more vegetables and fruits dishes. As it is, we have discovered a variety of vegetarian cuisine that can easily suit ones palate. We hope we can share our fun with everyone.

Christmas Tree

My parents, who literally live 5-minute drive from our home, have already put up their Christmas tree. Here it is in one of their living rooms. Pretty... 8o)

Udon Noodles

Here we have udon noodles with enoki mushrooms, aburrage tofu, broccoli, yellow tomato, orange tomato, red tomato, carrots, and onions. The soup base is made from red miso, ginger, burdock, and flavored with a bit of sesame oil and Shaoxing rice wine.

The crisp broccoli, soft carrots and tomatoes, firm mushrooms, and thick, stringy udon noodles provided a wonderful contrast in textures and flavors. It harmonized well and while eating the soup I can taste the freshness of the delicious, nutritious ingredients.

Deep Fried Shitake and Tofu in Sweet Tomato Chili Sauce

Here is a colorful dish. We have yellow, orange and red chili peppers in this dish. It is a tad hard to see as I cut them too small. Next time I will cut them bigger. We deep fried the shitake and tofu in a corn flour batter. Next we stir the fried stuff in a sauce which is a mixture of ketchup, chili paste, plum sauce, shaoxing rice wine, mushroom sauce, soy sauce and mushroom essence, using a wok. Other ingredients in this dish are yellow capped enoki mushrooms, broccoflower and carrots.

Past Dishes

FRIED BANH CANH with PORTBELLO MUSHROOMS

The following dish consists of a noodle called Banh Canh in Vietnamese or Rat's noodle in Chinese. This noodle is cooked with Portbello mushrooms, bean sprouts, chewy "soy" balls and fried bean curd. The noodle is stir-fried in a wok using vegetable oil, soy sauce, mushroom seasoning and mushroom thick sauce (vegetarian "oyster" sauce). The chewy "soy" balls can be found in Asian grocery stores normally in the cold food section but not in the freezer.

The noodle is made of wheat flour, rice, water and soybean oil. Its daily value for carbohydrate is 22% and dietary fiber is 56%.




STEAMED RICE with YAM and FRIED ALMONDS

This is a very simple rice dish with yam, fried gluten and beans. The yam's natural taste can easily be enhanced with salt, sugar, soy sauce, pepper and grounded fried almonds. I add raisins to the rice to bring it to another notch.




TOMATO CURRY without COCONUT MILK

I have decided to change my cooking style based on our wonderful friend's advice. She is Fish Fish from Kuishinbo~Meow~ on how to eat like a true vegetarian. She said that when you know you are eating right is when you have more colors in your dish. There are five colors that we can follow. Purple, Red/Orange, Green, White and Yellow. I will be aiming for the colors now 0.~

Here is a curry dish that we have carrots, long beans, eggplants, konnyaku, fried tofu and fried eggs. Normally for any curry dishes, coconut milk is added. However, I have replaced the coconut milk with tomato pasta sauce that is already flavored with garlic and herbs. I like the Presto brand. This sauce does kick up another notch. The other ingredients for this dish is lemongrass, kaffir leaves, lime juice, garlic, shallots, ginger, mustard powder, fenugreek powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, chili paste, cinnamon and cumin. Highly flavorful dish!




STEAMED EGGPLANT in CREAMY EGG

Eggs is required to complete our vegetarian diet. However, we do make sure that we use organic eggs from free range farms to support animal welfare. This is steamed egg that is mixed with heavy whipping cream to give it a creamy texture. We also add prior steamed eggplant, soy vegetarian product, jicama, portobello mushrooms, carrots and basil. We garnish it with chilly oil.




HOMEMADE CHEE CHEONG FUN

This is homemade Chee Cheong Fun in Cantonese or Banh Cuo in Vietnamese. A noodle wrap made of rice flour. I used a 6 inches skillet to make this. Hard work hehe especially when it comes to folding the wrap. In the wrap, we have mushrooms, jicama and some soy vegetarian product. We later garnish the noodle with fried onion and garlic oil, soy sauce and sesame. I resteam the leftovers the next day and they still taste good.

New Management

My name is Phan. I am the so-called "chef" of this blog. Welcome and thank you for reviewing and commenting my "little" dishes here. To the Chinese, "little" represents my humbleness and your generosity. I am a Malaysian of Chinese descent. A true blooded chinese who is not really good in the language itself. My favorite food is Malaysian food because only in Malaysian food can I find such harmonized multi-ethinicity essence that I can't stop longing for even when I am far away. Malaysia is truly the only place where I can find that many India, Chinese, Malay, Thai, Western and other cultural food 24 hours a day. Despite the large numbers of 24-hours food outlets, the number of overweight people in this country is still amazingly at 30% whereas in US is 60%.

Now, back to the issue of this blog. This blog is missing a lot of updates lately. Dennis has not been functioning properly :0P. He has been neglecting this blog while spending time reviewing other people's blogs. I was quite displeased with him that I almost sent him out to sleep on the balcony :0P.

I love to read Dennis's review about my food even how lacking it is. Somehow, I will miss this pleasure dearly as I will be writing from now on. Dennis, You're Fired!! :0P. Just kidding. I can't really fire my husband. I can only light a fire under his axx to make him jump around, get some attention, a frown and a cuddle later. Anyhow, I hope to write more about why we are doing this blog and what my relation with Asian vegetarian food. Recipes will also be provided with pleasure if you want them.

This is a very short update for this blog and more food reviews will be coming up soon. We hope to retain your support of our blog :oD.