Cook and Brew.

Have your realized what your food attitude has been? Well, if not yet, check out and try this wonderful and helpful food diary sample (from here) and you might be surprised how healthy or unhealthy your diet is. Ideally, keep a food diary for at least three consecutive days and from the results, do notice the patterns and that’s where you’ll start taking action on.

Some realizations may include:
- a tendency to overeat because you miss a mealtime
- whole day meals from breakfast to dinner consist of fast food meals (hello whopping calorie and fat contents!)
- responding to stress through mindless munching

Finding out your food habits can help you make conscious decisions about your daily food intake. Start jotting down your food habits through this table.

Here’s another smoothie recipe my grandmother taught me using pandan leaves. These abound at their home in the province and she would always make us whenever we spend our summer vacation there.

Ingredients:
1 pc buko, meat shredded, (reserve water)
18-20 pcs of pandan leaves
1 can (240 ml) Pineapple Juice
1/2 cup sugar

For 5 minutes, boil pandan leaves in the reserved buko water plus 1 cup of water. Remove leaves and add sugar. Stir until dissolved. Cool and combine buko and pineapple juice in a blender. At high speed, mix. Add to pandan mixture then serve with crushed ice.

We are recommended to have five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. And the best way to serve it is through smoothies. Smoothies are loaded with vitamins and minerals. Not only are they great tasting, they’re healthy drinks, too! They are great for breakfast or any time of the day.

Sharing a recipe which my grandmom taught me.

Ingredients:
1 pc small carrot
4 to 5 tbsp sugar or 1 tsp honey
1 tbsp raisin
1 can (240 m) Pure Pineapple Juice
12 pcs ice cubes

In a blender, blend carrot and raisins with the Pineappe Juice until crushed. If your blender doesn’t like carrots try chopping it up and adding it one piece at a time during the blending. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth.

Makes 4 servings
Excellent source of Vitamin A for good eyesight.

- dried watermelon seeds
- a popular Filipino salty treats during drinking sessions or while watching your favorite TV show or movies
- comes in big plastic packs in supermarkets and groceries but these can also be bought from the sari-sari store in smaller labeled packs (Captain Sid)
- to get the edible white seeds inside, bite the edges in vertical position until the seeds break in half
- anticipate to have wrinkly lips and a sodium headache after finishing a big pack of it
- pringles’ “once you pop, you can’t stop” also goes with eating butong pakwan

Food Nutrients Trivia for 100 grams of Butong Pakwan as calculated by Calorie King.

I could say that Asher, at this stage, is a vegetarian kid. He loves eating mashed squash, soyote, eggplant, carrots, broccoli, stringbeans, potato, malunggay, spinach and saluyot leaves and even those uncommon vegetables that we have on our Dinengdeng dish like the green spaghetti-like “alukon”. What he abhors eating are any meaty texture – pork, beef or chicken. At first, I got worried because he may not be taking in enough protein and other key nutrients but my research in parenting books says that “vegetarian kids can be very healthy, as long as you keep these few simple rules in mind”:

1. Dairy foods (such as milk, eggs, cheese) are great source of protein.
2. Whole grains have lots of proteins, too.
3. Variety of beans,nuts, legumes, and some soy foods together with whole grains cover the baby’s protein requirements.
4. Serve a vitamin C–rich food (which boosts iron absorption), at every meal to make sure the toddler makes the most of the plant-based iron he’s eating. Plant-based iron (called non-heme iron) is not as easily absorbed by the body as animal sources of iron (heme iron).
5. Milk intake should be carefully regulated for vegan kids. While milk is packed with calcium, vitamin D, and protein..it has no iron. So if a vegetarian kid bottoms up just milk, he’ll not go hungry for solid foods in meals that contain iron and many other nutrients. Instead, if he clamors for more milk, serve him some enriched soy milk – which contains iron.