Crunch 'n Munch

I often struggle to find late night snacks.

And I happen to have difficulty falling asleep when I'm feeling hungry.

I grabbed this "Crunch 'n Munch" from the store the other day thinking I will eat this when I have a snack attack.

The name isn't so appetizing to me. But I like the idea of caramel and popcorn.

So it's around 3AM now, and I decided to eat this.

It's pretty good, but I'm not sure if it's good as a late night snack. It's a little too sweet. But it will do for now...


By the way, I didn't eat that great lately. Today wasn't the most nutritious day.

For breakfast, I ate a croissant & coffee, egg fried rice with Indian spices, Whopper Jr., and then the Crunch 'n Munch.

I think I should start cooking more...

Home made naan and Indian curry from paste!

I went to the world market the other day to buy some nice coffee beans, and while I was there, I also picked up a packet of Indian curry paste.

Along with the curry, I decided to make naan... from scratch!!

I saw couple of youtube videos about making home made naan, and made a little twist on the recipe from one of the videos.

I even used my brand new rolling pin (yeeeeea!).

Originally, I was planning to use the oven to bake these, but at the end decided to use the grill instead.

There's grill marks on them, and they also had some grill flavor. 

Turned out not bad, but next time I would keep in mind to not make it too thin. Fluffy naan tastes much better then crispy naan.

So the tip I got from youtube videos is to have soft dough, bake at high temperature, and butter it at the end.

I love naan, and I want to make these again whenever we have Indian curry for dinner!

Jasmine tea

I always have a big pitcher of jasmine tea in the refrigerator, so I basically drink it instead of water. I was wondering if jasmine tea has some benefits or negatives.

From my googling of "jasmine tea," I found out that it is a form of green tea. It does have caffeine, but not as much compared to other teas.


One website lists 5 reasons why it is a healthy drink:

1. Powerful antioxidants
2. Promotes weight loss
3. Reduces fat, cholesterol absorption
4. Helps prevent cancer
5. Calms your nerves.

It definitely reduces fat absorption. After a big fatty meal, I like to drink hot jasmine tea because it almost feels like it melts the fat inside your stomach. I always feel refreshed after drinking it even after a heavy meal.

With that said, I think it's not great to drink it on an empty stomach.

I remember drinking iced sweet tea made with jasmine tea from a vendor type place that served chinese food. It was so good especially because it was such a hot day outside.

Next time when I make a big pot of jasmine tea, I'm considering putting sugar to make sweet tea for my pitcher in my refrigerator. I need to figure out how much sugar I need to put. I don't know if I really want to know this because it probably will require hundreds of pounds of sugar to taste as good as the sweet tea that are served at restaurants.

Some things are probably better not known.

Shampoo and hair stuff

I decided to use the amazon associates, because I was looking for a way to post pictures that I don't need to transfer from my camera to the computer. I think this amazon associates will work for me. :D

Right now, I'm using the Herbal Essences Touchably Smooth shampoo & conditioner, and I think its making my hair a little too oily at the top. It might be because I'm using too much conditioner. It's a bad habit that I have from winter when my scalp was so dry. I love the smell of herbal essences though.


Since the shampoo & conditioner that I'm using right now is almost running out, I will be on the hunt for a next set of shampoo & conditioner. My hair is getting pretty dry at the bottom because of color and straightening chemicals. It seems like the herbal essences isn't moisturizing my ends that great. So I think I will look for a shampoo that is for color treated hair.

Because my head was pretty oily today, I was in need of clean non-oily hair. I made sure not to put too much conditioner at the top of my hair. While blow drying my hair, I was telling myself not to put any cream or any moisturizing product in my hair. I wanted NOTHING on my hair for a change. After my hair was completely dried, obviously without thinking, I put on some hair cream. I was telling myself not to put anything on my hair, but totally forgot about it in 10 seconds. Wow.

I like the hair cream that I'm using though. It's not too oily, it reduces frizz, and it's good to put on before going to sleep. It's called "Tsubaki Chan" (椿ちゃん）. I got this in Japan, and it has tsubaki oil in it, which is said to be good for the hair.

Before I had my hair straightened chemically, my hair was so frizzy and wavy. To reduce the puffiness, I used the tsubaki oil. I'm not sure how pure the oil is, but it was "oil" and not a hair cream. I think tsubaki oil is a Japanese thing, because I never see any oil for hair in the U.S.
It made the hair pretty oily, but it definitely reduced the puffy volume of my my hair. Besides the weird oil smell, it's a really good product to use on frizzy puffy hair. Thanks to the hair straightening that I got, I don't really need to put the oil anymore. Tsubaki hair cream works good for now, and it smells much better than the oil. :D

Indian Collection tea bags + etc

I found this India Collection tea bags at the local health food store. It's pretty nice to try out different type of tea, and this box includes: Dargeeling Green, Darjeeling Spring, Darjeeling Summer, Kashimiri Chai Green, Kapili Assam Black, and Nilgiri Black. I'm not sure if I would like to buy these again, the quality of these don't seem so good.


This was my dinner today. Chicken cutlet + spaghetti. The chicken is a thin sliced chicken breast breaded in flour+egg+panko then fried. The tomato sauce is pre-made in jar from Publix :D.
I must say, this dinner tasted pretty good, and I would like to give myself (and publix) a credit.

These are "corn cream soup cheese bread". Yea, I'm not sure myself what to call this. For the topping I used mostly leftover stuff; canned corn, canned cream of potato soup, and cheese. These turned out just okay. I haven't been able to make really good bread lately. Need to retrain myself in baking.

That's it for today's blog update.

I'd like to try to not make this blog emo or controversial, but I will note some things about recent events that's occurring in Japan right now. I can't help myself in watching or reading the news about Japan lately.
What's important right now is worrying about the missing people, those who are in the evacuated areas, and to get enough supplies delivered to the evacuated areas. The weather is reported to be very cold, and the most important thing is to have food, warm clothe, and living supplies for the people who have lost their homes. Also support and comfort is so important to have for those people who might even have families and friends who are still missing.
Radiation is NOT going to reach U.S.
If it did, everyone in Japan is probably be in panic right now, and you will probably see the important people of Japan, like the prime minister or the emperor, leave the country first.

I hope Sendai and the North East will recover fast. Well, I guess hoping doesn't do much, so we will make everything recover, and I believe it will!

Okay....eh

I tried and retried many times to make an app on my phone to work...to upload pictures on this blog. It just works for one time and than it doesn't work the next. I'm using the computer more often now since I came back to FL from Japan. So I decided to not rely on the app, and use the computer! OMG

I am feeling pretty bored lately, so I'm going to try to enjoy myself by making this blog an "anything blog" . I would like to focus on Japan stuff, bakery stuff, or just stuff in general. And I will be uploading the blog via computer, not the phone. So hopefully I won't abandon the blog like I did before.