Eat Dance Live

Lychees are very unphotogenic, but really yummy! Seriously though, they are. When I put lychee into google images, this is what I got: Lychees as eyeballs (from here ): Lychees as... what usually happens after a rough night out? (from here ) Lychees as... the primordial soup from which all life was born? (from here ) And I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore, but needless to say that lychees just kind of look globby when you try to photograph them: Anyway, the reason I'm talking about lychees is that my foray with cooked foods over the winter break made me realize: a) how much I love raw foods and how they make me feel so much better b) that any dietary issue can probably be solved by raw food, you just have to figure out how. Right now, I've been looking for answers in Traditional Chinese Medicine, namely through the concept of "warming" and "cooling" foods. The reason I was being a little bit more lax abo...

Okay, so that title may not have been the most appetizing way to introduce you to this next dish, but the taste totally makes up for it! What I'm referring to is Hong Shao Dou Fu Pi and Mu Er ("red-cooked" tofu skin and "wood ear" mushrooms). By far, one of my childhood favourites! Over the holidays, I headed down to DC and came home to my mom's amazingly veganized Chinese food. Little did she know I had been dreaming of tofu skins a week prior to going home. (That's actually an embarrassing fact. Right before falling asleep one night, I was said to have exclaimed "You know what I'm really craving? Tofu skins!" That is the depth of my obsession...) Tofu skin (also known as a beancurd sheet or yuba) is the filmy skin that lines the top of your pot when soy milk is boiled (the same thing happens when you heat cow's milk). It's made up of the bean's protein and lipids and it's apparently quite a process to make. Instead of bein...

Between Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, and Mardi Gras, I've definitely had my fill of holidays over the past couple days! First off, happy New Year to all those on the lunar calendar and a special shout-out to all the other Tiger zodiacs out there! As kids, we definitely used to make a bigger deal out of Chinese New Year, doing a lot more of the traditional activities a family does and getting our little red money envelopes at the end of the evening. However, we still honor the most important part of the day though: getting together as a family to celebrate over a big meal. We had a wonderful dinner with all of the many extensions of my Chinese family that live in the area, now uniting four generations under one roof! Though I didn't have most of the meal because it wasn't raw (I made a big salad for the veggie eaters), I still loved to share in the experience of the big traditional Chinese hot pot (which is actually your perfectly balanced meal of proteins, starch...

First things first: I love my mom. Why? Aside from all the obvious reasons, she took it upon herself to veganize one of my favourite recipes this weekend. Fen Zheng Rou (Beef) or Fen Zheng Pai Gou (Pork) has always been one of my favourite dishes growing up and I was kind of sad to have to let it go when I became vegan (this is despite the fact that I loved the dish despite the meat). BUT, because my mom is awesome and loves me lots, I introduced her to seitan and she decided to attempt to veganize her age old recipe for me and it turned out better than ever! I can’t tell you enough how much I love this woman. Considering what I said about “Cooking is like Piracy”, I apparently learned that from my mom. This is all based on me watching her and having to estimate a recipe she now does more by memory and reflex than ever needing to measure things out: Ingredients 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes, peeled 4 small taros, peeled (don't forget to wear gloves or your hands ge...