Affordable Healthy food: Salad Served with Peanut Butter lemon Sauce, Somen, and Fried Tempeh & Tofu

 

Affordable healthy food: salad served with peanut butter lemon sauce, somen with Thai parsley & fried anchovies on it, fried tempeh & tofu - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Nowadays, we often hear and read about healthy food as we concern about our health. I have seen many restaurants offer package healthy menu to attract more customers. However, as far as I can see, the price that we have to pay for those meals consider high-priced. Here in this article, I wanna show you the fact that eating well is affordable to everyone!

I have no clue why the price for a salad menu is priceless for at least we need to spend $ 7 per menu. The other day I saw advertising for a healthy menu that was overpriced. When I saw the menu they offered, well, I can say it is my regular menu at home, for instance, a meal that consists of stir-fry vegetables, baked chicken or fish, and rice. It sounds like daily basic food in our life, isn't it? But how do we have to pay about $20 per meal?🤔🤷‍♀️ Because of this type of marketing, many people think that healthy food is expensive and not everyone could not afford it. 

Ichi's Fusion Recipes: mix vegetables and somen with peanut butter lemon sauce before eating - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

What is healthy food exactly? I had learned in primary school about food ingredients. My teacher taught us what kind of food sources and the vitamins in them that we could find surroundings. What I can say, maybe I am lucky that I was born and grew up in a remote village which gave me a wide-open mind. Most villagers were living in poverty so it was about surviving rather than thinking about healthy food. However, without realizing it, those villagers ate food sources that many people today claim it is superfood and healthy food. Amazingly, these foods came from their own garden, yards, and their crop field which meant all of them were free! So, what is healthy food? In my view, neither vegan nor vegetarian, it is about balance; there are carbo, protein, vitamins. 

Ichi's Fusion Recipes - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Speaking about eating well, we consider what menu that we need to serve on the table. To be honest, it is easy to find out and do not need to think about fancy things. In other words, a healthy menu is simple and easy to cook as well. We can prepare it without consuming our time in the kitchen either. Really? YES! Besides saving our time, the most important thing is that we are able to find the ingredients surroundings and it won't suck your money. Have you ever visited a market, right? What do you see in the market? I believe there is an abundance of vegetables from leafy veggie to root ingredients, seafood, meat, and fruit. Here in Singapore, I admit seafood, meat, and fruit, are high costs, however, compared to buying food outside, cooking at home with those ingredients is cheaper! Each menu we prepare must use all those food sources for example it could be spinach, egg or fish, potato, and fruit! By combining those elements, we would get lots of benefits for our body as it keeps us fit.

Affordable healthy food: salad served with peanut butter lemon sauce, somen with Thai parsley and fried anchovies on it, fried tempeh and tofu, a pear, and a glass of jasmine tea - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

Talking about the affordable menu, what kind of recipe that I offer in this article? First of all, it is salad! I have believed this menu is familiar for many of you since it is easy to pick the vegetables that we want to use. Give it example: in this article, I grabbed kale, purple cabbage, carrot, and long bean. I boiled them all and served them with my homemade peanut butter lemon sauce. This special sauce is inspired by Indonesian salad which I twisted with a Western touch. You can read this homemade peanut butter lemon sauce in my book on Amazon Kindle! The second component is the protein that I got from tempeh. I chose tempeh as my protein as it is good for our intestines, builds the immune system. I had written the recipes on how to fry tempeh and tofu in an easy way before. Yes, you can go back to read it. The last is carbo, what kind of carbo that I picked this time to complete my meal? Well, this is a new one, it is somen (One of the Japanese noodles). As I can't eat rice anymore, I change my diet by substituting rice with another carbo for instance potato, sweet potato, and noodles! For me, it is not a big deal as I have been living in Singapore for about 9 years, and I have adapted to the food sources. The intriguing about my somen was that put a little bit of Thai parsley on it. My kind neighbor gave me a Thai parsley leaf that was picked from her garden. Although we live in an apartment, our spirit of planting flowers and plants is at a high level! As result, we create a greeny view in our corridor!😊 To be honest, I prefer celery rather than parsley, however, once in a while is not bad to take the taste of parsley.

Ichi's Fusion Recipes; somen with Thai parsley and fried anchovies on it, peanut butter lemon sauce with Thai parsley on it - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

After talking about the menu, I bet you are wondering how much does this menu cost? I would say the cost of this meal is about $ 6 for 2 people which included the fruit! The fruit that I served with this menu was a pear or an orange. In addition, I have always used low sodium salt, canola oil, and olive oil which are expensive here in the market. In another word, with a $6 cost, I am able to serve meals on the table by using the best ingredient. One of the benefits of cooking our food is that we know all the ingredients on our plates. The fun fact by preparing our own food is that we can mix and match one ingredient with another so that would sharpen our skill in the kitchen. It sounds fun, isn't it?

Ichi's Fusion Recipes: salad served with peanut butter lemon sauce, fried egg, fried siomay, and somen with Thai parsley on it - Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti

You can see that eating healthy food is not that hard and wipe out our money. We can choose the ingredients surroundings and prepare them at home. We are able to create a restaurant menu at home even better.

Note:

• Written by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Photographed by Acik Mardhiyanti
• Do not copy this article without permission
• Do not reuse these photographs anywhere else without permission