Day 7: 97 mg cholesterol and 3 chinese meals

The real chef in the house is my wife, enjoying a downsized coconut rice – nasi lemak – and cooking up 2 fast, easy and delicious Chinese meals: noodles for lunch and rice for dinner, with a total cholesterol consumption of 97 mg only.

Breakfast was different for the both of us: I simply had cooked rolled oats and add some almond milk (for my serving I blended 16 almonds with water). Added 2 teaspoons of brown sugar in the mixture and breakfast is pretty close to how I love it, compared to the full cream milk version I had before I started my new diest lowering my cholesterol intake.

My wife however doesn’t like almonds and had been craving for the Malaysian national dish… So she went out to buy her ‘nasi lemak’ or coconut rice. However eating only the coconut rice and the white of the egg! According to the Mayo Clinic egg whites don’t contain any cholesterol: all the egg cholesterol can be found only in the yolk: 186 mg for one large – 50 gram – egg. That’s good to know because I do love eggs 🙂 Not to mention the smile on my wife’s face being able to eat zero cholesterol nasi lemak: priceless 🙂

For lunch, a delicious fried spaghetti with veggies and meat, cooked by my wife. The organic spaghetti is made from organic durum wheat semolina, contains no eggs and no cholesterol. Only the 25 grams of meat per person contributes to 21 mg of cholesterol per person:

1. Cut the meat in small pieces and marinate with soy sauce, black pepper, chili flakes and brown sugar.
2. Fry garlic and onion in olive oil until the garlic starts turning color.
3. On a high fire, immediately add the meat, making sure the garlic doesn’t burn.
4. Meanwhile cook the spaghetti in salted boiling water for 6 minutes (1 minute less than what the package says: 7 minutes).
5. Drain the cooked pasta and poor in the pan with the meat.
6. Add the stems of bok choy (one of the many Chinese cabbages available)and add 3 minutes later the bok choy leaves and the thinly sliced sweet red pepper.
7. Add some lime juice, season to taste and serve.

Dinner again Chinese cooking, that means entirely my wife’s cooking: stir fried veggies and small pork pieces marinated in lime, soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic and black pepper. 90 grams of pork meat a person, contributing to 76 mg of cholesterol:

For the veggies: brocolli, carrot, cherry tomato and french beans, stir fried in olive oil with slices of ginger and chopped garlic, seasoned with fish sauce and salt and a bit of water added. Served with cooked rice:

Total cholesterol intake: 97 mg

• breakfast: 0 mg cholesterol
• lunch: 21mg cholesterol
• dinner: 76 mg cholesterol

Notice that when my wife cooks, I don’t take tidbits nor teatime inbetween meals 🙂

Back to breakfast: Suppose I would have eaten a large egg with the yolk, then I would add 186 mg cholesterol in my diet, resulting in a total intake of 283 mg. This is to high for a cholesterol lowering diet but lower than the recommended daily intake for healthy people. So there is light at the tunnel that eating one egg for breakfast will be possible once I get my bad LDL back in the normal range. Can’t wait 🙂