My parents are over for a visit and will be here for a week, so it's busy, busy and busy; Busy cleaning up the house (before they arrive), busy clearing the fridge, busy being their driver, busy bringing them to their favorite places to eat/bringing them to try some new food or restaurants etc etc. Lol. You know how people say even when you've grown up, you will always be a baby/kid in your parents' eyes... That's so true. Every time they come over, they will bring LOTSA seafood (Coz I love eating them!) - fish, prawns, scallops and crabs (That's the reason why we need to clear the fridge before they arrive :P). They say that it's much cheaper and fresher in East Malaysia, which is true. They even bring Bario/brown/highland rice over and say it's healthier and unprocessed, therefore it's better for us, especially my LO. Though I told them it's heavy, I don't want them to carry such load and hurt themselves, but they still continue to bring without complaints... That's why NOBODY on Earth can love us MORE than our PARENTS!! They will also fill my fridge with loads of fruits, as though we are not eating enough/not feeding my LO with enough fruits. Haha!

As I mentioned, we were clearing our fridge so we didn't buy much meat this week. There was only a pack of pork bones left in the fridge. Was supposed to boil lotus root soup with them but my parents used them to boil ABC soup instead. I wanted to cook the lotus root before we head to Genting for a short family trip, and so I thought, why not try boiling a meatless version since I've never tried that before. Looked up a few recipes and decided to go the following few ingredients, using honey dates to replace the sweetness from meat:

It's naturally sweet and light. I still prefer using meat (I'm more of a carnivore, you see :P), but it's pretty nice to have a meatless version from time to time too.

Ingredients:

• 350g lotus root, peeled and cut into pieces
• 100g peanuts, soaked for at least an hour
• 10 red dates, pits removed
• 5 dried figs
• 3 honey dates
• A handful of gojiberries
• 3 cloves of garlic (Optional)
• 2500ml water

1. Bring water to a boil over high heat. Rinse all ingredients and add into the pot, except the gojiberries.
2. Turn to low heat and simmer for 3 hours. Add gojiberries at the last 1 hour. Serve.