Excerpt
Healthy, My Way
Introduction People often assume I grew up with a wooden spoon in my hand. After all, my parents owned and ran a Vietnamese restaurant for years and my brother is a professional chef; cooking must be in my DNA, right? In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. With two doting parents who showed their love by putting multicourse meals on the table every day, even when our finances were tight, and then later, having the restaurant as my own personal canteen, I really never had to cook, and frankly, I wasn’t that interested. When I left for college, I could barely make a PB&J. Even after I married my husband, Harlan, dinner more often than not was fast food or a Hungry Man meal for him and a Lean Cuisine for me!
It wasn’t until my twin daughters arrived that I realized I needed to start getting more serious about eating well, both to help me get back into shape after childbirth and, just as importantly, to start my girls off on a path to good health from the moment they started eating solid food. Plus, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with two active toddlers, a high-intensity job in the mortgage industry, and a bustling household if I wasn’t fueling myself with high-quality nutrients that gave me energy and kept me strong.
Not only that, weight was starting to accumulate in a way that I wasn’t loving. I couldn’t just work off a weekend of pizza and burgers with an extra hour in the gym the way I once could, and honestly, I just didn’t feel that great. I knew if I was going to right the ship and get on a path to better health and a weight that made me feel good about myself, it had to start with cooking. After all, it was not lack of exercise that was packing on the pounds, it was too much processed, prepared food. It was time to get in the kitchen and really understand what I was putting on the table and in my body.
With a little encouragement from my nightly Food Network fix (a shout-out to my girl Rachael Ray!), I slowly began to get more comfortable as a cook, quickly progressing from basic staples like tuna salad and baked chicken to more involved dishes. When I started experimenting, I realized that I didn’t need to follow every recipe to the letter and that I could play with flavors and ingredients to make things taste the way
I liked them, and that made me feel good.
Since one of my goals was keeping my weight in check, my menus reflected whatever guidelines the diet du jour recommended, and I ping-ponged from keto to no-carb to high-protein and back again. But after a few months of forcing myself to follow restrictive diets and packing my plate with the kind of food we generally think of as healthy—so much quinoa, soooo many kale salads—I had to face facts: No way could I eat like this forever. It was food, and it certainly provided fuel, but was it exciting to eat? Did I look forward to mealtime? Not really. (Don’t tell anyone, but I actually don’t love quinoa. Does anyone?) Even worse, because my meals were so unsatisfying, I was losing the battle with between-meal snacking and eating way too many desserts.
Plus, my days were just too full to spend extra time making a health-conscious meal for myself and another for my husband, kids, and parents, who lived with me at the time. Let’s face it, no matter how many dried cranberries or croutons you add, it’s just about impossible to get a toddler to eat a kale salad!
My big breakthrough came when I realized that flavor had to come first; it couldn’t just be all about getting the right number of macros in. If you’re happy subsisting on an endless loop of grilled chicken breasts with steamed veggies on the side, good for you—that makes things easy. But I need a lot more color, crunch, and variety in my meals to keep me excited, and I know I’m not the only one.
I stopped counting calories and grams of this or that and started to define my
own kind of healthy eating, one that minimized carbs, fats, and processed sugar in a low-key way while maximizing flavor and plate appeal. Instead of building my meals around a carb like rice, noodles, or pasta (not exactly intuitive for someone raised to believe a big bag of rice is the perfect housewarming gift!), I doubled down on lean proteins, vegetables, and ingredients like fresh herbs and condiments that boosted flavors even further. Whenever I could, I made the cooking process more streamlined, cutting time (and fat) with my trusty air fryer and my own pragmatic kitchen hacks. And I cut way back on the amount of dairy and wheat I was eating.
The changes felt subtle and
manageable, and before long I was back to a weight I felt good about. Better yet, I was cooking and eating food my family and I genuinely looked forward to, and none of us ever felt like we were on a diet.
And that’s how MyHealthyDish came into being. What started as a way to document some of my more successful kitchen forays and share the food of my Vietnamese heritage with what I assumed would be a tiny audience of family and friends soon became a full-time occupation—lucky for me, since I’d had to move in with my parents again after the mortgage industry tanked. Today I am a full-time content creator, and together with a few million of my closest friends, I’m continuing to grow as a cook and expanding my horizons with new ingredients and flavors every single day.
As the product of a California upbringing, I gravitate toward food that looks and tastes fresh, an eclectic mix of influences and cuisines that puts great produce and lean proteins at the center of the plate. I aim for meals that are nutrient-dense, meaning no calories are wasted on empty carbs and other fillers that do nothing to keep me strong and healthy. And I continue to keep an eye on sugar and avoid too much salt, two “nutrients” none of us needs more of. The result is food that keeps me satisfied, nourishes my body without weighing it down, and is full of addictively delicious colors, flavors, and textures.
Many of the recipes in this book take their inspiration from my Southeast Asian heritage as well as the cuisines of China, Korea, or Japan, not just because I love those flavors and ingredients, but because they are naturally gluten- and dairy-free. With simple modifications, like swapping out some of the carbs for more veggies (I am
always pushing myself to eat more veggies) and including a bit more protein than is traditional on an Asian table, these recipes work with just about any kind of healthy meal plan.
But with a husband who grew up on a pretty standard meat-and-potatoes diet and two teens who eat like teenagers do, I make sure to cater to their tastebuds too. From an easy Chili Beef Skillet Dinner (page 179) to a dairy-free Creamy Roasted Tomato Soup (page 116), an irresistible layered dip with Greek salad vibes (page 93), and my take on street tacos (page 185), there is something here to make everyone at my table (and yours!) happy. Once picky eaters who longed for McDonald’s, my girls now prefer my cooking to what we get at restaurants, and I’m making sure that they get plenty of time to play in the kitchen too, starting them off on a path to lifelong good health a lot sooner than I did!
In the pages that follow, I will lay out my key strategies for keeping it light without losing out on taste or compulsively counting calories. (Spoiler: Upending your carb-to-veggie ratio is an important first step.) I’ll explain how I use some ingredients commonly associated with Southeast Asian cooking in unexpected new ways to make food with a bright kick and plenty of plate appeal. And I’ll show you how to stock your fridge and pantry so you’re never more than a few minutes away from a meal that looks as good as it tastes.
