Garlic Fried Rice, with not just garlic

Garlic Fried Rice, with not just garlic

Ingredients:

Cooked Rice, this was about 1.5cups

12 pcs Chili Leaves, chopped

3 cloves Garlic, minced

2 tbsp Canola Oil

3 tbsp Sesame Oil

1 tsp Seasoned Soybean Paste (from a Korean grocery)

Salt and Pepper to taste


Procedure:

1. In a heated wok (not high heat in my case), put in the canola oil

2. When the oil is relatively hot, put the garlic

3. When some of the garlic has turned brown, put in the chopped chili leaves

4. Mix the garlic and chili leaves

5. After about a minute, put in the seasoned soybean paste

6. Mix well and after about 30 seconds, put in the sesame oil

7. Mix well, try to make sure to separate the garlic and chili leaves coz they tend to clump up

8. When they're not that clumpy anymore, you can now add the rice

9. Add salt and garlic to taste

10. Since everything  is cooked, I only use this stage to both heat up the rice and mixed the ingredients together

11. Once you see that everything's mixed pretty well, you can turn off the heat and serve!


Notes:
1. There are usually plenty of selections of soybean pastes in Korean grocery stores, I usually just get the one that I feel like using during the time I shopped for it
2. The one used in this recipe is in a small rectangular green container (I know, I'm very helpful). It's a bit salty and is mild to medium spicy (for me)
3. I added chili leaves because I wanted to add greens, and it's the only leafy veggie I have on the fridge
4. The end product looks too oily. It is a bit oily, but not much. The canola oil was totally absorbed by the garlic and chili leaves, so the oil that's on the rice is basically sesame oil only

Have you also experimented making fried rice? Care to share?

Diode Laser or IPL for Underarms?

It's been years since I've been toying with the idea of doing laser procedures to get rid of unwanted hair. But since they are so expensive, I haven't had the chance to try them. Nowadays though, I see a lot of salons offering really cheap IPL procedures through groupons. Should I buy or not?

A friend of mine who's been doing IPL treatments say that IPL does it's job although she's still left with few unwanted hairs. The catch is, she's done, I think, more than 12 sessions of IPL to get this result. She still goes to salons for treatment every now and then.

I've read mixed reviews on both procedures online. It seems like IPL is okay although it takes more sessions for it to get the results most people wanted, which is exactly what my friend is experiencing. With Laser, depending on one's hair type, some say they are satisfied with the results after only 2 sessions.

As for the disadvantages, I've read in www.hairremovalforum.com that IPL can put patients at higher risk for burns, especially those with darker skin. This is because IPLs, unlike Lasers, produce a wide bandwidth of light, which means that it also affects the tissues that were not targeted for hair removal. Laser hair removal, on the other hand, produces selective bandwidth of light that will only affect the area targeted.

The disadvantages I found for Lasers don't seem to be bad enough (I'm talking medically or physically here) to make one want to say, "No way!" Mainly, it's just that people experience some degree of pain (depending on how one tolerates pain) or the machine being too hot during the procedure. Although I did read that there are also very rare occurrences of burning with Laser. Aside from that, one would probably also consider the cost a disadvantage as Laser is about 10 times more expensive than IPL, at least in my part of the world.

When I asked my derm about the differences between the two, she only said that there's risk for burning with IPL. I haven't really asked her for more information other than that. I should, in my next visit.

Would anyone have any say on this?

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My unwanted hair remedy as of the moment is waxing. I used to shave until I discovered that waxing is better for my skin. Once I tried underarm waxing, I never went back to shaving. What I don't like about waxing, though, is that I need to wear clothes that can cover my underarms, at least partially, by the 2nd week and something with a fuller coverage by the 3rd week and until I go for my next session. I do this procedure once a month and it gets tiresome to wait for the hair to grow enough.