A Healthy Lunch for the Day: Making Fish Sinigang in Kamias with Squash and Moringa from Scratch

The other day, Mommy D spent the night in their house with her sister, and when she got home the next day, she brought a plastic bag of Kamias, which was freshly picked from their garden. Seeing it, I suddenly craved something sour. Actually, I remember, I used to eat this while dipping in salt. It's a good source of vitamin C, but your eyes will really hide once you eat this because of its sourness. Have you tried Kamias before? Do you also have this in your garden?

Anyhow, with the Kamias we have, I finally came up with a dish that we can have for lunch. It's really hard to think of what dish to make every day. When we come up with a dish, we will always ask each other, "What's for lunch?" or "What's for dinner?" but no one can give an answer because there is really nothing coming up in our heads. And even if we have, we have already had those dishes before. And of course we still want to try other dishes and not the same thing over and over, so it's hard, lol.

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Now, after looking at those kamias, I have come up with something sour and a little healthy. It has two different kinds of vegetables, which I will share later. Actually, we already had this dish before, but that's from a long time ago already, and it's Mommy D from whom I got this recipe. Let's do the cooking!

Here's the main ingredient, I bought half a kilo of fish in the market, and I got it only for $1.06. Lucky for me, usually their price ranges from $1.41 to $1.76 per half kilo. I just clean them thoroughly and remove those things that have to be removed inside. As you can see, they are still fresh. As for the squash, I got it only for $0.40, it weighs more than half a kilo, and they are a big kind of squash, and I like it.

So, as I've mentioned above, this dish is just a "little healthy." It's because I fried the fish here and used it like that. That way, it will have a less fishy taste, and it'll taste yummier. This is also just like a "Dinengdeng," if you know that Filipino dish where the fish is grilled or fried. As for this dish, it is fried, as we prefer it that way. As for the squash, I just cut them into small pieces in whatever shape, lol. This'll do.

I put them aside and made rice. We will need rice water for this dish. I just wash the rice, and on its second wash, I put it in a pan, which I will use in cooking this dish.

I put the crushed ginger and onion together with the fried fish in a pan, then the rice water. Our ginger will give a very unique taste to this dish. It's sad we don't have garlic, garlic is like gold now here in our place, it's too expensive, lol. Anyway, I turned on the stove, put the pan in, and just waited for it to boil. I let it boil for 10 minutes, by the way, just until the water changed color.

And while waiting for it to boil, I go down to our little garden to get a moringa. Another healthy ingredient in our recipe today. Green leafy veggies are always good for the body, and Mom requested this particular one for this dish. Who am I to say no? I mean, I also love Moringa, so yes, I'm just thankful that we have this in our garden. We don't need to buy it anymore in the market.

Because I already put salt on our fried fish, I haven't put any seasoning in the water yet. And just after 10 minutes of boiling, it looks like this now. I just taste the soup and check to see how much salt I have to add. After that, I added the salt and some seasoning, just a little bit of it, just to make it more flavorful and yummy.

When I saw that the fish was already soft and the fish flavor was already attached to the soup, I removed the fish and put it on a clean plate. I set it aside, put the clean squash in the boiling soup, and covered the pan. I waited for the squash to become soft. I just let it boil for 5 minutes.

After the squash had softened in texture, I added the 5 large Kamias and put back again the fish. I just let it boil for a minute for the kamias to completely soak in the soup.

And for the finishing touch, I put the moringa I dissected and let it boil for another second and tadaaaan! It's done!

I could add more different kinds of veggies here, like eggplant, bitter gourd, and okra, but if I add more of them, I will be shorthanded as my budget is only $1.76. And I want to cook a dish that is only good for two meals, so just lunch and dinner. And if I add more, then that will be a bigger serving for only 3 people who'll eat it. Maybe I'll make a different kind of dish with those veggies I mentioned above on some days.