ASEAN Hive Community Challenge #132: Late Night Snacks

Hi everyone...
A wonderful day to you all!

I want to join ASEAN HIVE Community Challenge this week. It’s about Late Night Snacks.

Having a midnight or late-night snack isn’t unusual in my family, so I don't need to hide or be careful not to wake other family members up when I get hungry late at night.

We used to even prepare for our midnight or late-night snack back then. It was mostly sweets or chips at that time.

We sometimes even buy cake in advance from some of the cake shop nearby.





If we happen to go to SM Seaside, we also buy some cake from our favorite shop called Leona. If not cake, we get some of our favorites like biscucho, toasted mamon, Hokkaido cupcakes or ensaymada from Cardinal Bakeshop which is just a few blocks away.

There were times when I also made some popcorn and French fries. I either just prepare them with salt or with some powdered cheese. We sometimes even order some pizza from the nearby pizza shop or make our own pizza sandwich.

I don't have clear photos, so I just took some packets from our store as a sample...

Sometimes, I also cooked some pancit canton and topped them with hard-boiled eggs

I really made sure we had some snacks stocked for midnight snacks just in case, because that time we also used to sleep at midnight if not past it. It depended on my daughter's last classes.

It's already been our habit to wait for each other before going to our own rooms and greet each other good night. For us, it's kind of blessing each other before going to sleep. That is why having a late-night snack while waiting for my daughter to finish work and watching some movies or TV shows has become a habit.

Also samples from our store...

Worse, we even had crispy chicharon for midnight snacks and some chips or chichiria from our mini grocery store that time too. We never really thought that what we did was wrong. I mean the choices of foods and the time to eat them.

Until one day, that was August of last year, we learned a big lesson from this bad habit. It was somewhat a blessing in disguise while we had our lunch and the viand at that time was a dried adobong bisaya cooked by my husband because it's his specialty.

It's pork meat with fats and you just cook it with soy sauce, vinegar, and other spices and seasonings. I wasn't able to finish my meal that time because I felt dizzy and my face has reddened. Good thing that I wasn't panicking… well just a bit. My husband and my daughter @tegoshei guided me to sit and relax on the sofa, and my daughter gave me a mild massage.

I'm just so grateful that she is a registered nurse and knows how to make me comfortable in that situation. Then later, we checked my blood pressure and that was 200/105. But, I decided and insisted not going to the doctor because I'm sure in that situation I could be admitted to the hospital. I don’t like hospitals and the thought of staying there makes me sick.

They agreed with me and in that instant, my daughter @tegoshei suggested that we follow or we change to a healthier life style; cutting sodium and sweets in our diet, more potassium magnesium, and other health benefits that are good for our health.

That's the time that we changed our midnight snack habit. We didn't stop eating late-night snacks completely.

Lately, we have banana cupcakes which my daughter personally bakes through an air fryer, boiled banana and sweet potato, and biscuits that are more on plain flavor or crackers.

Sometimes, we only drink hot tea. And, we make sure not to eat at least 2 hours before going to bed. In the past years, we used to go to bed past midnight, but now my daughter adjusted her work schedule for us to sleep earlier. It's at 10:30pm, and we wake up at 6:30am to meditate and exercise.

I hope through this challenge I may be able to impart or share good lessons for each one's health too. We must be very careful in choosing our food and the time to eat especially with regards to late-night snacks.

I am really happy to share my personal experience here and I hope this could be a lesson for everyone. I am also grateful that even though I did not take any medicine, I survived by just following a healthy lifestyle and constant prayer.

Thank you so much my dear fellow Hivers for reading my post.

See you in my next blog. God bless…