My Favorite New Recipe!

I love Thai food, but I don't like making new Thai recipes. The reason being that you never know if it's going to be drop dead delicious or just drop dead. I'm a white American girl, so while I enjoy the effects fermented fish sauce has on dishes, I'm not quite ready to eat fish sauce straight. (I'll actually never be ready for this) So whenever you make a new Thai dish, it's a bit of a crapshoot. It might be awesome or it might be awful. As I was making this recipe for the first time, I was pretty sure it was gonna be awful. I mean it even smelled bad. I dreaded even taste testing it as I was getting close to finishing. As I drew the sauce up to my quivering tongue, I braced myself for a disgusting fishy nastiness- but instead, I got a delightfully sweet, tangy, spice that can only be described as Thai Food!


Originally I made this stir fry over rice, but as you can see in the picture I tried it with noodles- both were great!


Here's what you do:


First make your stir fry sauce by combining 3 tbsp oyster sauce and Golden Mt Sauce (My Asian Market was out so I used soy sauce which is similar), 1 tbsp of fish sauce, lime juice, and 2 tbsp of brown sugar. Stir this up and set aside. 


I cut up one boneless, skinless chicken breast and sauteed it with four cloves of  chopped garlic and one sliced jalapeno. I added 1 onion completely slivered. 1-2 sliced red and/or yellow bell peppers. Now you can add whatever kind of veggies you love- I've tried zucchinis, mushrooms, and broccoli and they were all really delicious. 


Stir fry all of these ingredients. If you need some extra liquid, add some white wine or rice vinegar. Just a few splashes to keep everything moist. Once your chicken is cooked and you veggies are at their desired softness, you can add your noodles if you're using them. I added just plain old cooked whole wheat spaghetti. You can use whatever you like but the spaghetti noodles were surprisingly complimentary in this and I used the whole wheat so there would be a firmer texture in the noodles.

Now you can pour in your stir fry sauce (don't worry it really will be good!) Mix this up and add a couple handfuls of rudely chopped fresh basil. This is really one of the main ingredients so don't skip it!

Let your basil wilt just a little and serve. You can sprinkle on a little more fresh basil as desired! Oh- it's good!

Jake's B-Day

My husband loves the Fall! And I do too! What's not to love about it? The crisp air, the beautiful trees, corn mazes, pumpkins, high school football (GO PANTHERS), and, of course, Halloween. 

Now, I know Halloween is a controversial holiday. I, myself, never really celebrated Halloween as a child and I certainly wasn't allowed to go trick or treating. Every year my parents, they were children's pastors at the time, would host a huge Hallelujah Night. It was great! Hay bales separated games and activities where I could glean TONS of candy!

As an adult, (yeah, I know, that depends on who you ask) I love Halloween. Not the nasty, creepy, weirdo's Halloween. But the fun, slightly spooky, "Ernest Scared Stupid" kind of Halloween. (Side note- I was very much into all of the ernest movies as a child and when this one came out- it actually did scare the bejeebies out of me. I think that they should have put a warning on the movie because most of us 8 year olds were really not prepared for troll growing, child eating trees.) But, even more than I love Halloween- Jake loves Halloween! Plus he loves birthdays- specifically his birthday. And his birthday just happens to coincide in the same month as (Yep! You guessed it!) Halloween! 

So, we're going to have a Halloween Birthday Costume Party for Jake this year and it's gonna be awesome (hopefully...). Today, at the grocery store I spotted a little magazine filled with Halloween themed food! I quickly flipped it over to see how much it was- $4.99. Deeming that the magazine was not worth my money I decided to snoop inside and see if I saw any intriguing food. I spotted these meringue ghosts that are just so cool! So I repeated in my head over and over, "meringue ghosts, meringue ghosts, meringue ghosts," in order that I could look them up on the World Wide Web when I got home and get the recipe for meringue ghosts for free (thank you Al Gore!).

I hope that you too can enjoy these ghosts. I personally have no idea what meringue tastes like, but I don't care if they taste good- I just want them to scare people! 

Happy Halloween!

Zucchini Fairies

M

My Mom and I (my dad too for that matter) love to garden. And Jake's favorite garden veggie is squash. So, every year I dedicate whole sections of my garden to Jake's squash plants. And every year I get so nervous that I'm not going to have enough. Anyone who's ever grown even one squash plant realizes that's a completely insane fear.

So last year my mom and I came up with the idea of zucchini fairies. Basically, we realized the only way to get rid of all our zucchini was to leave it on people's doorsteps and run away...

*This is of course at the end of the summer when NO ONE wants any more zucchini. ("All we have to eat is this stinking manna...")


I thought it would be fun to compile some lists of what we should actually do with the zucchini. Got good recipes? Post a comment with them. Weird art projects? Post a comment? Come on... it will be fun! Let's see how many awesome ideas we can get!

1. Stuffed Zucchini- (This is Delicious!) Let a zucchini grow really BIG. Then cut it lengthwise. Scoop out the insides. Saute these with a little butter, bread crumbs, a little white wine, some parmesan cheese, and anything else you need to get rid of (old unpaid bills...). Put this mixture back into your emptied zucchini boats and roast in the oven or grill on BBQ until your boat is tender enough to eat. MMMMmmm!

Dinner For Friends!

My good friends Alex and Amanda just had a beautiful baby boy! So, yesterday I put together a little dinner to bring to them.
Menu:
Spaghetti with crumbled  Italian Sausage
Fresh Salad with Balsalmic Dressing
Fresh Bread!

Pretty simple menu. But! I saved lots of money with how I got my ingredients.

1. All of my lettuce was from my friend's garden. (Fresh and really deliciuos)
2. The chives in the salad were from my garden.
3. I got the salad dressing for free (actually I made some money off of buying them) with tips from Here.
4. I got the noodles for free with tips from Here.
5. I used a #10 can of crushed tomatoes from Costco for $2.50!
6. I got a whole loaf of Honey Harvest Wheat Bread from Great Harvest Bakery for free. I cut it in half and sent half to my friends!
7. The ziploc container that carried the sauce to my friends house I got for free (I made money off buying that too!) with tips from Here
8. All in all the entire dinner (which I made enough for my husband and I to partake in as well) probably cost me about $4! Maybe less!

Couponing takes time and a little bit of your brain- but it will literally save you hundreds of dollars...A MONTH! Seriously! Sadly you can't get any of the great deals that I used to make this dinner- but there's a lot more deals out there just waiting to be used by you and I! To get started head on over Here and find out how you can win some FREE coupons to get yourself started!

Crock Pot Yogurt

Summertime is supposed to mean more free time. And even if I don't literally have more free time, when the sun comes out, my brain thinks I do. So, I've been trying new things with all this extra time I don't have! 

One of those things was making my own yogurt from a crock pot. It was awesome and fun! (Not roller coaster fun but fun none the less.) I found the recipe from this cool website which also has lots of other interesting recipes.

I highly recommend reading her schedule of when to start the yogurt- because I was too excited and started mine at 10 at night. This meant I had to set an alarm and wake up past midnight and again past 3am to continue with the recipe. (And I had to work the next morning...I did say it was fun...didn't I?) 

This recipe is cool because it make 64oz of yogurt at a time. Then, you can stick them in the fridge and have homemade fresh yogurt all month long!  Enjoy!

Delicious, Quick, Stromboli!!

Hungry...tired...overwhelmed...and angry? Now your family is also expecting dinner? What to do...

The other day Jake got home from his trip to Colorado. He was tired and hungry. I hadn't gone shopping yet for groceries so I was running through my brain (yes I literally ran through my brain!) trying to think of something to make. Then it came to me! The Heaven's opened and I remembered! Stromboli!

This is a really quick and easy recipe- Plus it's really versatile.

You just take some pizza dough, preferably whole wheat. (I used to make my own till I realized that Winco sells their's for only $1.50!) I happened to have some because I had made pizza about a week before. I only use have a package at a time (because their are only two of us) Roll it out into two rectangles. Spread a small can of tomato sauce on each. Some chopped garlic, dried or fresh basil, and some mozzarella (or whatever cheese you've got) Then I take some broccoli (I got mine from my parents garden) and microwave it in a little water until tender. Spread that all over your dough. And finally put on some salami- this time I only had pepperoni which also turned out delicious. Really you could put any type of veggie in this. I'm excited to try zucchini this summer!
Now, you just roll them up carefully, stick them on a baking sheet and bake at 425 for 20 min. You could probably do a little egg wash on top and get that beautiful shiny dough look- but I was pretty hungry and just wanted to get them in the oven... Delicious!!

Great Potato and Leek Soup

Just made this soup the other day- It was delicious!

1-2 Tbsp Butter
2 Leeks Cleaned and Chopped
2 cloves of garlic chopped
4 or so Potatoes Cleaned and Diced
4-6 Cups Chicken Stock
1/2 Cup White Wine
Dash of Thyme
Salt and Pepper
Spoonful of Sour Cream (I used Fat Free)
1/8 Cup 1/2 & 1/2 (I used Fat Free)
Chopped Green Onions For Garnish

Melt the butter in a pot and add leeks and garlic. Simmer until limp and add white wine. Let that cook out and add thyme, salt, pepper, potatoes and stock. Bring to boil and simmer until potatoes are nice and tender. Use blender or immersion blender and blend soup until desired consistency. (I left some chunks of potatoes). Stir in sour cream and 1/2 & 1/2. Serve with some green onion on top. Easy and delicious!