OMG. Nostalgia! Bought some captain crunch cereal it is a hit of sweet sugary heaven straight to the brain.
Decided to have some Mexican inspired food today. The Fronterra beef taco sauce is a solid meal helper. In fact most of the products I’ve tried from them are pretty solid offerings. Had some lovely beef taco meat with peppers and salad. Pretty easy to put together. Yea, had to sneak the pool into the shot.
When Pepsi gets into the avocado toast game, it’s no longer hip and cool. Which means, it is perfectly suited for me! It was pretty tasty, added scrambled eggs and some cherry tomatoes to give the experience a little more.
How to make microwave scrambled eggs: Break egg in bowl, add teaspoon water, beat, microwave 1 min, give it another stir. Done!
I’ve been totally craving gyros and haven’t been to a restaurant in ... gosh... a year? Low and behold the local grocery store sells sliced gyro meat. Amazing. Whipped up a grain bowl with creamy also store bought tzatziki sauce. It was heaven! Definitely going to have to do that again.
My mouth is watering just thinking about this:
I was craving something familiar and decided to make egg drop corn soup with ham and shiitake mushrooms. Wow. It’s been a while and just like I remembered as a kid, but maybe better because of the mushrooms and shallots. I have been in love with shallots lately. They are just so much more manageable than an onion.
Here is the bowl of warm nostalgia with a twist:
Sauté shallots, ham, and mushrooms in oil until slightly caramelized. Add can of creamed corn, fill empty can with chicken broth. Add an of broth to pot. Beat two eggs in empty can. Wait until soup is almost at a boil and slowly pour scrambled eggs into pot while stirring. Season with salt and white pepper.
I wanted trying to make kettle corn from scratch with kernels and turns out, it’s super easy. Just don’t try making it in the microwave and you’re good.
1/4 cup of kernels
3T coconut oil
2.5T sugar
1/2t salt
1. Put everything into a pot, cover with a lid and heat over med/high heat. 2. Shake the pan to keep everything moving and adjust the heat as needed to prevent burning 3. Let the corn do it’s thing and pop away!
I had some leftover beef chuck from a beef carnitas dish I made a couple weeks ago, so I made spicy Korean beef in the instant pot. I served it with brown rice and green beans. Here’s the recipe: https://damndelicious.net/2018/02/21/instant-pot-korean-beef/ Not bad, but definitely not the best. Could not beat how easy it was to prep though!
Continuing the meal prep plus microwave trend...I prepped one of my go-to order at Thai restaurants.
I grabbed a recipe from McCormicks website and used it as a guide.
Marinate the chicken in the red curry paste and brown sugar.
In serving container, put in chicken, snap peas, red pepper strips, and bamboo shoots.
Blend up coconut milk and pour into each serving, add 1t soy sauce and a splash of fish sauce.
Top with rice and microwave for four min. Top with fresh cilantro. Yum!
Decided to try making some scallion pancakes after the kids raved about scallion pancakes that were delivered. Grabbed a recipe off the web, I feel like this is one of those dishes that is hard to mess up. That being said, I was a little lazy and I messed it up.
Letting the dough relax
Rolling out the dough
Fried and ready to eat.
I tried a fish stew recipe this week and made the stew in the instant pot and ladled it on top of portions of raw cod.
I haven’t had Old Bay seasoning in sooooo long, that when I went to pull it out of the pantry, I found it had expired in 2015. I still used it, but increased the dosage. The recipe called for diced tomatoes and I used a can of diced tomatoes. When the stew was completed, it was very watery. I ended up fishing (haha) out most of the potato chunks and using an immersion blender to purée the tomatoes and shallot bits. I ended up with a nice, thick stew to ladle over the cod. Prior to consuming, I microwaved it for 3 min and let is sit to allow the heat to thorough cook the cod. There were a couple times where I had to pop it back into the microwave for 30s.
This is the second recipe I’ve tried from the book “Dinner in a DASH” by Nancy Hughes. Pretty good and worth making again!
I love the concept of Jamaican jerk chicken, but often fear the intense heat that comes with the dish. Well, I found Busha Browne’s jerk seasoning at the local grocery and use it very sparingly to marinate chicken breast tenderloins along with an Island breeze seasoning from my local grocery.
After referencing a couple Jamaican menus on the web, I noticed that jerk chicken is often served with coleslaw. Makes sense, the coolness of the slaw would cut back on some of the heat. So, I texted friend for a recipe and I typically hate coleslaw, but this recipe is worth repeating! I also made up some slaw with Tzaziki sauce because I had some left over. Wasn’t too bad, makes me wonder if I can make a slaw dressing subbing yogurt for Mayo to create a lower calorie slaw.
A long time ago, a co-worker introduced me to a dish called rice and peas. It is phenomenal for such a simple concept. I scoured the web and never found a recipe that inspired me to make the dish. Flash forward a decade and the same friend that sent me the slaw recipe sent me a recipe for rice and peas. I subbed the pigeon peas for black eyed peas and cooked it all together in the pressure cooker. It was a little fail in that I burned the rice on the bottom and it didn’t cook. But my oh my the flavors!!! Here’s a photo of flavor building in process: shallots, tomato paste and bacon.
So, in conclusion, here’s how the meal gets put together and cooked: 1. Cook the rice and peas using rice setting 2. Marinate chicken in zip lock. 3. Make coleslaw dressing 4. Portion rice into meal containers 5. Put chicken on top of rice right before cooking in microwave for 4 minutes. 6. Mix coleslaw salad blend with dressing 7. Top chicken and rice with coleslaw
Delicious and worth repeating!
