Mongolian Style

Last night I threw this together before heading to the gym, it was such a yummy meal to reward myself with afterward a good workout and it was so easy too! Measurements are guessy, but close. :)

MONGOLIAN BEEF
2 sirloin steaks, sliced thin (or flank steak etc)
1/4 C cornstarch
3 Tbs sesame oil
1/2 tsp minced ginger (or 3 pieces candied ginger)
2-3 cloves minced garlic
1/2 C soy sauce
1/2 C brown sugar
2 Tbs rice vinegar
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (I also added chiles del arbol for some extra heat)
1/2 yellow or red onion, sliced
1-2 C green beans
For the sauce I heated about 1/2 Tbs sesame oil in a sauce pan then added garlic and ginger. After sauteeing for a minute add soy sauce and vinegar, dilute with a Tbs or 2 of water. Add brown sugar and red pepper, bring to a boil for a few minutes then remove from heat. Heat about 1 Tbs sesame oil in a wok or skillet and saute green beans and onion, remove to a plate. Toss meat with cornstarch and let sit a few minutes. Add 2-3 Tbs additional oil to the skillet, add meat and season with salt and pepper. After a couple minutes return veggies and pour sauce over everything. Let it come to a simmer, reduce heat to low and cover until ready to serve. Serve over white rice, who needs chinese take out? :)

Red Poppies

I am feeling so twitterpated today!
I was driving home from a great step class at the gym when I drove by this:

My heart started racing (when it had just finally started to slow down) and I felt like this:

It made me so happy because it reminded me of this:

I guess it was about a year ago that we did our engagements because the same poppies are in bloom again! We drove by this barn when we were looking at houses, I absolutely love poppies and thought the flowers and barn would probably match the dress I was going to make. We took engagements at the barn, kinda funny since they are now our neighbors and we just snuck around there taking pics on their property..

We also went downtown:

and even took pics at our new place which we had only just put an offer on...good thing they accepted it or it would have been kinda sad pics.

To top it all off we are watching the bachelorette and they perform at the lion king, one of my favorite musicals. Its the musical Brad and I went to after he proposed, we had such samazing seats. All I can say is that I can feel the love tonight!

Paella y España

My brother Aaron is touring around southern Spain right now with his wife, I'm sooo jealous. I guess he deserves it since he served a mission there for 2 years. I just lived there for 2 months doing a geneology internship with my fav cousin Ann, but I still like to pretend like I have some claim to Spain. I wouldn't root for them in the world cup when playing USA or Chile, but against anyone else I'd definitely be on Spain's side. :) Man, I know way too much about sports these days...
I actually spent a couple of layover days in Spain last August when we were on our honeymoon, but it doesn't really count since we barely got outside of Madrid. (Still gotta go back, right?) I really wish I could recreate all of my favorite trips so that I could do them with Brad, and visa-versa, he's probably travelled more than me!
Anyways, I was telling my brother about all of the fabulous things I recommended for them to do (sure, he lived there forever, but you don't really get to play much on a mission-we got to travel all over Spain and Portugal) and it made me think about how much I love Spain. The flamenco dancing, romantic scenery and music, awesome history, fusion of cultures, great food- its a pretty magical place. People always like Italy more, but Spain seemed so much less commercialized to me. I like that, it's raw.  And the food- chocolate y churros, paella, tortillas españoles, magnum doble, and tapas for dinner each night. How luckly I was back then to have such a crazy metabolism.
I'm a scrapbooker, if I'm bored sometimes I'll go upstairs and pull out an old scrapbook to remenisce. I decided to take a pic of a page, then I got carried away. No worries, it's only like 5% of the Spain book...

What I'm actually getting at is that I got a Williams & Sonoma paella pan, made in Spain, for $3 at DownEast Home! The combo of that and having my brother in Spain right now inspired me to make paella for our weekend date w/ my old roomie Eun-Jin and her husband. They got married 2 days after us! We had fun complaining about sports and how our husbands shouldn't try to multi-task with their phones so much while they drive. There's always something comforting when other people can relate to you.

PAELLA
1/2 C olive oil or so
2 chicken breasts, cut in chunks
3 chorizo or hot italian sausages, browned on the outside and sliced
12 large shrimp, (peeled and deveined)
(lobster/crab/scallops/clams or any desired seafood, I just did big shrimp)
3 cloves minced garlic
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and cut into thin strips
1 C green beans
1/2 C artichoke hearts, sprinkled with lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp cumin
2 C med grain rice (valencia/bomba)- I actually just used jasmine cause I had it, but I'm gonna try sushi rice next time.
3-5 C chicken stock (I always save my homemade stock and freeze it)
1 large pinch or 1/4 tsp saffron (I got it cheapy in Morocco, I love saffron. You could just use turmeric though)
1/2 C peas
Lemon wedges, to garnish
Heat 1/4 C olive oil in paellera (you could prob just use a large saute pan, you just wouldn't be able to put it in the oven)  add chicken- season with salt, pepper, paprika, rosemary, thyme and cumin. Brown on all sides (no need to cook through). Set chicken aside. Add more oil, then add onion to the oil and saute a few minutes, then add tomato, peppers, green beans, artichokes, and garlic. Add rice and saute a couple minutes, add garlic salt and pepper. Pour in simmering broth and stir in saffron. Arrange chicken mixture, chorizo and shrimp on top. (I pushed the shrimp down so that they would cook good) Let boil 2 min, then reduce heat to a simmer. Move pan around to cook evenly, but don't stir rice, add more liquid if needed. It should take about 20 min to cook the rice through. After 10 min add the peas. My motto was do what you gotta do to cook the rice- I put it in a 350 oven for a few minutes, and turned the heat up on the burner for a couple minutes at the end to get the desired socorrat, golden brown crust on the bottom. I kept checking w/ a spoon to make sure it didn't burn. (if it starts burning just add more stock) Cover with foil and let rest 10 min. Sprinkle lightly with lemon and garnish with the wedges.

Brad took this picture of leftovers to make fun of how I always make too much food:

I made these yummy molten lava cakes for dessert: (unrelated to Spain)

Adios for now España!

Sunday is a Cookie day

My friend Emma is in nursing school with me and loves to bake, so naturally I follow her blog faithfully. A while back she posted about these amazing cookies from this website. I've been dreaming about them ever since and today I finally made them. Even with my high expectations, they did not dissapoint. You can almost see how yummy they taste in this pic:

Happy Sunday!

Bachelorette Food :)

I wish I could have gone to my friend Heather's bachelorette party this week. Oh, not hers, it's the TV show. I've never gotten into the bachelor/bachelorette series, but I couldn't resist giving it a try since Heather has been making a girls night for the show each week. It's kinda a silly show, but its been fun having a girl's night every week. (too bad for 2 weeks I'm doing 12 hr psych rotations instead of eating and watching TV w/ friends)
Heather made this yummy, easy pulled pork which she calls "Christy's", but I call it "Heather's" since shes the one who introduced me to it. You can't beat something yummy with only 3 ingredients, so I had to make it myself and share.
Now I didn't have a pork roast on hand and didn't decide I wanted this until an hour before dinner tonight... so I just boiled 2 chicken breasts for 10 min, shredded them, and added them to 1 C of the mango salsa with 1/2 C of brown sugar. (I brought the salsa/sugar to a boil in a sauce pan first) I let it all simmer for a bit, I also added a little chicken boullion. I thought this would taste great w/ chicken and I was right!

Heather's Mango Peach pulled pork (or chicken!)
1 pork tenderloin (or 4 chicken breasts)
2 C mango peach salsa (Costco)
1 C brown sugar
Put it in a crockpot on low all day (or boil chicken), shred meat and serve with nachos, tacos, quesadillas etc.

yum!

the next day I made the meat into cafe rio-esque salads:

Breakfast Burrito

Brad challenged me to make dinner for 2 people and I almost did it yesterday! I don't know exactly why that's so hard for me. Maybe because its easier to cook for 4 and then we can have the leftovers the next day for our lunches. Problem is lunch portions should really be smaller, and Brad tends to eat a bit more than 1 portion at dinner so I never know quite how much to make.  I think of that when I pull out some giant hunk of meat from the freezer and somehow decide it makes sense to just cook it all...

Anyways, I love making breakfast burritos! They make a great weeknight dinner or special breakfast. I assume my version is a bit healthier than Beto's... (they use deep fried french fries and are a bit greasier)

BREAKFAST BURRITOS
1 C hashbrowns (or 1 potato cut into julienne strips with this amazing tool)
4 beaten eggs, + 2 Tbs milk
1/3 16 oz pkg chorizo
5 strips bacon
1/4 onion, chopped (or 1 tsp onion powder)
1/2 C sharp cheddar cheese
salt/pepper to taste
tortillas, salsa, sour cream
Cut bacon into small pieces and fry in a pan. Once cooked, set bacon aside onto a paper towel and drain some of the oil from the pan. Add chorizo to the same pan and fry until slightly browned.  Add onion and hashbrowns and only turn around periodically so they have a chace to brown, add salt/pepper and a little olive oil if needed. (I've also cooked the potatoes in the oven just like I do for oven fries only cut ito juliene strips.  Once the potatoes are cooked add eggs to the pan and stir, when the eggs are almost done return bacon to the pan and add cheese unil just melted. Spoon into warm tortillas and top with salsa and sour cream, or ketchup.

I folded mine into a cute little burrito, Brad's was too overstuffed for that!