Sweet & Sour Pork and Fried Rice

One of my goals for my Bucketlist 2013 is to catch up and continue my blogs..... so after the rave reviews on tonight's supper, I will commence my first welcome back post.



In making March's menu plan, I decided since wrestling season was over, there would be less eating out on weekends and we could get back to some of the special meals we used to do for weekend suppers. One of our favorites is Chinese. Lately we have been going to our favorite Chinese buffets, however money is tight this spring and the freezer is fairly full of roasts and burger. With this in mind I added a variety of homemade Chinese meals to our Sunday menus.

First up... Sweet and Sour Pork

If you have ever been to my Pinterest profile you will know I have around 300 boards highly organized down to the type of ingredient for some meals. On my Asian Meals board you will find this recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken & Fried Rice by Life as a Lofthouse blogger.

Fried Rice

3 cups cooked white rice (day old or leftover rice works best!)

3 tbs sesame oil

1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)

1 small onion, chopped

2 tsp minced garlic

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/4 cup soy sauce

      On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the peas/carrots mix, onion and garlic. Stir fry until tender. Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated! **You could really play around with this rice too! Try adding some diced ham, or green onion :) Yum!

I have tried multiple recipes for fried rice including those on seasoning packets. None have compared to this one. It actually turned out, for one! I didn't have any sesame oil, which I'm sure would have made it even better, but the grape seed oil from WildTree was a very good substitute. I also didn't have any 'just peas and carrots mix', so I improvised with mixed veggies.

 

 

 

 

 

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken

The chicken coating:

3-4 boneless chicken breasts

salt + pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

The sweet and sour sauce:

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbs ketchup

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt

Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs. Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.

For the Sweet and Sour Chicken, I used a pork roast, thawed and largely cubed. It was nice and tender and juicy and breaded nicely just the same. To feed a family of 6 it took the entire roast, so I doubled the breading and sauce recipes. The sauce was neither too bold or too bland, one of the best we have had and I'm thinking I will make a separate batch to keep in the fridge for dipping.

To finish the meal off, we added some hot and sour soup. This was not homemade, we used our last packet of our favorite brand. They no loner sell it in our area. The last place we found it was the Kearney, Ne WalMart, one of the last places I want to spend my time on a trip 'back home'. If you think the Rapid WalMart is bad, Kearney possibly is worse!

 

 

 

 

 

Absolutely every aspect of this meal was delicious. A definite KEEPER!!!!

Where Are You?

To all my wonderful followers,

I apologize for the abandonment. As you likely know, we were pregnant and it was a trying period for cooking and eating. Then on the 26th of May we fund out we lost our baby. We had surgery on the 27th then kept busy with Memorial Day, a garage sale, our anniversary and a 2 week long trip to NE where there was not Internet. You can only spend so long at the library with 4 little boys. I have a whole stack of recipes and an album full of pictures to blog though so worry you not, they will soon come rolling in!

Kandi's Jumbalaya w/ Tortilla Soup

This was a total "I don't want that again, so I am just going to throw some stuff together" item. It was a Wednesday, Mexican night and I have been in that nothing sounds good first trimester mode for a while now. I decided burritos sounded too thick, we had just had ole's and cheese and gauc with chips and apple grande's so I was determined to find something different. A great substitute for Mexican night is always Cajun.

Then I remembered all the Cajun mini meals I had gotten from the frozen section to try and how they'd been wasted ....and my frustration level with food in its entirety rose.

I had found these Zantarans frozen meals that looked yummy and decided to try them out. now....when we go to the register at Wal Mart (I switched back to a checker from self check out a while back deciding that I just didn't have the speed or nich for the grocery clerk business), I always unload my cart by the sections it is organized into, frozen, dry goods, dairy, canned goods, meats, breads and produce, then all non food. Any good cashier will follow this same system when bagging your groceries and it saves you when you get home and go to put it all away. You don't want to forget that block of cheese between your 2 boxes of mac and cheese you shoved into the cupboard.
Well this time the cashier seen the Zantarans and figured it was rice (despite the frozen feel of it) and placed the frozen meals next to the actual rice. When we got home I was in a hurry to put stuff away so we could eat the Papa John's pizza we picked up on the way out the door (our WalMart is awesome like that and has Papa Johns instead of McNasty's). I did the same darn thing! Grabbed the frozen Zantaran's out of the bag with the Zataran's rice and stuck them in the pantry. A couple days later we found this watery stuff all over the pantry shelf and could not place it. Finally it was traced back to the frozen meals who's seal had finally broke and begun to leak. BUMMER! At least they hadn't started to smell yet.

Anyhow, so I decided to take the Zantaran's rice box and prepare it then throw in sausage and mix a bunch of beans together and some veggies and call it Jumbalaya.

Ingredients:
1 box Zantaran's rice
1 can diced tomatoes
1 c celery diced
1 onion diced
1 peper diced
1 can green chilies
1 pkg long roll sausage (I used chedderworst as it was there)
1T cumin
2T Worcestershire





Directions:
In pot prepare rice according to package. Meanwhile in skillet fry sausage with peppers, onions & celery with cumin and Worcestershire. When rice is no longer crunchy add tomatoes (undrained) and green chillies. Finally mix skillet ingredients in. Serve with Tabasco. Viola! Jumbalaya al la Kandi.



I served this with Tortilla Soup. It just wasn't my night, however, as I thought I had seen a can of enchilada sauce in the pantry and it turned out to be chili beans! Apparently the tops of the cans are similar. So after sending Wayne to the store, and him getting all the way to the register and realizing he didn't have his wallet, then asking all the neighbors if they had a can, I decided to make it from scratch!




Enchilada Sauce:

When all else fails, go to AllRecipes.com for any ingredient or meal.
Here is the recipe for Red Enchilada Sauce:
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/red-enchilada-sauce/Detail.aspx

Tortilla Soup:

Gayle's Recipe (Mother-In-Law)

Ramen Noodle Salad

This one came from my mother-in-law. It is another one of those that upon looking at it I thought they were crazy, but then I realized I was the crazy one for never having had it before.

I feel I may have missed exposure to some pretty yummy stuff growing up as my family consists of some of the pickiest folk I have met yet. They do not eat seafood, not even shrimp or walleye or bass. They don't eat many vegetables, we are talking potatoes and corn (which lets face it, are really starches), then they eat raw carrots and occationally some peppers and onions in their omlets, cheese balls or breakfast burritos, but only if they are cooked fully. They turn their nose at spinache artichoke dip and my dad will eat a lb of gizzards with me but not the others.


I have found I rather like all of these things and many more. One such item is cabbage. I have always loved a good runza and created my own recipe when I moved 3 hours away from the closest Runza Resaurant then a few hours further. I have never been a large fan of coleslaw but Wayne holds it in his top 10, so I did find one Kraft brand claw mix I can tollerate. This recipe however, is my favorite side dish for cabbage....



Ingredients:
1 package shredded cabbage or cole slaw mix (1lb)
1 cup slivered almonds
2 packages Ramen Noodles (uncooked)

Dressing:
1 package Ramen Seasoning
3T sugar
3T vinegar
1/2 cup oil


Directions:
Place cabbage in large mixing or serving bowl.
Mix dressing ingredients and poor over cabbage. Toss until well coated. Just before serving add crunched Ramen and almonds, toss again.


It is a yummy picnic treat too!

Mom's Chocolate Banana Parfait

One of the things I remember my mom making for dessert or snack when I was little was warm chocolate pudding, the kind you cook and serve right away. Then slices of bananas on top. I got a hankering for that snack the other day and when I spotted the whip cream spray can from the last birthday party in the fridge, it was parfait time.

I thought for sure this would be a winner for my picky Zach. He loves chocolate pudding, bananas are his all time fav, and who doesn't like whipped cream?

Well his resistance to the idea of new foods instead of animal crackers, peanut-butter sandwiches or graham crackers came out full fledge and he began his tantrum. It wasn't until Luke went to steal it after devouring his own, that Zach wailed and dove for it. He then licked it clean and keeps asking for it every time he sees bananas int he cupboard (they are usually gone within a day or two of buying them bulk).





Lukie loved it sooooo much that it was absolutely ALL over him!

Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich, fruit salad & pine nut hummus w/ relishes

A classmate and old friend, Heather Lambert McQuillan featured this sandwich on her blog and we decided to give it a try...yum! It was an instant approval from Wayne as it had Tabasco in the ingredients. I did not add it into the sauce, however as the boys wouldn't eat it then, but put it directly on Wayne and I's sandwiches and we added some creamy jalapeno sauce by Taco Bell. We used extra large deli tea rolls as buns and it was delicious!

Here is the link to the recipe at Heather's blog:
http://mrsmcquillanmastersmeals.blogspot.com/2011/02/marlboro-mans-favorite-sandwich-with.html

I served this sandwich with a contrasting fruit and vegetable arrangement. The 2 fresh fruits we had gotten this time at Sam's Club were cantaloupe and kiwi, which even offered contrasting colors. One was not quite ripe though and I wish I would have had the camera ready for everyone's faces, including my own, as we bit into an unexpected bitter slice of it. 

I also had been dying to get some Roasted Pine Nut Hummus after trying it on sample day at Sam's last month. Wal-Mart ended up having a small tub of it which was not near enough and rest assured it is on next month's bulk buy list for Sam's. This is another one of those items I was never exposed to when I was little and upon my first taste of a different flavored hummus had vowed never to torture my taste buds with it again, however while starving and grabbing every sample in sight at Sam's a couple weekends ago, I seen baked tortilla wedges with a pinkish orange colored guacamole looking dip and immediately went for it popping it in my mouth before reading what it actually was.

Good thing, turns out I LOVE IT! For those of you less experienced eaters, that is what it was similar too, the texture of guacamole and a taste similar to a mild salsa. I didn't get the baked tortilla wedges (though they were to die for with it) and dipped everything from veggies to tortillas to crackers to chips in it. My favorite next to the tortilla wedges was baked veggie crackers. MMmmmm.

Ranch Ramen

A dorm room creation that stayed!

One night in the dorms we were hungry and had a little bit of left over ground burger, some sauces and some ramen of course! The creation that became was actually pretty decent and has remained on our menu as a side dish. I ditched the ground burger (which that night had made it a meal) and added parmesan cheese instead. We like to eat it with steak as a side dish that takes less time than the medium rare steaks we spend all of 10 minutes on.

Ingredients:

2 packages Ramen Noodles (we use chicken flavor)
1 seasoning packet from Ramen (2 is too salty)
dash or two (1-2T) Worcestershire sauce
dash or two (1-2T) Soy Sauce
2t parmesan cheese
1 cup ranch

Fully cook Ramen, drain, add the rest, stir and serve!