Cooking: Caprese Salad on Toast

We had a party to go to last night so I was torn between making caprese salad and some Merguez Boulettes (French meatballs) but since the weather was warm, I thought caprese salad would be the perfect thing. In order to have the caprese salad easier to eat, I toasted some baguette slices and rubbed some raw garlic on them. I then topped the toasts with slices of mozzarella cheese, half a cherry tomato & basil. Then I drizzled them with olive oil and twice reduced balsamic vinegar. I hadn't reduced the balsamic vinegar to get it thick enough so I had to pour it back in the pot to let it reduce a couple more minutes before it got syrupy. Before we brought them to the party, I had eaten 3 myself and they were delicious! I'm always amazed at how sometimes simple things can taste so good since I normally love more complicated recipes.

At the Greek Festival

Today we went to the Greek Festival to satisfy our Greek food craving.

Cooking: Quick Zha Jiang Mien

I got this recipe from runnyrunny999 on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXe1LrOiiT0). I love his videos because they're all so candid and funny. Anyway, I've been craving this dish like crazy but the hard part is finding the right ingrediants. It wasn't the produce, meat or noodles that made me wait this long to make this recipe. It was the two bean pastes. In runny's video, he uses doubanjiang & tenbanjiang both of which I would've had to make a special trip to Marina to get. I found the spicy bean chili paste at Lucky but they didn't have sweet bean paste. Instead, I used plum sauce.

OK, so this isn't exactly authentic but it tastes good. Instead of Chinese egg noodles, I substituted shirataki noodles to make the dish healthier. The texture is a little weird but Justyn and I like that we're eating a product that's better for us than straight carbs. IIRC, it's only 40 calories a pack!

The recipe is pretty quick and easy. Plus, once you have all your prep work done, this meal only takes about 15-20 minutes to cook. I'm digging the flavors of my bastardized Zha Jiang Mien and I'll probably be making this for future weeknight meals.

Cards Blog Challenge: Window Card

These past couple of weeks have been pretty hectic and busy for me so that's the reason I was unable to post a submission for last week's challenge. I made myself sit down and crank out a card since I missed making something. I never got around to making a window card when Kristina Werner posted her MACM on May 10th (woah.. that was nearly a month ago!). I used this week's Cards Blog Challenge as an opportunity to do so.

To date, I don't think I've made a monochromatic card and thought it'd look pretty good. I like it :) I didn't have any white brads so I used one of Kristina's old tutorials and white embossed on them. Pretty handy trick! I only had to emboss the brads twice to cover up the original color (orange, blue & purple). I am bummed that my white embossing powder isn't exactly white. Doesn't it look more like a cream color? Oh well, I bought some American Crafts embossing powder in white, so as soon as I'm done with my current stash, I'll start using that.

NAC: Congratulations

I started this card last night but couldn't get the box around the flowers centered. I find that stepping away from a card and coming back to it helps a lot. Tonight it was a lot easier to focus and get it just the way I wanted.

PS - I revisited Lisa Spangler's blog for a tutorial on how to lighten my photos since the lighting set up (non-existant) sucks. I've been playing around in GIMP and her tutorial was super easy to get rid of the darkness in my photos.

Here's a photo so you can compare the two.

Cooking: Chicken Porridge

Today was a chilly and rainy day so for lunch we had some pho. The weather was still pretty crappy when we got home and since Justyn had some leftover rotisserie chicken from some tacos he made last night, I used the bones, salt, pepper, ginger, garlic, green onion & cilantro to a quick chicken stock. I also had the rice soaking while I prepped the ingrediants for the stock. By the time I had the stock simmering I was supposed to saute the rice prior to putting it in our new rice cooker but I got lazy and impatient. I skimmed the chicken stock and got rid of all the scum before draining it. I added the rice to the rice cooker and submerged it 3/4 of the way full and added another 1/4 of the way full with water. It's a little complicated but the results are worth it and to be honest, I don't really have much of a recipe for this dish anymore. You can pretty much wing it with a few basic tips and it'll turn out great.

1) Soak the rice for at least half an hour.
2) Drain the rice and saute it until they're a little transparent.
3) Take the time out to make a nice aromatic chicken broth.
4) Lots of toppings. I used some chopped and rinsed preserved turnip, cilantro, the tops of the green onions, prepared fried garlic & onion, lime juice & finally some baby bok choi. Sriracha & a little soy sauce on the side doesn't hurt either.

What you end up with a nice hot and flavorful bowl of comfort.

NAC: I'm There For You

Look ma! No stitching! Heh.. I was inspired by this cute tank top from Old Navy. I'm actually working on another card that has stitching on it but it's far from being done so maybe I'll finish it up and post it tomorrow.