Beef Yakisoba

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Georgina

Beef Yakisoba

Ingredients
½ head green cabbage
1 medium yellow onion
2 medium carrots
1 small crown broccoli
2 inches fresh ginger
1 # beef flank steak
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 (3 oz.) packages ramen noodles- season packets discarded
seasoning packets discarded
1 tsp sesame oil (optional)
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp ketchup
1-2 Tbsp sriracha hot sauce (depending how hot you like it!)
1 Tbsp sugar

Instructions
Before you begin, prepare the meat and vegetables for stir frying. Peel the ginger with either a vegetable peeler or the side of a spoon and then grate it with a grater or zester. Peel and grate the carrots or just cut them up like matchsticks. Remove the core from the cabbage and cut into thin strips. Slice the onion into thin strips. Cut the broccoli into bite-sized pieces. Slice the flank steak into thin strips.
Begin boiling a medium pot full of water for the noodles. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the grated ginger, saute for about 30 seconds to one minute (its okay if it sticks to the pan but don’t let it burn). Add the beef strips and cook until they are no longer pink (about five minutes).
Once the beef is cooked through, add all of the vegetables. Stir and cook until wilted (about 5-10 minutes). Meanwhile, once the water boils, add the noodles and cook just until tender (2-3 minutes). Drain, return to the pot (with the heat turned off) and toss with the sesame oil to keep from sticking.
In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, ketchup, sriracha, and sugar.Stir until the ketchup and sugar are dissolved. Pour the sauce into the skillet with the chicken and vegetables with the heat still on medium high. Add the noodles, stir to coat everything in the sauce, and heat through (just a few minutes).

Soooo delicious and mildly healthy, LOTS of veggies. Hope you enjoy!

xoxo

Candy Cane Popcorn

Posted on January 12, 2014 by Georgina

Candy Cane Popcorn

Ingredients:
12 oz. of white chocolate, melted (I prefer the chocolate blocks but chocolate chips or white candy melts will work too)
1/2 – 1cup of un-popped popcorn (measure it un-popped and then pop it)
1/2 cup of crushed candy canes(about 10 candy canes)
7-8 drops peppermint oil
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
dash of salt (optional)
Red and Green m&m’s (or any mini candy of your choice)

Directions:
1. Pop your popcorn and make sure to remove all the un-popped popcorn kernels. Place in a large mixing bowl with ample room to mix. (You may have to pop the popcorn in batches depending on how much you make and your method of popping. I did it in two batches.)
2. Melt white chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave. If you are using the microwae, make sure to use it at 50% power. Seriously, it makes a WORLD of difference and you wont turn your chocolate into an unuseable burn blob within a minute….not speaking from experience or anything…….. 🙂
3. Add the peppermint oil to melted white chocolate and stir quickly. Pour over popcorn and mix it so that it is even distributed and all the popcorn is covered. Then pour the crushed candy cane peices and your candy of choice (if you’re using) into the popcorn and mix until it’s evenly all over the popcorn.
4. Spread out on a wax lined cookie sheet or jelly roll pan. Add a dash of salt over the popcorn(optional)
5. Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave(*remember the 50% rule!) and drizzle over the popcorn. Set aside and let the chocolate harden.
6. Break up into bite size pieces and serve /eat it all immediatly (preferred method)/ or store for later.

I am a popcorn FREAK. Seriosuly- could it eat every day. I don’t eat microwave popcorn, I honestly hateeee the taste. I grew up not eating it as my step-dad was WAYYYYY ahead of the game with the absolutely disgusting hazardous toxins that line the bag and seep into the food you ingest….serisouly if you eat microwave popcorn, STOP. Anyway, I love popcorn. This is my first time making a sweet batch of popcorn myself and it turned out amazeeeeeeeeeeeing. I could have eaten this whole thing- almost did but my sister split it with me. lol. Hope you guys enjoy, let me know what you think!

As always, thanks for reading!!

xoxo

Ok- I’m not so great at delicately drizzling the chocolate over the popcorn- my bad. But still deeeelicious!

Stuffed Green Peppers

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Georgina

My first food post! ♥

I made stuffed green peppers. The recipe I adapted it from was for 8-10 peppers, and as it is just me and Jake I cut it in half for 4-5 so we could each have one and then another one for leftovers sometime. Well there was actually way too much stuffing for just 4 peppers…this recipe is definitely enough for about 6 peppers. (depending slightly on pepper size obviously).

Here is what ingredients you will need:

– Peppers(*helpful tip is to make sure that they are stable enough on the bottom to ‘sit up’ on their own so you don’t have spilling peppers! 🙂

– Small/medium onion

– Can of DICED tomatoes(yes the picture is of stewed tomatoes, thats what the recipe called for, but I had to spend time cutting them into smaller pieces and so next time I’ll be using diced)

– 1 can of corn

– 1 pound of ground beef

– 1 cup of rice

-Chili powder, and I threw in some chipotle powder too

– Ketchup

– Cheese to sprinkle on top

What do do:

Cook your rice and set aside. * Look at the bottom of this post for a rice cooking tutorial 🙂
Cut the tops off of your peppers and clean. Set aside
Chop your onion and the tops of the peppers into a small dice
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and boil the peppers for 3-4 minutes until they softened a little bit (as pictured)

Take them out and run under cold water for a second or two and then set aside.
Turn on oven to 350 degrees
Start browning beef, once brown add the onions and pepper pieces until soft
Add corn, tomatoes, 1 -2 tsps of chili powder/ chipotle powder or whatever seasoning you choose.
Add ketchup, about 5 tablespoons-more or less- just to get a ‘stewier’ consistency
Mix in your rice and stir entire mixture together

Here is what my pepper stuffing looked like after I was done:

Pack each pepper tightly with the stuffing and place in a tin foil lined baking dish
Sprinkle the tops with cheese
Bake for 10-15 minutes (I finished with a broil to get a pretty brown color 🙂 )

Here is the finished product:

VOILA! I served this with some biscuits I had left over from another recipe- but would be good with a salad too!

Hope you enjoy & please share with me if you adapt and experiment with this and come up with your own tasty creations!

xoxo

-G

Rice tutorial:

White rice is a 2:1 ratio and brown rice is 1.5:1, so two cups of water for every one cup of white rice and 1.5 cups of water for every cup of brown rice.

-I always rinse my rice before I cook it- particularly for white rice. Usually 5-10 rinses or until the water is no longer cloudy.

-Combine the correct amounts of rice and water in a saucepan(you can add a little bit of oil (canola,veggie,olive or whatever you choose)) bring to a boil with the lid OFF.

-A soon as the water starts to boil, turn the burner to low and place the lid on the pot

-Simmer the rice for 17-20 minutes and ta-da! super simple.

*for brown rice after the 20 minutes is up I remove the pot from the burner but continue to let the rice sit for another 15 minutes before I serve- not sure why but it always turns out better when I do 🙂

easy peasy!

Paint Chip Calendar

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Georgina

Hi!

So I have seen these quite a bit around the internet- both Pinterest and just poking around the web. The brilliant idea of a paint chip calendar. You take an old frame(or new one if you would like- but I love re and up cycling! 🙂 ) and some paint chips(paint card samples or whatever they are called! OK, you don’t buy the paint cards but you acquire them however you do. I went to a hardware store and picked out colors in the same family and just took them(Green of course!). That’s what you’re suppose to do right?! I mean truthfully I did feel a little sheepish taking 20-ish paint chip cards but I think it’s the norm. Anyyyyway- you could choose any colors you like- be it random or all the same or same color family etc… Cut them into squares and put in the frame and use a dry erase marker to write on the glass the dates and days and month and you’re done! Basically that plus scissors and tape are the only materials you need.

Materials:

Old frame with glass intact
Large sheet of paper to cover background of frame
Various assortment of sample paint cards
Ruler
Scissors
Tape

So what I did was:

– Took out the picture originally in the frame and cleaned the glass and such

– Traced the glass size on my large piece of paper and cut that out

– I measured how large my paint cubes could be to be able to fit row of 7 by columns of 5 turned out to be about 1.7′ x 1.7′

– Then I just went to town cutting those squares from the paint samples till I had a few in each color

– Then: (this is the only part that took awhile because I’m anal) but you evenly space and tape down the squares to the backdrop paper leaving enough spacing at the top to write the month and the days of the week

– Insert it all in the frame and BAM! you’re done! You have a gorgeous DIY month-to-month reusable calendar

Here is how mine turned out! (sorry the picture is not good at all but you get the idea!)

Since this picture I've found a marker that writes darker- Happy!

Thats it! Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for looking!

-G

Painted Vases

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Georgina

Hi Again!

So here is another craft project that I recently completed(once more apologize for no tutorial pics or anything as I did this project a couple of weeks ago). I originally saw this idea HERE.

This project actually took a little bit of time because I had the hardest time finding the enamel paint (actually the surface conditioner)that the original idea blogger had used. After some research I determined any enamel or paint designed for glass would work. I found my ‘vases’ (one of them is actually a glass) at Goodwill and the smallest one I got at the dollar store. The paint I ended up using was Martha Stewart Craft paint which I found at Michael’s Craft store and pictured here:

Martha Stewart craft paint with a satin finish. I did not use this color but wanted to show what the bottle looked like.

So while I was shopping for the paint, I had picked out the color “Pool” (number 32014) sort of a aqua-marine/turquoise color and was contemplating doing the vases all the same color as the original blogger had. BUT then I saw the color “Love Bird” (#32051) and fell in love with it. It is a gorgeous corally-red. But then I thought it would be weird to have two one color and an odd man out so I opted for a third color of “Arrowhead”(#32080) which is a basic grey. Now the paint says that after you paint your item (metal,glass,fabric) you need to let it ‘cure'(*still not really sure what that really means) for 21 days. what?!? Maybe if it was for something you were going to eat off of or something like that- but my vases are only for decoration so I knew I’d be fine once they were dry to the touch.

Soooo- to prep my vases I used good ole Goo-Gone to remove the stickers then washed them with warm soapy water and dried, then cleaned the inside of them with rubbing alcohol just so the surface was extra clean and the paint would get great contact. Then the painting began! Sort of messy with the tall one reaching in to the bottom and getting it all over my hands but the others went great. and here is the finished product!

I love painting the inside so that they are still high gloss and gorgeous on the outside!

They were dry within 2 days. & Sorry that pics is a little cluttered/ not great. But they turned out gorgeous I think. I just had the thought of doing another something of this fashion but doing different shades of green. (green is my all time favorite color and most everything I do or choose is green)ha!

Not a lot of direction or detail but it really wasn’t hard at all! Let me know if you have questions at all!

Thanks for reading!

-G