Bacon and Egg Chicken Spring Salad

Every once in awhile, you just feel like eating salad. Whether that lasts just one meal or for weeks can vary by situation or person or availability. I could potentially eat salad every day considering salad really is just a melange of ingredients.

Some people say that putting bacon in your salad is an oxymoron, but really, how else are you going to get carnivores and KIDS accustomed to eating “salad”?! I say, put whatever you like in it if it gets you eating more greens! There’s really no limit to what you can add. If you think about a meal, think about the leftovers, cold, on a plateful of leafy greens. Salad. For example, spaghetti and meatballs. Take a few leftover meatballs, put them on a bed of spinach with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a little parmesan cheese, maybe some sliced black olives. Salad! Leftover Orange Chicken (maybe zap it in the microwave for 30 seconds)? Add it to a bed of greens with a little olive oil, some orange juice, maybe some French Fried Onions or wonton chips…salad!

Here we have our favorites; spinach, steamed broccoli, steamed cauliflower (technically not green, but certainly a veggie!), cilantro, and Spring Mix. Add some protein: boiled eggs, sunflower seeds, bacon; something sweet: golden raisins; and homemade red wine vinaigrette (recipe below) and you have a salad! Simple.

Assemble your own!

Add some leftover seasoned chicken…et voilà! Enjoy!

Photo by M. Sandoval

Homemade red wine vinaigrette: 

½ cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup olive oil

teaspoon lemon juice

teaspoon spicy yellow mustard

salt and pepper

Photo by M. Sandoval

Chili Lime Cilantro Chicken

This is what we’re enjoying tonight. It’s so good, we make it over and over! We’ve even put it in Chicken Tortilla Soup. I seriously thought I posted this one already but in reviewing the page, I realize that it is everywhere but here! Instagram, Facebook, etc. So getting back on track, here we go!

The first or second time I made it, I misread the recipe and put a teaspoon each of all the seasonings and it came out great as well. If you like it warm and extra fiery, then you should definitely stick to the original recipe.

I love this color combination! The spices are so bright and vibrant, as is the cilantro. When blended, it becomes a beautiful green paste that hangs on nicely to the chicken instead of oozing to the bottom of the pot and burning or even turning a drab green.

 

Unfortunately, when I made it for the Tortilla Soup, I covered it up with the spices.

Here’s the lineup of ingredients: Cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper, cumin, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, chili powder.

Photo by M. Sandoval (cropped)

The finished dish pairs nicely with rice. Tonight, it was extra spicy so we shredded it and wrapped it with in some flour tortillas with sour cream and Manchego cheese. Totally delicious! Cheddar cheese, sour cream, and guacamole would have probably been a great addition also (I ate all https://cookingupuneecrivaine.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/mikes-guacamole/ with tortilla chips)!

Use-what-you-have item here for me is the Ancho Chili powder (which the recipe doesn’t specify) and the Bullet. We don’t have a traditional blender, and I prefer to keep the small appliances as minimal as possible especially right now until we find a bigger place with a kitchen right for us.

Chili Cilantro Lime Crock Pot Chicken

East Coast Feel on the West Coast

Since I’ve been out of town, let me change things up a little. This will be a review on a restaurant that I had a great experience in. We went to the coast after taking the kids to the Reptile Expo in Santa Rosa and ended up letting the kids play in the sand until sunset. We were starving by then as it was past dinnertime, and the businesses were few and far between, some already closed for the day.

The internet service was surprisingly functional while we searched the area for a place fitting for our interests and cut out as we ventured out. Luckily, the GPS still worked. We found the restaurant we decided on down the road, clearly marked with large signs, hurrying inside to warm up. The place, Fishetarian, boasted Clam Chowder, gluten-free in fact, which sounded amazing, but we ultimately chose different dishes than one another.

Here you see my cod tacos, likely pan-fried topped with red (and green) cabbage, cilantro, scallions, and their chipotle mayo, avocado slices, and a squeeze of lime juice. I did not add the pico since I can’t eat tomatoes right now and I very much dislike onions (I’m sure it was fantastic, though). I know I was hungry, but these were amazing! Light, tangy, fresh, but filling. I didn’t even notice the scallions! Very good!

I washed it down with a bottled organic iced sweet tea.

This was so cute! The kids both ordered the Grilled Cheese & French Fries (sweet potato fries) which came with cheese fish-shaped crackers and a fish-shaped graham cracker. They had a pint carton of the local brand milk on the side.

Mike ordered the Fish & Chips. Doesn’t that look scrumptious? I believe they use gluten-free panko “breadcrumbs”. He had a cold bottle of ginger beer with his.

*I neglected getting a picture of the Clam Chowder! It was good!

They have quite a selection of bottled drinks in refrigerators taking up one side of the restaurant which seemed to be set up similar to a deli with a line to order, limited bistro seating, and a small retail area which included souvenir shirts (which you can get a free  cup of chowder with any purchase every time you return wearing them from what I understand).

There was an extension with more seating (tables for two) and also outside seating with heaters, but the kids were still trying to warm up as it was. While we waited for our food, we waited for a table to open up inside.

The staff was friendly and kind letting my son ring the “panic” bell and crab bell multiple times as they were closing up and we were finishing up our dinner checking on us every now and then. Most of the other customers had cleared out by the time my son was ringing the bells. The kids had plenty of leftovers preferring to try a little bit of everything on their plates.

Fishetarian reminded me of getting seafood on the northeast coast where it’s particularly cold seemingly most of the year, and a bowl of hot clam chowder is irresistible. I thought it could be a great area to spend summers. That thought was only cemented when I saw the sign outside the door.

Just like Home-Sweet-Home Hawai’i!

 

Mike’s Guacamole

Mike and I have been experimenting with guacamole recipes trying to make the perfect one. Since I moved to Sacramento a year and a half ago, I have rediscovered guacamole, but it seems the more places I try it, the more picky I become about it; especially since I so very much dislike onions, and onions are one of the main ingredients. There is an interesting mango guacamole (ridiculously priced) we found at Mango’s Taqueria & Cantina in San Francisco, but as soon as I crunched into a piece of onion larger than 1/4 inch, I lost my appetite! A mouthful of onion juices…bleck! And the taste sticks for hours.

It may have been Chipotle’s guacamole (in Las Vegas) that got me hooked, but I’ve since noticed that they are inconsistent (Las Vegas and locations in Sacramento, at least) with the size of their chopped onions (salty lime tortilla chips are especially good with their guac, though). Dos Coyotes, although seems mostly made of avocados, it is somewhat pasty which I would venture to say it’s blended rather than mashed by hand (as in the photo above which my son helped with. Good job, kid!) and possibly has water added.

I have been tolerating onions in the restaurant guacamole that we have tried or I have eaten around them. Some restaurants use just onions and lime juice, some just tomatoes and lime juice, but the lime juice always seems to be scarce and the onion a filler since it’s inexpensive but adds some sort of flavor. There are restaurants which use so much onion that you can rarely get a bite without a chunk of onion, a clear example of “you get what you pay for”. A lot of onion is great for those who love onions, but I still would expect a balance in flavors from a restaurant food. With all that said, I do love garlic and shallots having a garlic-onion flavor have made a great substitute for onions in my cooking.

So Mike invested in a molcajete or mortar and pestle (I linked below where we got ours) which works marvelously. We tried the traditional ingredients, and then ventured out using tomatillos, Anaheim peppers, Serrano peppers, and finally bell peppers. Tomatoes have been making my tastebuds swell (which probably has to do with my allergies or immune system), so we’ve substituted red bell pepper for color. It has a milder flavor than the tomatillos which were good, but can overpower the avocado flavor. The abundance of lime juice keeps the guac tasting fresh as well as helping it keep its bright color. Here is his latest attempt which is, so far, my favorite (even my daughter loves it)!

Ingredients:

6 avocados, smashed

6 limes, juiced

3/4 red bell pepper, chopped

One whole shallot, chopped finely

Handful of cilantro, chopped

Pink Himalayan Sea Salt to taste (depending on how salty your chips are)

Simple Fried Eggs

There’s really no excuse for fast food in the morning for me unless I’m going out of town AND I need to go to the store for eggs. I’ve made eggs for breakfast every morning since I was pregnant. I didn’t know it then but I had Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Eggs were the only thing I could keep down in the morning…for seven and a half months. The rest of the day was another story!

Plain omelet, fried eggs, sunny-side up, scrambled…all relatively simple. For fried eggs, start with two eggs, crack them open into your heated (medium-high) pan that is coated with olive oil, breaking the yolks; I usually drag the edge of the shell across them if they didn’t break on their own. Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you wait until you’re done cooking to add salt and pepper (the reason some people have salt and pepper shakers on their dining table), you’re going to have to put up with the gritty feel between your teeth of the salt and possible sneezing fit from the pepper. I’ve watched cooking shows since I was little, religiously when I was in high school and college over 20 years ago. The chefs always add salt and pepper while cooking. If I remember correctly, it’s to “enhance the food’s natural flavor.” I never used to season my food with salt hoping to avoid hypertension later in life, but it turns out I have low blood pressure, so I definitely keep to proper (according to the chefs’ recommendations) seasoning now!

Like pancakes, flip the eggs when the edges dry out. The eggs are done when there is no wet/jiggly parts left. I have bacon on the side which cooks marvelously on one of those microwave bacon plates, one minute per slice for perfectly crisp bacon. The spinach was wilted in olive oil after heating the minced garlic and shallots. This leaves a nice flavor in the pan to cook the eggs.

I recommend cooking the bacon first, then the spinach, and finally the eggs. The bacon needs a little time to cool off; the spinach cooks quickly, and the eggs get cold easily.

Try this and tell me what you think!

Turkey Meatball Phơ

Noodle soup is the perfect dinner for me after a long drive between states. It not only satisfies the I’m-not-hungry-but-need-to-eat-something-before-I-crash-for-the-night-so-I-don’t-wake-up-hungry-and-everything-is-already/still-closed dilemma, but it also does a great job of rehydrating me.

We have our favorite Pho place, but I wanted to try making it at home since I’ve used all of the ingredients before in other recipes.

Finding the right noodles was a little confusing. I’m pretty sure these noodles are cooked by restaurants and then removed from the liquid until they’re ready to serve because my noodles ended up disintegrating in the soup when I tried cooking some flavor into them! It was still delicious, just not as pretty as I’m used to.

Ingredients here are really like a Hot Pot; the amount is by taste. You can find some sort of rice noodles at most grocery stores. I found some dried rice noodles that came in a bag. For the soup, I made six cups of broth using water and Better-Than-Bouillon chicken stock (check the label for the appropriate proportions) and then added my favorite Asian cuisine veggies.

Straw mushrooms

Bamboo

Water chestnuts

Broccoli

Spinach and…

My Turkey Meatball recipe can be found and is also used in the Crock-Pot Beef Stew with dried cilantro added to give it a more Asian than Italian flavor.

Try it and tell me how it goes!

Turkey Meatloaf

Photo by M. Sandoval

Nostalgic. Comfort food. Kid food? American, for sure. My mom made this on occasion when I was growing up which, now that I think back, was nice considering she was born and raised in the Southeast Asia. How nice of her to incorporate American traditions into our upbringing! Don’t you just love your mom?!

My dad showed me how to make my own eggs when I was ten years old. Since then, I’ve been experimenting with cooking. In high school, I made things like chocolate truffles and croissants from scratch and brought them to share (test out?) on my French class classmates. That is about the time I quit drinking soda and eating red meat experimenting with lean meat (mostly chicken, but also some seafood) and low-fat options for recipes.

This meatloaf is different every time I make it since I don’t measure anything for it, but it always has ground turkey to start. As usual, I use what I have and I usually have garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper, eggs, mustard, and some sort of crackers in the pantry. I also add ketchup and Worcestershire Sauce when I remember/have it.

Ground turkey, a package of crackers–crumbled, one egg…

Add ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire Sauce, salt and pepper. Mix together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used dried, chopped onions this time, and my son had a fit (I can’t wait until his palate matures).

Shape and place in baking pan coated with cooking spray.

Drizzle with ketchup, then bake at 350°F for 55 minutes…

Let cool for 5 minutes before slicing.

Approximate measurements for ingredients:

1 1/4  lb ground turkey

1 sleeve of Ritz crackers

1 egg

1/4 cup of water

1 Tablespoon of mustard

1/4 cup of ketchup, plus drizzle

2 Tablespoons of Worcestershire Sauce

½ teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper

Try this recipe and let me know how it goes!

I used this for seasoning ideas. http://www.food.com/recipe/turkey-meatloaf-54752

Filet Mignon

Meat and potatoes. Sometimes you just want a steak. So far, in my opinion, the best place for a steak is at Strip Steak in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas. Their filet mignon is the best that I’ve found. If you can’t make it there, home may be second…if you have a good recipe.

I’ve used the oven before in trying to make a good filet mignon, but this may be better! I found this recipe online and had to adjust it for the size of the filet. In the past, I’ve used meat I found which Walmart sells in a two-pack. Since I wasn’t able to find it for this attempt, I tried a deli wrapped filet mignon that was larger than what I was used to seeing. It might have been six or eight ounces. This was another recipe when I didn’t follow it exactly; I just used the ingredients for an idea on seasoning.

This may have been my first time using the broiler to cook a filet. My garlic caught on fire, but since it was just the garlic burning, I let it continue to cook watching it in the oven in case I needed to grab the fire hydrant, but the fire went out on its own.

Filet seasoning: minced garlic, a coat of onion powder, salt and pepper, olive oil; broiled 7 minutes per side. Similar seasoning on the green beans; salt and pepper, garlic powder, parmesan cheese.

Bacon-wrapped filet. Photo by M. Sandoval

Steamed green beans with parmesan cheese. Photo by M. Sandoval

The veggies were cooked in the microwave, quick and easy. I recommend starting this meal cooking the potatoes first, piercing them (four to five potatoes) several times with a knife and heating them for ten minutes on High Power flipping them after five minutes. Steam the green beans right before everyone is ready to eat. I found a steamer bag of fresh beans in the grocery store produce section near the bagged salads.

Photo by M. Sandoval

Sour cream and onion sounded like a good topping for the potatoes since there’s such a thing as Sour Cream and Onion flavored chips. We usually have sour cream in the fridge for all the Mexican dishes we enjoy (quesadillas, tacos, enchilada casserole, etc.) and we have chives in the backyard garden, so it was effortless.

Let me know if you try this and how it goes!

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/132814/easy-yet-romantic-filet-mignon/

Simple Asian Chicken

It’s not so easy coming up with different meals for the day throughout the day and week with two kids at home who need your attention. Otherwise, we tend to fall into routines here eating the same things each day that will get us to the next meal; what we have found we like that is quick and easy to put together with little thought. Peanut butter and jelly. Ramen. A bowl of cereal. Chips and salsa. Not-so-great eating habits. To avoid that, I try to make sure there’s leftovers from the night before at least a serving, something that I can warm up quickly without effort that will stave off the hangryness and, hopefully, will keep me motivated for creating a new menu for the day.

Lately, I find myself lacking in ideas for dinner. If I don’t have a recipe decided on by lunchtime, I end up putting two pounds of frozen chicken in the Crock-Pot with salt and pepper on High for 4 hours and making a sauce later. It’s better to have something ready than nothing, and sometimes you just have to take it one step at a time instead of giving up completely.

Motivational speaking? Partly. Moms. Sometimes we’re just so tired. When you’re on a roll prepping meals for the week, prep some for the Crock-Pot, put them in gallon freezer storage bags squeezing out as much air as you can, and freeze them for those days the kids are sick, you have house guests, or a project that you anticipate taking up most of your day. I actually write on the refrigerator with a dry-erase marker what I have put in the freezer and then wipe it off when it’s removed/cooked. It’s like a menu. We all have put food in storage containers in the fridge and then forgotten about them! You could put the date, too, and rotate it out before it gets freezer burn. If you have kids who find it funny to erase what you’ve written, you could use a fine-tip permanent marker which erases easily with a quality dry-erase marker. When you’re freezing those meals, it’s best to lay them flat. They chill quickly, but also defrost quickly in a (kitchen) sink full of cold water, change the water as necessary or use running water if you’re in a hurry. This makes it easy to drop in the Crock-Pot in the morning and forget about it.

We actually have two Crock-Pots. Because we use a lot of frozen chicken, it’s difficult to add “chopped chicken” to freezer meals without defrosting it first. That takes up more time and increases the risk of food-born illness to occur. Having two slow cookers, I can easily prepare all the veggies and sauce for the freezer meal and then cook the chicken in the separate pot, throwing the two together once the chicken is done and finally chopped. This is twice the clean-up, though. I generally alternate the use of the pots. I allow the one I used one day to properly cool down before cleaning it and use the clean one the next day.

This chicken came out more flavorful than I expected since it didn’t sit in the sauce while cooking. I also forgot the thickener (corn starch, flour, arrowroot), but I didn’t even notice. This recipe went great with rice and the broccoli was a great companion.

Tried this recipe or any of these techniques? Comment below!

Ingredients:

One pound chicken breast, cooked with salt and pepper (frozen chicken, Crock-Pot on High for 4 hours), chopped into cubes

½ teaspoon ground ginger

2 garlic cloves through the garlic press

Tablespoon of fish sauce

1/4 cup water

½ teaspoon of Better Than Bouillon Roasted Chicken Base

Teaspoon sugar

What was left of my sesame oil, not quite 2 teaspoons

Teaspoon of sugar

Two handfuls of broccoli, steamed in the microwave in a covered container with just enough water to cover the bottom, salt-and-peppered with a sprinkle of garlic powder.

I used the seasoning here as a guide. http://www.dinneratthezoo.com/chicken-and-broccoli-stir-fry/

Garlic Butter Shrimp Pasta

This recipe went so quickly. I used angel hair pasta. The pasta cooked in less than five minutes, so everything else needed to be ready then or the pasta would dry out! Needless to say, I didn’t have time to photograph the steps.

Update! Captured a couple more photos on the repeat using linguini…

While the water for the pasta was heating up, I warmed the oil, added the garlic and red pepper, lemon juice, and then butter. Since I used cooked shrimp, they needed warmed and to have flavor, I wanted to let them sit in the butter sauce for a couple minutes on each side but then I realized I forgot to remove the tail shells!

The pasta went into the boiling water. I’m stressing at this point because the shrimp doesn’t need any more cooking as it is, and my pasta only takes five minutes before I have to drain it, so everything needs to come together as soon as the pasta is done or it will end up being a cold dinner; either the pasta will cool off and dry up (I do put salt and olive oil in my pasta water) before you finish the sauce or the shrimp will be cold while you wait for the pasta to cool (I added the spinach to the cooked/drained pasta to wilt). The butter will burn, the shrimp will overcook, and the pasta will dry out if you get distracted.

Using my tongs, I pulled the shrimp back out of the pan and peeled them before they became too hot to touch. I sifted through the sauce looking for pieces of shell that I thought had been rinsed off when defrosting the shrimp but may have gotten stuck in the sieve. The sauce was very hot at this point, so I swirled it around a little with the shrimp in it and then stirred it in with the pasta. It worked out it in end, but that’s what I get for trying to speed it up and not following the recipe as is which I recommend for the first time you try this one!

Do try it. It’s a little spicy from the red pepper, but it’s that warm, hearty, spicy flavor; not the I-need-a-glass-of-milk-right-now spicy! The lemon and butter are proportioned just right to give this dish the right flavor but neither stands out. It has more butter than other recipes but with the full pound of pasta, seems light; filling but not heavy…and I love spinach! This is a new favorite.

Try it yourself and tell me what you think or if you substituted anything. Here’s the link: