Butter Garlic Shrimp w/ Snow Peas

To make this super delicious seafood meal is super duper simple. All you do is heat up about 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter and add about 4-5 minced garlic cloves. Once lightly browned, add about a pound of shrimp (make sure it's somewhat dry and not soaking wet beforehand). Cook for about 4-5 minutes on medium high heat. Once it's just about finished cooking, throw in your snow peas and let cook for another minute or two. Serve with rice. Om nom nom nom.

Spinach Burger

This is pretty much the same thing as last night's dinner, but with spinach leaves instead of lettuce. Also, mustard honey was used for a bit of a sweet and tangy taste. I'd say it adds a bit of a sophisticated touch to a regular american burger.

Burgers!

The secret to awesome burgers is to use fresh ground beef. To season, only pepper and salt was used. Grill to your desired temp and enjoy between buns with a slice of cheese, couple leaves of lettuce and a big ole slice of tomato. These were DEEE-licious!

Quesadillas n Corn

Quesadilla with shredded colby cheese, chopped cured meat and a bit of cilantro.

Corn!

Quesadillas n Corn! :D YUM

DIY Yogurt

You'll need 4-5 tbs of store bought plain greek yogurt with live cultures and a half gallon of 2% milk.

1. Bring the milk to boil, then pour into a slow cooker (or a non-metal container) to cool around 110 degrees F.

2. Add the 4-5 tbs of yogurt. Cover with lid and cover with towel so that it'll retain its heat. 

3. We let ours sit over night.

The next morning, it looked like this:

Then it was strained through a cheesecloth to get rid of excessive liquids: 

We let it drain overnight as well.

I forgot to take a picture of the end result but it looked like the store bought version and tasted the same, however, the thick n creamy texture was a bit lacking. For flavor, bf loves to mix it with jam. Honey works too.

Potstickers

Potstickers for dinner! What can be more delicious than that???? Okay, there are lots of other foodie stuffers that are just as good, but man, these are definitely a fav of my ours. Either take homemade frozen dumplings/jiaozi or store bought version (doesn't matter). Heat a nonstick pan on medium-high heat and add a bit of oil. Try to evenly coat the pan, then place your frozen dumplings on. Add 1 cup of water (watch out! heated oil will make the water splatter) Then cover until the water is just about gone, about 5-7 minutes. Let it your dumplings brown, about 1-2 minutes. I like them browned on all sides so I try to flip them once they're browned on one side.

Tuscan Vegetable Soup

This delicious "soup" was a spinoff of the original Tuscan Vegetable Soup. If you want to keep it vegetarian, obviously, just don't add meat or actually follow the directions. But this is what I did to make it a more complete meal:

1. Heat the oil in a large soup pot. Add the garlic, then the onions. Caramelized the onions til soft and nicely browned.
2. Add the carrots, celery, zucchini, salt, pepper, dried thyme, and dried rosemary. Cook til the veggies are somewhat tender, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the water and chicken bullion and tomatoes. Bring to boil, then simmer.
4. Add the beans. (I mashed about 3/4 of my beans because I'm not a big fan of beans)
5. Add pasta into your soup and boil til al dente (lazy way) or cook it separately al dente then add it to your soup (proper way, supposedly).
5. Add the cilantro and some spinach leaves.
6. Best if served immediately. Add a couple slices of delicious meat for a wholesome meal!

1 cup of dried black beans - seasoned and cooked beforehand (becomes 2 cups)
1-2 tablespoon canola oil
1 brown onion, chopped
4-5 cloves of garlic, minced
4 carrots, sliced
4 stalks of celery, sliced
1 small zucchini, sliced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 pinch of dried rosemary leaves
6 cups of water
6 tsp of chicken bullion
2 tomatoes from the vine, diced
1 cup dried pasta
2 tbs of fresh cilantro, chopped
spinach leaves

London Broil Roast n Salad

Boyfriend made another roast with a piece of london broil. It turns out that the term London Broil is very confusing so in this case, it's just a piece of lean meat with a dry rub consisting of olive oil, lightly salted with lawry's salt and kosher salt and lots of freshly ground pepper. It was then broiled for about 15 minutes and then baked until internal temperature reached 135 degrees F.




Then serve with side of salad! And you've got yourself a pretty wholesome meal! Mouthwatering and savory at its best!

Fried Rice

the way fried rice was originally made... with lots of leftovers!

We've got the last of the leftover fried rice mixed with a couple of leftover chinese sausages and some leftover pieces of steak. We just added more meat. Guys like meat, right? :)

Banana Choconut Bread

The recipe that I usually use can be found from a previous post: here. However, this time, for the wet portion, I mixed 3 mashed old bananas, 2 eggs, 1/2cup of honey, 1/6cup of oil, and lots of nuts and shredded chocolate (choco chips merely went in the blender). Add the dry portion (flour mix) to the wet portion. Place in glassware and bake in the oven at 350 degrees F. Bake until nicely browned and until you can place a toothpick/chopstick in the middle and pull out cleanly. This version turned out to be quite decadent and moist and finger-licking good with all the chocolate pieces!!

Ground Turkey and Sausage Fried Rice

Scrambled eggs, the last of the turkey sausage onion combo, chopped green onions.

Mixed with chopped broccoli and brown rice and a bit of soy sauce and black pepper.

Ta-da! A mountain of palatable savory fried rice. Mm-mmm gooooooooooooood!

Burrito Plate

Pretty much whatever you put in a burrito goes into the burrito plate. It's a plate because if we made bowls out of our tortillas it'd be pretty small. That and it was easier to brown the tortillas to act more like a plate. We made more ground turkey and sausage meat with chopped onions and seasoned with lawry's salt. We ended up eating it as if it was a taco though.... and it was a very messy but deliciously savory burrito plate.

Strawberry Banana Milkshake

About 10 frozen strawberries, two bananas, about a 1/3cup of greek yogurt and a half cup of milk (not shown) as well as 5-6 ice cubes (also not shown) makes 3 heavenly cool cups of strawberry banana milkshake.

Mmmmmmmmm!!!!

Turkey Sausage Quesadillas

These quesadillas were once again made in a waffle-maker. It's kind of slow if you need to feed a family of 3 or more though. Nevertheless, it's quite delicious. Bf cooked and seasoned ground turkey with ground sausage together along with some chopped onions. Place rice, beans, corns, lettuce, cheese, ground turkey n sausage etc for your meaty-licious quesadillas!

And enjoy!

Hearty Chicken Salad

We had a couple of chickens leftover and decided to make this delicious chicken salad! Made with chicken pieces, black beans, halved cherry tomatoes, slicked cucumbers, halved olives, canned corn and green leaf lettuce. It's pretty nice have meat in your salad every now n then. :D

More Chimichurri Chicken

More chicken cooked the same as last night's with plain salad with jalepeno ranch dressing and a side of frank's hot sauce with a bit of ketchup for a spicy kick. Another enjoyable dinner!

Chimi Chicken n Salad

This chimichurri sauce was bought from Nonna's Empanadas for a buck. A friend of mine introduced me to this. It's pretty freaking delicious and I now want to try n make my own. It seems simple enough... maybe for a future post.

We cooked our chicken the way we normally do. Brined overnight in salt and sugar water. Then baked in cast iron for about 40 minutes or until internal temp reaches 165 degrees F. This time we added the chimichurri sauce over the chicken as well. Our chicken was very nicely roasted on top.

This meal was truly delicious! We also had extra chimichurri sauce on the side. The sliced green stuff on the left are cucumber strips followed by sliced vine tomatoes over a bed of lettuce with a little leftover mango salad. soooooooo good. sooooooooooo tasty! :D

Peanut Butter Banana Nutella Sandwich

This is exactly what the title is and no more. Pretty yummsters! I think I'll add strawberries next time...

Mango Veggie Salad

Mmmmmm, this was extremely delicious and outta this world because we have never had a mango salad before!

The recipe for this salad includes:

2 tsp canola oil

2-3 clove garlic, minced

1 canned kernel corns

1/2 brown onion, chopped 

2 mangos, diced

1 cup of black beans

1 colored bell pepper (I used yellow)

3/4 of a box of halved cherry tomatoes

1 cucumber, chopped

2 tbs fresh cilantro, chopped

3 tbs lemon juice

1 generous dash of cumin powder

1/4 tsp kosher salt 

Heat a frying pan up with the oil and minced garlic. Once garlic is browned, add corn. Once corn is slightly browned, set aside. Then brown the onions til it's soft and somewhat transparent. Mix with the corn n garlic. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Then serve.

For the original recipe, go here.

This turned out to be a pretty good looking and great tasting mixed salad with just about everything you can  put in a salad. Each bite was different yet always delicious. So delicious, it definitely does NOT need any kind of dressing. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... I definitely want more everytime I see this. You could also put the salad in a corn tortilla and top with salsa verde. It's pretty freaking delicious too (according to my bf and pops).

Leftovers

Sooooo, the noodles in our stew overexpanded and soaked up all the broth. I figured the best way to make use of it is to turn it into a casserole. So I placed our lamb stew into a casserole dish and topped with bread crumbs n shredded cheddar cheese. Heat in microwave til hot, then broil for a nice crispy top. Then top with more cheddar cheese. Turned out pretty good! Wish I had more bread crumbs for the top though.

Heat leftover salmon in frying pan. Add a bit of oil or pat of butter beforehand. Then place on top of a serving of the old lamb stew turned casserole dish... teehee. Purty yumsters!

Broiled Salmon

Raw Salmon with skin on one side                    Lemon Zest

With the recipe taken from food network, we used 1/3c brown sugar, 1 tbs lemon zest and 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper and placed them in a food processor until well blended. Then spread the mixture on the salmon and let the salmon sit for about 40 minutes. Then place in oven to be broiled until nicely browned.

Ta-da! This was super scrumptious! We will definitely do this again. sooooooooo gooooooooooooooooood!

Lamb Shank Stew

                              Lamb Shanks (on your left) in a Lamb Shank stew (on right)

We put these tiny chopped up noodles in, which ended up sorta looking like expanded rice. This dish tastes better than it looks. It was served with sliced sourdough bread dipped in olive oil. yumyum! This is pretty much a spinoff of the Beef Bourguignon recipe.

NY Steak n Salad

NY Steak with Salad. Easy NY Steak recipe can be found here. Salad is just green leaf lettuce and chopped tomatoes with sliced cucumbers on the side. What a pretty yummy dinner! :D