Easy Beef Stew (in a Slowcooker)

The list of stuff you need are:

1-2lbs Beef
Salt and Pepper to Season
2 cups Red wine
8 tsp Beef Bouillon
8 cups Water
3-6 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 Onion, chopped
8 Celery Stalks, chopped
8 Carrots, peeled and chopped

1. Chop up your beef into 1" cubes. Season with salt and pepper. Sear on all sides. Then place them into your slowcooker.
2. Pour in 2 cups of any red wine you like. Cheapo wines work just fine too.
3. Add in 8 tsp of beef bouillon and 8 cups of water. (Or 8 cups of beef broth.)
4. Add in your smashed garlic, chopped onion, celery and carrots.
5. Cook on high for 6 hours and when the beef is tender.
6. Serve with rice or pasta.

Happy to say we got compliments on this easy peasy stew. :D

Macaroni Salad

A couple of weeks ago, my dad asked for macaroni salad. I said sure... when I get the ingredients. I finally have them all. It's quite easy to make, just takes a bit of time. Here's what you need:

3 cups uncooked pasta (this time I used mini penne as I tend to change it up)
2 big roma tomatoes (~1 cup)
3 carrot sticks (~ 1 cup)
2 celery stems (~ 1 cup)
1 cup frozen peas
3 boiled eggs (~ 1 cup)
1 can of spam
1/2 cup mayo
salt n pepper to taste

1. Boil the pasta first before you chop anything!! That way the pasta will have time to cool off.
2. Then chop up everything!! (If you haven't any boiled eggs, boil them second, then chop everything).

3. Just mix in all your chopped foodies into your pasta, including the spam.

4. Add in the mayo and mix well. You could always add more if you are a mayo lover. I tend to add only a little bit of mayo and then when I serve it, I either mix in more mayo (cuz it looks like it dried out) and/or some ranch or blue cheese dressing for added flavor.

Om nom nom.... I added another dollop of mayo and some black pepper for tasty. Mmmm

Handy to have these:

Pyrex Glass Measuring Bowls, 4 cups (Google Affiliate Ad)

Denby Wooden Spoon (Google Affiliate Ad)

Whole Salmon

We bought this baby 2-3 pounder salmon to celebrate an upcoming new year. Supposedly, some asians eat fish the eve of a new year and leave some left over to bring prosperity and good luck for the new year the next day. We just bought the salmon cuz we saw them at a market. heh.

Chop up some veggies and slice up a couple of lemons.

My hubby re-descaled the salmon to ensure a less scaly salmon (since the supermarkets don't really de-scale their fishes completely). Then, it was stuffed with the lemon slices. The fish was also rubbed well with red and white hawaiian salt with garlic powder and pepper and coconut oil (the white gunky stuff is the harden coconut oil). Top the fish with butter so it'll melt over the fish and make it even more tastier. Add the chopped veggies on the side of the pan to catch the fish drippings. Salt and pepper them lightly.

Bake in preheated oven of 400F for thirty minutes. 

Serve on a plate. We ate ours with some rice and made up coconut gravy. The coconut gravy was somehow made with coconut flour, butter, white wine, water, heavy whipping cream and salt n pepper... maybe some other stuff too? We were trying to make a keto-friendly gravy. It wasn't great by itself, but man, it went really well over rice! We need to figure out what we did and make it again!

Leftovers

Everything you see are leftovers, except for the rice. That was a new batch.

We mixed the ground beef n eggs with the short plate and cucumbers. Not shown were the added dashes of Chipotle's Smoked sauce. And some pickled daikon and carrots. This meal was very savory and tasty. Love it! (I think the pickled daikon and carrots make everything taste better though).

Beef n Cucumbers

Here we have short plate mixed with julienned cucumbers, picked daikon and carrots and brown rice topped with furikake. The beef and cucumbers were an interesting mix at first, but it turned out  well (but still not one of my fav).

Pork belly, Kimchi, n Daikon

all on a bed of lettuce. Totally yumsters!

Pickled daikon and carrots

Chop up one part carrots, one part daikon into thin strips. Cover with water. Add 2 tbs white sugar, 3 tbs salt and 3 tbs vinegar. Taste till desired flavor and add ingredients as needed. Let sit for at least 1 hour or until you can bend the strips of daikon/carrot in half without breaking. Refrigerate.  

Then eat your heart out!

MMMMM - so deliciously sweet and sour and savory all at the same time! It's the best side dish one could ask for!