Stir-frying and a neat breakfast!

Last night I decided to try a stir-fry recipe that a friend pointed out to me. It turned out wonderfully and is something that will be done again in our place.

The recipe is to be found on Heidi Swanson's blog 101 Cookbooks, which is a favorite of mine. It's the Asparagus Stir-fry Recipe. If you have time, look through her recipes, they are great! Don't expect precise measurements, or directions, BUT it's an awesome place for original recipes.

So, it reminded me that I had not talked about stir-fry much. I rarely stir-fry with a recipe since to me, a stir-fry is a "take whatever you have a throw it together" kind of dish. Kind of like a soup. Still there are a few things that I've learned along the way (most of the time the hard way AH!).

First thing to remember is that a stir-fry is all about preparation. You need to make sure that your ingredients are dry, you want to stir-fry, not steam. You also want to make sure that the size your cut your ingredient into will insure an even cooking.

Here I am cutting Tofu:


Another thing about Tofu is that you want to drain it and press it well. Wet Tofu is mushy tofu, and there's nothing I hate more than mushy tofu in a stir-fry. Yuck!

Draining, well, you drain the water... DUH! Pressing takes a little time, but it's totally worth it.

1- I put my block of tofu on a few layers of paper towel, folded the paper towel over to cover the tofu, put a heavy book on top or a plate.

2- Turn after about 20 minutes, let sit another 20 minutes or so.

3- Remove from the paper towel and cut into shapes. It's also a good prep to marinate tofu to bake!

So after this hopefully helpful tofu lesson, lets get back to stir-frying:


Note that not only do I prepare everything in advance, but I have everything within reach. That's very important because once you start, everything happens really fast!

I use a non-stick wok because I want to use little oil (I do use some though!) and I hate cleaning. it's that simple. Purist will say that you need to use a "real wok", to them I say whenever you offer to come and clean for me, I will.

Cooking is where the magic happens, your wok has to be hot, and things need to keep moving.


You don't want to overcook the vegetables, they just have to be crisp tender which is why you usually cook the meat/tofu first, and then take them out, cook the veggies, and add the proteins back in at the last minute.

So there you have it stir-frying for the clueless (like me) who didn't know a thing about it. ;op

I cannot leave without bragging a little about this morning's breakfast. I've been in an oatmeal phase, but today I just didn't wanna. I looked in the fridge and found inspiration in there.

Here's my breakfast:


Looks neat doesn't it? It's nothing fancy, leftover couscous, chopped spinach, red bell pepper, and a lightly scrambled egg (which was supposed to be an over-easy egg, but shit happens He he he).

It was delicious, and I think pretty. I just had to brag a little!

Be good n stuff!

It's Wednesday!

It's Wednesday and I got to go back to the Farmer's Market at the Civic Center. As much as I love the Embarcadero Farmer's Market (Tuesday and Saturday) at the Ferry Building, it's not a place that I can afford to shop at every week. After asking a few people, and looking it up on Yelp.com, I decided to give the "Loin Market" a try.

I got myself a new smaller basket (easier on the bus), added a Trader Joes Shopping bag (those are the BEST!) and off I went.

Now the Civic Center is pretty much in the Tenderloin. Today I walked from the Weight Watchers Center on 1st street to the Farmer's Market. I swear you walk on Market Street, and it's like 5th Street is a gateway to another world. A very sad messed up world. San Francisco has two speed, full tilt and not going anywhere. :o( I could go on, but that is not the subject at hand here...

Back to the market:

That's about the nicest spot in the entire thing. Yeah the place stinks a little, some dude is selling live chickens from the back of a truck, and the fragrance coming out of that truck gives a whole new vibe to the neighborhood.

The first two times I went (these pictures are from the first time I went actually) I went in the morning, every stand was full, the crowd was very nice and tame. Vendors were happy and willing to talk, explain, make some deals... If you can, go in the morning it's much much nicer.

Today I went in the afternoon, just before closing and found a very different market. There were a lot of homeless people begging and getting in troubles. There was also more people who were there just to hang out. Lets just say that the food wasn't the center of attention. There were also a LOT of pickpockets hard at work.

Doesn't sound too interesting does it? I love the place! Just need to go in the morning. The prices are a lot cheaper than the Embarcadero (or the Sonoma County Farmer's Market I must say) and you find a lot of produces that aren't that easy to find usually. Lemon grass in huge bunches, some sort of squash that I have no clue what they are.


I like this little herbs and vegetables plants vendor. So funny, if you're buying, you can't find him, if you aren't, he's all over the place!

My husband's ideal hangout! The Mushroom stand! They have everything and anything there. I haven't bought anything yet (cause my husband won't LOOK at mushroom, much less eat them), but I'm planning on experimenting a bit soon.

So the Market goes all the way to Market Street. The closer you get to Market, the higher the price. It's really funny, the oranges go from 65 cent/lb to $1.25/lb as you go.

The stand you see on the left here (above) is my main stop. Not sure his stuff is organic, but it's cheap, and tasty, and the guys working there are easy going (again, better in the morning!).

Here's what I bought on my first trip! All that for about $20 and I could have saved more, I didn't know the different stands.

So, this market is my weekly stop. Yes it's dirty, stinky, and the crowd there is... original, but the prices are unbeatable and if you go in the morning, the vendors are very helpful and "happy".

I also like that the vendors aren't pushy, and that the crowd isn't impatient. I like to pick my own veggies and take my time choosing, that's part of the fun of going to the Farmer's Market. At the Ferry Building, you get the memo pretty quick to either buy or get out of the way.

Warning: If you go to that Farmer's Market, check your belonging. Also, stay away from the fountain as it's a hangout spot for the "Loin crowd".

Be good n stuff!!!

Sushi Bowls, Oh my!

Doing some reading, I found out that you can buy very decent precooked unagi frozen at Asian market. My husband and I both LOVE unagi, so I stopped by the little market in Petaluma called "New Asian Market" at the North end of McDowell (by the OSH hardware store).

I bought all sorts of stuff there, I always do, and came home to make sushi rolls.

I put the brown sushi rice (get that at Olivers! in Cotati) in the rice cooker, and started looking at what I had to work with. I had plenty of nori, vegetables and of course a big pack of unagi.

I had two problems though: 1- I was too tired to bother with rolls; 2- in rolls, it's hard to really taste the unagi enough to know if it's a keeper.

Instead I decided to make "sushi bowls". I've made sushi bowls before to treat myself for lunch, but my husband had never seen them so I thought I'd surprise him with it.

I seasoned the rice the same way you would for sushi, 1/3 cup of rice vinegar, 2 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp miring and about 1-2 tsp salt for 3 cups of uncooked rice. I mixed the whole thing, and then was ready to start with my Sushi Bowls. Here's how I made them:

I measured 1 cup of rice in each bowl (using my measure-rite system from Weight Watchers, I'm such a nerd LOL).

I dumped the rice in there, but then I used my spatula to spread it gently in the bowl.

While the rice was cooking, I steamed thin carrot sticks and edamame (Trader Joes)I had leftover. I added a little mirin to the water to give the vegetable some taste. I added cucumber sticks after I was done steaming.

I spread the vegetable on the rice trying to spread the colors.

I added nori strips mainly for color, but also because I like the "fishy" taste of nori.

See? That in itself could be a very nice vegetarian Sushi Bowl wouldn't it?

But I had something else to add: Unagi! I bought it cooked but frozen, cut the pack in 2 and put one part back in the freezer for another time. I put this half in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 350 F to thaw it out.

I put it on the rack so that it wouldn't get "soggy" at the bottom. I HATE soggy fish, eeeewww.

I put the unagi on the cutting board and cut it in pieces.

I am very neurotic about both portions being the same. I grew up with 2 brothers and to this day I expect my husband to say "You got more than me!!!". He would never I'm sure, but...

So I cut it in half lengthwise, and then made the pieces the other way. That way each gets half.


I placed each piece in the bowls and tried to spread them in a pretty manner. I was getting hungry though, so it got less "fuffy" as I went.

Here's what it ended up looking like. Cute huh? It was just delicious! Honestly, it was also easy. I have a Zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cooker, so it's pretty much "put the rice the water and forget it". The unagi was precooked, and the rest is just cutting and steaming veggies!

If you clean your rice cooker right away, the rest is nothing really.

I had leftover rice, so I made onigiri that I broiled and frozen for bento use later on. Here they are:



So that's today's adventure, it was easy, it was interesting and it was just delicious! I love when it works!

Be good n stuff!

A good start to 2009

Happy New Year!

If I have one "motto" for 2009, I think it will be "Keep it simple but effective". I'm tired of trying to do everything all at once and ending up doing nothing. Ever feel that way?

So, no big challenges, no grand plan to reinvent the wheel. We have a new plan at Weight Watchers and I'm approaching it as a new member. I'm reading the plan, following the plan as written without any attempt to "better the plan".

I've also started a major decluttering of the house. It's the second time we do it, and this time it's for real. We plan on moving this year, so I'm pairing down what I own to the minimum. It's so refreshing to let go of stuff and just go back to the essential! I love it!

I'm also simplified my cooking a lot. I got to the point where cooking meant 2-3 hours in the kitchen, to the point where I wasn't enjoying cooking anymore.

I've been trying now to cook once for at least 2 days of food. This started with a need to save money, and now honestly, it makes my life much easier.

Here's a few sample of my "cook now eat a few meals":

Barley Pilaf:

Thursday night we had a vegetarian attack. I made a Spicy Barley Pilaf that I served with roasted asparagus and zucchini slices.

The following day we ate the leftover barley with sandwiches.

I know, barley with bread, carbs galore, but see? that's what I mean by keeping it simple. I wanted bread and barley, I had bread and barley. Counted it, end of the story.

Last summer I would have felt the need to cook something complicated because you just can't have bread with barley. Guess what? I did, and I survived!

Caribbean Drumsticks and Vegetable Rice:

Saturday we had a lot to do so early in the morning I prepared everything to make Caribbean Drumsticks in the crock pot. I went to Costco and put the chicken to cook when I came back.

It cooked all day smelling just heavenly.

When we started getting hungry, I threw chopped onion, carrots, celery and red bell pepper in the chopper attachment of my immersion blender. Minced all that and sauteed it a few minutes in a pan.

In the meantime, I microwaved Trader Joes frozen brown rice. Once the vegetables were softened (2-3 minutes of cooking) I added the rice, a little bit of broth, salt and pepper.

Dinner! With about 10 minutes (or less) of preparation.

I had leftovers of both the chicken and the rice. I also saved the cooking juice from the chicken. With that and the jalapeno chicken sausages I bought today at Trader Joes I was planning on making a soup later this week, but my husband had a great idea:

I sauteed 2 sliced sausages in my pan, added the cooking juices from the chicken last night, the rest of the chicken and 1/3 cup of edamame. I cooked that covered for about 2 minutes, added the rice, mixing well, a little broth, covered again and cooked for another 2 minutes.

I served that with green salad and baby carrots:


The chicken and rice mixture was pretty spicy, so the simple cold vegetables were a good "neutral" to eat with it.

We still have half left for lunch tomorrow. So with 1 crock pot recipe, we have 3 meals!

So simple and uncomplicated is the rule, and so far we're enjoying it!!

Be good n stuff!

Food food food foooooooooooooood!

Hi there!

I'm alive! So, it's blogging day, been almost 2 months. Busy months too! I've had ups and downs (literally) but now I'm on a good trend. I've been "testing" the new Weight Watchers program and am loving it!

I just stopped by to show off a few things that I've been up to. All of a sudden I miss cooking, so expect to see a lot more of it starting in January (after my vacation!).

For now I have a few things to show off:

I went to GNG and bought a pre-made Tandoori marinade. I wasn't too hopeful since I've had many disappointment with those, but that one was DELICIOUS!

I used my oven rack to cook it, so that the air could circulate all around the chicken pieces and the results were wonderful!

I served it with Garam Masala scented bulgur and sauteed red bell pepper and carrot sticks. Here's what my plate looked like:


Since I'm showing off anyway, here's my Thanksgiving table:


Would you believe that's all for just 2 people?

You can see the biscuits/rolls on the right. My husband made those and they were quite tasty. I had only 1 of them, maybe half another actually. hey, it's Thanksgiving!

The longish colorful platter is the roasted vegetables. Red onion, butternut squash, carrots cooked with thyme and rosemary sprigs, salt, pepper and garlic scented oil.

The white plate left of that is slice of turkey. We roasted a turkey breast, bone and all. Put it on a bed of onions, with thyme, rosemary, garlic oil, salt and pepper. Wrapped the whole thing in an aluminum foil. It turned out delicious. If you plan on eating the skin though, cook it unwrapped some, cause it wasn't "crispy".

Finally the glass bowl has mashed potatoes that my husband made with FF milk and a little butter. They were DELICIOUS.

We had plenty of leftovers, I made a soup the following day, and a curry with the rest of the turkey Saturday!

So that was Thanksgiving. I would have skipped the whole thing, but my dear American born husband looked so sad at the idea of just not having Thanksgiving that I couldn't do it.

Can't have Thanksgiving without dessert now can we?

This is the simplest thing!

Mix together 2 small pack of Jello sugar free vanilla pudding (1 big pack is only 1 1/2 small pack not 2!), 2 cups of Fat free milk, 1 cup of pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice mix (to taste, I put 1/2 tsp or so). Once that is well mixed, fold in 1 cup of Fat free Cool Whip.

Then, take a fuffy glass, and alternate a layer of Cool whip (not mixed with anything) and a layer of the pudding/pumpkin mix.

You could decorate with a cinnamon stick, a mint leaf... you know..

Delicious and good looking! AH!

After all that yummy food, and 2 weeks of eating out almost constantly while my brother visited, I was craving home cooked food. I was also sick of chicken!!!

Last night we had salmon thawed out, so I made our favorite salmon dish:

Basically, you season the salmon to taste (I use cumin, salt and pepper), heat up 1 tsp of oil in a heavy bottomed pan. Cook on medium high heat on one side 4 minutes (do not move it too much), then turn it and cook one minute, then lower the fire and cover, cook an additional 3 minutes or so (until done).

If you wait for your oil to heat up well, it makes a crispy layer on the salmon without overcooking the middle.

I roasted vegetables to go with it, and cooked some mushroom for myself (my husband won't touch those).

Last bragging subject for today (on here that is.. hehe) is this morning's breakfast:

I was hungry, but didn't want to use up my points, so I made myself one of my "Egg white pie":

Sauteed onions, bell pepper strips (had them frozen) and mushrooms. Added 3 egg whites, minced rosemary and thyme, salt pepper. Cooked in the non-stick pan until almost set. Put under the broiler to finish setting the top.

Et voila! Eating healthy delicious foods is so simple!

Find a restaurant that will serve those foods for cheap and have them taste half as good, AH! Good luck finding it!

Be good n stuff!

Tried something new!

I got a new cookbook yesterday: World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey. It's a wonderful book that I surely use a lot.

As always when I get a cool book, I trot out all my other cool cookbook and start looking around in them. I have well over 170 cookbooks so...

Today I used The complete Middle East Cookbook. I've had it for a while, used it some, but hadn't looked at it for some time.

In there I cam across a recipe for Nivik which is chickpeas cooked with spinach. I had never tasted it and had no idea what to expect, but it DID look good!

I cut the recipe in half and used canned chickpeas instead of cooking dry ones, here's what it looked like:




I served it along with roasted chicken but honestly it would have been fine on it's own with a salad, or a naan. The chicken was really overkill.

It was simply delicious, I'm planning on doing it again, starting with dry chickpeas this time, and having it as my main dish. My husband really liked it also, so that's a step in the "putting it on the regular list" direction.

The more I explore vegetarian far, the less appealing meat is. I'll never be a real vegetarian, even less a vegan, but I do understand how it is possible to be completely satisfied living as a vegetarian. There's so much to explore!

We're still on vacation, walked non-stop the last two days in Berkley and San Francisco, tomorrow we're heading to the farmer's market in Sebastopol. Other than that, we're taking a vacation from planning! AH!

Be good n stuff!

Food is good!

Ok, I still have to work on being active again, I do move a lot, but not as much as I'd like to.

We're eating good though!

Last night we were tired from our Embarcadero expedition, so we decided to keep it simple. My husband grilled chicken thighs and summer squash.

He's really doing a good job at the grill and it was simple but delicious. We ate that with leftover couscous, and a quick tomato salad that I made with our new fresh tomatoes, and some fresh lettuce I had left over from last weekend. Here's what it looked like:

Neat huh? Simple, no fuss, mismatched dishes, welcome to my world! AH! ;op

After such an eventful day yesterday, I was feeling a little let down and lonely this morning. I felt like I needed to treat myself, but I didn't want to eat stuff I shouldn't. What to do?

This:

Doesn't it look fuffy? I had more fun making it than I did eating it!

Left to right:

1- I have 1 hard boiled egg that I sliced with my super egg slicer (from Ichiban Kan). Between the egg slices I put a cucumber slice on which I have spread a LITTLE bit of homemade hummus.

2- I have leftover lettuce mixes with carrot sticks I made out of my yummy yellow carrots I got at the Embarcadero. On top of that, I put some fresh tomatoes on cutsy little skewer I have for my bento boxes.

3- I have a sliced plus, just one.

The whole thing was very filling, low calories, and fun to make!


I have a lot of time on my hands right now, and I find that to be very difficult. Rather than sitting around feeling depressed, I'm playing with food. And it's even healthy! How cool is that?

Things are changing for me and it's a good thing. I feel much more able to "deal with life" and face things than I did just a month ago and that brings me to share this:

This is an entire different topic, and I guess should be the topic of an entirely new post, but after being on Depo Provera for several years, I finally stopped using it and went for Mirena instead.

I'm not saying Mirena is for everybody, I'm saying if you're using Depo Provera and are finding yourself to be moody, anxious, depressed for no reason, look into a new birth control.

Since I was new to the country, I thought it was the "adaptation process" and that I was just going crazy as I got older.. wouldn't you know it? It was just my body not liking that stuff!!! I'm me again!

Just thought I would share, please don't let yourself down, react and "make things better" for yourself when needed!

Be good n stuff!