"One Pot Wonder" Chicken Lo Mein

I looooove Chinese food and lo mein is my favorite of all the meals. I found a recipe on pinterest for chicken lo mein and I decided to try it out. I followed the recipe almost to the letter (and anyone who has read my blogs know that by almost to the letter, I really mean the new recipe is almost unrecognizable). Have the ingredients!

Ingredients

• ½ lb. boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into small chunks
• 12 oz. whole wheat linguini or fettuccini, broken in half
• 4 medium carrots, peeled and cut in thin 3 inch long strips
• 1 medium red bell pepper, cut in thin 3 inch long strips
• 1 bunch green onions, white part sliced and green part cut in 3 inch long strips
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon corn starch
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• ½ cup water
• 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

1. Add the chicken, then the pasta, then the remaining ingredients to a large stockpot and cover. Bring to a boil. Stir and reduce to a simmer. Cook covered for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Cook until most of the liquid is gone and the chicken is cooked through.

I changed the vegetables because I can. I used water chestnuts, baby corn, carrots, snap peas, and probably that's it. Otherwise, I used all other ingredients except corn starch because I forgot to buy some and red pepper flakes, because much to my shame, I could not open up my bottle. I swear the lid is glued on. Anyway, everything else was more or less the same (again, I'm lying). For any of you that clicked the link and took a look at the first picture there, it looks so nice and neat and easy. Well, it took me 30 minutes to prepare the veggies and then I simply could not get it to look as nice as that picture. 

 Later on, I added that face to the pot of ingredients. I swear there is chicken in there, it's just at the bottom hiding from everyone. It's shy. So this is just the veggies. 

And this is all of it. It really looks yummy, doesn't it? Also, instead of cooking this in a hot pot, I used my crock pot. I figured the principle was generally the same so it would all be fine. Well...

First, I overcooked the damn noodles. They are all mushy and gross. Also, that is linguine because I couldn't find lo mein noodles, and I hate thin noodles. I should have known better. Also Also, the soy sauce I used tasted weird. Also Also Also, it was too thick and not soaked up enough, so I added some water and it still looks nasty. And tastes nasty. I have a huge pot of noodles and veggies that are no longer edible. My life is disappointing, I was so looking forward to this and now I don't know what to do with it all. Anyone like gross noodles? 

Green Tea Mojitos/Yogurt and Fruit Smoothies

I had my brunch cooking buddy help me pick out recipes this time. She is really big on tea and loves rum and so naturally she came across a brunch booze recipe for green tea mojitos. I figured we could give it a try even though I'm not big on green tea or mint in anything but hot tea. She found it on a website, and I don't have it with me or else I would post a link to it. Sorry, whoever's website that was! 

So I brewed the green tea Saturday night. This same night I went all over town (the town of heathens as I mentioned in my baked brie post) looking for mint because that is a completely necessary ingredient for mojitos. As I said in my blueberry banana bread post, it was not to be gotten. So, I did something radical. Because we were already making tea, I figured I'd just add peppermint tea and everything would be fine. 

I put the green tea in the fridge overnight unsweetened, and I made the peppermint tea in the morning when my cooking buddy brought it. We brewed it and mixed it all in and then added rum and sugar according to the preference of the guest. 


I'm going to leave the critique to my brunch cooking buddy whom I'm going to call Hatty because the name amuses me. She says, "About the green tea mojito, you should make the tea with a lot of sugar if we do it again. And more mint is needed (so more mint tea). Also, the limes need to be squeezed in and not just used for garnish (I forgot that part). The way I made them, they weren't that great." No, they were not great, and it seems the guests thought the same. 


The midmorning was saved by the fact that I just bought a blender last week. I had bought yogurt for brunch as requested by my brunch partner (and no one was eating that either) as well as some fruit. When the tea didn't pan out, I suggested they made fruit and yogurt and almond/coconut milk smoothies with rum or vanilla vodka. That was astoundingly successful. So I count this as a fail/win. I only won because I have a sizable liquor cupboard from so many brunches that had leftover liquor. 

Also, I told you I was going to post both my failures and successes, and there you have it.

Baked Brie

This is a recipe I learned from one of my good friends. She's basically the only reason I try new things. When she said we were going to have baked brie, I was like brie? What kind of weird vegetable is that? For those of you who don't get the joke, brie is a cheese. 

A miracle happened a few weeks ago. You all know about my dairy allergy, but I can do goat cheese because it is 100% more gentle on my digestive parts that you don't want to hear about. Anyway, I live in a town of heathens that don't believe in fresh fruit or non-cow cheeses. Anything that is not just plain straight up goat cheese is basically impossible to find, which is why I replace all my cheeses with plain jane goat cheese. Anyway, MIRACLE! I found goat cheese brie. I don't know who you are that convinced the store to carry it, but I want to marry you. 

Baked brie is probably the simplest dish I have ever made and it is a great snack and reheats really well. What you need: 

5-8oz brie (it can be goat or cow cheese, they are equally delicious)
1 roll of pillsbury crescent rolls
Your choice of jam (raspberry is first choice)
Glazed Walnuts (I can't remember how I usually do this, so I will add a recipe for that). 

Here is the recommended walnut recipe that I'm trying to remember off the top of my head: Chop walnuts. Put oil in a pan and heat, add walnuts, and mix to coat. Add cinnamon, brown sugar, something something....and cook until it begins thickening and congealing around the nuts. The recipe is good, but I'm not sure it is correct. I urge the SO of this recipe-giver to comment on what the real recipe is, you know who you are. This is a more specific recipe I just found for making glazed walnuts: Spread 2/3 cup of finely chopped walnuts on the bottom of a baking dish. Bake 10-12 minutes until toasted, stirring occasionally. Remove from oven and stir in 1/4 cup of coffee flavored liquor, 3 tbs of firmly packed brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp of vanilla. Set aside. 

I'm not sure how that particular recipe will taste, but it sounds right. The full recipe is here. 

I used a pie dish to bake my brie, but you can also use a cookie sheet or anything you can cook in. Spray the bottom. Roll out your cold (but not frozen) crescent rolls into a rectangle or in such a way that it fits the pie pan. Mash the sutures together so there are no holes. Place the brie in the middle, place the walnuts on top, and you can either add the jam now or serve it on the side. I always serve it on the side. Bring the edges together to cover all the ingredients and mush the top pieces together so there are no holes. You can remove excess dough and bake it on the side and eat that separately with jam or butter. Bake in oven on 350F for about 12 minutes or until the dough is brown and cooked. Serve with crackers (I prefer townhouse) and jam. 

Baked goat brie is actually really good, if you want to know. I think it has a better flavor than cow brie but that could just be because I secretly hate cow milk products (but I love cheese). I served it without walnuts this time because of the brunch member with a nut allergy and it was the saddest day of my life. My poor, lonely walnuts. I did have both plum and raspberry jam, and I have had blackberry jam with it before and it's all really good. This was, as usual, a success and it was gone within minutes. If you are feeding more than four people, I recommend you make two.  

Spinach Artichoke Egg Casserole

So as you all know it was my week to make brunch. The blueberry banana bread I posted about Saturday night was a part of that. I made other items for brunch, but I'm going to deal with them separately, and post them throughout the week. You have baked brie and green tea mojitos to look forward to!

I don't have any pictures because I just did this all so fast. I got this recipe from pinterest, you can find the original here. 

Ingredients:
8oz artichoke hearts, chopped
2 cups of fresh baby spinach, chopped
12 eggs
1 cup goat cheese
garlic salt and pepper to taste

The original called for 14oz of artichokes, 1 tsp of garlic salt, and parmesan cheese instead of goat cheese, just in case you are curious about the differences. 

Whisk the eggs together, then add all the rest of the ingredients, put in a greased 9x13 pan, and bake at 375F for 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack (I skipped this part). 

This recipe also got good responses from my brunch group, and most of the 9x13 pan I made got eaten. I thought it was a little cheese heavy, but part of that is getting the goat cheese to crumble in such a way that you aren't getting huge chunks in every mouthful. I have yet to discover a way to fix that, but I will. However, the artichokes are sufficiently salty to give this dish a really good flavor, but I think that if I make it again, I will put in some broccoli. Broccoli is good. 

Blueberry Banana Bread

Man, this was a tough one. I am starting this post the night before I actually get to the sample my bread, and I am telling you what, I'm really hoping for the best. This is a new brunch recipe I'm trying and I really messed up a lot and now my kitchen is(was) a mess. 

Pretty bad, huh? 

I'm going to start with the ingredient and instruction list and then tell you what I did to it to make it dairy-free, and to kind of mess everything up bad. And I just realized something else I effed up. This is going to be the worst bread ever. Hopefully future me will come back and tell everyone how good it is. Future/present me is saying you will have to read to the end to find out. Future me is kind of a b****. 

From The Country Fair Cookbook:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened (used margarine)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (3-4 medium)
1/2 cup buttermilk (almond milk and vinegar)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
1 cup fresh blueberries

Cream butter with sugars in mixing bowl. Beat in eggs, banana, buttermilk, and vanilla. Combine four, baking, soda, salt, and nutmeg in separate bowl. Add to banana mixture with walnuts and blueberries and stir gently, just until all ingredients are moistened; do not overmix. Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 1 1/4 hours for 9-inch pan or 1 hour for 8 1/2-inch loaves. Cool 5 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely. Keep tightly wrapped and store in fridge for easier slicing. 
Note: Toast walnuts in 375F oven for 5-10 mins, stirring 3 times while baking. 
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease bottom of pan or line with parchment. 

Now that the boring part is over, I am going to tell you all what just happened to me. First, I went grocery shopping for these things last night. Of course you can't get ripened bananas at the store, they throw those away, so I did the shortcut. I put my oven on the lowest setting and put them on a baking sheet and left them in there. I intended to pull them out when they started getting brown, but I needed to make a store run for mint (for mojitos!) and vinegar (to make buttermilk). The mint was not to be got for love nor money, and I was out entirely too long looking for it. I came back to completely brown bananas. Life is so hard. I threw them in the fridge, although in hindsight I should have done the freezer to make them stop browning. Needless to say, that didn't work so well. 

Next, I made some almond buttermilk. One recipe called for 1 cup almond milk, 2 tsp white vinegar, and I did that originally. I made 1/2 cup to 1 tsp ratio. Then I looked at other websites and they recommended a 1 cup/1 tsp ratio, so I added more milk and figured I'd save the other half cup for another time. Nope, that did not happen. I put the entire cup in. I have no idea how that will affect the recipe, honestly. Now another stupid I pulled. Our newest member of the brunch group is very allergic to nuts. I remembered to leave out the walnuts, but I completely spaced that almond milk is made out of a nut. I am the worst nut ever. 

So otherwise I followed the recipe to the letter pretty much except when I forgot to add the brown sugar until after all the other wet ingredients had gone in. Good job me. Oh! I don't own a mixer, so creaming butter by hand is hard. Confession: I used my smoothie blender for it. It kinda worked. Here is what it all looked like when I put all the ingredients together:

And what it looked like after I mixed it gently:

Like oatmeal. Also, when I added the blueberries I put in half a pint, because blueberries.
So I "lined" a pan with parchment paper. It's surprising I have such a weirdly specific cooking thing, am I right? I don't have a mixer, but I do have parchment paper. It's because I have a friend come over to bake a lot. She asked me to keep it in my house. I guess it's convenient. Anyway, I put most of the mix into a 9x5 pan, but it seemed like it really filled it up, so I put the rest in another greased 9x5 pan, and then decided that one didn't have enough so I scooped more mix into it. I'm going to have some very stumpy bread. 

Update: The smaller loaf is done and it is not so very stumpy. I think I made the right decision, because the bigger loaf rose more than I expected. It still needs about ten minutes. 

Update the second: Both are done and here is a picture!

Parchment paper was a bad idea. I just don't have the skills to make it smooth so it shaped the bread weird. Also you can see where I sliced in to the farther loaf. I was eager to see how it would taste and I just couldn't wait for brunch tomorrow to find out. So how is it? 

I'm not going to lie, I want another piece and it's taking all of my self control not to eat more of it. I looooooove banana bread, and despite all of my brain farts, I managed to bake some really good loaves! It is very very moist (but not wet or unbaked), maybe a little bit too much so, but I actually think that's a good thing rather than a bad one. So there you have it, friends! Blueberry banana bread, win. 
Also, I lied. My kitchen is still a mess. 

I just served this at brunch to raving results. My friends said it was some of the best banana bread they had ever had, and putting in the extra buttermilk made it really good. 

Pulled Pork

One of my favorite meals is pulled pork. I learned how to make this by watching my ex make it. He liked to just throw things into the slow cooker, I don't even know what, and leave it at that for a few hours. I don't remember it ever turning out poorly. He also taught me how to pick the right pork: you choose a pork loin with a good amount of fat on it, because while it is cooking that will give it really good flavor. He also preferred to pick the premarinated pork loin (my favorite is lemon and garlic) because they're tasty. 

If you want to skip my thoughts, there is a quick and dirty set of ingredients and instructions at the bottom. 

I don't have pictures for every step because I just don't. If you can't figure out what the ingredients look like, that's not my problem. Oh burn. Anyway, the first thing I do is fill my slow cooker up with enough water to cover the pork and then some (til it looks good) and then I put it on low. I don't add any flavorers yet because I have no reason for that either. 
This time I used peppercorn pork loin. I have no idea what peppercorn is, it just looked good and it had "pepper" in the name. I love pepper. Also, the store was out of lemon and garlic. I should add here that is completely unnecessary to get a premarinated one, you can marinate it yourself or you can not marinate it at all. After all, you're eventually going to smother it in bbq sauce, so it doesn't really matter that much, right? Anyway, I let it slow cook for about two hours (arbitrary time limit, this is how long I was studying before I remembered I was cooking). Then I added green onions and garlic. I wish I had added these ingredients earlier because only the pepper and onion really soaked in. I recommend that if you do this, add it at least an hour earlier in the process, if not at the beginning.

Green onions. Man, those are delicious. I only used the bottom halfish because someone told me once that if I don't cook the top greens enough it's poisonous. I never looked that up, but it might be true. Anyway, I knew in this case that it wouldn't be cooking very long so I decided not to risk stomachache. As for garlic, I'm going to tell you to put as much in as you like. I used half of a head (is that what they are called?) for it because I looooooooooove garlic and I have serious doubts that there can ever be too much garlic. 
This is what it looked like when I added those:

Also added in there is oregano, pepper, and cinnamon. I added a lot of pepper because I love pepper. I really think the end product is delicious, but it turns out you don't need to add a lot of pepper to peppercorn marinade. Lesson for you guys.  I mixed it up a bit and then cooked it for maybe two more hours because my slow cooker cooks fast even on low. I pulled it out and cut it open to make sure it was not pink on the inside, and this is what it came out looking like: 

Gross, huh? 

The next step is to let it cook down enough to allow you to strip it. I pull it by hand instead of cutting it up because I like getting my hands dirty. Except for with raw meat. It's so slimy and nasty and gross feeling! I hate hate hate touching raw chicken, it is absolutely worse than having a spider crawl on you or having the texture of oyster in your mouth. *shudders* 

Pulling it! Do it with the grain, of course because it's easier. Put the pieces in a bowl and then SMOTHER IT IN BBQ SAUCE!!!! Pick whichever sauce you think will compliment the taste or whichever you like best, it really doesn't matter I don't think. I typically don't warm the sauce up first because I don't know how much I will use. Instead, I dump it in, mix it, and then microwave it. Then I serve it to myself on slices of bread because I prefer my nut and oat filled bread to any bun ever put into existence. It is literally good with everything. 

This is what it looks like when I finish with it:

I show the bbq sauce I used because I am really satisfied with the taste. It's a little bit sweet and really tempers the other flavors I put in. And it's thick, which is something I love in bbq sauce. 

Here are the ingredients:

Pork Loin of whatever size you want
Water, probably about 8 cups. Or more. 
Spices/herbs to taste (oregano and pepper are my preferences)
    I should add here that I put in a pinch or two of cinnamon to see what it was like. It didn't       soak in.
Onion (green onion is my favorite), I used four green onions
Garlic to taste, I used half a head but you can also use minced garlic or garlic powder
BBQ sauce, at least half of a bottle
Buns/Bready product

Put your slow cooker on low or high depending on how fast you want it cooked, add water and pork loin. You can add the garlic, onion, and spices at this time or after it has cooked for a couple of hours. Let cook until done (4 hours is enough for me), then remove from slow cooker and allow to cool. Strip the pork and place strips in a bowl. Add bbq sauce and microwave for about two minutes or until warm. Serve on your choice of bread or bun and enjoy!  
This recipe can take up to 8 hours, although mine took 4.5. 

The Beginning

The sole function of this blog is to record the food I've made. I'm single and allergic to milk products, so everything here is generally dairy free and tailored to my individual taste. Despite being single, I always make enough for at least three normal people (my ex ate like three normal people so it's a surprise I survived that relationship). Cooking for one is hard, and I am now a firm believer in leftovers because I am poor and pretty much hate cooking. No, I'm not joking, I hate to cook, but if I don't want to have my guts explode daily I have to cook for myself. Frozen food is gross. 

Another note is that I am part of a brunch group, so it is likely that I will post every Sunday things that I've made. I get the vast majority of my recipes off of pinterest or recipe sites, but I don't like following directions so I always tweak them. That's why I can't just have a pinterest account and be done with it, I want to record how I improved or ruined the recipes so I can do it again. Yes, I will post my failures as well because I don't want anyone to make the same mistakes I have. I also have permission from another member of my brunch group to post her recipes and what I thought of them. She's a vegetarian, so you can see already how interesting my group is. Anyway, she has this crazy knack for just putting together a bunch of ingredients that I would never imagine throwing together and making it work. Pretty much if I could have her feed me for the rest of my life, I would, and yet I love meat. The point is, some of my recipes will be vegan on account of her being vegetarian and my being allergic to milk products, but with most of these recipes you can switch to milk products, add some meat, and get on with your life. 

A final thing to say is that I am lazy and don't have much experience with cooking. For that reason, most of my recipes will be fairly simple (but generally delicious). Also, I follow my mom's mantra: add (blank) until it looks good. I can't tell you exactly how much of this or that I add usually, but I will make a solid attempt for the sake of future me to record it as best as I can. Because of my lack of experience with cooking, I'm not great with herbs and spices. I know what I like, but I rarely experiment outside of that field because I am not sure what most herbs and spices taste like individually, or how they will go with what else I put in. So if you have suggestions, let me know. Otherwise, me and garlic salt will keep on trucking. Okay, now it's time to add my first recipe.