Happy St. Patty's!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! A great excuse to get trashed for most people, but since hubs is working and we've got no one to watch the little ones, it's a stay-at-home day for me. I'm sure most people did their nails green so I jumped on the bandwagon.

Nails: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Green with Envy

I hate how hard it is to capture the real colour of nails in photographs. From the left, I shot that at night. Second picture from the left, that was during the daytime. Both look like two completely different shades. But the best way to describe the true colour of this would be "celery". Yup, I was chopping celery earlier today and realized that it was an identical match. This was about 3 coats with top and base coat.

As for dinner...

Chinese Ginger Beef on Rice

Hope everyone's getting completely wasted tonight!

♥B

Another Long Day

I had to go downtown for a training workshop early in the morning. Grabbed myself a little pick-me-up.

SURPRISE MEL!

I ordered one of Mel's fave by the way. Caramel Macchiato. YUMMMMMM.

It definitely hit the spot when I needed that morning boost.

Got home this evening to make one of my comfort foods. I wasn't going to post the recipe since I hardly think this is authentic to the real thing but I guess this is just my adaptation of it. Mel wanted to know how I made it so I decided to post it. Plus, the recipe is easy peasy.

Minced Pork on Rice
1 lb ground pork
1 cup of julienned carrots, cut into matchsticks
1 small white onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp of sugar
1 tsp of chinese five spice
1/4 cup light soy sauce
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp chinese cooking wine
2 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp cold water
2 stalks of green onion, sliced
2 eggs

Cook some rice however you would usually make it. I use a rice cooker.
In a small pot, bring water to a boil and gently submerge two eggs in for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, take out of water and run it under very cold water for a few seconds. This helps the shell come off a lot easier, trust me. Set these gorgeously peeled hard boiled eggs at the side.

Brown your ground pork on medium-high heat and season with salt and pepper.
Add carrots, white onions and garlic and saute for about 5 minutes with the meat.
Add chinese five spice, soy sauce and chinese cooking wine and cook for another 10 minutes. Now, add the 1/2 cup of water and put the hard boiled eggs to soak in the sauce. Bring to a simmer and cover with lid for about 15 minutes.
Remove the lid, add the green onions and let the water boil out some more.
Mix the cornstarch and 1 tbsp of cold water to make a cornstarch slurry. This is used in many asian dishes to increase their viscosity and thicken the sauce.

Then, serve with rice and you're done! Notice how I didn't have to use any salt besides on the meat? Quite healthy!

Hope you enjoyed it. Time for me to catch up on my hockey and basketball games. Goodnight :)

♥B

Friday Night In

TGIF! I've honestly learned to appreciate my weekends a ton more now that I'm working full time again. Usually I bring work home to do, but I opted to take it out of my bag to refrain from going into workaholic mode on a Friday night. Instead, I made a nice meal while waiting for hubs to get off work.

Chicken Stirfry with Steamed Egg on Rice

I decided not to do a specific recipe because this is totally easy to recreate. In fact, you could add whichever vegetables and meat that you want. It's one of those "clear your fridge" meals! All I used were carrots, red bell peppers, green beans, onions, garlic and shredded (already cooked) chicken. In terms of the sauce and seasoning, I added a bit of hoisin sauce, soy sauce, chinese five spice, sugar, salt and pepper. For the steamed egg, believe it or not, just mix eggs with a bit of water, salt and green onions and pop it in the microwave for 3-4 minutes. I topped the stirfry with chopped salted peanuts. The peanuts gave some crunch and flavour since I only used a pinch of salt for the entire plate!

This yummy and healthy stirfry was just THAT simple. I love to make meals that are colourful since they always say: You always eat with your eyes first. Mel and I enjoy plating most of our meals prior to eating, picture or no picture. There's nothing like sitting down, visually enjoying your culinary creation, and then emptying your plate. Hopefully some of our recipe-less posts will inspire you to reach into your inner chef (we all have one!) and create food on the spot that is delicious yet nutritious. Happy Friday everyone!

 

♥B

♪ These are a few of my favourite things..

So it seems I haven't exactly snapped out of my "seafood diet" ..whenever I see food I eat it. But literally, this is my baked seafood w/ white sauce rice. Such a great comfort food. I've been carbo-loading for the past few days.. I can't help it! I need to get on a treadmill...

This is one of my favourite knit sweaters with faux leather elbow patches (H&M). Nothing beats an ever so comfortable oversized sweater. I couldn't live without it. I often break the rules of wearing the same thing twice in a row.. and by often I actually mean ALL the time.

♥M