Shaking things up a bit!

So, I am shaking things up a bit.  Basically I took pretty pictures of my stir fry the other night and decided I would put it on the blog!  Aren't you excited?  (Okay, yeah, no one is nearly as excited as I am about food.)  But these are, in my humble opinion, very pretty pictures.  I am not a professional photographer, nor do I play one on the Internet.  These are merely some joe-schmoe's supper pictures.  I think you can appreciate that!

So I made stir fry the other night.  It was delicious.  I'll give you a mark up of the recipe, but understand that I really don't measure, unless I'm baking.  So please taste everything and adjust as needed.  Also, we are attempting to be primal in our eating.  This is basically paleo light.  We have cut out most grains from our diet.  So everything we use is gluten free, but I'm pretty sure it'll work with everything.  We are not purists, this recipe has soy sauce in it (I can hear people gasping!) and you know what?  It was good.

Key:
T = Tablespoon
t = teaspoon


Ingredients:
1.5 T  Tamari (gluten free soy sauce)
1.5 T  Rice wine vinegar
1 T  Hoisen Sauce
2 t  Mirin
2 t  Sweet red chili sauce
1 T  Honey
2 pound flank steak (or skirt steak, or whatever steak, or even chicken)
a couple heads of broccoli
2 Carrots matchsticked
half a green pepper, matchsticked
half an orange pepper, matchsticked
half a yellow pepper, matchsticked
any other veggies you want to throw in (seriously, snap pears would probably be delicious!  We've also added water chestnuts as well for crunch!)

Isn't that broccoli pretty?

Recipe:
Mix all the sauces together.  Take 1/3 of the sauce and reserve it for later use. 
Cut the flank steak into strips, thinner is better than thicker. 
Place the cut up steak into the 2/3 remaining sauce, allow to marinate in the fridge for an hour (or less, or more, up to about 8 hours I would think.  The longer you can marinate the yummier it is!)
Heat a wok or large pan on the stove to a nice medium high.
Please a couple tablespoons oil of choice into the wok
Put meat into the wok and brown on all sides.
Remove meat and put in a bit more oil and the veggies
Once veggies are cooked to your liking (we like a little snap, but not much), put the meat back in and pour over the reserved sauce.
Heat till everything is warm.
Serve

The pretty stir fry.. and the picture that started this whole post!

Until Next Time

Woah busy and bathing suit ready

I'm late to the game this week on the link up because, woah, busy!  Since Sunday I haven't really been home, much less awake when home, at all.  This is busy time as everyone I know is hosting some type of cook out or get together or just general hang out time. 

But I am stopping in to do a FTSF and reading the prompt I couldn't help but laugh!  The prompt this week?  It's bathing suit season, and to prepare, I...  

I really don't do much.  Why?  I don't swim.  I mean, I can swim, and I can swim very well, but I just really don't have an interest in swimming.  My partner, on the other hand, is a freaking fish!  He grew up in Florida, so it kind of makes sense that he is such an awesome swimmer.  I, on the other hand, grew up in a land locked state, and the reality is that swimming just wasn't a big part of my life.  That, and I haven't worn shorts on purpose in 20 years so the thought of putting them on to get in water?  Yeah, not my cup of koolaid.

Now, I do find myself wanting to work out more in the summer, so I do.  My partner and I are getting ready to jump into a better routine with getting out and walking, as well as making sure we make it to the gym at least a couple days a week.

We are also trying a new diet as well.  While we don't look at diet in the tradition sense, we are trying to make sure we eat better food, and are following a mainly primal diet.  We eat very few grains and try to stick to lots and lots of vegetables and good farmer's market meats.  It's working to help us feel better, if not helping us shaving inches off our waist line.

Now I must run off because I have things to make for a cookout tomorrow and I haven't even had time to make it to the damn grocery store yet!!

And as an aside note, I am absolutely loving the new FTSF graphic!  Rainbow hair and unicorns, yes please.

Until Next Time.

My spare time

So we all have spare time, right?  I don't have as much as I wish I did, but what little I do have is spent perusing local digs and cooking.  I am a cooking purist, yet I love so much spending time in the kitchen making things.  I figured on this Saturday I would spend a little time showing you some of my latest beauty.

I have never been a great making of custards and custard like goodies.  It's just impossible for me to get the set right cause I'm so afraid of undercooking eggs and making everyone sick.  Yeah, yeah, our eggs come from a local farm, and probably don't have any yukkies in them, but woah.

So the other day I have a few things in my fridge that were getting ready to go bad.  I hate wasting food (just ask my waist line!) and so I started thinking of all the things I could make with: about 10 button mushrooms, a head of broccoli, some cheddar cheese, 3 eggs, half a cup of cream, and one onion.  A very random assortment indeed, but that was everything in my fridge that looked a little floopy.

Doesn't that look yummy?

Well what can you make?  A quiche!  So that is what I made.  And let me tell you, it was more delicious than anyone could have imagined!  Honestly it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, which surprised me!  I had plans to spend quite a bit of the day in the kitchen, making sure I took the time to make it perfect.  It wasn't nearly as long a process as I thought either.  I basically softened onions in oil, then threw in the mushrooms to sweat down, then threw in some small broccoli florets that I cut even smaller just long enough for them to brighten up.  I mixed the cream, eggs, and about a cup of milk all together for the custard part.  I did cheat a little, I used a prefab crust because I suck at crust making, like really really suck.

I blind baked the crust with some beans on parchment paper holding it down.  Then layered some cheese on the bottom, poured in the onion and mushroom mixture, then some more cheese, then filled it up with the custard.  Baked it for about 40 min at 350F, and it was amazing.  Ah-May-Zing!  I think I need to take more pictures of my process from now on, giving you some good food porn, but for now you'll just have to deal with my non recipe recipe!

Pair that with a tall glass of local chocolate milk and BAM a nutritious and delicious supper on the table!  I'll leave you with one more picture of the yumminess!  Trust me, worth every minute of time it took to make.

Look at those yummy layers.  So good!

Until next time!

(all pictures are my own and copyright to me!)