Mongolian Chicken (or beef)

I've been loving making stir-fry type things as a way to eat lots of veggies at dinner. This works well with rice, fettuccine, undon, or Ramon noodles (just don't use the flavor packet that comes with the Ramon noodles).

Mongolian sauce

1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp garlic, minced
1/2 to 1 tsp ginger
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp cornstarch mixed with 2 Tbsp COLD water

in a pot over medium heat fry the garlic for about 20 seconds (helps bring out the flavor) then add the soy sauce, water, ginger, and brown sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar and boil for a few minutes. Add the cornstarch mixture and continue stirring for a few minutes to thicken the sauce. Remove from heat and pour into a bottle so you can pour some over the chicken and over your noodles/rice. Store the rest in the fridge.

Cut one large chicken breast into 1" chunks and sprinkle 2 Tbsp of cornstarch over them to coat just as you start cooking them. When the chicken is all browned and cooked through set a side and stir a little of the sauce into it to soak up the flavors.

Stir-fry your veggies and rice. Mix it all together and serve. Don't forget to garnish with a lot of diced green onions!

(PS keeping green onions fresh on hand is kind of a hassle so what I do is buy one bunch for when i need it and chop up the whole thing into the little tiny rounds. Use what i need that day and freeze the rest. They keep really well in the freezer and then you just have to add them in for the last minute of cooking or sprinkle them on your enchiladas right before you put them in the oven or whatever you want to use them on)

BBQ chicken pizza

YUM! I love bbq chicken pizza. Since I had time, I made my own crust today and boy was it tasty. I'm so sad that Papa Johns doesn't do the whole wheat crust anymore, it was so good. :(

I cooked a chicken breast in a small pot on the stove with bbq sauce 1tsp garlic and 1 Tbsp thyme over low heat (3 on my stove) for like 30 minutes while I was waiting for my dough to rise. Since it was such low heat i didn't even have to watch it, just put a lid on and came back to rip it into small chunks. I only used about 1/2 the breast on the pizza too so now i have leftovers for a sandwich or more pizza later in the week.

Roll out your dough to about 1/4 in thick put it on your cookie sheet and stab it with a fork all over (this way when it cooks it wont bubble up) then bake it at 400' for 3-5 minutes.
Do this with either homemade dough or use a package of Jiffy pizza dough, it tastes good, it's less than 50cents, it's easy and takes 5 minutes, I usually add just a couple tablespoons of wheat flour when I use the Jiffy kind because it just seems too sticky otherwise

Take it out of the oven and top with
1/3 cup (more or less) bbq sauce, I use sweet baby rays
1/2 of a chicken breast, in small chunks
some diced red onion
slices of peppers red, green, yellow, whatever you have/like. i just thawed some pepper stir fry
1/8 cups finely shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (or whatever cheeses you want)

Put it back in the oven to bake for 15-20 minutes, til the edges brown nicely.




Here is the recipe I used for the pizza dough. I've also used this to make bread sticks, just brush some butter mixed with garlic and a sprinkle of salt and finely shredded cheese.

Delicious Dough

1-1/2 cup warm water (like 110' don't do super hot water, over 125' will kill your yeast)
1 Tbsp sugar
2-1/2 tsp (or one envelope) yeast.

I use dry active yeast that i keep in the fridge so you have to let the yeast sit out for a minute or two in the bowl before you sprinkle the sugar and water on top. Then use a fork to mix it together and let it poof (foam up) for about 10 minutes. Then add

3-1/2 cup flour (I use half whole wheat half all purpose but you can use what ever you want)
1 tsp salt
Use the fork to mix it all together for a minute then when switch to you hand. You want to kneed the dough for at least a few minutes so that it all comes together smoothly and helps the yeast do it's job. Kneading the dough is important for the gluten to develop properly, you don't want the dough to rip, just use your palms to stretch the dough and fold it over and stretch it some more. This way your bread/rolls/crust will be sturdy and chewy.

Using a firm hand roll the dough into a nice tight ball, place it into a bowl that has a light spray of cooking oil and cover with plastic wrap.

Allow it to rise to double in size, like 2 hours or so. If your house is cold it wont rise properly. what you can do to help it rise on a cold day is turn on your oven just to 200 and as soon as it heats up turn it off, place the bowl with the dough in the oven and leave the oven slightly cracked.

Pepperoni Pinwheels

So when I made the bbq chicken pizza I had double the dough i needed. Instead of making two pizzas i decided to make these pizza pinwheels so that i could either eat/put them in the fridge or freeze some of them.

Roll out the dough into one big rectangle.
in a blender put 1/4 cup pizza sauce, 1/2 c shredded mozzarella, and 20 or so pepperoni slices,
pulse a couple times and then spread it onto your dough (you can also skip the blender and just layer it on but the pepperoni makes it hard to roll up)
Make sure you don't over fill or it will spread apart in the oven.
roll the dough up like you would cinnamon rolls and freeze it for 30 minutes (so that it slices easier)
Slice into 1 inch rounds and place on a sprayed cookie sheet.
Bake for 18-20 minutes at 400'

Enjoy for dinner or lunch :)

Lime Sorbet

I got a ton of limes form the bountiful baskets a few weeks ago and I just had no idea what to do with them. We will use one here or there but 20 lime? I just had to figure out something. So I finally decided on something, Lime sorbet.

And I don't even have an ice cream maker. Hence sorbet not sherbet. I figured it would be easier to just work with, mostly frozen, flavored water and some time in the future I'll attempt the creamy frozen milky-ness.

Honestly, it took less work than I thought and it turned out pretty good. I wouldn't quit my day job (bu dum bum chush) but i'll do it again with other flavors i'm sure.

Lime sorbet

squeeze the juice out of 5 limes (about 1/2 cup) and get the zest from 2 or 3 of them
1 cup of sugar
1/8 tsp salt and
1-1/2 cups water
Mix together until sugar is completely disolved

Add 1 Tbsp vodka (or use rum to make it Magrarita Ice!)
the alcohol will help it be creamy and prevent it from freezing TOO much so you can still scoop it. If you want to omit the alcohol add 1/4 cup more sugar to help prevent it from freezing too solid.

Then all you have to do is put it in the freezer for at least 5 hours.
Make sure you mix it up every hour or so to help it all freeze and cream together nicely.