Chicken cacciatore with rice

Hans and I are normally very busy with school and work, so a lot of times, we’d get home late and there wouldn’t be any food. Being ravenously hungry, we’d opt to go out for food and end up spending more money and eating unhealthier food that we really wanted to. I started thinking about getting a slow cooker, day dreaming about how great it would be to dump some ingredients into a pot, turn it on, and return home 8 hours later to a cooked meal without having to do anything more. I’ve never cooked with a slow cooker before, so I was hesitant to get one, but for Christmas, our good friend Casey very sweetly got us a Crock Pot as gift! We were ecstatic.

Crockpot from Casey!

Hans took the reins on our first ever Crock Pot dish, which we decided would be chicken cacciatore. I know this dish is traditionally served with noodles and is more saucy than brothy, but we decided to go soupy with the ingredients and have it with white rice instead. We were pretty Asian about it.

Hans tweaked a recipe he found on Cooks.com. Here are the ingredients of our chicken cacciatore.

Ingredients

Adding garlic powder

Hans put  the sliced onions on bottom of Crock Pot and then added the chicken thighs. Remember to add them in thawed, not frozen, or else you’ll have to cook them for longer. He then added the rest of the ingredients together in the pot and cooked on low for about 8 hours.

Before cooking

After cooking

And there it was when we got home from work! It was absolutely delicious. The baby carrots would burst with juices when you bit into them, and the chicken was so tender that it fell right off the bone when you cut it. The mix of veggies was just wonderful, though it would have been nice with some bell peppers. All in all, it was a pretty successful first Crock Pot dish, if I do say so myself.

Yes, I know there's way too much rice to chicken ratio... LOL.

Zinburger - Wine & Burger Bar

There have been plethora of burger joints popping up all over the place. From Five Guys to Smashburger to the newer Bobby’s Burger Palace, it seems that these little hunks of sizzling ground beef are all the rage now that they’re wrapped up in the casual dining restaurant package instead of a greasy drive-thrus Happy Meal box. Zinburger is no exception to this commonality, but from what I’ve seen it certainly stands apart from the rest in quality, class, and ambiance.

Zinburger New Jersey
Promenade Shops at Clifton
850 State Route 3, #105
Clifton, NJ 07012

http://www.zinburgernj.com/

Zinburger interior

Right off the bat, when you enter Zinburger, it’s clear this is not necessarily the family-oriented outing that other casual burger places are advertising. Instead of bold, energetic colors and cartoonish drawings of food on the menus,  the centerpiece here is the mural on the wall, displaying clean Holstein cattle on a fresh open field (which, if cows were really involved, would never be that spotless). The restaurant is airy, spacious, and minimalistic in design. The lights aren’t glaring, but more of lounge-style type softness, allowing for a more intimate feeling to permeate your dining experience. This is probably for the best since Zinburger’s main theme (aside from burgers) is alcohol.

Zinburger's bar

The Zin in Zinburger is a big tip of the hat to their carefully crafted wine menu, with which the servers can help you match a burger to a particular spirit that would taste just dandy with it. They also have multiple beers on tap, which also go great with their gourmet burgers. It really seems that the menu is all about decadence and indulgence – the foods are rich, from their toppings (truffle oil-drizzled fries) to their candy bar milkshakes (January’s shake of the month is the Butterfinger). Here’s a link to their sweet, simple, and affordable menu.

Truffle fries, Kobe Burger, and 16oz Blue Moon

As for my meal, I went for the most expensive (and raved about) burger on the menu – the Kobe Burger. At $14, it had the juiciest, tenderest, most succulent Kobe beef patty I’ve ever had in my life along with cheddar cheese, mushrooms, mayo, and lettuce between a soft and fluffy bun. The truffle fries were served with a truffle aioli sauce that was sweet and tart at the same time, offsetting the creaminess that the sprinkled cheese provided. The Blue Moon, my favorite beer, with the citrus tones, balanced out the meal just perfectly.

It was one of the burger combos I’ve ever had. Each bite was glorious. Altogether, the adult ambiance to the high quality food fit together so nicely. They should have called it Zenburger ‘cos I was certainly in a state of oneness with the universe while munching on this magnificent meal. Five out of five stars.

Chicken Breast with Ricotta and Spinach

So while I went grocery shopping the other night, I was struck by the idea of stuffed chicken breast, so I picked up some ricotta and decided to throw together a recipe. An idea I’ve really been trying to focus on lately is taking the time to truly enjoy my food – to slow down and cook things that I like and can savor instead of just throwing stuff together really quick and having everything totally fly over my head. Last night, I treated the process of cooking as a sort of meditation, focusing and calming my mind. Afterward, I plated my dish on the nicest plates I had, poured two glasses of wine for me and Hans, and turned on Michael Buble for a nice quiet evening at home.

Ingredients

• 2 large chicken breasts, sliced thin
• Bread crumbs
• Adobo seasoning
• Tomato sauce
• Pasta (your choice)
• 6-7 oz of ricotta cheese
• 1 small package of frozen spinach (or fresh if you’d like!)
• Oregano
• Italian seasoning
• Crushed red pepper
• Garlic powder

Ingredients

Normally this sort of recipe calls for splitting the chicken breast and stuffing it, but I wanted to try cutting the breast thin and wrapping it around the ricotta cheese/spinach mix. I felt that the chicken breasts I had were rather large and it would’ve been too much chicken to cheese. I was really going for a stuffed shells sort of feeling, but with chicken instead. It worked out rather well when the chicken cutlets were long enough to fold over, but some strips were too short. Still worked out pretty good though!

Chicken cutlets

The spinach I had was from a leftover package of frozen veggies, but I’m sure fresh spinach would have probably tasted much better. The frozen stuff worked though. Had to microwave it to thaw it out of this frozen block:

Frozen block of spinach

After it was softened enough, I mixed it with about half a package of ricotta cheese (6-7 oz). I mixed this with a bit of oregano, Italian seasoning, crushed red pepper, and garlic pepper (all to taste). I would have used minced garlic and fresh basil/parsley if I had some though!

Ricotta and spinach mixture

I used Pam in a frying pan to cook the chicken cutlets, just to try and make things a little healthier.

Pam! Good stuff.

From the other recipes I’ve read online, most fried the chicken first before baking it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. So that’s what I did, too. Again, longer strips of chicken were much better to use when wrapped it around the ricotta and spinach. After cooking the cutlets, they became more firm and it was harder to wrap it around. I wonder if it would have still worked if I wrapped it around the ricotta while raw and then baked it all the way through? Sorry if that’s a stupid question, but  does anyone know if that would have worked or not?

Frying the cutlets first

I fried them just enough to cook them most of the way through, wrapped them around the ricotta and spinach and then baked them for about 20 minutes. They looked absolutely delicious. Some of the cutlets were too small to wrap, so I just put the mix on top of them, and it still came out just as good.

Chicken in the oven

While all of that was in the oven, I started on the pasta and sauce that would complete the dish. All I had was tomato sauce, so I emptied two cans into the pot and mixed in my dried herbs and spices to make a almost respectable sort of marinara sauce.

Marinara sauce? Close enough.

It would have been a lot better with fresh ingredients, but it was:

I cooked up some rotini pasta, which is what we had left in the cupboard and put it all together.

complete dish!

I gotta say, I did AWESOME . It was totally delicious. The chicken was juicy, the pasta was tasty, and the cheese completed everything. I was totally a happy camper! I lamented my lack of fresh ingredients, but I did pretty well without.

Bread Pudding!

Mini Weenies!

Hello all! I know it’s been just about four months since I’ve posted anything. I was SUPER busy this semester with work and classes, but in particular two things ate up most of my blogging time – applying to veterinary school and working on a project called Comfort Foods Dessert-ation.

So I’m graduating in May, and hopefully by then I’ll know what I’m going to do with my life. Applying to veterinary school has been highly stressful. My grades aren’t as great as they should be, which was really discouraging me from applying at first, but I figured I should at least give it a shot. Luckily, I had a few people to write awesome recommendations for me, and hopefully the essays I wrote were pretty good. I spent a lot of time writing them, and I really tried to think out of the box..

So far, out of eight schools, I’ve gotten one interview (which will be happening on Wednesday! *bites nails*), and two rejections. One school wants to see my transcript once I graduate before making the decision to interview me. I’m super nervous because it’s a high possibility that I won’t get in anywhere. But I’m determined to live the dream, so if I don’t get in this year, I’ll just work for a while and apply again.

Not knowing what your future holds is crazy frightening, especially when knowing where I’m going to be in a few months  would help Hans figure out if he can come with me or not. Honestly, I’m a lot more anxious that I probably sound, but I’m trying to keep upbeat and positive.

As for the Comfort Foods Dessert-ation project I mentioned before, the idea sprung from a blog post I was going to write, which was about the biochemistry of comfort food/comfort eating. This turned into a project of sorts for a class, in which my partner, Justin, and I wrote a 10 page research paper and developed an art project surrounding people’s ideas of comfort foods. It really deserves a post of it’s own so I’ll put it up soon.

So onto the food!

For New Year’s Eve, I decided to make bread pudding and “mini weenies” (as my friends and I so affectionately call them).  The idea for bread pudding arised because I had a bag of two loaves full of white bread crusts. The bread crusts were leftover from the Cinnamon Toast RollsI made for Christmas. It’s simple, really  – you use soft white bread, cut off the crusts, flatten it out with a rolling pin, brush with butter on each side, spread cinnamon sugar and roll it up. Then bake for 15-20 minutes at 375^oF. They’re okay, not anything to call home about, and they definitely need the glaze/frosting that go with it. But anyway yeah, all the crusts from two loaves were left over. What better use than to make bread pudding?

I used a Paula Deen recipe for this one since it boasts in the title that it’s the “Best Bread Pudding”.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar
• 5 large beaten eggs
• 2 cups milk
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• leftover crusts from one loaf of white bread
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup of raisins

It calls for stale Italian bread, but I just used my bread crusts, ripped up into square-like pieces  in a 13×9 pan:

Bread crusts..

Next I mixed 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of milk, 2 eggs (I forgot to beat them first..), and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. I ended up having to use an electric mixer for this because it wasn’t going to be smooth by just mixing by hand..

Mixing up the ingredients. Before.

Mixing up the ingredients. After.

Then I poured the mix with bread and let it soak for 10 minutes. During that time, I started on the topping, which consisted of 1/2 cup light brown sugar, 1/4 cup of butter, 1 cup of crushed walnuts, and I threw in a few raisins for good measure. Paula Deen called for pecans, but I just used the leftover walnuts I had in the cupboard. This is what the goop looked like together:

Nutty topping.

Then I did my best to spread it evenly over the bread pudding mix.

Spreading the nutty topping over the pudding.

Then I stuck that sucker in the over for 45 minutes at 350^oF. I started working on the sauce. Make sure you do it on the stove because I mixed everything first! For the sauce, add

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of melted butter
• 1 beaten egg (don’t forget like I did!)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.

Unfortunately I didn’t have brandy for the sauce like Paula Den wanted, but it was pretty good without.

Make sure everything is heated at the stove! And beat your egg first or else you'll have bits of egg in the sauce. I had to strain it.

The sauce looked like honey once everything was mixed together well.

Bread pudding in the oven. 45 minutes at 350F

And there it is! All done.

All done! I made two, one for my family and one for Hans'. If you're going to make two, double the recipe!

The bread pudding came out really great. It was really soft and sweet with little bits of crunch. The sauce was really really sweet and sticky, like honey, and honestly the dish could do without. The sauce is made of, like, 90% butter anyway (which I suppose makes sense since its a Paula Deen recipe.)

Couldn't help it.

Heh, sorry about that. So, following this Food Network roll I’m on, I also did Neely’s Pigs in Blanket, or as my friends and I like to call them, “mini weenies”. Okay, fine I didn’t really follow the recipe, though it sounds like a nice twist on mini weenies, I just put the Crescent Rolls and cocktail franks together. It’s pretty simple really. You just roll them up and put them in the oven for 12 minutes at 350F or until the rolls are golden brown. I used two packages of Nathan’s cocktail franks and Crescent Rounds.

There they are, all wrapped up!

In the oven.

So yeah, word of advice, use the Crescent ROUNDS, not Crescent ROLLS. The rounds come in strips, and each strip can wrap 4-5 weenies. The rolls come in triangles, which are just harder to deal with  I suppose.

Buy this stuff.

Really simple, really yummy! To prepare them and then bake them right before the party so they’re nice and flaky. I ended up baking them in the morning and by the time night came around, they were a little soggy. But yeah! Super simple appetizer to make! Two packages of franks and two cans of Crescent Rounds came up to about $12, and that made an entire 13×9 tray full.

Mini weenies, all cooked up!

So there you have it. Thus ends my very long, very overdue post on foods. I’ll try my best to keep posting throughout this last semester! I’m starting Weight Watchers again, too, so hopefully I’ll be putting up healthier recipes than these two above, haha. And I’m only taking two classes this last semester, so I should have more time on my hands to write!

Until next time!

]]> http://tornadoinateacup.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/best-sonew-years-eve-bread-pudding-and-mini-weenies/feed/ 1 rizaanne IMG_20111231_134023.jpg IMG_20111231_142430.jpg IMG_20111231_121811.jpg IMG_20111231_123139.jpg IMG_20111231_123825.jpg IMG_20111231_125128.jpg IMG_20111231_125304.jpg IMG_20111231_130856.jpg IMG_20111231_133739.jpg IMG_20111231_134023.jpg pauladeenbutter IMG_20111231_141258.jpg IMG_20111231_141306.jpg IMG_20111231_141354.jpg IMG_20111231_142430.jpg http://tornadoinateacup.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/turkey-chili-soup/ http://tornadoinateacup.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/turkey-chili-soup/#comments Thu, 11 Aug 2011 05:24:41 +0000 RizaAnne https://tornadoinateacup.wordpress.com/?p=180 ]]> Phew. I’ve been really busy. Been putting off this post for a couple of weeks already, but I suppose it was worth it! My fifth draft of my personal statement for vet school is actually readable, though I still have a long way to go.. And I still have to write all the mini-essays for all my supplementary apps.. Sigh.

Work at the computer lab has been busy, too, since school is just starting this week, and so the management staff and I have been busy putting all the finishing touches on things that we’ll need for this semester.. Stats sheets, bulletin boards, updating tickets and documentation, and so many things! I’m glad to say that I was promoted just today, from Supervisor-in-Training to Assistant Lab Supervisor! Hoorah! Going to iHop later tonight to celebrate and catch up with some friends. =)

Anywho, here is the recipe for Turkey Chili. It’s modified from Gina’s Skinny Recipes’ Turkey Chili Taco Soup, and I added a little BBQ flavor to it by using some ingredients from my BBQ Tukery Sloppy Joes recipe. I also didn’t add the chicken broth so that the chili would be thicker instead of soupier. Hans and I have been trying to be healthier lately, so we started on Weight Watchers a few weeks ago, and Gina’s Skinny Recipes has been the greatest resource! I’ve already tried her Low Fat Creamy Mushroom soup and her Tomato Bisque soup, though the tomato bisque came out chunky since I didn’t have a blender.. Oh well, I’ll try it again sometime, but in any case, all three soups were delicious!

Ingredients

• 1.3 lb of ground turkey (the leaner the better, though mine is 93%)
• 1 15oz can of kidney beans, drained
• 1 15oz can of corn kernels, drained
• 1 15oz can of petite diced tomatos
• 1 8oz can of tomato sauce
• Some adobo seasoning
• Some cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp of garlic
• 3 tbsp garlic red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp Worcestshire sauce
• 1 tbsp hot sauce
• 1/2 chopped red pepper
• 1/2 chopped red onion

Ingredients

Chopped veggies

I started off by browning the ground turkey in a dollop of olive oil and garlic. You gotta chop up the meat in a little pieces so that your chunks aren’t too big. Unless you like chunks of course. Then I seasoned the meat with Adobo and cayenne pepper.

Seasoned and browned ground turkey

After that, I put in the fresh veggies to cook for a little bit, and then it’s just a matter of dumping the rest of the canned ingredients in, haha. Once everything was put in and simmered for a bit, I added the garlic red wine vinegar, Worcestshire, and hot sauce to give it some kick.

Everything in the pot..

So that’s all there is to it, really! It’s thick and spicy, and very filling. And it should be somewhere around 3-4 (old) Weight Watcher points, which is an added bonus. The chili is excellent with some low-fat sour cream, and would probably be great with some shredded cheese, too.

Finished product. Turkey Chili Soup.

So yeah! Hope you guys enjoy that! It’s one of my favorite recipes nowadays. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more soon.. This blog has been a nice little outlet for me, to do something semi-creative instead of working all the time.. Luckily, it’s also getting cooler, which means I’ll probably be posting more tea-related posts! Hoorah!

I haven’t had time to breathe let alone write up a post, so here’s something Hans whipped up about two weeks ago. He’s a lot better at experimenting than I am, thus there is no need for a recipe link. We had a bunch of limes left over from a party we had (we did the tequila shots without them!) so Hans decided to use those.

Lime Butter Salmon

• 2 tsp garlic
• 2 tsp melted butter
• Juice from 1 lime
• dash of cayenne pepper
• dash of lemon pepper

Marinate salmon filets in these ingredients for 30 minutes, then slow cook over a low fire with a little bit of olive oil.

Salmon cooked over low fire

The pasta was made with

• Whole wheat linguine noodles with olive oil
• One handful diced parsley
• Slices of grape tomato
• Slices of baby bella mushrooms
• Diced green pepper
• 1/2 tbsp diced garlic
• Dash of cayenne pepper
• Dash of Adobo seasoning
• Pinch of salt

Pasta, al dente

And voila!

Finished product. Lime butter salmon. Yum.

Hans’ finished product was salty and tart, and had a great fresh quality to it. The salmon was cooked til it was tender, and it just melted in your mouth. So filling and so yummy. =)

I was doing my physics homework last night alongside Hans, who was playing some Battlefield: Bad Company 2. All was quiet, aside from the scrawling of my pencil on my paper, and the muffled sounds of simulated war coming from Hans’ headphones. I looked over to the couch at my dog, Rory, who was fast asleep.

She was in a deep REM cycle, her eyes darting around wildly underneath her eyelids, and her paws jerking back and forth. Her muzzle and whiskers twitched as though her rambunctious dream-barks were being suppressed by real life. I wondered if I ever looked like that when I was sleeping, so obviously within the clutches of an adventure that was merely in my mind.

I watched her close for a few good minutes, wondering what on earth could she be dreaming about. Despite the fact that normally, her little black ears folded back meant that she was relaxed, or that her tail falling limp instead of curling up and wagging meant that she was unhappy, or that her crawling into your lap and exposing her belly meant that she was sorry and didn’t want anyone to be upset at her, I know that my little, ever-underfoot companion could never speak to me in words. Though I can read her body language, her whoops and whimpers, and the expressions in her almond brown eyes, I will never really be able to know what is going on inside that noggin of hers.

I can only imagine what she might dream about. Maybe she was dreaming about standing on top of a kayak on the water and falling into the lake, like she did this weekend at my friend’s birthday party. Or maybe she was dreaming about patrolling the backyard, guarding against those dangerous and treacherous meowing creatures or the not-to-be-trusted fuzzy-tailed tree-climbers. Or maybe she was simply dreaming of me – as we play tug-of-war, as we frolic through the park, chasing Canadian geese through the field, as we come back home for a well-deserved drink of water and hot plate of dinner, and as we cuddle together in bed for comfortable and warm night’s sleep.

You know how people analyze their dreams? How falling through the air supposedly means you feel like you don’t have control over your life or how getting chased by something means you’re afraid to face whatever that thing represents in your subconscious? I wonder, what about dogs? Are their dreams like ours? Are their dreams also a realm in which their subconscious minds can play out their anxieties, fears, and happiness about life? I know that dogs, and most animals for that matter, are in-the-moment creatures. The beautiful thing about them is they live in the present, and they don’t dwell on past happenings or future happenings. I mean, sure they can remember things, people, events, and they can worry about whether or not their owners are coming back when they’re left at home alone. But dogs don’t have those moments of existential angst that we humans subject ourselves to.

So I wonder what Rory dreams about. I wonder if she dreams only of things she remembers or if her mind creates different dream worlds as ours do. What would she fear, aside from me leaving her forever or getting a bath? What would she desire, aside from treats and toys and going outside? Wondering what she dreams about is not only about what she dreams about. It’s also about wondering what kind of complex things dogs and cats and the other wonderful animals in our lives can think of and comprehend. It’s wondering at how different we are from other animals, but how sometimes we are very often the same.

Rory stirs, and awakens as I stare at her, my furred friend, my dear companion. I murmur a few gentle words, and she wags her tail at my voice. I ask her if she had a good dream or a bad dream. She looks back at me with a loving, though quizzical look, and its moments like that that lead me to truly believe that she’s just doing what I’m doing. Just trying to understand.

I looked up rooibos tea later on in the day and found these neat tidbits. Rooibos tea is made from the rooibos bush that grows in South Africa. The tea is made of the rooibos’ little needle-like leaves. Other names include redbush tea, South African red tea, or simply red tea. In South Africa it is common to drink rooibos tea without milk, but instead with a slice of lemon and sugar or honey.

I suppose it would have been nice to try it the South African way, but I hadn’t known about it until I got home and Wiki’ed the information. The tea was a gorgeous marigold type of orange (that you can’t really see all that well in my picture.) It was steeped for 5 minutes, though I don’t know how hot the water really was. The tea had a nutty flavor, as well as a subtle vanilla undertone. The color reminded me of some thai teas I’ve had before, and so I’m thinking the tea would have gone very well with a little bit of milk and sugar. Generally, I feel that loose-leaf teas give a much better flavor than bagged, so I’m excited to see how a loose-leaf rooibos would taste.

My breakfast was a french toast bagel with cream cheese. Pretty good, since I love me my cinnamon sprinkled french toast, but the raisins kinda baffled me. Raisins with french toast? I don’t really dig that, but whatevs.

We drove half an hour from home to get to Thai Shangri-La, a restaurant in Old Bridge, only to find out, to our horrifying dismay, that it was closed! What a coincidence, open every day EXCEPT for Tuesday. We were devastated (and incredibly hungry). We had our hearts set on Thai food, so a quick Google search on our phones revealed to us that there was a Thai restaurant with great reviews about 12 minutes away.

River Thai Cuisine
50 Main St.
South River, NJ 08882-1225
Telephone Number: (732) 698-2225

River Thai Cuisine was located on a diverse little street alongside a Polish bakery and a Mexican grocery. A great thing about that, too, was that the meter parking was 1hr/$0.25. Sweet.

When we walked in around 7pm, it was fairly empty. The decor was simple with colorful round paper lanterns from the ceiling, bamboo plants all around, and jeweled elephants pictures hung on the walls. The music was very playing very low, almost inaudibly, which could have made things a bit awkward feeling if Hans and I were on a first date and we didn’t know each other that well. Good thing that’s not the case. =)  But yeah, the music would have added to the ambiance if they played it louder.

We started off with an appetizer of Curry Puffs, which I don’t have a picture of, unfortunately. (They were just that good.) They came in a set of six round little puff balls, with a thick, sweet clear chili type sauce that had cucumbers cut up into it. The curry puffs were delicious. The breading was very airy, flaky, and fluffy, and the curry inside wasn’t chunky, but like a fine paste. It was very reminiscent of samosas or empanadas, but the lightness of the dish gave it a very classy touch.

Their chicken pad thai was also a smash hit home run dish for me, too. I’ve been to a couple of Thai restaurants, and I even have my favorite, Thai O’Brien’s in Bayonne, NJ, but this pad thai blew every other pad thai I’ve had out of the water! The noodles were just the right consistency for me – soft but not too chewy, and soaked in that wonderful peanut sauce, which was very flavorful without being overwhelmingly peanut-y. The chicken, tofu, and egg made the meal nice and filling, and the bean sprouts, carrots, and scallions added clean, fresh taste to the dish.

Hans had the Pad Ga Prow, which was chicken sautéed with onions, bell peppers, chili, and basils. The sauce definitely had the perfect amount of heat to it. If I just drowned the rice in that sauce, I could eat it just like that all day all. (Ahem, that’s what she said.) I was glad that the chicken was chicken breast, because it made the dish nice and light, which I feel balanced out that heat. I couldn’t stop eating Hans’ food. For the record, he couldn’t stop eating mine, either!

And because we were trying so hard to not finish the entire meal (we’ve been trying to portion control ourselves by only allowing ourselves to eat half of whatever is on our plate when we eat out and taking the rest home) we decided to stop halfway and have some tea. Hans ordered their green tea, which I didn’t think was anything too special, and I ordered their Sunflower Jasmine tea, which was so flowery and fragrant, I drank almost 3 cups of it. The jasmine tea had a beautiful amber color to it, and bits of the tea specks floating at the bottom of the cup reminded me of pollen drifting in the wind or of sand at the beach falling slowly into clear water. The Sunflower Jasmine tea was made with green tea and jasmine petals, and drinking it made me think of relaxing in the sun in a field of flowers. It was a very lovely way to end a very lovely dinner.

All in all, I give River Thai Cuisine a 5 out of 5 stars. The food was absolutely delicious and was made perfectly to my tastes, and the staff was friendly and very attentive all night. I had a wonderful time there, and I’m honestly pretty happy the other restaurant was closed, or else we would not have found this spectacular gem!

The show is so laugh out loud funny (especially to nerds like Hans and I), though it’s annoyingly male dominated for the first couple of seasons. Things perk up when they add Bernadette (the book-smart, but slightly ditzy girlfriend to Howard) and Amy (the female version of Sheldon) to the cast. Then at least after that its not a sausage fest, and television can finally admit that the diverse community of girl geeks exists.

Anyway. The only reason this is relevant is because of the Chinese food. Yes, the Chinese food. Hans and I have been watching The Big Bang Theory non-stop, and during every theme song is this:

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

AND BAM. A PICTURE OF THE CAST EATING CHINESE FOOD. At the end of the theme song of every. Freaking. Episode.

I’m very susceptible to pictures and advertisements, especially for food… And even though this is no advertisement, seeing that shot of the five of them, eating Chinese food, every 30 minutes or so for a couple of hours each night, really made me want Chinese food. And because Hans and I are continuing our quest to have healthier diets, ordering out was out of the question. Sadly. I did beg quite a bit. So instead, I settled on making my own food, and the dish I was craving the most was… Drumroll please..!

Chicken with garlic sauce! I found this recipe off of Food.com, and adapted it to my needs – Stir Fry Chicken with Garlic Sauce.

Since I was getting home late from work, I had Hans cut up the chicken breast and marinade it for an hour or so in these ingredients:

• 2 tsp of minced galic
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 water
• 1/4 honey
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp crush red pepper flakes

And when I got home, I was ready to cook! Fresh veggies up the wazoo again! I added more than the recipe asked for – sliced baby carrots, baby bella mushrooms, green peppers, and onions. Look at that color! Beautiful.

Fresh vegetables to be added in.

I also had a can of baby corn in the cabinet that I had been holding on to for a while,  waiting to find the perfect dish to put it in. What better dish than chicken with garlic sauce! Of course, the baby corn out of the can doesn’t look as delicious and yellow as the baby corn on the picture, but what are you gonna do. It still tasted great with everything else.

After preparing all the veggies to be used in the dish, I heated up a little bit of olive oil and another half a teaspoon of garlic and then used a slotted spoon to place the chicken in the pan. I didn’t have any cornstarch on hand, but I find that sprinkling some flour in the mix thickens things up pretty well in place of it.

After letting the chicken cook through, I added the vegetables in there, too. Over that, I poured the rest of the sauce from the marinade and then a little bit of extra oyster sauce to make the that much more saucier. I let that all simmer in there for a while and voila!

My chicken with garlic sauce was finished! I couldn’t wait to put that on my plate with some cooked white rice. Mmm sooo good.

Finished product. Only took 20 minutes to cook, aside from the marinating time.

The result was amazing. I liked it just as much as I would from any other Chinese takeout (though I do miss the water chestnuts that come with the veggies, as well as the fortune cookies that come with my meal!) The heat from the crushed red peppers was just enough to leave my taste buds tingling, and the sauce was just the right amount of thickness that I liked. It was salty, sweet, and spicy all in one, and it definitely quenched my craving for Chinese food! (Thanks a lot, Big Bang Theory!) Writing about this the next day is making my mouth water so bad. That could also be due to the fact that it’s almost 7pm, and I’m almost out of work to eat dinner!

That’s all for today folks. Toodles!