May 28th, 2009
The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.
No matter how good your plan is, things can still happen to make the plan fall apart.
Things have fallen apart for me in a good way. The soap business has really taken off for me and I’m loving every minute of it. In the process of being very busy making soap there hasn’t been much time left over for any creative cooking. I’ve been slapping meals together at the last minute and not being very original. Seriously, who wants to read about grilled chicken breasts, salad out of the bag, frozen pasta and Chinese takeaway?
Guest bloggers are still lined up for posts in the future. It just seems like all of my friends are just as swamped as I am right now with work and projects. I’m looking forward to getting back on track and getting back in the kitchen. I really hate it when I loose my desire to be creative in the kitchen.
Today I leave you with one of my favorite quick meals….San Bei Ji. Better known as three cup chicken.
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San Bei Ji
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons olive oil
20 garlic cloves, minced
10 slices thin fresh ginger
1 Serrano pepper, thinly sliced
2 lbs chicken breasts cut up into bite-size pieces
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup rice wine
3 tablespoons sugar
2 cups Thai basil
1/2 pound fresh shitake mushrooms, sliced
1/2 pound yu choy, roughly chopped
1 cup sliced lotus root
2 single serve (5.6 oz. each) fresh yaki-soba noodles
1. Heat up the olive oil in a wok on high heat.
2. Add garlic, ginger and Serrano pepper, stir fry until fragrant ( 3 minutes)
3. Add the chicken pieces and cook 5 minutes.
4. Stir together the soy sauce, rice wine and sugar in a bowl, pour over chicken.
5. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to low. Cook uncovered for 15 minutes.
6. Add yu choy, lotus root and mushrooms.
7. Let cook, uncovered, until sauce thickens, about 15 minutes.
8. Turn heat back up to high and add basil, sesame oil and yaki soba noodles cook for another 5 minutes.
The dish turns out kind of ugly as you can see in the picture above…but the taste is out of this world! Very simple and very delicious.
What is your favorite quick Asian inspired dish?
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
May 18th, 2009
I admit…I am on a salad kick at the moment. Last week was the cucumber salad, last night was the Fresh Bar at Ruby Tuesdays (birthday treat for me!) and tonight is potato salad.
I was not in the mood for a traditional potato salad. I wanted something to jump up out of the bowl and slap me! I needed flavor and tartness and something different. This salad delivers all three hands down.
Potato and Green Bean Salad. Most definitely not your Mamma’s potato salad. The dressing is a breeze. Just take the juice of 2 lemons and mix together with 1/4 extra virgin olive oil. Throw in some chopped fresh mint, a handful of fresh chopped parsley, a little Cavender’s Greek seasoning, chopped garlic and a tablespoon of red wine vinegar.
Tonight I steamed fresh green beans and added them to cold, sliced cooked potatoes. I also threw in a few mini heirloom tomatoes and thinly sliced red onion for flavor and color.
Just lightly toss everything together and serve. How simple is that?! I made the potato salad a meal by serving it with a little fresh goat cheese and a few Carr’s Rosemary crackers. If you love rosemary and haven’t tried these little gems, you’ve got to rush out and get a box! I swear that I could stuff myself with these crackers smeared with goat cheese. Live on them for weeks even, they are that good! I’ve always been a fan of Carr’s…but these babies go above and beyond and they were perfect with my potato salad.
This is another salad that does not need chilled. I love it served at room temperature. All of the flavors play together beautifully and do not need chill time to round themselves out.
What are some of your favorite non traditional salads?
Posted in Daregal Herbs, Spring, crackers, salads, vegetables | 3 Comments »
May 15th, 2009
The good news is that Life, Lightly Salted has survived a change in platforms and a change in hosting companies. The bad news is that in the process Feedburner managed to lose all of my subscribers. So if you normally read Life, Lightly Salted in an RSS reader, you will need to re-subscribe. Sorry for the pain in the rear…but it was a small casualty to deal with to get such an awesome new home an fresh look for the blog!
A little update on the home front…as well as this blog I have started my own business. I am now in the business of soap making. If you haven’t had the chance to check out my store or new blog here are the links for you to go take a look.
Funky Chunks Handmade Soaps and More
Funky Chunks Blog
While I have been working on the start up end of Funky Chunks, our dinners have been quick, painless and mostly grilled meats and salads. I had a flopped batch of scones in there somewhere and a lot of take away meals.(our local Chinese takeaway doesn’t even ask for our address for delivery anymore!) Now that things have calmed down quite a bit I can get back to the cooking! Today I would like to share one of my favorite quick salads. The beauty of this salad is that you can use most any fruit and veg combination. I make this salad on the nights that I need to clean out the produce bins. It’s very forgiving, you can use fresh vegetables, thawed frozen vegetables and even left over steamed veggies.
Mustard and Dill Salad
For the salad…
Thinly slice up a few of your favorite vegetables and fruits. The combination that I use together most often is cucumbers, red onions, red delicious apples and grapes that have been sliced in half. This time around instead of the grapes I used this beautiful organic carrot that I came across at Wegmans. The little bugger was as big around as the apples in this salad. They really added to the presentation of the dish.
For the dressing…
1/4 cup malt or cider vinegar
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon of whole grain mustard
a generous addition of Daregal fresh frozen dill
Mix all of the dressing ingredients together. Play around with them to get the flavor that you like. I prefer mine to be heavy on the vinegar and herbs with very little oil. You can even throw in a little sour cream to make the dressing a little smoother. The important ingredients here are the whole grain mustard and fresh herbs. Everything else is up for adaptation.
Add the dressing to your sliced veg and fruits. This salad can be refrigerated, but I recommend bringing it to room temperature before serving. It really brightens up the flavors. This is best made the same day that you are going to serve. It doesn’t keep well. Only because the juices from the fruits and vegetables will dilute your dressing.
This salad pairs beautifully with grilled chicken and fish. We’ve even been known to eat it alone for dinner with a nice hard roll on the side.
Hope that everyone has a fabulous weekend! Summer is just around the corner!!
Tags: cucumber, Daregal fresh frozen herbs, salad, whole grain mustard
Posted in Uncategorized, cheap eats, salads, summer, vegetables | 6 Comments »
May 11th, 2009
We are up and running again…whooo hooo! Give me a little bit to figure all of this wonderful Wordpress stuff and Life, Lightly Salted should be back on track. The guest bloggers are just around the corner…we’ve got a few new giveaways planned and I’ve been cooking up a lot of fantastic dishes while I’ve been away.
What do you think of the new design? While you are browsing around the site please let me know if there is anything that isn’t functioning properly, missing or needs a tweak. My designers will be ironing things out for the next few days to make sure that everything is running smoothly.
Thanks for your understanding and patience during the transition.
Tags: design
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
May 10th, 2009
We are just a few days away from launching the new Life, Lightly Salted site. We have switched hosting companies and will be going to a Wordpress format. But best of all is going to be the brand spankin’ new look around the place. My design team has been awesome! When I sketched out an idea on a piece of scrap paper I had no idea that they would turn it into reality. I’m so excited that I want to leak screenshots out early, but that would ruin the big surprise.
To take my mind off of the launch I want to do a weekend giveaway!
Here’s your chance to win a sample box of Funky Chunks soaps.
(Caramelized Brandied Pear)
Just click on over to Funky Chunks and answer a Pop Culture trivia question for your chance to win.
(Green Tea Zen)
The soaps pictured are just part of the sample box! There are several others included. Good luck on the giveaway…the winner will be announced on Monday over on the Funky Chunks website.
Have a fabulous weekend!
Posted in Enter To Win, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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