Bumble Bee Tuna Salad

It was Helen who introduced me to this world of ready-to-eat tuna salad. They sure are tasty. If you are a cat owner like me, you would find that it's very hard to eat tuna without cats surround you on all sides. So these ready-to-eat tuna salad is very handy if you want to eat tuna away from home.

So this is a review post of Bumble Bee Tuna Salad* because sometimes, we just don't have time to cook fancy pants food like lamb burgers and beef stew.

Caprese Salad

I used to think that caprese salad is the dumbest thing in the world. Why? I'll tell you why. I was watching an episode of Sex and the City and Charlotte was ordering a caprese salad. When her salad came out, it was one single slice of tomato, one slice of mozzarella, and one basil leaf! I was so perplexed. Why the hell would anyone want to eat that? It's so uninteresting! If I want to eat one slice of tomato, one slice of cheese, and one LEAF I wouldn't pay $5 for it!

Since I'm a grown up now, I decide to go back to all of the food I despised/thought was stupid as a child and try it again. Or else, I'd just be stuck in the child phase forever! Not that it's bad to be a child at heart, but it's pretty stupid to stay ignorant.

Let me tell you, I am a changed woman! ...as far as caprese salad is concerned, that is.

Apple Tart

This week, my friend, Iva, and I decided to make this Apple Tart posted at Smitten Kitchen, an adaptation of Jacques Pepi's apple tart as documented by Alice Waters. I believe this apple tart is still served at Chez Panisse today, which I believe the Chopping Block has visited a couple of times, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyways, this was delicious. We served it with homemade vanilla creme en glaze and apple syrup.

Stir Fry Ramen

This is a lazy post for a lazy dinner for one. I was so lazy that I only took one photo. Heh.

Many people had made stir fry ramen before, right? Right. Well, who cares? I didn't want to spend money on dinner and I only had enough shrimp and broccoli for myself. Not only that, I didn't feel like rice. So I thought, if other people can make stir fry ramen, why can't I? And so I did.

List of lazy ingredients:

1 package of ramen
1 small thing of broccoli or several florets of broccoli
1 clove of garlic - minced
about 5 or 6 shrimps
sesame oil or vegetable oil
salt
pepper flakes (optional)


Lazy steps:

- Boil some water and cook the ramen without the soup base package. Don't throw that soup base away!
- Mix the soup base with the shrimps. Hahah! I even got too lazy to make my own marinade.
- Wash and cut broccoli into bite size. Like I even have to tell you that.
- When ramen is tender, drain and discard water.
- In a large pan or wok, heat about 1/2 tablespoon of vegetable oil. Stir fry the broccoli and garlic for about 2 minutes.
- Add in shrimps. Stir fry for another minute.
- Add salt to taste, but I think the ramen soup base should be enough.
- Toss in the cooked and drained ramen noodle.
- Add about 1 tablespoon of sesame oil or vegetable oil so the noodle doesn't get too dry.
- Constantly toss and stir the whole thing for 30 seconds or until well mix.
- Remove from heat and serve!
- You can sprinkle on some pepper flakes for fun.

This is an any-wo/man's stir fry ramen so feel free to use cauliflowers, or cabbages, or carrots, or peas in lieu of broccoli. Throw an egg in there for all I care! Go forth and make lazy dinners!

So easy, it's child's play!

Bacon Wrapped Brussels Sprouts

I'm afraid I'm one of those bacon worshipers and believe that bacon-everything is awesome! Since I also love brussels sprouts, what am I going to do to double the fun? Wrap the brussels sprouts with bacon, of course!

A few recipes recommended that the brussels sprouts be blanched and the bacons be slightly fried before combining the two. A few other recipes start with frozen brussels sprouts. Well, I decided to try neither!




I started with some non-frozen brussels sprouts.




Wrapped one piece of bacon around each brussels sprout and secured with a toothpick.




Twenty to twenty-five minutes later (depending on how crispy you want your bacons) in a 375 400 degrees oven resulted in delicious bacon wrapped brussels sprouts (I checked my notes, I had it at 400 degrees not 375).

That's it! Almost no work at all. Easiest and tastiest appetizer ever!

Pumpkin Bread

Do you know what time it is? It's time for my favorite season of the year: Fall! Do you know what that means? PUMPKIN! I was reading an RSS from Savory Sweet Life, and Alice had just made this pumpkin bread recipe from the Pioneer Woman. It looked so good, I had to make it too!

Penang Assam Laksa

Nur, my Southeast Asian food go-to person, sent me this penang laksa recipe to try out. According to Nur, it's authentic! How do I know it's authentic? It contains strange sounding ingredients. Let's take a break from my streak of dessert making and go into some real food.

Laksa is a sort of spicy noodle soup and it comes in several types. There's curry laksa and assam laksa. Curry laksa is self-explanatory. Assam laksa is a sour fish base laksa.

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage

I asked the Chopping Block what I should cook, and she suggested a pumpkin recipe from Martha Stewart, except I thought that it wouldn't turn out very well. I think pumpkin has a pretty mild taste, and I didn't think it'd work with pasta. After some searching around, I found a Rachel Ray recipe, albeit I'm not a fan, but it looked more promising than Martha Stewart's.

Elise's Oatmeal Raisin Chocolate Chip Orange Pecan Cookies

If you haven't notice already, I have like a crazy girl crush on Elise at Simply Recipes. You can see that I made food from her blog all the time. As shown here and here and here, and here.

That's right, people, Elise herself commented on one of my posts. I was so stoked I almost peed my pants. Hahahha...not really, but really stoked nevertheless! But all of her recipes are so delicious and simple. Not only that, she's also from the greater Sacramento area, like me! Well, I'm not exactly from from Sacramento, but I lived there when I was 11 to 21 and still consider it home.

Okay, let me end the fan girl craze and move on to tell you about my adventure of making Elise's oatmeal raisin chocolate chip orange pecan cookies or as I like to call it my Out-of-everything cookies...Why? Well, you shall know...

Matcha (Green Tea) Ice Cream

My first exposure to matcha, Japanese green tea, ice cream was during my first trip to Berkeley in high school. My first thought was "What? Tea ice cream? Wouldn't that taste kinda gross?" Good thing I decided to try it and changed my mind on the whole "gross" part. It's so fun when stuff you thought is gross initially turns out to be awesome?

When you have an ice cream maker, you might as well make ice cream with it, right? Right!