Tomato Egg Cups

Nur sent me this recipe from La Casita Inspirada out of the blue. It's super easy and pretty so I made it.


Two beautiful and ripe tomatoes? Check.


Hollow out tomatoes' innards? Check.


Fill each tomato with an egg, some ground pepper, and salt? Check, check, and check!



Pop in preheated 425 degrees F oven for 20 minutes, then top with crispy bacon bits? Check! The recipe actually says to top it off with cheese but I think bacon is greater than cheese, so I went with bacon.

That's it. I actually switched to the broiler option for an additional 5 minutes because I do not like my eggs so runny. So easy and pretty even a LeTran can do it!

Chicken Pasta Salad

This was one of those "I'm hungry and don't wanna walk to the store," sorta meals. Very easy.

What I had:

Greek yogurt
green onions
1/4 bag of wheat pasta
lettuce
frozen chicken
sandwich pickles

So chicken salad it is!

1st I cooked the chicken in the microwave and boiled the water for the pasta.

I sliced the green onion, 2 sandwich pickles, and the lettuce.

I placed the pickles and green onions in a mixing bowl. Added pasta to boiling water. Chopped the chicken into bite-sized bits, then added to the mixing bowl.

When the pasta was cooked, it went in to. I added a dash of garlic salt for taste, and tossed the mixing bowl contents with 1/4 cup Greek yogurt (-ish, sorry, I cook by instinct, not measurement), point is to coat, but not soak. Just a bit, not too much.

The lettuce I placed in the bottom of the bowl (sorry, can't see it in the picture) and scooped some of the chicken salad mix on top.

Very simple,. very yummy!

Waffle Ice Cream Sandwich

In the previous post, I talked about candied bacon ice cream. Then that spawned this conversation:

Brendan: make the ice cream
and add chunks of egg in it
LeTran: cooked eggs? (commentary: I'm not stupid, ice cream has uncooked eggs in it)
Brendan: yup
and a bit of waffle
oh oh, nix the egg
and just put pieces of syrupy waffles with the bacon
orrr a bacon ice cream sandwich
LeTran: omg waffle ice cream sandwich
waffle bacon ice cream sandwich
Brendan: ohhhhh omg
that is a real good idea
no joking

...and so it began...

Spicy Candied Bacon

Studying gave me serious cases of the munchies. No lie. Checked the fridge for tasty drinks. None. Checked everywhere in kitchen for random snacks. Nada. Well, except for those stale/raw almonds. Then I remembered that I had some bacon left from previous bacon adventures. My fatty mind was craving something sweet. The light bulb went on! I also remembered seeing a recipe for Spicy Candied Bacon from Serious Eats.

What do you think my bright idea was?

Misadventure: Strawberry Stuffed Ice Cream

Remember Brendan? I was having a little chat with Brendan about food...because there are only three things that I talk about 1. food, 2. cats, 3. dogs. I'm not well-rounded. I cannot hold an intelligent conversation about politics, history, geography, philosophy, literature, string theory, game theory, human behavior, etc. But I digress.

Brendan and I were talking about ice cream sandwiches. Who doesn't like ice cream sandwiches? Then Brendan had the brilliant idea of making ice cream sandwiches not with cookies, but with fruits instead. Talking with Brendan tickled my brain, so I started to think about stuffing fruits with ice cream. Basically, the conversation went something like this...okay, maybe not a bit, but exactly like this:

Brendan: i wonder if ice cream sandwiches would be good with fruit as the bread like mango ice cream inside slices of mango
me: too slippery
Brendan: or ice cream between wedges of banana
me: OR ice cream in hollowed out strawberries
Brendan: ooo, i like that one, and then it can be dipped in chocolate
me: yes!
Brendan: for extreme tastiness
me: and rolled in a bit a sea salt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! akdjfaoier
Brendan: haha
me: just a tiny bit
Brendan: you're one of those salty choco people/

...and so that conversation gave fruit to this misadventure!

Cilantro Pesto Pizza

I am not dead yet! I've been um...lazy and there isn't any good excuses (or excuses at all) as to why I neglected the blog. I am so sorry!

Back to the actual food part, remember how I made the mango salsa? It was quite delicious. Actually, Helen and I like it a lot.

The thing about making salsa is that you will always be left with a giant bunch of cilantro that you have no idea how to use up. I mean, do you make more salsa and eat it for two weeks? I love them salsa but that would be too much. So I searched for an easy way to use most of my leftover cilantro and found Bobby Flay's Grill Shrimp and Cilantro Pesto Pizza. It was actually really convenience because I had leftover mango salsa to use as a topping for the pizza, too!

Spicy Saté Squid

I had this spicy sate dish in Singapore. Impressed with how tasty it was, I set out (with the help of my sister) to duplicate it. Beware that this is very spicy, so I suggest eating it with rice.



Here is what I came up with.



Recipe under the cut.

Russian Tea Cookies

Okay, so this is not a particularly exciting post. I made these Russian Tea Cookies from Smitten Kitchen precisely as she stated. So no real posting required... except I took some photos for you!

My mom wanted to bake with me, and I guess so did Gandalf!



It's been so long, do you guys remember Gandalf?


The hardest part was powdering them with sugar. Serious. Lots of hard work in that.

Chicken & Shrimp Lo Mein

When my friend, Iva's, mom came to visit her, I was invited back for dinner! Yay! So her mom made a seafood lo-mein, and she got all her ingredients from Whole Foods, so there's no need for an exotic trip to the asian grocery store. Her mom's was way better than mine, but I've only attempted this dish a couple of times. Her dish was a little saucy, and she used corn starch (a staple in a Chinese kitchen), which I don't have with me in Pittsburgh and I was too lazy (and cheap) to buy some.

Eggs, Bacon & Cheese Toast

Sorry for the lack of updates, peeps! Both The Chopping Block and I had finals (and she had work too)! We've been cooking, I swear!

So the Chopping Block had sent me a recipe via instant messenger a long time ago, and I don't think I saved it anywhere, so I can't send you to a reference link! Epps! Well, anyways, the recipe sounded interesting. Eggs. Bacon. Cheese. Dijon Mustard. Worcheshire sauce. How can I resist? Well, it's a misadventure people! Perhaps it's me and not the recipe, but the flavors just didn't mesh well, and I had integrated the cheese into the egg mixture, and so it took forever for the cheese to melt, thus overcooking the eggs to a dry mess and the toast to... a very hard cracker. :(