Shrimp Stir-Fry made easy

I went off course with everyone else at MSU this week and used the Better Homes & Gardens recipe. It turned out pretty good, considering I didn't have any rice vinegar, or any vinegar at all for that matter. My first picture is the garlic, onions, carrots, mushrooms, and broccoli. As you can see I don't know how to slice the carrots "bias-style" or however they said. I just sliced them like normal. I think they're supposed to be more like Lindsay's.

Caleb usually is cooking right along side me when I do these meals. It's much more fun that way.

This is the final product. The sauce wasn't bad, although it didn't bring out the shrimp taste at all. I used a little lemon juice since I didn't have rice vinegar, so I'm not sure how much that affected it. The texture of the shrimp was perfect, but they didn't taste much like shrimp. They kind of tasted like nothing. There definitely could've been more sauce for the amount of veggies and rice.

We even busted out a bottle of sparkling cider from our wedding. 6 month anniversary on Nov. 1st!!

Overall I really liked the recipe. I love seeing all those bright colored veggies in the pan. Makes me feel healthy. I liked using shrimp because I've never cooked shrimp before. It's pretty quick one you get all the veggies cut, and you can change it up (the sauce, veggies, or meat) really easily.

If Martha forgives us, we're back to our syllabus next week!

Shrimp Stir-Fry--Linds

I feel somewhat guilty putting this recipe on our Martha blog, when we totally threw that one out the window and busted our "Better Homes and Gardens" books. But, it was Martha-inspired so I guess it's alright. Problem #1 with this recipe--I don't like shrimp. I try, I really try. But I don't. Kenny, on the other hand, was very excited about this. He took Tyler to town on Saturday to spend some time with him and get him out of the house while I worked on my lesson, so he did the grocery shopping for this meal. He bought a pound of shrimp, and I ate 2 pieces of it, he ate the rest :).

While we were eating the meal he said, and I quote, "I feel like I'm eating at a fancy restaurant." So that tells you it was a success. We didn't have mushrooms, and I really wasn't a huge fan of the sauce, but that's ok. Oh and it was my turn to cheat this week and not do the "perfect white rice", Martha style. I totally used my rice cooker.

I love making stir-fry and I loved how easy this meal was to throw together. I would definitely do this again, just maybe not with the shrimp (unless Kenny asks really nice :). ) AND one more confession. I haven't done the eggs yet. But just for the record that's how I always make my hard-boiled eggs. I learned that in a cooking class at BYU-Idaho. But I will make them sometime this week.

the end.

Stir-Fry Shrimp without Black Bean Sauce, by Steph

(Sorry in advance about the crappy spacing on all my posts. I use Picasa, and it has issues. Not as many issues as Blogger, but still. How annoying.)
We made a unanimous decision this week to veto Martha's recipe for Shrimp Stir-Fry with Black Bean Sauce. Sounds simple enough, right? I thought so when I originally chose it for this week's recipe. But don't let the unadorned title fool you. The recipe was filled with ridiculous indredients like fermented edamame beans and hao shing sauce. I wasn't about to go to an Asian specialty market to get some weird stuff that would probably cost too much and taste gross.

So I found a different (ahem, better) shrimp stir-fry recipe in our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. But in order to not completely take Martha out of the picture (after all, it is Martha Stewart University), I was willing to try her "Perfect Rice." (Although in my experience, anything Martha says is perfect is my perfect opportunity to ruin a recipe.)
















I chopped up all my vegetables, which is honestly the hardest part of a stur-fry. I had to peel my shrimp, but it wasn't too bad. I have learned from experience that it's better to buy uncooked shrimp. I'm no longer scared of them. Raw shrimp are my friends! Apparently I was really boring while working on this meal, because you can see my daugther asleep in the background. On the counter. That was a first.












I used my wok, which worked great. Stir-frys (stir-fries?) move so fast and take so little time that I knew I had to have all my ingredients ready beforehand to avoid any mid-fry stress. I did quite well this time, for once. (Andrew, aren't you proud of me?)
















And here is the finished product. The rice was, indeed, perfect, and I think I'll do it that way every time. The secret is to use less water. Normally the ratio is 2 cups of water to one cup of rice, but Martha uses 1 1/2 c. water for 1 c. rice, and it was nice and fluffy. Good flavor, too, with the 1/2 tsp. salt in there. For once, she was right about something being perfect.

The stir-fry...not so perfect. The vegetables were great. The broccoli was perfect, and the mushrooms tasted yummy. But the shrimp tasted like fishy rubber. I tried to eat it, as shrimp is one of my all-time favorite foods, but after 3 pieces, I just couldn't do it. And I dumped the leftovers down the drain in the end. (Seems to be a theme with me, doesn't it?) I still ate enough to get full, and Leighton went to town on it all (except the shrimp), so I guess it wasn't a total failure. But I'm still on the hunt for the perfect stir-fry sauce. Martha doesn't have the answer for this one.

Cheater Tortilla Soup by Steph

I don't know if I should really be posting this on this blog, since is was so far from Martha's version it probably doesn't count. The last week and a half have been the worst of my life. We are counting the days until Andrew comes home from deployment, but it seems to drag the worst at the end (like a pregnancy). On top of that, my kids are both sick, leaving us all stuck inside with bad moods and no energy. So my lame attempt at tortilla soup was only to check it off my list.
I say cheater tortilla soup because as I was making it, I realized that if I were getting a grade for this, I should get an F. After all, it is Martha Stewart University, and although there are no professors, I still look at this as a school of sorts. So somebody give me an F. I felt like I was using Cliff Notes the whole time instead of doing the real thing.

First, I cooked the chicken WHOLE in the crock pot. I didn't cut it up and boil it, and I didn't make homemade stock. It was way easier, and I didn't have to deal with my salmonella phobia.

Instead of frying my own tortilla strips (even though I bought corn tortillas for that purpose), I used my favorite pre-fried kind.








I couldn't find a dried pasilla chile, so I used what I had at home - green taco sauce. Mmmm. Cheater's delight.
















Like I said, making my own chicken stock was out of the question, so I used my favorite kind from Costco. The soup was pretty good. Definitely not something I will make again, as I already had a good tortilla soup recipe that gives me much more pleasure and far less guilt about skipping steps.
















And while I'm taking pictures of food, let me include one of my favorite snack. Delicious, and only 35 calories. I always eat 2 wedges because of that. It's practically as low fat as eating air, but yummy and more filling. I dip the afore-mentioned Santitas in the cheese, and my mouth is watering just thinking about it. After my unsatisfying tortilla soup experience, all I needed was a Laughing Cow wedge to cheer me up.

Tortilla Soup--Linds

I started making my tortilla soup yesterday. I read it before hand and knew it was going to be a lot of work, and I hate complicated meals on Sunday so I did it all yesterday. I had never heard of some of the ingredients (what else is new) like pasilla chiles and cojita cheese. I could only find fresh pasilla chiles, not dried ones like it called for. So I don't know what it was supposed to taste like, but we liked ours. I just used one fresh one. Oh by the way. THE CHICKEN. I was trying to wuss out and buy one that was already cut up into pieces for me, but the store was out of them. I am secretly grateful that they didn't have any because it forced me to cut it all up by myself again. I put the kids down for a nap and went to work. It was so much easier this time because I used a sharp knife, the insides were in a nice little baggy, and I knew what I was doing. So it went much faster, with much less mess and I am no longer scared of whole chickens. I can handle them--no prob.

I had also never had or made those tortilla strip things. I just sliced up some corn tortillas with a pizza cutter/roller and deep fried them. Then I sprinkled kosher salt all over them while they were still hot and they were so yummy in the soup.

I was pretty sick of the whole soup by the time I got it all done and in the fridge. But it was SO nice to pull it all out today and heat it up and serve it with some yummy sides. I didn't have limes, and I forgot to pull the cilantro out of the fridge. But we did have avocado, red onion, and tortilla strips, and regular cheddar cheese (couldn't find the fancy stuff), and sour cream. It was very yummy.

We had some friends over for dinner tonight to share in it with us and they claimed to like it too. Of course, they could have just been being polite, but I'm pretty sure Heather meant it because she complimented it multiple times. :)

And just in case you were wondering, we had a delicious pumpkin roll for dessert.

It was the first time I've made one by myself and it was SOO good. MMmmm....I want to go get the rest out of the fridge and eat it right now at 10:00 p.m. I better go to bed instead.

Basic Drop Cookies by Steph

Today's recipe, thankfully, was pretty much failproof. After another bad Martha experience on Monday with the Perfect Beans (which were pretty far from perfect), I needed a boost in my confidence in following Martha's recipes. (The strange thing is, I rarely have bad recipes. For some reason I just don't do well with Martha.) But cookies are something I have made many times. The recipe was basic and turned out delicious. For my add-ins I used 1 cup of white chocolate chips and one cup of semisweet. It was also my first time using my new silicone baking mat (a wannabe Silpat) and I LOVED it. The cookies baked perfectly and evenly - probably my most perfectly baked cookies ever. I attribute that entirely to the baking mat, which cost $10 at Fred Meyer. Great investment.
















Leighton loved the cookies too. This is him nodding when I asked him if it was a good cookie.























As I'm limiting my calories this week and the next few until my husband comes home, I froze a bunch in little baggies to pull out when I'm in desperate need of a treat. Of course, I saved a dozen for the kids to enjoy this week. And they were so good, I might sneak one in myself. After all, what's a diet if you can't cheat once in a while?

Basic Drop Cookies--Linds

I am sorry that I did not do the borlotti beans or whatever they're called. I can't find them. So as soon as I do, I will make them. Until then, I am still caught up because I made the drop cookies.

I thought it was neat to read the page before the recipe where it talks about why you're supposed to cream butter and sugars together, stuff about eggs at room temp. etc. It's nice to understand the why behind all of our cooking. I used dark brown sugar, which i've never used before, and it's yummy. I think it's a pretty good, basic recipe. We added choc. chips because I had just used all my pecans, almonds, and walnuts making a yummy granola. I also didn't use two pans on two different racks and rotate them halfway through. I think martha comes up with the funniest things sometimes, just because. I also didn't have parchment paper, and they turned out just fine. Kenny thought they were really yummy, and he likes them fluffy. Tyler didn't like them too much, but he did love the dough (as always). Overall, I'd say it was a success!