"Ginger" Cashew Chicken

So it seems I almost forgot to post about this one! Based off of a recipe I found using Epicurious from Bon Appetit - Ginger-Cashew Chicken. I put ginger in quotes in the title of this post because I didn't use any ginger. I made a smaller version of the recipe, using what I did have on hand (no chicken broth, no dry mustard, added mushrooms), and it made two servings. It came out pretty well - the biggest surprise was that the slight cooking of my embarrassingly old cashews made them taste quite a bit fresher! If you are sensitive to saltiness I would suggest adding less soy sauce. Here is my ingredient list:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 5 green onions (dense bottom part, used tops for second part)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 chicken breast
• 3 celery stalks
• 1 cup oyster mushrooms
   
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/8 cup water
• 1/8 cup wine (I used a semi-sweet rose blush, same as in this post)
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/4 cup cashews
• tops of green onions
• 1/2 cup uncooked rice (cook while making the rest)

Here are most of my veggie ingredients - note that I separated out the base of the green onions from the tops

Sliced oyster mushrooms ready to go

Starting with the green onion bases

I added the mushrooms about halfway through the cooking time of the onions

Everything cooked up! Ready when chicken was just done to keep it juicy.

Here's the sauce...I thought this looked kind of cool :)

Everything - ready to eat!

On rice.



Very savory and tasty!

Second Helping: Penne Mozzarella

I wrote about the simplicity of Seventeen's Penne Mozzarella dish, and made it once again, this time with the intended spinach from my CSA. See again how glorious this basic meal is!

Beautiful spinach!

Pre-wilt spinach

Post-wilt spinach

Oh...

Mmm!

Beautiful.



And delicious!

Water Marble Nails

I'm not super into nail art. Well, I was, when I was in middle school. I used to make little flowers on my nails. I am, however, super into nail polish. It just comes in so many beautiful colors. I admit I'm a bit of a nail polish addict. Not totally obsessed, but not far from it. In any case, I came across this YouTube video which shows water marble nail art. It's like the coolest thing ever. There are a number of tutorial videos if you search "water marble nail art," but that one is pretty good. Think of the possibilities: school colors, team colors, holiday colors, whatever colors! Here's what I do:

1. Base coat, then one or two coats of something light (white, pearl, silver, etc.)
2. Fill a Dixie cup with room temperature water (or leave a Dixie cup out with water and let it become room temp ;) I like the Dixie cups because they are small; you don't have to use tons of nail polish and after it's done, just throw away.
3. Get out some nail polishes, toothpicks, and a paper towel.
4. You should wrap tape around your fingers...I didn't, and ultimately it took a few hand washings and lotioning my hands to help the nail polish peel off.
5. Unscrew the nail polishes so they are ready to use, since it dries pretty fast.
6. Drop them on, one at a time, or get crazy and try something new! Some will spread out better than others.
7. Dip 1 (or 2, saves time and effort) nails in face down, then stretch them out under the water. Sometimes the nail polish "skin" will double up on the nail; it's pretty thin, so it's doesn't cause a lot of thickening, but it will look better without any overlap.
8. Gather up the rest of the skin on the water with a toothpick and pull it out, wipe on paper towel...remove fingers and marvel!

Here's some photos from my first water marble try; I went with a cool pastel theme. I experimented a couple times on nails that were losing their polish to check things out, then prepared for the real deal. I used a pearly white as the base color and on top used: China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint, Hello Kitty - Blueberry, OPI - Luck Lucky Lavender, and Essie - Lilacism.

This is what happens when you don't use tape :(

Still pretty sweet, though!

Most of the extra polish off. You can see a few spots on the side that the nail polish film didn't stick to. Probably from air bubbles.

Pretty much all cleaned up! Love the stripiness on these.

On my thumb you can see where some of the film overlapped near the tip.

Right hand was a bit more abstract-looking.

Love this little wiggle...you can see a small spot that didn't get any film; you can see the pearly white undercoat.



So cute!



Definitely will do again :)

White Chocolate Orange Banana Bread

Whew - long title. But it's got a lot in it. Including walnuts, but I left that part out of the title. This is based off of "The Best Banana Bread You'll Ever Have" from A Cup of Jo, which I had found on Pinterest. Which I followed more closely in this post. However, I had a couple bananas about to spoil, and an orange I was being finicky about eating, and thought I'd just experiment a little bit. It came out fairly well, though was quite a bit more moist. The white chocolate chips seem to melt into the batter mroeso than chocolate ones, which is not so great. Changes (full recipe at end of post):

• Two bananas, one orange (zested orange and saved for later, peeled orange and put it in the blender
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbsp vanilla (in place of lemon juice)
• 3 Tbsp rum (in place of bourbon)
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 325 F for 60 minutes

Creaming the sugar and butter, one of my favorite things :)

All the liquidy things.

Everything! You can see little bits of orange.

Ready to go - so I made the center not as high to make to top flatter.

...which was okay, and it worked, but doesn't look as good without the peak in the middle :)

See how the white chocolate kind of melted in?

Good stuff !

Here is my version of the recipe (which we will now call White Chocolate Orange Banana Bread, haha):

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 orange, peeled and blended
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons rum
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
• 1 cup (6 ounces) white chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 325 F (for dark pan, 350 F for light pan or glass) and prepare loaf pan - I use the cooking spray with flour in it, otherwise grease and flour.
2. To prepare orange, zest (you can save this for other things, or add to the batter), peel, and puree in blender or food processor.
3. Mix dry ingredients in medium small bowl.
4. Cream butter and sugar in a medium bowl until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix thoroughly after each. Add the rest of the liquid ingredients (including banana and orange) and mix well.
5. Add flour mixture to wet ingredients, stir until just blended. Add walnuts and white chocolate, stir until they are distributed.
6. Pour batter into loaf pan, place in oven and back for 60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.
7. Cool, enjoy, and save in plastic wrap.

Simple Dishes - Penne Mozzarella

Sometimes the best things are the simplest. One of my favorite dishes is very easy, quick, and has nice subtle flavors. Oddly enough, I found the recipe for this meal in Seventeen. Yes, the teen girls' magazine. For some reason I've had this unending subscription (okay, so I got some free subscriptions and picked Seventeen - when I was 22) that has been following me though I haven't updated my address. I think it may have finally stopped coming this sping, though. Haven't seen any charges on my credit card. Just Seventeen in my mailbox each month. Anyways, it was a nice little pull-out section that has exercises, food tips, and sometimes recipes. Besides being simple, I like it because it serves two. Seventeen doesn't have it posted online, but I found someone published it here. Here are my modifications and photos, but first, a salad!

Simple salad with CSA greens and strawberries, pine nuts, and (later) pomegranate vinaigrette.

Just wanted to share an obvious use for CSA (or other goods). Inevitably there are always some things you have around that you can toss on lettuce and make a salad with. Easy meal. Now for the Penne Mozzarella!

I love fresh mozzarella; I will use 1/3-1/2 a ball for a full recipe. Can also use those little round ones, baby bocconcini.

I only made half a recipe (for one) so I used half a pint of grape tomatoes, cut in half.

Instead of spinach, I used these two chard leaves.

I cut out the main vein of the chard leaves and then cut up the rest.

Everything ready to go!

I let the garlic (usually use 2-3 cloves for the full recipe) sit in the olive oil on low while I cut everything up, then turn up the heat when I add the tomatoes.

These ones got a little overdone, but tasted just fine.

Added the pasta water and chard, as well as some salt. I usually add the spinach after the pasta, but figured the chard needed more time to wilt.

I heat everything all together for a little so it's all warm.

Instead of mixing the cheese in, I add the pasta mix and cheese in layers in the bowls. This keeps the cheese from sticking into one giant mass.

So simple, so good! Simply delicious :)

"Marsala" Chicken and Asparagus

So, I had mushrooms and asparagus from my CSA that I thought I'd use with chicken. Marsala chicken, I thought. Well, plans changed as I realized my mushrooms had gotten a bit too fungal and probably weren't good to use any more. No matter, I forged ahead. I found this recipe using my Epicurious app, and it appears also on the website. It is apparently from Gourmet, June 1995. Here are my changes:

• There's just one of me, so I did a third of the recipe, with one chicken breast and it made two light meals.
• I used green onion instead of onion, and added a clove of garlic.
• Didn't have chicken broth, so I made up that volume using half water, half wine.
• No Marsala wine, so I used some wine I didn't really enjoy drinking, a semi-sweet rose.
• Didn't have parsley, instead used the green onion greens.

Asparagus is pretty quick to cook; I just used some fresh garlic, olive oil, and salt for that. While the last steps of the chicken were being completed, I cooked the asparagus.

Here's the ingredient list I used for the chicken:

• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp butter plus 1/2 tbsp
• 3 green onions - tops for garnish
• 3 tbsp wine
• 1/3 cup water + wine
• salt to taste

When prepping green onions, I cut off the rooty bit and any sad-looking ends of the greens.

Here you can see where I separate the denser more onion-like part from the green leafy part.

Veggies prepped! Again, kept the greens and whites of the onions separate, one garlic clove for the asparagus.

Since I live alone, I usually divide up my meat and freeze part. Rolling down the baggies helps keep them open, and helps keep meat juice from the outside of the bag (bit of a germaphobe here). Putting a single serving in a bag makes things quick and easy when I want to defrost one in the fridge.

To the right: On low heat I melted the butter with the garlic in it.
To the left: Garlic in olive oil for asparagus. I put this on very low heat to let the garlic infuse into the oil.

I cut the breast in half, as directed, and tried to make all pieces about the same thickness. I used lemon pepper and salt to season.

Chicken just lightly browned - wanted to keep it juicy!

Here's the wine I used; sadly did not enjoy drinking, but excellent for food!

I believe I left all the fat in the skillet after the chicken, and cooked the onions until they were transparent.

Added chicken back, and cooked some more.

The lovely sauce - it was so good!

Here's the asparagus, just rinsed.

Added into the slowly heated garlic in olive oil during the second chicken cooking.

Just takes 5 or so minutes to cook on medium heat. Right at the end I added half of my green onion greens.

 

Used the second half of green onion greens to garnish chicken - how pretty is this? And so tasty!