Recipe Spotlight: Spanish Rice by The First Year Blog

Last year, I ran across a recipe for Spanish rice by Beth at The First Year blog on Pinterest that was simply amazing. No kidding...it's awesome.  This is the recipe that you will thank me for finding and adding to your repertoire, and you won't believe how easy it is to make.

I made it the first time without the ground beef, because I served it as a side to my salsa chicken. Today I am making it with the beef to have as my main entree with a side of Mexican street corn, which I am making for the very first time and am super excited about!

As she says, start by adding a tablespoon of butter to a nonstick skillet, then add your chopped onions and cook until they are slightly browned. I actually did a full small onion because I love the contrast of onion to the rice. In the future, I will probably add about 1/4 cup of chopped green pepper as well. 

Once the onions are done, toss in your ground beef and brown it as well.  When that is cooked through, add the brown sugar, chili powder (I kicked it up a notch by also adding 1/4 tsp. of cayenne pepper), mustard and tomato sauce. Simmer for a few minutes, and then toss in your rice.

So in Beth's recipe, she calls for minute rice. I love the idea, but I really don't ever have it on hand, and I rarely ever buy it. What I do normally have on hand is uncooked brown rice and a rice cooker. 

Brown rice has a reputation of being boring and not very tasty, but I disagree! I throw mine in the steamer but I don't add water to it...I use homemade chicken broth. It's amazing! I roasted a chicken a few months ago, strained the broth from it and threw it in the freezer to use later. So while chicken broth is awesome to steam brown rice with...roasted chicken broth makes it aaaaaaa-mazing.

Simmer that for a few more minutes making sure to stir every so often, and then it's ready! It is SO good.
Also, in the vein of yesterday's post, it's really inexpensive to make! In fact, if you consider the fact that I have all the spices, broth and butter on hand which make them negligible...the whole recipe only cost me a whopping $3.91 to make. Probably even less considering I based it on the price of Minute Rice instead of plain brown rice. Seriously...you can't beat that!!

Here is her recipe. My tweaks are in parenthesis next to it.
Thanks for sharing your recipe, Beth!  We love it!

Ingredients
1/4 cup onion, chopped (I used one whole small onion)
1 tbsp butter
1/2 pound beef or ground turkey
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp dry mustard  (I used 1 tsp.)
1 1/2 tsp chili powder  (I used 2 tsp.)
1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
1 cup minute rice (regular rice will not work because it takes too long to cook)

Chicken (kinda) Chow Mein - Eating better...you CAN afford it!

So a dear friend of mine sent me a Snapchat of of his lunch the other day:  a Lunchables. When I jokingly commented that I had taught him better than that, he replied that didn't pay his grocery bill. Truth.  So it got me to thinking...when I reworked this blog from a baking blog to what it is now, I did it with the idea of showing good food at prices that hopefully everyone could afford. It's been a long time since I did a "How Much is This Meal?" entry, and it's long overdue.

Last week I went shopping and got some great deals on some produce. I was particularly excited about the fresh snow peas, and immediately knew that I wanted to do a stir fry or something closely related to that. Chicken Chow Mein sounded really good to me last night, but when I went to the pantry, I didn't have chow mein noodles. I did have spaghetti, which I have seen used and is actually very good, but I only had fettucini and angel hair and those don't quite cut it. The next logical step for me was chicken ramen!

Make sure you have all of your ingredients measured and ready, because this kind of cooking goes really quickly! Start by chopping your vegetables and then cutting your chicken into bite sized pieces. Place them in separate bowls and set aside. In another bowl, add your rice vinegar, soy sauce, corn starch, sugar - and it sounds weird - but also stir in one of the chicken seasoning packets from the ramen. Now take two blocks of naked ramen noodles and place them in boiling water for two minutes. Immediately drain them and toss them with a few teaspoons of oil so they don't stick together. Set aside.

Place two tablespoons of oil into a hot wok or nonstick skillet. Stir fry your chicken just until no longer pink, then remove from pan. Add the water chestnuts, onions and celery, letting them cook until the onions are just beginning to get soft, not translucent - about five minutes. Now throw in your snow peas and cook for two more minutes. Add in your ramen noodles and gently toss with the vegetables, then stir your sauce together well and add it to the pan. Toss together gently to mix, then add your chicken back to the pan followed by the fresh ginger. Cook just until sauce begins to thicken slightly.  That's it!  You're done!

I am drooling all over again just thinking about this.

Okay now for the best part!  Can you believe this whole entire meal cost just a little over FIVE dollars?! I was completely astounded when I added up the price, and when I shared it with my husband, he responded with a knuckle bump. That's some serious props right there, people.

So here's the breakdown:
1 lb. chicken tenders = 2.69
2 packs ramen @5 for $1 = .40
1 onion @$2.99 for the bag of 9 = .33
ginger root - .68 for the piece I got which I used 1/5 of = .14
snow peas = .64
celery @.99 for the whole bunch of which I used 1/8 of = .13
1 can water chestnuts = .79
I didn't count the soy, corn starch or rice vinegar since they were in my pantry already.
Total spent = $5.12.
No, seriously.  For a whole four serving meal. Now that is awesome!

Asian Inspired Green Beans

One of my husband's very favorite dishes that I cook is one for Citrus Ginger Chicken that someone introduced me to from Eat Better America. It's really fantastic - full of flavor, easy to do, and not bad for you! I suggest checking it out.

My birthday was last month, and a friend of mine gave me a gift card to The Fresh Market, which cracks me up because it just shows how much my friends know me if they are going to give me a foodie gift! During my stroll through the store, I picked up some organic green beans and freshly ground peanut butter. I love green beans. I think they have a bad rep, but they are my very favorite green vegetable!

In looking for a healthy side dish to go with my citrus ginger chicken, I decided to do a quick marinade of Asian green beans. These are SO much better when the flavors are left to develop overnight, but if you're looking for something easy, quick and tasty...give this recipe a try.

First, make sure you wash your produce. I won't even go into what sorts of nasty can be on produce, so make sure you always wash stuff before you eat it. Next, I trimmed the ends off the green beans. Most people just trim the stem end, but I trim both. I don't know why, I just always have.


Next you want to combine these things in a bowl:
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic,
2 tablespoons sugar or honey
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger, or 1/2 teaspoon ground

Toss green beans into a pot of salted water and leave them on a medium boil for about five minutes. This cooks them enough so that they aren't fibrous, but still have great color and crunch.

After letting them boil, drain them and immediately plunge them into a bath of ice water. This will stop cooking and help retain that gorgeous green and delightful snap.

Leave them there for another five minutes, drain them well and place them into a bowl or a Ziploc bag. Pour marinade over them, toss them well in it, and put them in the fridge until dinner is ready.

When ready to serve, I usually sprinkle mine with sesame seeds but that's optional! Enjoy!

Gone Fishin', Day 3 - Hard Cider Pancakes

It's National Pancake Day!

Soooo...I was working to do a week's worth of entries for the fishing crew. Truth be known, I could not have picked a worse time to try and do that! I tried to do it in the same week of my birthday. My 40TH birthday, to which I was hosting family coming in for the festivities...and festivities that I was attempting to plan and do all by myself since hubby was so busy at work.

Honestly, my intentions were good. They really were. I had all sorts of recipes and ideas written down to do, and I will still get to them...but alas, I am tardy.

So one of my things I was working on was cider pancakes. I have made these before using whole wheat pancake mix, Woodchuck Granny Smith cider, and fresh diced apples. Of course, when we're talking super portable this pretty much takes the cake. Er, the pancake, that is.

It really can't get much easier than this, guys. Toss the mix in a bowl, add cider, stir, cook. I also like to punch it up a little bit by adding a little sprinkle of cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg to the batter. The trick to a great pancake is to keep the skillet over medium low, and flip it just when the edges start to look a little dry.

The trick to the perfect pancake, however, is something that can either be the hardest or the easiest thing in the world to learn. That is this: the first pancake is always a hot mess. Let it go to the pancake gods and keep moving. Hubby refers to this as the tester pancake to make sure it's fit for human consumption.

Ha!

For this particular pack, it used a little over 1/2 of the bottle of cider and made 8 pancakes. So either double the packs for one bottle of cider, or use the leftover cider to reduce with brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to make a yummy little syrup  for your pancakes! (which is especially yummy with some of those chopped apples mentioned above in it as well)

Oh yeah...that's good stuff.

I see a million different combinations with this based on all of the different kinds of beer that is out there. Try your hand at all of them! The only thing I might suggest is to watch using a dark beer like a stout, simply for no other reason than I could see the pancake turning bitter on you. Have fun!