Thanksgiving re-purposed. #1

Hello again!
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I know I did.
I mean, how can you not? It's a holiday dedicated to food and nothing but food (well, family too, but mostly just food).
But what do you do when the day is over and you have all kinds of leftovers that you don't know what to do with? You get creative and re-purpose them.
This weekend I made 3 meals out of my Thanksgiving leftovers, all of which were absolutely amazing.
Here's my first dish: Shrimp stir-fry.
"What?" you ask. "Shrimp stir-fry with Thanksgiving leftovers?"
Yes.
You see, dinner isn't the only thing that we don't always finish. Sometimes we don't finish our appetizers either. And that's where the inspiration for this meal came from. Stir-fry made with the leftover shrimp from the shrimp cocktail and some of the leftover veggies from the veggie platter.
Add in some rice noodles (also known as rice sticks) and homemade teriyaki, and you have yourself one fine meal.
Let's begin.
Start boiling water for the noodles, then toss the veggies into a hot pan with a little oil.
Since the veggies were already chopped, and the shrimp were already cooked, this meal came together real quick.

While that is cooking, you can make your sauce.
Now, I'm sure everyone has their own way of doing this, but here's the way I have always made it:
soy sauce, frozen concentrated orange juice, honey, garlic and brown sugar.
I used about 2 cups of soy, 1/3 c. sugar, 1/3 c. honey, 1 tbsp. garlic, 1 tbsp. OJ. Go easy on the OJ as it is pretty strong. If you don't have any, a splash or regular orange juice will do.

Mix to taste.

When the veggies are almost done, its time to cook the rice noodles. These only take 3 minutes.

When those are ready, its time to put it all together:
Veggies

 Noodles

 Shrimp

 Sauce

 Mix

Enjoy!!!

steak and potatoes

Don't let the title fool you. This meal was a lot more than just a steak and just some potatoes.
It was an amazing pan seared London broil in my new amazing pan. With sauteed mushrooms, twice cooked garlic and cheddar smashed potatoes, pan seared asparagus.
YUM!
Did I mention that I got a new pan?
Well I did. And I am in LOVE with it!
And I cooked this entire meal in it.

The lineup:

Step one: boil the potatoes. When they are done (you'll know this because if you stick a fork into the center of one it will slip right out), drain them, put a little oil in the pan, then put them back in.

Then, lightly smush them with a fork, sprinkle with salt, pepper & garlic, then top with cheddar cheese. Cover then cook until everything is crispy, hot, melted and happy.

Next: asparagus. Rinse, trim, saute, done.

Next: steak that I seasoned with salt & pepper. Do not skip this step!

Also: Never cook a cold steak. Always let it rest before cooking until its almost room temperature. 

drop it into a hot pan and let it sear real nice. Then flip it over, and do the same to the other side.

However, once I flipped it, I tossed in some mushrooms (and a little butter) to cook along with the steak. That way they absorbed all the flavor from the steak.

Once the steak seems happy, remove it from the heat to let it rest. This is also a very important step that you should never skip. While that rests, let the mushrooms cook a bit longer so they absorb all the good stuff that the steak left behind.

Last step: plate it all and enjoy!

stripes and polka dots

In case you didn't know, one of my greatest passions is painting (and all things home-improvement. Yes, there are other things I do besides cook). LOL
Anyways, this past weekend I painted a bedroom for a soon-to-be 13 year old as an early birthday gift. Her request: 3 different solid colored walls (aqua, purple and green), and one white wall with lots of different colored polka dots.
And since I did her sister's bedroom in similar colors (but with stripes) 2 years ago for her 13th birthday, I couldn't say no. (plus, remember, I love painting!).
Anyways, I think the pictures say enough, so without further ado, here are both bedrooms, before and after. My apologies though for the poor quality. Camera was dead so I took them all with my phone.

Stripes (August 2010)
before: Pink

after: light aqua, lime green, and lots of stripes!

 

Polka dots (November 2012)
before: blue

 after: colors and dots!



Ok, that's it.
Now back to the food!
:)

Quick bread donuts.

It's Sunday, I gained an hour thanks to daylight savings, and I feel like experimenting in the kitchen. After spending a little time thinking about what to do, I decided I wanted to use my fryer, and the box of pumpkin bread mix that's been sitting in my cabinet. So I thought I would try to make some pumpkin quick bread donuts. Let's begin...

I began by preparing the mix according to the instructions on the box (although I did add about a cup of sifted flour to make it a little thicker), and I heated up the oil in the fryer to 325* (if you don't have a fryer, you can use a deep skillet that can hold a couple inches of oil). Then I proceeded to make the donuts. Er, donut holes. Er, donut blobs. Whatever...

You see, the mix was far too thin to roll into donuts or donut holes (trust me, I tried and failed- see below), so I decided to just drop scoops of it into the fryer to see what happened. And that seemed to work pretty well.

 

 

Once they were all nice and toasty brown, I pulled them out and dusted them with some cinnamon sugar. Definitely do this as soon as they come out so that the sugar sticks.

 

 

 

That's it! So easy! And so delicious!!!





See you soon!
<3