Sweet and Sour Chicken

Hubby and I, avid meat-eaters, have been making an effort to try to eat healthier. We are now trying to incorporate more chicken into our meals to replace beef and pork. We're still a long way off from being totally healthy and I won't even dare suggest that we become vegetarians, but this is a start.

So we've been buying chicken during our weekly grocery trips and we are fast running out of options for preparing chicken. So I turned to the net and my favorite cooking site, Pinoycook.net, and
I found a recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken Fillets.

We tried the recipe and the dish turned out good on our first try except that it was too sweet for our taste. We have since revised the recipe to suit our tastes and to make use of the ingredients that we have in our kitchen and this is the result.

1.5 lbs Boneless & skinless chicken thighs, cut into strips
seasoned salt
flour (for dredging the chicken)
cooking oil (for deep frying the chicken)
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger (we grated this instead)
1 small bell pepper, sliced
1 small onion, sliced
1 small carrot, sliced
1 cup water
1/8 cup vinegar
1/4 cup - 2 tbsp sugar (subtracted 2 tbsp sugar from the original recipe)
salt & pepper to taste
2 tbsp tmato paste
1 tsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp sesame oil
pineapple chunks (new addition)
toasted sesame seeds (new addition)

1. Season chicken strips with seasoned salt and then dredge in flour.
2. Deep fry the chicken till golden brown, drain on paper towels and set aside.
3. Saute garlic & ginger. Add the vegetables and stir fry over high heat for around 45 seconds.
4. Stir together water, tomato paste, vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar and cornstarch.
5. Return chicken to the skillet or wok and pour in the sauce. Stir till sauce thickens and clears.
6. Add the pineapple chunks and stir around to coat the pineapple with sauce. (Note that by adding the pineapple chunks at this stage, it probably didn't lend a lot of flavor to the dish. We like it this way).
7. Turn off the heat and drizzle with sesame oil just before serving.
8. Top with toasted sesame seeds.

This is good for 4 to 5 servings.

Hubby's new toy

I bought hubby his PSP last week. I had gone to Massachusetts for my regular visit to the company HQ and I decided to visit a friend & his family - they'd just had a new baby - over in New Hampshire.

My friend lives across a shopping complex where there is a best buy, a circuit city, 2 gamestop branches, among many others. I was driving to my friend's place and hubby was keeping me company over the phone and on an impulse, I asked him, "o ano ? We get your PSP na ?". New Hampshire does not have sales tax. So compared to a 7% tax rate in NJ, you get around $12 back if we buy in NH and we can easily put the $12 to good use, say, for PSP accessories.

In fairness, hubby's been wanting a PSP for a long time (since we moved here, actually) and I agreed so long as he gets a job first and saves up for it. It's not something that I would agree that he buy up-front. He's been saving a while now... kaya lang, it just seems that the more you save, the more inspired you get about saving more. So it's more nakakahinayang to just buy another toy and he's just been using my classic Nintendo DS - which is now so heavily used that the labels / stickers are all faded smooth now, and I am not exaggerating when I say this.

Anyway, hopefully, he gets to drop by E's (a friend) place tonight so that he can get his firmware updated and he can start using it. Magastos rin pala because we just *had* to buy an 8GB mem stick for the PSP, haha! sneaky. he did not tell me about this earlier.

and now that he has his PSP slim, he's like... "hun, maybe you should upgrade to a DS lite?".
No, thank you. I'd rather just get a nice designer bag *hint hint*.

Stir-Fried Chicken

We keep hearing that it's easy to prepare stir-fry dishes. You just keeping stirring the ingredients until they're cooked,... supposedly.
The thing is, what do we use to flavor the dishes ?

My mom sent me a Chinese cookbook - it's more of a pamphlet, really - and this gave us a starting point in terms of the sauce.

For this chicken-stir fry dish, we used the following:

Skinless & boneless chicken thighs, cut into strips
1 head of broccoli florets (did not know that the stem is edible so I threw it away, argh!)
1 carrot, sliced
quail eggs
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp grated ginger

sauce:
2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp lite soy sauce
1 tsp cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tbsp water
1 tsp sugar

1. Blanch the vegetables - broccoli and carrots.
2. In a wok, saute the garlic and the ginger in hot oil.
3. Add the chicken and stir around until chicken in cooked.
4. Pour in the sauce and then add the vegetables and the quail eggs.
5. Let the sauce boil and thicken.
6. Serve

Carrot Cake

I got this recipe from my Aunt in California when I visited last June. She was on a carrot cake cooking binge and would cook different batches (she'd be giving most of the cakes away) while she experimented and looked for the best recipe & combination.

Dad isn't too fond of eating sweets but he liked the frosting on this one.

When I got home, I decided to try this out and see if I got the recipe right. This turned out good but yielded a lot of cakes! I will halve the recipe next time I do this so we don't get stuck with carrot cake for several weeks.

I have to give a word of warning to first timers though, shredding carrots is a hard job! My arms were so sore afterwards.

CAKE:
3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups shredded carrots
1 cup crushed pineapple
1 tbsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
1/2 cup cooking oil

ICING:
1/3 cup cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
1/2 cup chopped cashews

1. Sift the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder.
2. Add eggs, cooking oil and beat for 5 minutes.
3. Grease 13x9 in pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes. Stick a toothpick and pull it out, if nothing sticks to the toothpick, your cake is done.

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Awarded to me by Hope This Helps You by Mec

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I'm tagging Berryblitz and Sheryll :)

Ultimate Power Shopper

We usually do our grocery shopping on Saturdays. Depending on how much we need to get, it usually takes us between an hour to a few hours (around 4?) to get everything done and oftentimes, we buy different products from different stores because of availability, product quality and cost considerations.

With this in mind, I usually spend Friday nights making lists and sort of planning the meals that we will be preparing for the rest of the week. I also take the time to go over the weekly ads and any manufacturer coupons (they're usually inserted in our weekly city journal) that we might have received.

Sometimes, we get lucky and get the ultimate power combination of advertised sales + manufacturer coupons + grocery coupons. This happened last week. We paid $13 for $39 worth of groceries. This was very significant because we didn't buy a lot, just $39 worth. I feel lucky that I'm blessed with a husband who doesn't feel embarassed whenever I whip out the discount coupons.

Prior to last week, the best buy that I had was for L'Oreal shampoos and conditioners. My local store offered a Buy 1 Get 1 promotion for them and I had a few manufacturer coupons for Buy 1 Get 1 which I've been saving for a time such as these. Tamang tama, malapit na mag expire yung coupons ko when I got to use them. When used together, the B1G1 promotion from the store and the B1G1 manufacturer coupons actually let me pay for 1 and get 3 bottles free.

$4.49 for 4 big bottles of shampoo/conditioner. Things can't get any better than this, even if you compare to Manila prices.

It took me a while to explain the concept to hubby, he was so amazed and couldn't quite believe how we could take home 4 bottles and just pay for 1. I was explaining to him while I was choosing what I wanted from the different varieties.

Bottle 1 - You pay for this
Bottle 2 - from the store's B1G1 promo, free from buying bottle1

Bottle 3 - free from the manufacturer's coupon
Bottle 4 - from the store's B1G1 promo, free from buying bottle3

Ang saya no?

Crunch time

When hubby moved to the US with me last year, he decided that he wanted to go into a more technical line of work. He's had different types of work and responsibilities before but his love has always been hardware and he wanted to make the transition.

During his job-hunting days, we found out - it was actually more of a confirmation rather than a surprise - that one would need to get certifications to move ahead in his line of work. Hubby had none.

Hubby was blessed enough to find a company who was willing to overlook his lack of certifications and take a chance on him. This is such a huge blessing for us because up till now, we don't really know how this company came across his resume. He did not apply for a position with them and their hiring personnel can't remember how they even got hold of his information.

Modesty aside, I would have to say that his company lucked out when they hired hubby because he did not only have the skills that was needed but he also had the drive and a natural ability to diagnose and address technical issues. His benefits package wasn't bad either, aside from the usual health and dental benefits, he also gets to get certified for free. The company pays for all certifications that you pass.

This brings me to the matter that's weighing on my mind right now. Hubby has always been scared to take chances and to get exams. I have to admit that this is quite normal, after all, who enjoys taking exams and being graded, anyway ? So his first sets of certifications were easy ones but it took him months to get ready. Most of this time was really spent conditioning himself and building up confidence to take the step.

His colleague, who is very happy with hubby's work, took the initiative and started a conversation between their boss, him and hubby. He then put hubby in the position where he had to set an exam date, para matapos na. Everything went well :)

Oh, by the way, did I mention that hubby is entitled to get a salary increase for every certification that he completes?

So with the first test completed with flying colors, hubby was inspired by his success and went on to take up some more tests. These tests resulted in 3 total certifications (some certifications required multiple exams on different but related topics).

Now, the momentum is gone. I don't see him reading books or review materials instead I see him playing all the time. When home, he's either holding on to a Nintendo DS or playing games on his PC. :(

To be fair, I am also in the same situation. I keep saying that I want to complete a certification as a personal goal and yet, I'm in front of the TV when I'm not working. Bad, no ?

I came up with an idea early this week and challenged hubby to commit to an exam date. Sabi ko, we should both commit to an examination time frame, say X months from now, and work to meet that deadline. I figure that with both of us studying, there's lesser chances of him feeling bad that he has to study while I just laze around watching TV.

I have not gotten him to agree to my plan yet, so I still have some cajoling to do. In terms of studying, it's been a couple of days since I issued him that challenge and I have yet to take up a book. I really really need the motivation.

I'll start tonight. Pramis. I hope....