Sweet and sour shrimp

I am always experimenting with Asian food. Love love love Asian inspired food. Tonight we had sweet and sour shrimp.

The best place to buy shrimp is Costco. They sell the nice big tiger shrimp and they are already deviened, which saves tons of time. Tonight I tried frying the shrimp, like they would do in a typical Chinese restaurant. In retrospect, I would have been better off pan frying them, saving all the effort of frying, (which is a pain in the rear) and saved the calories. So lets "pretend" I pan fried them and I guarantee it would have been just as good. First, lets get to the ultimate sweet and sour sauce. This was inspired by a cooking class I went to at Thanksgiving Point, I just added two ingredients. I love cooking classes, so if you ever need someone to go to a cooking class with, call me!

Sweet and Sour Sauce

1/2 C of each following, white vinegar, water, catchup, pineapple juice

1 c sugar

2 T soy sauce

1/4 t ground chili paste (see picture)

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil, turn to a simmer and thicken with a corn starch mixture ( 2 T corn starch 2 T water). Add slowly till you have the desired consistency. The chili paste is optional if you are afraid of anything spicy, but trust me, it is good! Keep sauce warm if you are going to use it for the following recipe.

Prepping the shrimp:

Remove shells and tails of the shrimp (about 15 big shrimp) and marinade in 1 egg white 3 T rice wine vinegar, 3 T soy sauce. for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile cut up half an onion, half a red pepper, a handful of carrots. You also need pineapple, about a cup fresh or canned.

Heat about 3 T oil in your wok and get it really hot. Coat the shrimp lightly in corn starch and drop into the wok. Cook shrimp till they become pink (2-3 min) and remove from the pan and set aside.

Add another T of oil and add the veggies and stir fry till tender crisp ( 4 min, make sure your wok is hot!) Add pineapple and give it another minute or so.

Return shrimp to the pan and pour the warm sweet and sour sauce over the shrimp.

Serve over rice. This will feed 4 adults.

I also served it with some stir fried cabbage, and it was so yummy! But that will have to be for another day . . . .

Rice Pilaf

So my friend suggested I need to name my recipes. In my head the recipe is called, "you know that one rice with the pine nuts and mushrooms" but that isn't very catchy. So my next thought is, "The best Rice Pilaf" followed with the "The best pan fried Cod" and a so on and so on . . . Or maybe, "Dang good Rice Pilaf" . . . . catchy?

So tonight we had almond crusted cod, with rice pilaf, broccoli, homemade canned peaches, cottage cheese, and a lettuce wedge.

Tonight I will share the rice pilaf.

1/2 c fine diced green pepper

1/2 c fine diced red pepper (I used an orange one today because the store had no red, dang you Albertsons!)

1/2 c fine diced mushrooms

1/2 c fine diced onion

1/2 c fine diced carrot

1 garlic clove minced

1 1/2 c uncooked rice

3 c chicken stock

1 T oil

2 T butter

1/2 c pine nuts

Saute all the veggies and garlic in the oil.

Add butter and rice until the rice because to be transparent.

Add chicken stock and bring to a boil, turn to low and simmer till all the liquid is absorbed (to be honest, I transfer everything into my rice cooker but not everyone has a rice cooker) Mix in the pine nuts. TADA! a great side dish that goes with lots of meals, especially fish.

Sign up on the pass around sheet

So we had our ward Christmas Party this morning. It was a breakfast. Many are familiar with the clipboard that goes around church a few weeks before a party. When the blank sign up sheet stares me in the face, I am compelled to sign my name. So there were two options, sign here for sweet rolls, or sign here for a breakfast casserole. Sweet rolls I can do, I have the sweet roll down pat. Breakfast casserole however, not so much. I have never made a breakfast casserole before. Many had already signed their names to the sweet roll column, but the blank lines of the casserole column guilted me; so I signed.

Never made a breakfast casserole? Me the lover of all cooking? The truth is, I am not the lover of all cooking, I hate breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I can make a mean french toast, but I don't do breakfast.

A little over 9 years ago I was being dressed in a toilet paper wedding dress at my bridal shower. I was telling everyone that my fiancee was going to be the one to make the breakfast. After all he had made me breakfast on plenty occasion, he loved doing it. He would be the breakfast person and I would be the dinner person. My aunt Judy chuckled, "ya right!" Her chuckle still echos in my ear this day. She was right, fairb was a liar. I remind him of this often, and this is where he inserts HIS evil diabolical laugh.

So that is why I have never made a breakfast casserole. So I looked at a couple recipes and went for it. I was thinking, croissant, egg, cheese. I probably should have actually followed a recipe, because it came out kind of runny, but the parts that we not runny tasted pretty good. But I was not proud of it, in fact I left my wooden spoon at the church because I didn't want anyone to know which one was mine by returning to the scene of the crime. So I guess I will have to put on my list to master, CROISSANT STRATA. Anyone have a recipe?

Cookies for baby

My brother-in-law called this morning to tell me that my sister was in labor, finally! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! I need to get there! Wait, I need to make cookies! One of my best memories of having my babies, is my sister bringing me brownies, and them tasting so good after not eating during a long delivery. So I needed to bring something!

So I am not much of a baker, baking takes precision, and patience, two things I am not very good at. However,I have been working a while now at mastering the chocolate chip cookie, and I this cookie am about to share is pretty dang good. So good in fact, I am hesitant to share it. If I were in my right mind, I would call these "Nan's Secret Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" and leave it at that. After all, I have been experimenting with different methods of baking chocolate chip cookies for a couple years now. Is it really fair that all you people in the blogging world get to reap the benefits of my labor? Hardly fair at all . . ..

The reality is, I despise people who have secret recipes! Tell me your recipe is "secret" I am liable to smack that smug little grin off your face! Share the love, that is my motto.

Now, remember what I said about precision and patience, you must follow both of these rules.

2 sticks butter melted

1 1/4 c brown sugar

1/4 c white sugar

2 t vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 T milk

2 c bread flour (or I do 1 c all purpose and 1 c of the high gluten flour that I use for pizza)

2 c oatmeal measured then blended smooth in blender

1 t salt

1 t baking soda

half bag chocolate chips

Cream sugar and butter, next add vanilla and milk, add eggs, but don't add eggs if the butter is still hot, or you will have scrabbled eggs , add them slowly while blending ( I use my stand mixer). Blend till smooth. Meanwhile, measure 2 c oatmeal (preferably the 5 min quick cook oats) in my blender and blend till it makes like an oat flour. Combine with flour, salt, and baking soda. Slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture, till it makes cookie dough. Add chocolate chips.

Next, get out your mini ice cream scoop (lets call it KITCHEN TOOL OF THE WEEK shall we?) and scoop dough onto your cookie sheet (lined with parchment, I know it is so Martha, but I like it) You should get 15 cookies on one sheet. and you will get two sheets of cookies.

Now you have done the precision, now you must have a little patience, because this is an important step. Put your sheet in the freezer, then turn the oven on to 375 degrees. While those are chilling, and the oven is heating, scoop the second sheet of cookies, and put them in the freezer as well. When the oven is heated, your dough should have enough time to get cold. Put them in the oven for 9 minutes. When them come out, they should look just barely browned, and you might say to yourself, "these aren't done" they are done! take them out and let them cool on the cookie sheet. If your oven cooks hot, you may want to do 8 min. If they are gold brown, too cooked.

These will make the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookies, that not only will be good hot, but good the next day too. If you want to learn the science behind this cookie recipe, I adapted most of it from here.

Lucky for me I brought plenty off treats because Lisa invited to whole world to see her baby come out of the baby hole! She had me, my mom, her best friend, 2 sister-in-law,'s her mother- in-law, her husband and her four children. It was a rocking party! Watching a baby come into the world was absolutely one of the coolest things I have ever experienced. I cried more watching it then pushing out my own babies. It was incredible! What a miracle! So good on ya Lisa, you did good! I was so excited, I forgot to even ask what they named him!

Admit it all you "I am done!" mothers out there, this picture below makes you want another one, just a little bit ("a little bit" is very little in my case, but is there none the less) .

Christmas Traditions: Part I

I am a lover of the Christmas season for sure! My husband is a total scrooge, but I just ignore him. Lucky for him, there is something we both share one feeling about Christmas, we both hate to shop! So, we really don't do much of the present thing, we get the kids 2 gifts each, and we don't get each other anything. We do however fill the Christmas season with lots of Christmas traditions. One thing we do is let the children pick out and decorate their own little "charlie brown" Christmas tree. I give them complete creative control.

Yesterday, with a couple sick kids, we stayed home all day and did crafts for their tree. I also had them write their teachers Christmas letters, and make them a Christmas poster.

We used model magic clay, pipe cleaners, fuse beads, Styrofoam balls, and lastly I let them pull those party poppers at the tree. In years past, I have strung popcorn, let them cut out snowflakes, dried oranges and apples to hang on the tree, and make candy suckers. I'm sure we will do much more decorating to the tree as the month goes on. The best news is when its all over, I throw the WHOLE tree away, lights ornaments and everything!

I did not make these cupcakes

Today was my son's 4th birthday. Parties are the world to my children. They cannot think of a single present they want on their birthday, but they know exactly what they want to do for their birthday party! So I never buy them birthday presents, I just throw a raging party! I used to do these elaborately themed birthday parties that I spent weeks on and took great pride in. That was well and good, till one year a child asked to go to Chuckie Cheese. I shuttered at the thought, what about the amazing, "glow and the dark" themed birthday I had conjured in my head? Since it was HER birthday after all, I decided we would do the Chuckie Cheese thing. Since I was going the "commercial" route instead of the "homegrown" route, I decided to go full blown and even order a store birthday cake. Grimacing, we were off to see Chuckie. When it was all over, there was no mess to clean up, and I also realized I hadn't spent weeks on decorations and goodie bags. I looked into the children's faces and they were having more fun at Chuckie's house then at my house having a teddy bear picnic. This was all too easy! Since then, I have strongly suggested to my children birthday parties outside of the home "wouldn't bowling be fun?" I am so full blown commercial when it comes to birthdays, it is ridiculous. Today we had our party at jumping jacks, I bought Christmas cupcakes from Costco, and had dominoes deliver pizza. I invited 25 kids, they made a complete disaster, and when it was all over we gathered all the presents and left. It was wonderful, and my son is so happy and grateful to be four. I still believe in the "homegrown" birthday, but I do enough "home cooking" to make up for my "commercial birthdays!

A kitchen fire

So lucky for the Pope family that Thanksgiving was an off year, (meaning everyone was with their in laws for turkey day) because my mother started a fire in her kitchen the day before Thanksgiving creating this monstrosity.....

I am calling it the Matterhorn candle, but for only 100 dollars it can be yours and you can call it what ever the heck you like( I'll start the bidding . . .) , or better yet, my dad would probably pay you 50 dollars to get it out of his house. Art is subjective indeed . . . .

So while I was at home busy making Thanksgiving pies two of my children were at the cabin (aka my mom and dad's house) playing. Grandma was melting wax on the stove. She forgot about the wax while she was arguing with grandpa (probably about the candle). While the kids were watching a movie, they spotted the fire and almost immediately the heat set off the fire sprinkler in the kitchen. Screaming down the hall, they ran into grandma and grandpa's room, "Grandpa you better come see this!" to which Porter followed up with, "I'm out of here!" Grandma and grandpa heard nor smelled anything! They went to the kitchen to see water showering the whole kitchen and into the great room. The fire was out, but they had no idea how to shut off the sprinkler. Porter then called me, "I want to come home now." With an inch of water everywhere, filling the cupboards and soaking the leather couches and Persian rugs in the great room, they finally figured out how to shut it off, and they called a clean up crew immediately. Without waiting for the crew to come, we went to Ruby River for dinner.

So the moral of the story is, fire sprinklers save houses and save lives, and don't attempt the Matterhorn candle, you can have my mom's.