Category Archives: Kitchen-Cooking & Misc

Pillsbury Chicken Lo Mein

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Earlier in the Summer, I got a bit of a craving for Chicken Lo Mein. Usually we go to a local restaurant for Lo Mein and other tasty foods, but it was too late in the evening for going much of anywhere. It occurred to me that most everything can be made at home now-a-days. Perhaps there was a simple recipe for lo mein on the internet that I might be able to make. It became quite an obsession with me over the next few days. I finally decided on a recipe on the Pillsbury website ‘Chicken Lo Mein’.

I’ve made this recipe a few times this Summer. I’ve adjusted ingredients for us and it turns out quite well. It’s filling and We really like it.

Here’s my adjustments:
– I leave out the water chestnuts. We tried them with the first batch, but it really didn’t add anything to the meal.
– I use fresh garlic and fresh ginger.
– I’ve used frozen vegetables only once. There wasn’t hardly enough in the bag for 2 servings, so I had to add some other veggies with them. Since that first time, I use fresh vegetables only. It takes a bit longer for prep time, but it’s so worth it.
– The recipe doesn’t call for cauliflower, but it had cauliflower in the pretty photo on the recipe page, so I added it to it. Cauliflower tastes great in this lo mein.
– We use a ‘less sodium’ soy sauce.
– I use linguini noodles. I cook them almost done before adding them in with the ingredients in the pan.
We prefer linguini noodles over the angel hair pasta for this recipe. To us, angel hair pasta is more for spaghetti or alfredo and the like.

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Wishing you all success in finding new to recipes to enjoy!

 

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1st harvest 2017 & potato bucket update

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I’m happy to finally have our first harvest. I pulled some green onions and cut some chard. It was fun and I wish I had more veggies ready to harvest.

I cut some sweet basil. I forgot to get a photo of the cut basil, but here’s one of it still on the plant.

I put the chard in the refrigerator for future use. I used the onions and fresh cut sweet basil in Bruschetta. Then I made some Bruschetta toasties for supper. The toasties was really good and a nice something different. I had quite a bit of Bruschetta leftover for later.

One of the potato plants has broken the soil. It looks like a wee green rose nestled down in the potato bucket. I had trouble getting a good photo, but I wanted to post it anyway. Perhaps this wee green rose is the start of a bucket full of potatoes. I hope I hope.It looks as if our little garden is off to a good start. Hopefully we’ll get more harvest and maybe even have some produce to store for winter.

Happy gardening!

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2017 WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Repurpose

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2017 WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge
~Repurpose~

“Show us something that you’ve recycled or repurposed,
or an object for which you’ve discovered a clever new use!

strawdespenserRepurpose is kind of a hard challenge for me since most of my recycled/reused projects are already posted on my blog. I gave it some thought and decided on a project that I don’t remember ever posting about: drinking straw dispenser. I made this one years ago. It’s quite handy.
The dispenser is made with a fairly tall jar (mine used to be a Planters nut container years ago)
And you need one pour spout from a carton of juice or something.
Wash the spout box especially the spout part thoroughly. Then put the jar’s lid over the spout and draw a circle around it and cut it out.
That’s the gist of it. It’s relatively simple.
I went on Pinterest and saw a few pins about pour spout mason jars. It’s pretty much the same method.collage

 Wishing you all fun with the WP photo challenge!

 

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November Tomato Update – a few left

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p1100253Every week there’s a few more of the tomatoes ripening in the bag. When I see they’re almost ripe, I set them on the window sill so I can keep an eye on them.
Putting an  apple in the bag  with the tomatoes trick does work, but you need to keep checking them every couple days.
I can’t get over how pretty they are. I’ve only a few more November tomatoes left. It certainly has been fun having these volunteer tomatoes this late in the season.

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November Tomato Update – tastes like

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p1090285We ate the ripest four of the tomatoes. 20161113_042543They tasted like sun ripened tomatoes.
Since these 4 were mostly ripe before I bagged them, I figure
being outdoors was mostly responsible for the taste. 20161114_025343Some more of the tomatoes are mostly ripened now too.
I hope they taste as well as the first four.

The 12th of Nov, my husband looked under the cheesecloth covering the tomato vine and discovered several other tomatoes on the now dying vine. He picked them and brought them in. I’ve bagged them with an apple. Now I wait for them to ripen too.11-13-2016-novtoe2

I suppose this is the end of the gardening season for me.
It was fun tending to the volunteer tomato vine.

Wishing you all a pleasant week of sunshine & warm smiles.

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