Fried rice!

So this girl ventured into cooking fried rice! I found a recipe on Pinterest and then I tried it. I love that website. 

So enough jabber let's get down to it. 

You will need: 

3 Tbs Sesame seed oil

1 cup of the mixed peas and carrots thawed 

1/2 an onion or one whole smaller one

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 eggs 

3 cups (cooked) white rice. I made mine right away but the website I went off of said to use day old rice because it works best. 

1/4 cup soy sauce (I did use the less sodium soy sauce and it still tasted great) 

Start off with your burner on medium-high heat. Use either a large skillet or wok. (I used a large skillet) Add in your sesame seed oil and let it heat up a little. Then add your mixed veggies, garlic, and onion sautée until soft. This is the part where if you needed to cook some white rice (because you don't have any leftovers)- do it. I just used minute rice. Three cups of that stuff is 1 and a half cups of uncooked rice and 1 and a half cups of water. Follow their cooking instructions on rice. I find that 5 minutes does not get y rice the right texture so I usually wait about 8 minutes until I am at fluffy consistency. 

In a bowl LIGHTLY scramble the eggs (don't go all crazy now). In the pan push the veggies, garlic and onion over to one side and pour your lightly scrambled egg on the empty side of the pan. This part sould only take about a minute but you are cooking the egg-scrambling it. Once it's no longer runny you mix all of it together. Turn your heat down to medium-low. By this time I am

Pretty sure your rice is either about done or completely done- so were going to just pour it in the skillet. If you want to follow it just like me then you don't even mix it yet- pour over the soy sauce then mix it all up. Now all you are waitin for is it to be heated thoroughly. 

I am pretty sure I you used leftover rice then you would be waiting for it to heat up but since our new rice was just made it's basically done unless you want the flavors to mingle ;) a bit. Viola!!!

Meatballs. Yeah commence happy dance

Okay so apparently, I do more cooking than anything. I realized I should probably give away one of my favorite SECRETS...Cooking secrets that is. I'm talking about Meatballs. Homemade, hands messy, a part of your soul, and a whole lot of love poured into each little ball you hand form. These babies are moist, and they taste amazing. I have REFERENCES.


What Cha Need:

1 lb ground beef. (I dont care what percentage...but I use lean ground beef)
garlic powder
salt and pepper
1 egg
3/4 cups of water
3/4 cups fancy cheese (I used asiago, romano, & parmesan combined)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I use these A LOT don't I?)
and a honkin' bowl.


Now you see all the ingredients up there? Exactly as they are listed LAYER...See that....I SAID LAYER everything. NO MIXING, no combining early. LLLAAAYYYYEEERRRRRRR. Don't question me on my madness.
This means you put the meat on the bottom, then the garlic powder right on top (now some people in my family are sensitive to garlic so use your best judgement on how much to use), then salt and pepper on top (same use your best judgement rule) and so on and so forth.

Here we are in order

Now when everything is sitting pretty on top of one another in the order listed wash your hands.


Then take off any jewelry that means anything to you that is on your hands. I would hate for meat or crumbs or cheese to get stuck in a diamond, or a crevice you cant clean on your wedding ring or something. See i did it...

This is the part when i usually heat up my pasta sauce for spaghetti and meatballs.

Mixing time!
Now this is fun for the kids to get in on too.

SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH mix that with your hands. Feel the icky gooey, and mush it all together. I would say do this for about 3-4 minutes.

once everything is mixed and loving one another in that bowl you will need to form little balls about the size of a golf ball maybe a bit bigger, depending on how big you want them. I then place them all in the sauce as its heating up and i cover it. 

Occasionally i will come by and jostle the pan, but be careful not to rough them up too much for they might break apart and you end up with just a "meat sauce".

After about 5-7 minutes on one side in the sauce I turn mine GENTLY over. Recover pan. Again these babies are fragile. Another 5 minutes and i would normally take one lucky pup out of the pan and cut it in half to make sure its cooked through. And i sample too...NO big deal. Usually at this moment i revel in my awesomeness because my mouth just went to some sort of sicilian heaven. MMMM

You are welcome! Now you make!

Pork Chops

Imma break this down for you a bit nasty today. 

So something i should probably mention to ya'll. I am usually cooking for only 3 people (myself included) I know right...must be nice. PFT whatever. Control your self now girly. So if you have like 17 kids and the 2 (boneless) pork chops i used in this recipe wont be enough for you then guess what sweetness- you're going to have to increase portioning on here. Simple math i promise. 

two thick cut boneless pork chops

Half an onion

2 eggs

1 cup flour

1 cup italian style bread crumbs

tin foil

1 table spoon minced garlic

1/2 stick of butter. Divided.

2 tablespoons honey

AN OPTIONAL SAUCE

3 tablespoons sour cream

1/3 cup milk

1 tablespoon flour

1 teaspoon lemon juice

salt and pepper

PREHEAT OVEN 375 degrees

Break out that skillet and get 3 tablespoons of butter a melting in that SON B. You know when i said half of a stick of butter...well sweet cheeks your "hips wont lie" after this meal it's good. SO suck it up and melt those tablespoons of butter away. Or if you wanna be a pansy you can use some olive oil..pppffftttt. Now i left my onion in the rings just cut it into "sections" i guess and placed those in the pan to get them all nice nice **well caramelized (you happy now). Add some salt, pepper, garlic to the pan. 

Now go on and get yourself one bowl and combine the 1 cup of flour and the 1 cup bread crumbs....MIX THEM

Then in another bowl whisk the two eggs. fo sho.

Get out yer pork chops. Now we are going to DOUBLE DREDGE these babies just like we did when I made the CHICKEN TENDERS. (click that puppy if you want to make some homemade chicken tenders)

Pork chop in hand, cover in egg, cover in flour/breadcrumb mixture, back into egg, back into flour/breadcrumb mixture- set that meat aside. Repeat for how many pork chops you have there chicklet. 

Now by the time you have all your chops ready your onions had time to sit in the butter- garlic- pepper- salt mixture and are starting to smell glorious. Take some tongs or your grabber/utensil of choice and place them onto the pan (i had my heat on medium) They can go on top of the onions it is quite alright deary. 

Give the chops some time to have a little meet and greet with the onions and get browned on one side. 

About 3 minutes go by and its now time to see if they need flipping....They do?! awesome flip that puppy over and let it work on the other side. Drizzle a tablespoon of honey over each porkchop.

******Insert sauce instructions here if using*******

Right now I need you to get out your baking/cookie sheet and get two pieces of ton foil out (or however many pieces of pork you have) out in squares large enough to make an amazing flavor pocket. After about 3 or 4 minutes pass and the other side of the pork chop is browned I need you to transfer each pork chop and designated onion/juices/sauce like stuff in the pan evenly between each piece of tin foil. Create a pouch. Not tightly wrapped. Just to seal moisture and all the flavors inside. You can certainly add a tablespoon of butter to each pouch to create a little bit more juice in there. Not required though. 

place all pouches onto cookie sheet, and place in the oven for about 20-25 minutes. Check occasionally if you need to. Now since i DID opt in to use the sauce creation my chops came out not as crispy as they would have if i ya know-didnt use a sauce. 

After about 22 minutes my chops looked like this in the foil

and now on a plate

Now the sauce instructions are as follows.

1 tbs honey

the sour cream

the milk

salt and pepper

and lemon juice

Mix it together and pour over chops where is says "INSERT SAUCE HERE" in my instructions. 

These golden babies were yummy. and i paired them with greenbeans sautee'd with onions and a little bacon grease...just cuz. Lol. oh good lord. Relax It wasnt a lot.

ENJOY them!