Yummy Modified Thai Fried Rice Recipe

So I had some leftover rice I was trying to figure out what to do with. I was talking to my sis-in-law and she told me I should look up a recipe for Thai fried rice. After searching around online a bit I found this recipe over at realthairecipes.com After reading some of the comments under their recipe it seems as though maybe it's not 100% authentic since it doesn't have fish sauce in it. Well, I didn't have fish sauce on hand anyways, so I went for it. I made some changes so I thought I'd share my recipe with you here. Warning, this recipe isn't super specific as far as measurements. I usually just gauge how I make food depending on how it looks, smells and tastes as I go, so bear with me I'm not a cookbook author. :) 

Ingredients:

• 3 T. Olive oil (divided 2T. and 1T.)
• 1 cup sliced onion
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 lb. of uncooked chicken breasts
• 2 1/2 cups cooked rice (About a day old is good since it's better if it's a little dry apparently)
• 4 diced roma tomatoes
• 2 T. Soy Sauce
• 3 T. Sriracha chili sauce
• 2 eggs cracked into a bowl but not stirred
• about 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
• 5 chopped green onions
• 1/2 cucumber chopped
• 1 lime quartered

Directions:

1. Prep all ingredients. Chop, mince, slice and dice all of the veggies. Cut the raw chicken breasts into bite-size, thin slices. If the rice is cold from being refrigerated heat it up a bit in the microwave so it's closer to room temperature.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil on high until hot. Add the sliced onion (don't add the green onion yet). Stir well and when it’s softened add the garlic. When the garlic is slightly browned add the chicken. Stir well. Keep flipping the chicken until it’s white on all sides.
3. Stir in the rice and tomatoes.
4. Add the soy sauce and Sriracha and stir well.
5. Push the rice to the outside side of the pan so that there's an open hole in the middle. Add the remaining 1 T. of olive oil into the hole and drop the 2 eggs into the hot oil. Let set for a minute or two then stir it all together. Make sure that the eggs are fully cooked as you continue to stir everything together.
6. Stir in the cilantro and green onions. Turn off heat.
7. Serve with a quarter of the lime and some cucumbers on top. 

This recipe made 4 entree servings. Also, I'm not completely sure how much of the olive oil, soy sauce and Sriracha I actually used since I just added it as I went, so you may want to use your better judgement depending on your tastes.

I hope you enjoy it! I know I'll be making it again soon. :) Please feel free to comment or ask questions if there's anything you'd like to me to clarify.


And for good measure here's a video of my sweetie :)

Fun in the Rain

This past Monday we had a storm come through that was definitely needed. Of course since then we've had sunny weather in the high 70's. But still the rain was really nice. Tom spent the majority of the day drawing so Jack and I took advantage of the rain and played outside for a bit. We got bundled up and headed out!

 Jack kept telling us "waaa, waa" which is how he says water :)

As always picking up rocks and sticks! He even picked up a few worms...gross.

Video of us playing outside

After getting drenched outside we came in and stripped down. He was just wearing his onesie. :) We sat on the couch and looked at the rain outside.

We finished off the evening by putting space jammies on and reading some books. Look at that face, he is so sweet! 

I love his little profile, I just wanna kiss his nose!

Yesterday we got out of the house and went downtown to Michael Levine's to get some fabric and sewing supplies. They have so many options of everything it was pretty overwhelming at first. 

I'm working on making a tester bag that will ultimately be a bag for my Mom. She wants a custom bag that she can use in her teacher's cart at work. She's looked and looked for something that has the right dimensions and can hold her laptop, but hasn't found anything she likes. She called me a couple of weeks ago and told me what she wanted and I happily agreed to attempt to make a tester and send it to her to try it out. I've never made a  structured bag, so this is different than anything I've sewn but I love a good crafting challenge. After finding various tutorials for similar bags online, I drafted out my own pattern pieces and got to work on the tester. I'm almost done with it, but didn't originally purchase enough interfacing and although I thought I wouldn't need it for the tester I decided I want to make sure it's the right stiffness, so went downtown to buy more. While I was there I went ahead and bought the fabric for my mom's bag. Originally we had talked about doing the outer fabric with corduroy, but I wasn't crazy about any of the corduroy they had. They had some great corduroy prints, but all of them looked too young or casual. So, we went ahead and got this really beautiful gray suiting fabric, with a purple liner and gray and white paisley for the piping. (I don't know why but in the lighting of this picture the purple looks more like a wine color, it's definitely more eggplant than wine though in real life....hmm)

I'm SO excited to see how it'll turn out. I only have a few more steps for the tester, so I'll be sure to post pictures when I'm finished with that one.

Michael Levine's is inspiring though!! Tom and I were dreaming of all sorts of things we could buy fabric for and make. He kept picking out fabrics that he liked, suggesting things he wanted me to make, like new pillows to throw on our sofas. We also saw Rami Kashou from season 4 of Project Runway and Project Runway All-Stars, which is airing now! 

Like Tom said, if Rami shops here, then this is the place to be!  :)

After shopping we headed over to Philipe's to get some french dip sandwiches for lunch! I was surprised with how busy they were since we got there around 2:30. But, Tom waited in line and I found a table to sit down with Jack and feed him. As always the sandwiches were delicious and Tom also got potato salad, pickles and a brownie for us to share. Overall a great outing downtown!

Homemade Gifts

Okay, okay so I know Christmas is long gone at this point, but I had to share some crafty things that I was working on over the holidays.

First up, I made a Gil doll for Jack.

If you don't have kids you may not recognize this little mer-boy(?) but he's a character from a Nick Jr show called Bubble Guppies. While we don't have tv, we do have a computer that we watch shows on. I limit how much Jack watches obviously, but this kid would love to sit on the couch, or as he says "cow" and watch either Bubble Guppies or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse all day. :)

Jack with his Gil doll, showing me where his mouth is :)

Grabbing Gil from me while I was trying to take a picture so he could give him kisses :)

Okay so this next one wasn't actually for Christmas but a week and a half later was Tom's birthday. I made him a paracord-wrapped hiking stick and keychain.  Well, I didn't make the stick, it was one that his Grandpa gave him a few years ago, I just wrapped it for him. He's been wanting paracord to do different things with so I bought some then made these things and he can use the leftover 65 feet to do whatever he wants with it. It came in a skein of 100 feet. I used about 12 for the keychain and 22 for the hiking stick. To wrap the hiking stick I used suggestions from this blog to make the Turk's Head knot at the top and bottom to hold it in place and did the middle with the Chinese Staircase knot. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out considering I've never done anything like this before. I guess playing with lanyards as a kid probably helped out here :)

Paracord wrapped hiking stick

Turk's Head knot on paracord-wrapped hiking stick

Next up is actually a gift that was made for me! Tom knows that I love anything astronomy related so he made me this awesome Orion necklace! 

Close up of the front of the Orion necklace. He even drilled the holes different sizes to indicate the sizes of the stars. (He mixed up the sizes of a couple of them, shh don't tell him) :)

It's hard to see but on the back he wrote Psalm 19:1 which says "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord, the skies proclaim the work of His hands." What can I say my hubby is amazing! 

My Kid Is Spoiled

Seriously, as I was preparing Jack's dinner tonight I thought to myself, "Man, this kid eats really well. If I ate what he did I'd be skinny."
Today his menu consisted of
     Breakfast: Fruit, spinach and yogurt smoothie. Oatmeal.
     Lunch: Turkey. Mozzarella. Peas and Corn. Applesauce
     Dinner: Spinach, ham and cheese quiche. Eggplant. Pears.
     "Dessert": Graham cracker with peanut butter.
He really is spoiled. He's never eaten a jar of baby food in his life (once when he was 9 months old I had to try since I didn't have any homemade with me and he refused) everything he's ever eaten has been fresh ingredients and homemade. I don't puree much for him anymore, but certain veggies he won't even try whole, but loves pureed, like carrots. I don't know if the next kid will get this kind of treatment so I figured I might as well do it while I can. Back to my original thought though, I want to eat what he eats. Why not? I'm making it anyways right? Don't know if I'd eat pureed sweet potatoes mixed with oatmeal, but at least if I eat the same foods it would be good for me. Don't get me wrong, we eat pretty healthy, fresh foods and I don't plan on doing the "baby food diet". But, I know I don't eat nearly as many veggies and fruit as I should, especially compared to how much Jack eats. So that's a new goal for me this year. Eat more fruits and veggies!! I'm so inspired by Kath over at KERF and if you haven't checked out her blog I encourage you to see the journey she's been on to get and stay healthy. Here are some pictures of the boy enjoying his yummy food :)

This was taken mid-December, he was practicing feeding himself applesauce with a spoon.  He's actually gotten pretty darn good at it lately! He doesn't really even make a mess anymore!

 This last one was taken a few days after Christmas. I know it's terrible quality, but I love his big grin and the way his hair was standing up :) Eating some scrambled eggs that had ham mixed in since he wasn't willing to eat the ham by itself, which is why there's a pile further in front of him.

Back on the Blogwagon

So, Tom's been actively posting on his blog, and he's inspired me to do the same. :)

Right now I'm at home with a sick baby who is much less cranky after having his smoothie for lunch and going outside for a bit. He has Hand, Foot, Mouth disease though, so no playing at the park or anywhere near other kids unfortunately. We had a great Christmas and New Year's, but after doing so much and seeing so many people it's no surprise he's now sick. I took him to the Dr yesterday and although she told me what I already assumed, I'm happy I took him since it ruled out the possibility of allergies. Although the rash/blisters are difficult to see all over my precious little boy's face, I'm relieved it's not a long term issue.

As sort of a New Year's resolution I signed up for FlyLady which is a great website set up to encourage and challenge you each day to take control of your life through keeping your house clean and yourself on a routine. I mainly like the daily challenges and although I haven't been doing them exactly the way suggested I take bits and pieces and once I accomplish these tasks I feel so much better! Yesterday I thoroughly wiped down all of my exterior doors and windowsills (that I could reach). When I went outside after doing it I couldn't help but smile at my dust and cobweb-free doors. This morning I started the day with wiping down all of my kitchen cabinets. They're white and although didn't really appear dirty, once they got a good wipe-down they are sparkling! She says she wants your house to "hug" you when you walk in, and doing little things like these really make me feel loved when I walk in my house, which I guess is a good thing :)

Well I guess that's it for now. I promise I'll be back sooner than last time :)

I almost forgot!! Here's a link to Tom's blog, TomDraws check it out and follow him and leave comments :)

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Well, we've been in this house for almost 7 years and will be moved out by the end of this month. Read that sentence again...yes it happened that quickly for us also. This came as a surprise to us two weeks ago when our landlord stopped Tom outside on a Sunday afternoon and told him we'd have to start looking for a new place to live. We're pretty much the ideal tenants, but unfortunately his family is having some major issues that apparently will be resolved if his adult kids move back in with them. Yes, I am annoyed and bummed that it wasn't really our choice to move out of here. But, it's his house and he can do with it as he pleases, it just sucks that we had to find something so quickly because of their emergency. The day we found out we drove to Granada Hills and looked at 2 houses. If it were me by myself I probably would have signed a lease right then and there. Not because I loved, or even liked the place, just because I was stressed and didn't want to be homeless. Since Tom is pursuing his illustration we felt like it would be beneficial to be down near LA more. We looked at probably 25 houses from here in Simi Valley down to Montrose in the last two weeks. We decided that Burbank, Glendale and Montrose would be good options for us, and we happened to narrow it down to 3 homes, one in each city. We officially signed our new lease for the house in Burbank last night. We couldn't be happier with our decision. The house has almost everything we were wanting and is less than the other ones we had narrowed it down to. It's a duplex, but definitely feels like a single family home. It's in a quiet residential area, but still very close walking distance to a large library, 3 parks, the bank, stores, restaurants and coffee shops. It's only 4 miles from the LA Zoo where we have a family membership for this year. Plus, we're only about a mile and a half to Tom's parents house and 2 of his sisters. We are so sad to leave this house, but knew it would happen someday. It may as well be now since we're getting more and more cramped with all of Jack's things. I'm looking forward to having a separate room for Jack, as well as more storage space inside the house. At our current house we've been spoiled with a 2 car garage which will be downsized to a 1 car garage in the new place. We're overwhelmed, but kind of looking forward to getting rid of things that we don't need.

Right now they're doing some work on it: painting, replacing the toilet and screen doors and refinishing the original hardwood floors. We should be able to start moving in on Saturday the 19th, but don't need to be out of here until the 1st of April. We're planning on making this a pretty gradual move. I can't tell you how many times I've cried about leaving this house and all of the memories we've had here. One thing that I've had to keep in mind is that although we've built memories here, we'll take those memories with us and build new ones in the new house. Now that we actually have a place that we're excited about it definitely helps though. Pictures to come soon. As long as I remember that I even have this blog. :)