Lettuce wraps with Hot and Sour Soup was a hit!

First off, now that I think I am over my computer issues (video card died, new chip and motherboard and new hard drive) I think I can get things back to normal.  And the best part, I lost no data!  YAY!

As promised, here is my review of Chinese Turkey Lettuce Wraps requested by Sherry.  And I added Hot n Sour Soup.  Both were great.  I love Hot n Sour Soup.  My favorite was from House of Thai, but they have closed.  So far I have not found anything close.  So I tried to make my own.  I know understand why I can't find a good soup.  This was a very long process, but worth it.  The lettuce wraps were great also.

I'll start with the Hot and Sour Soup from Silk Road Gourmet.  I found this on a random search for food blogs and after trying this soup, I'm glad I did.  Check out the recipe, and I hope you are not disappointed.  I sure wasn't.


 I like to chop my ingredients all at one time if possible.


I made this on my day off.  At lunch time, I made the Soup Base.  Which is basically a rich and flavorful stock. What I found interesting was that it had both chicken and beef broth.  Not to mention you have pork in there.  So it is almost like having 3 stocks in one.  I also started the its marinade.

 Thinly sliced pork in a bath of soy sauce.  My mouth is watering as I recap this recipe.  Dang I want some soup...

I did not add any mushrooms to the soup at all. I also didn't add any lily buds.  From what I could tell on my research of lily buds is that they don't change the taste much.  And since I wasn't up to a special trip to an Asian store to find them, I left them out.  Since I liked it, I'm okay with omitting them.  I will look for them and make this again with them and see if the make a difference.




I also loved the lettuce wraps.  And I made the with mushrooms!  I know, you can't believe it if you know me well.  But I used about half the amount and I chopped them.  Okay, I minced the heck out of them.  But I did notice they add an earthy taste.  I made a couple changes to the Chinese Turkey Lettuce Wraps, such as the mushrooms.  In stead of button mushrooms, I used baby portabella and I used 1/2 a can of water chestnuts.  I also am not a fan of iceberg lettuce, so I used roman heart leaves.  They are a bit sturdier and I feel have more flavor.

I chopped all this up earlier in the day also.  That way at dinner time it was a little faster to prepare.

Looked, proof I added mushrooms!

This looks way better when finished.

Together, they make a GREAT dinner and pretty low in carbs.  Doesn't this look tasty.   And they are both good as left overs.  I was even nice and took some of the lettuce wraps to Sherry so she could try them.  Since she is the one to suggest that I make.

Up next, LOW CARB snacks, lunch and products.  Send in your low carb ideas for me to try! 

Post coming soon

Up next, product review of low carb bread, two recipe reviews of hot n sour soup and lettuce wraps and ideas for snacks.

I'll be posting all this tomorrow.

Stir Fry Night

I forgot to post my Stir-fry night.  Sorry about that.  This was from a couple nights ago, and it was pretty good.  I tried something new.  I'll keep this one kind of short, since it isn't really a recipe and a semi homemade type recipe.

It's pretty simple:

Onions, garlic, bell peppers, carrots, snap peas, cabbage mix, chicken, jasmine rice and sauce.  The sauce I got from Gateway Market.  It is Thai Sweet Chili Sauce and Dip.

Just chopped the onions, sliced up the carrots, sliced the bell peppers and diagonally sliced the peas.  And got a slaw mix for the cabbage

I saute the onions and garlic first for a couple minutes, added the carrots and bell peppers next. I cooked them until they were soft.  

Then added the peas and cabbage and cooked them until soft.

While the veggies cooked, I made the rice and it worked great in the microwave.  Turned out nice and fluffy.

Then I added the sauce and heated it up.  Served over 1/2 cup of rice. 

Up next, Hot n Sour Soup and Lettuce Wraps.

The Superdome! From Gusto Pizza

Since I needed to spice up my day, I went to Gusto Pizza. I needed to try something new, so I got the Superdome. It was the special. It consisted of a jambalaya sauce, Graziano Andouille sausage, bell peppers, shrimp, celery, and cheese.  Mark had the Mona Lisa Pizza.  It was pretty good also.  Even with Mushrooms.  Yes, I'm trying to eat mushrooms and in SMALL amounts I can eat them.  Too many and they taste like dirt to me.

  SuperDome Pizza                                        Mona Lisa Pizza

Pasta Puttanesca, Potato Soup and some Golden Beets

I've gotten a little behind in my post, so I'm combining them.  Today's post will include 2 dinners and a side dish.




The Pasta Puttanesca is the first dish to discuss.  It was pretty good, but since there was no protein, I added steak to the dinner.








I marinated the steak in some balsamic vinaigrette and served the pasta as a side.  Chicken would have also been good to go with the pasta, but I didn't have any ready, so steak won out be default.  Not to mention, I needed some iron I'm sure.

The recipe I once again got from Budget Bytes and didn't change much.  It was good, it just was missing something for me.  I will make it again, just next time I need to add something.  Maybe an Italian dressing marinated chicken breasts.  This was an easy recipe and pretty good.



Don't let the anchovies scare you off.  They don't add a fishy taste, instead they actually add a salty taste without the salt and I feel act as a flavor enhancer.

Overall it was a pretty good dinner.  Maybe a side salad would have been nice to go with it.

The next dish was Potato Soup.  I started out with a couple different recipes, then I decided to just wing it.  and made my own version of potato soup, and it wasn't too bad.

Ingredients:

8-10 potatoes, pealed and diced
6 strips of bacon
1 onion, diced
28 oz. chicken broth (I used chicken base and water)
1 tbs ground white pepper
1 tbs thyme
1/4 cup flour
1 cup Sour Cream
1 cup Milk
1 Cup Sharp Cheddar Cheese, plus some for topping soup
2-4 Green Onions

• Peal, clean and dice potato and onion.
• Cook bacon until just browned and saute onion until browned a bit.

• Add broth, onion, bacon and potatoes to crockpot.  Cook on low 6 hours or high for 3 hours.
• 30 minutes before serving, mix flour and milk, add to crock pot with sour cream and the cup of cheese.

• Serve with chopped green onions and cheddar cheese.

I've talked before about my Honey-Balsamic Roasted Beets.  I decided to try it with Golden Beets.  And I liked the results, but will stick to red beets.  The Golden Beets are better just roasted with parsnips, rutabagas and turnips with olive oil and Italian seasoning.

 I just peeled the beets and diced them up.  Then splashed balsamic vinegar over them and drizzled honey over the top.  Roasted them for 45 minutes at 425 degrees F.

 Let them cool down and put them in the fridge  for a side dish or snack for latter.