happy breakfast

i love skillets. it's the first thing i look for on a breakfast menu. the weekend of our wedding, we treated our bridal party to brunch at meli cafe & juice bar in chicago. my sister and i got a veggie packed skillet (delicious!) and the guys got meat filled skillets. i've been craving that skillet ever since so i decided to try and make my own at home. i ended making enough for three people... and then ate it all by myself because RT wasn't home over the weekend...

cut potatoes into about one inch cubes and fry them up. season as you like. italian herb? salt + pepper? curry powder? whatever floats your boat! i used cajun seasoning.

 fry up some veggies in batches to avoid over cooking. i used zucchini, broccoli, red pepper, mushrooms, spinach and onions. be sure to add salt and pepper while cooking. i really love veggies so i pretty much cleared out the fridge here.

cook a couple of eggs your favorite way. i like mine scrambled.

pile the veggies on top of the potatoes.

pile the eggs on top of the veggies.

top with cheese and let it melt into your hot eggs or pop it into the oven for a tiny bit to melt the cheese.

yum! the best part is that you can make it however you want it. add sausage, use different veggies blends (possibly asian veggies and eggs topped with siracha??), make your eggs sunny side up. i wish i hadn't eaten it all in one sitting... kind of craving some right now...

green onions

did you know that if you take the white ends (with the roots) of your green onions and put them in some water, they'll keep growing new greens for you? and they grow fast! grow little onions grow!

happy weekend ^_^

summer food... black bean + corn salsa

black bean + corn salsa. here's what i used... roughly... i didn't measure anything :P

1 tomato, diced

1/4 c red onion, diced

half a 15oz can black beans, drained and rinsed

2/3 c frozen corn, thawed

1 garlic clove, minced

juice of half a lime

cilantro, chopped or torn

salt + pepper

tumble it all together and adjust everything to your liking! a minced jalepeno would be nice too if you'd like to add some heat. RT and i love corn so i added lots of it. it's even better if you let it hang out in the fridge for awhile so that the flavors can all sink in and it's nice and cold. we had this with fajitas last night. such a yummy, easy summer dinner!

greek style mac and cheese

weekend dinner... delicious greek style mac and cheese with feta, harvati with dill, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, and olives. i only used half the amount of feta because i ran out but i increased the amount of harvati which made me happy since i love harvati with dill. i also cut the amount of olives a bit and the next time i'll add more sun dried tomatoes. recipe via steamy kitchen.

egg rolls + deep thoughts

last weekend, i finally got around to making a mountain of egg rolls. i rolled 50 of these babies. and then i ate a third of them. it's nice to make a big batch at once and freeze them in portions to fry up on a lazy day. i used this recipe from the steamy kitchen, substituting the chicken for the pork. super tasty! RT prefers egg rolls with lots of filling, i like lots of crunchy wrapper. next time i'll double the filling so that we're both happy. i got into a zen-like state rolling egg roll after egg roll and thought about life, the future, the decisions i've made in my life thus far, and things that i'm thankful for. apparently, egg rolls make me pensive.

lahbokkie

it's not a good sign when the weather report uses words such as "frigid" and "arctic". thankfully, i grew up in a chicago suburb so i'm pretty used to it but even i need warming up once in awhile. and the perfect snack for cold, windy days is lahbokkie! dukbokkie is a dish made of rice cakes swimming in a hot and spicy, slightly sweet sauce. when you top it off with ramen noodles, it's called lahbokkie. in korean, ramen is pronounced more like "lahmyun". so when you mix dubokkie with lahmyun, you get lahbokkie. still with me? i like to add onion and carrots to mine and some people like to put in fish cakes too. but no matter what you toss in, lahbokkie will definitely warm you up! i wanted to post a recipe here but i didn't really measure anything. maybe next time :P

kalbi jeem + mexican pizza

a couple of weeks ago, i went on an asian food kick and we ate nothing but korean food for days. one of the new things i tried was kalbi jeem... braised short ribs cooked with carrots, onions, garlic, radish, and soy sauce until the meat is so tender that it just glides right off of the bones.

i used this recipe by maangchi (who by the way is the master of cooking homestyle korean food) and the recipe found in this book as a guide. easy to make but time consuming. by the time it was finished, i was so tired of standing that i wasn't hungry anymore! but artie really liked it so it was well worth the effort.

after all that asian food, i needed a break and so we had a mexican pizza last night. i saw the pioneer woman's mexican "flatbread" pizza recipe and followed the basic idea. i threw on refried beans, leftover taco meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, green onions and topped it all off with sour cream and taco sauce. being extra lazy, i used a tube of pillsbury pizza dough. so good! i actually got bummed when i got full last night because i wanted to eat more. but that's okay because now i have leftovers for lunch today :)

beef & broccoli

i'm trying to be better about using new recipes. i get kind of lazy and end up rotating the same foods every few weeks. so, last week i saw this recipe from jaden's steamy kitchen (and her new cookbook!) on the pioneer woman's food blog and decided to give it a try. i'll pretty much try anything that the pioneer woman says is good. partly because she's usually right and partly because her pictures are so pretty. tah dah! my photos definitely aren't as pretty (have i mentioned yet that there is no such thing as natural light in my apartment?) but it was sooo tasty and easy to make. i was a little skeptical because the kind of beef and broccoli you get at your local sketchy chinese takeout place (the sketchier ones always taste better) is usually drowning in oily delicious gravy/sauce. i thought this would turn out dry and a little bland but i was completely wrong. everything is lightly coated in an incredibly flavorful sauce and since you don't have all that oily gravy/sauce, it feels much lighter and healthier. try it! and don't forget to chew while you're inhaling it :)