Chinese Green Beans

Personally I don't like serving a meal to my family that doesn't have a vegetable with it.  Whether there are vegetables in the main dish or on the side I try to make sure that it is always included.  So the other day when I made my General Tso Chicken I tried to come up with a nice veggie dish to serve up along side.  One of my favorite dishes in Chinese restaurants in the States was a Dry-Fried Green bean so I thought I would give it a try and see if I could come up with something similar. It turned out to be an incredibly easy dish to prepare and equally delicious.

General Tso Chicken better then you can get at restaurants

After a very disappointing experience at a Chinese restaurant last week I decided that it was time to go back to what I do best and make some at home.  For me Asian cuisine is my culinary staple, it is how I really came into my own as a cook.  I always enjoyed cooking meals but I never realized how good of a cook I could be until I decided to get more into my Chinese food.  It too all started from a bad Chinese food experience at a restaurant.  Sadly because I grew up in Hong Kong I am a bit of a snob when it comes to Chinese food and at the time I was living in East Texas and no matter where I tried the food was way below par.  So I began experimenting, seeing if I could do better and thankfully I discovered that it came quite easily to me.  Sometimes I stick to very authentic dishes, but I do also like to try and cook up some of the Americanized Chinese dishes. This time I decided to try my hand at a very American dish that normally in restaurants I avoid, General Tso Chicken. What I discovered about this dish is that not only is it an easy dish to prepare but it is so much better prepared at home then in restaurants.  This dish turned from being something my husband would never eat to a dish that he will now request.

Being more adventurous with Brussel Sprouts

Do you have a certain ingredient that you just always seem to cook the same way? I have found that I can get stuck in a rut with certain ingredients and it takes some nudging to try something new with it. It isn't that I don't like trying new things, just that there are some ingredients that I only know how to cook one way and I am not always as adventurous to try a new method. For me one of those ingredients has been brussel sprouts. The only way I knew how to cook them was roasting them or boiling them as a side vegetable. Now that I think about it there are probably a lot of ways I could try and serve brussel sprouts, it is just until now I had never attempted it.  But after trying this creamy dish I must say I will try to be more adventurous about all of my food because you never know what you might be missing out on.

Apple Shortbread Bars is a match made in heaven

Now this is where I get really excited, because I must confess to being a bit boring when it comes to sweet dishes.  I have never really liked chocolate so that has always made me the strange one.  But what I do love might seem rather dull to others but I just LOVE apple desserts.  Give me a plain old apple pie any day and I would be happy.  So when I was blog surfing for ideas and I stumbled across a recipe the blog, A Whisk and Prayer, I knew it would be love at first bite.

Millionaire Shortbread: Like a homemade version of a Twix candy bar

So much to my husband's delight I decided to do a dessert week and focus on pleasing that sweet tooth.  While I do occasionally love sweet things my desire for them has never been altogether that strong, while my husband Chris, would eat cake and chocolate biscuits every day if he could. So on the occasions that I decide to do some baking I love to make it worth every bite.  And being that we are back living in England I decided to do something a little more British this time. Millionaire Shortbread is a popular British shortbread that consists of three layers, shortbread, caramel and melted chocolate, it is more like a candy bar then a bar. This recipe is my mother-in-law's.

June Coupons for Cooking.com

No matter what your financial situation is we all love a good deal. I am always scouring the internet for coupons and deals for everything from just a night out for the family to deals on furniture. I get a high when I discover that I can find what I am looking for and for less then I planned on spending. But here is the thing about saving money, it only works if the purchase was for an item that you had already planned on spending.  Sure it is great if you find that deal on the stereo system on sale but if you already had a good stereo system and hadn't planned on replacing it then any money you saved is negligible.  But on the other hand if your washing machine has been breaking down on you for a while and you have been desperate to replace it then finding a great deal on one is money saved because it was a purchase that was going to happen regardless if you had found a good deal or not.

It isn't always easy to think in these terms, especially if you are an impulse buyer, but once you get the hang of it you will find that it actually helps improve your deal finding skills.  Because when you are able to direct your attention on a specific items that you need your search is more focused and thorough, finding your the best offers. 

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Find ways to use up excess ingredients to create a whole new dish

I have to say I am a bit of a sucker for homemade burgers, it is one of those meals that just makes me feel good, not matter my mood.  So the other day after I prepared too much balsamic marinate for my Balsamic Glazed Salmon I decided that I would attempt a new burger idea.  So next time you make a dish that yields too much of something, instead of just throwing it away or putting it in the fridge and forgetting about it until it then has to be thrown away, think about what else you could do with it for the next days meal.  It is a great way to utilize all of your ingredients so that there is less waste and you are getting more for your money.

Finding new ways to prepare fish

Sadly my parents didn't prepare fish while I was growing up, so it wasn't until later on in my life that I discovered that I love it.  But I have to confess to at first being intimidated about cooking it.  It is funny to think about it now because fish is so easy to prepare, but if you have never done it before it can make you a bit nervous. I never felt like I knew how to prepare it, how to season it and definitely had no idea how to know when it was done cooking.  So for many years I didn't even try, restricting my enjoyment of fish to restaurants or if someone else had prepared it.  But when I moved back to California in 2006 and found that I had such wonderful access to fresh fish, I decided that it was time to learn.  At first I relied on resources online, like About.com, but soon I discovered that my favorite place for advice came from the fish counter itself.  I have to say I hadn't really thought about it before but the people serving you the fish at the fish counter are often very knowledgeable about not only the fish they are selling but ways of preparation. Different fish handle being seasoned and being cooked in different ways and I found the people at the fish counter to be an amazing resource of information on the best ways to prepare it. So whether you grill, bake, broil or pan-fry fish is a lot easier then you might think, so give it a go, you might surprise yourself.