Recipe 11: Sweet and Sour Tofu

One of the recipes I found in last Sunday's ads was a recipe for Sweet and Sour chicken. I do not eat meat, so I substituted tofu. It was really easy and delicious. My dad made the chicken version and my brother loved it. Now he requested for me to make it with shrimp next time, so that we can all eat it (i.e. I will actually make it for him to enjoy because I can have it, too). I am thinking I might do that this week and although sort of cheating I might count it as another recipe because it will be Sweet and Sour Shrimp not tofu. By the way I served it with the Jasmine Rice, which I made again, as it is so much better than plain old rice (what the recipe called for).

Recipe 10: Lemongrass Limeade

Yesterday I made Lemongrass Limeade following a recipe on My Healthy Cooking Coach for Nintendo DS. I could not find any Lemongrass at my local grocery store, so it was not exactly right. I did, however, do a substitute recommended on Thai Kitchen's website here. It is a lot more work doing the lemon zest and fresh ginger, but well worth the flavor it adds. The other substitute I did was I used freshly carbonated water from our Soda Stream machine instead of plain water just because I like carbonation.

The Limeade did take a long time to make for the amount it made, as it took at least 30 minutes to make only 1 liter of Limeade. However, it is quite delicious, cheap to make, and well worth the effort. I think next time, though, I will at least quadruple the recipe and put the syrup in a container for mixing with the water as I want it. I think I will use the first empty bottle of the soda mix that goes with our Soda Stream. Then I will have my own homemade mix ready for use whenever I want with my Soda Stream carbonated water.

Recipe 9: Steamed Aromatic Rice

This is another recipe I made from My Healthy Cooking Coach DS game. It is rather simple and basically just cooking rice, but it really helped me realize how to cook rice right. I usually just follow the package and they say things like boil water and then cook for so many minutes. This recipe, however, has you boil it with the rice lower to medium for a little while and then cook longer on low. Definitely something I will be making again and I will never buy plain white rice again, as the Jasmine Rice makes a big flavor difference while still being pretty cheap.

Recipe 8: Orange Bruschetta

I bought the game My Healthy Cooking Coach a few weeks ago. Last Thursday I used it to make a recipe for the first time. The first recipe I made was Orange Bruschetta. I kind of knew it went on bread, but it never lists or mentions serving it on bread, so I forgot to get some. I ended up putting it on toasted wheat bread. It was not too bad, but it had way too much onions in it and I actually halved what was called for (2 scallops and I only used 1). The orange and tomato flavor was good. I do not know if I will make it again, but if I do I will definitely almost entirely leave out the onion and remember to have decent bread on hand.

Recipe 7: Cream Cheese Crisps

This Cream Cheese Crisp is one of the many recipes I have saved from magazines the past few years. It came in Family Fun back in 2008, but it is on their website here, too. It is a very simple thing using cream cheese and mini rice cakes (they were on sale this week, so I stocked up). It is also pretty tasty, although it would have been nice if I could have found plain flavored rice cakes instead of only cheddar.

Recipe 6: Angel Hair Pasta with Two Cheeses

I set out to make a three cheese pasta using another recipe from The Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith. The name of the recipe is Angel Hair Pasta with Broccoli and Three Cheeses. However, I could not find any Mizithra cheese, so it ended up only be a two cheese pasta. In the end I modified a lot of the recipe (mostly omitting stuff) and the result is little like the actual recipe.

Basically I just used Swiss Cheese (a little less than called for because I accidentally did not buy enough), Romano cheese (way more than called for to make up for the Swiss and missing third cheese), whipping cream, and angel hair pasta. I did not add the garlic, oil, onion, or broccoli. I just did not like the idea of garlic and onion with my cheese. Garlic probably would not have been bad, but I am not much into onions and especially did not like the idea of them with cheese. I do like broccoli with cheese, but omitted it because my brother does not like having it mixed in with pasta and he will probably eat the leftovers.

It turned out pretty good tasting as well as fast and easy to make the way I did. The overall recipe is not too hard either, but requires way more steps. It did end up a little too cheesy. Partially because I do not think I cooked enough pasta (I kind of randomly guessed what half a pound of it was since the box had a whole pound). The other thing was I ended up way overcompensating with the Romano. Honestly, though, even if done as it is supposed to be done I think it would be too cheesy without the broccoli. The 1/2 pound of broccoli is really what would make the amount of cheese called for be just right or maybe even not enough. I might make this again, but will definitely pay more attention to slowly adding the cheese to find the right amount.

Recipe 5: Japanese Cucumber and Crab Salad

I found the Japanese Cucumber and Crab Salad recipe in an old cookbook (really old to me, as it is older than me) we had called The Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith. The recipe is really easy, although to do it entirely right it needs 45 minutes prep time for the cucumbers, but I realized that too late and instead just used a little salt and skipped the draining part.

I liked the easiness of the recipe, but not the taste. It was not horrible, but it is not all that great of a dressing in my opinion, although my mom loved it. I would not mind making it again, but I would omit the sesame seed oil, as I am pretty sure that is the ingredient that I do not like the taste of. Or maybe just use a regular Balsamic Vinegar dressing, although then it would not be very Japanese anymore.