Mongolian Beef and Veggie Egg Rolls

Friday nights at our house are usually our go out to eat nights. The one day off I allow myself from the kitchen. Since Thanksgiving is Thursday and because peanut oil for the deep fryer is $30 a jug, we decided to stay at home to save a few bucks this past Friday.

Daniel loves Chinese food!! I am one of those people who can take it or leave it and most times I choose to leave it. Since it's all about making my hubby happy though I am trying to incorporate more Chinese friendly dishes into our rotation at home. I stumbled upon this recipe and tweaked it a time or two and I must say it turned out really well. It went really well with the egg rolls we made to go along with it. They weren't the prettiest things...I have to work on my rolling skills...but they were actually pretty delicious...more so than what I can say about the egg rolls that get delivered from the professionals.

Katie's Mongolian Beef~
Ingredients:

1/2 lb. beef (Not sure what cut we used, but it was flat and very, very thin which I then cut into strips)

1/4 C. soy sauce

1 tbsp. hoison sauce

2 tsp. sugar

1 tbsp. garlic, finely diced

1 tbsp. red pepper flakes

1 tbsp. teriyaki sauce

Extra virgin olive oil

2 green onions, diced on the diagonal

1 C. cooked white rice*

Directions:

1.) In a medium mixing bowl whisk together your soy sauce, hoison sauce, sugar, garlic, red pepper flakes, teriyaki sauce, and a few drizzles of extra virgin olive oil. Add your strips of beef and marinate for two to four hours.

2.) In a large skillet heat over medium high heat. Add strips of beef along with any extra sauce left in the bowl. Cook until brown on both sides and then throw in green onions, toss around and then lower heat to low for five minutes ensuring that beef is cooked through. Serve over white rice.

*Whenever I cook white rice for dishes such as this one, I always add a teaspoon of red paper flakes to the water to boil. This addition gives the rice a nice little kick.

Veggie Egg Rolls~

Ingredients:
1 C. cabbage, thinly sliced

1/2 shredded carrots

2 green onions, thinly sliced
teriyaki sauce
6 egg roll wrappers

Directions:

1.) Begin warming your oil. (We use our fry daddy, but you could easily do yours in a pan on the stove, use enough oil to cover half of the egg roll.)

2.) Take one egg roll wrapper and add cabbage, carrots, and green onion. Enough to fill your wrapper but leaving you with enough to fill each additional wrapper. Drizzle your filling with a little bit of teriyaki sauce. Proceed to roll*. You may need to dab a little bit of water where the wrapper ends to form a seal. Repeat this step for each egg roll.

3.) Gently place each egg roll in your oil. Lightly brown each side...you may have to flip the egg roll to brown the opposite side. If your oil is warm enough this should take two to three minutes or so. Place on a paper towel to drain.

4.) Serve with either duck sauce or soy sauce!

*Most packages containing the wrappers give you a set of instructions on how to fill and roll them. If not, place one corner near you and horizontally add your filling, roll upward once and then tuck in each side, continue to roll until you get a perfect shaped egg roll.

Results

Peanut...good news, we passed our glucose test with flying colors. I am a little concerned though, when I asked the nurse whether she thought the 45 minute delay that took place Friday could affect my results her comment was..."you're the one".

Why do I get the feeling my ordeal was the topic of conversation for a day or so afterwards...LOL. I did ask if I should redo it just to make sure we were all right but she said that I was fine. YAY, now we just have to get through the big shot in the rear on the 7th.

Broccoli Salad

We get this particular salad all of the time from a local grocery store around our neck of the woods. The store itself is pretty expensive and not meant to do your everyday shopping unless you have more money than you know what to do with. Daniel and I like going there for specialty items and stuff like this when we feel like pampering ourselves. You know you're a foodie when going to a high end grocery store is your way of pampering yourself...lol.

Anyway, we both really enjoy it and it's a good way to get broccoli into your system. This time, instead of spending way to much money on it I spent less but got more by making it myself.


Broccoli Salad~
allrecipes.com

• 10 slices bacon
• 1 head fresh broccoli, cut into bite size pieces
• 1/4 cup red onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup sunflower seeds (I omitted)
  

Directions:

1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the broccoli, onion and raisins. In a small bowl, whisk together the vinegar, sugar and mayonnaise. Pour over broccoli mixture, and toss until well mixed. Refrigerate for at least two hours.
3. Before serving, toss with crumbled bacon and sunflower seeds.

As you can see from the picture this salad goes great at lunch paired with a sandwich and a handful of potato chips.

More Awards...

I have received a few awards over these past few weeks and I thought maybe it was about time to blog about them and pass them forward.

First up from my friend Polly over at The 5th Sister;

The rule is if you are tagged you must list 5 things that make you a true, authentic mom and then pass along the tag to 5 other deserving bloggers.

Technically I am not a Mom yet however Polly was gracious enough to award it to me anyway. Personally I think you become a Mom the minute you can't keep your Cheerios down...what we do for our children! Coming up with five things is somewhat difficult for me but here are some things that I think are going to make me a wonderful Mom as long as I follow through.

1.) I plan on telling my children everyday that I love them no matter how many times they have been sent to the naughty chair or talked back to me. I want them to know that there is absolutely nothing in this world that would ever make me question my love for them nor do I ever want them to question whether I do because I haven't said it enough.

2.) I plan on beating my children. Just joking, I don't really plan on beating my children but I do want them to know the difference between right and wrong and if that means a swat on the fanny once and again then so be it. I got the swat a few times and you know what...I have lived to tell about it and am grateful my parents did it. Obviously spankings will only be used for certain actions but I want my children to know there are consequences to their negative actions that will help teach them to not do it again.

3.) My goal when it comes to parenting is to be the sort of parent that a child can come to about anything and everything but still have respect for. I don't want to be your best friend, I want to be your Mother, but having said that I want them to come to me when they have those typical life questions. I for sure do not want them getting their facts about the birds and the bees or knowledge about drugs that can't be found in my medicine cabinet from their friends or teachers. I am their main teacher in life and feel that information should come from me.

4.) Christmas Eve at our house will be new pajama night for Santa's arrival...I have almost bought Addison her first pair for next year on more than one occasion. I really need to take a breather.

5.) I see a Katie's Krafty Korner in my future. I want to be a hand's on Mom who can get down, dirty, and creative when it comes to school projects, classroom Mom stuff, and passing the time projects...I can't wait!!

Now enough about me here are my five nominees:

Cassie over at Cassie Craves and Life Ensues. She's hands down a pretty cool Mom and since she already has one toddler with a baby on the way she really deserves an award...can somebody say patience?

Heidi over at Tried-and-True Cooking with Heidi, take a look at some of her snacks that she creates for her children...that alone deserves this honor. Growing up it was fix your own snack at my house.

MamaKeith over at the domestic mama, she made jack-0-lantern brownies for Halloween, cool Mama in my book! You must check them out for all of your Halloween events for next year.

Su over at This Stop Willoughby, read this post of hers and then you will know why I tagged her.

And lastly Lisaloo who has several blogs but this is the one I picked due to the nature of this award, Krafting with Kids. Please see #5 of this post and that should be a very good indication of why I picked her. Seriously, high five to the Mommy's that go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to doing stuff with their kids.

Now I know a few of you ladies may have already received this award so obviously you don't have to redo it on your blogs, for those of you who haven't received it though, spread it around!

It's official...

I told you you would love Thanksgiving and if your movement Saturday afternoon after our first meal was any indication...you LOVED it!!! You were all over the place and beating the heck out of your Mommy. The good news though is that since you were so excited after having had turkey and Grandma's stuffing, Daddy FINALLY got to feel you kick for the first time. You also gave Aunt Megan a nice little kick as well although I don't think she was quite as excited as your Father was. Oh how Mommy loves feeling you roll around like a monkey in her belly, I think I am going to miss having that once you arrive but at least once you're here that means I can snuggle and love on you in person. It's getting closer and closer!

28 week appointment...

Daughter, would you mind explaining to your Mother why she has gained 9 lbs. in 4 weeks? I realize it's winter but you are not a squirrel...please stop storing food for your winter hibernation.

I had another dream this morning about you and you came out with these perfectly round cheeks, maybe you have squirrel tendencies after all.

Any who, we had another decent appointment I guess you could say. Your heart rate was 150 and my blood pressure and urine were once again clean. It was after those announcements that the appointment went south of the border.

Do you know why they call the glucose test a one hour glucose test?

It's because one hour from the time you drink your lovely orange beverage they are supposed to take your blood. Not one hour and forty five minutes later as was the case today. How they manage to misplace your file and then proceed to forget about you is beyond me but they did. It didn't help that I was dehydrated which meant trying to get blood was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Four nurses and five sticks later they finally found blood. This was after they all had to argue about who was going to do it and then proceed to ignore my request to just redo the test at another time when we were all better prepared. I was actually pretty proud of myself though. Needle sticks #3 and #4 were done after I pretty much told them to have at it. For anyone that knows me and the chore it is to get blood from my veins this is a new thing. Normally after the second one I wave the white flag and tell them to back the hell away before anyone gets hurt. It didn't even get dizzy from all of the commotion. I think Mommy has finally put on a pair of her big girl underwear...YAY!!

Hopefully they are able to use the blood and not force us to deal with it again. You didn't move much this morning and I knew why. Mommy hadn't fed you since around 7 o'clock last night so her lil' peanut was just hungry and tired of all the bull crap. I just fed you a single with cheese from Wendy's and you haven't stopped moving since. I guess since I have gained (gulp) 9 lbs. in such a short period of time that maybe a burger from Wendy's wasn't the greatest of ideas but I was in a rush to get home, feed your brothers, and then get back to work since I had been gone since 9:15 this morning. Hell...let's be honest, the cheeseburger probably wasn't smart but the thought of even considering going on a diet is just a joke. Our first Thanksgiving dinner is tomorrow followed by at least one more and then we head into the Christmas season which means Christmas parties, our holiday bake off, Christmas Eve, and then Christmas day. By then you will be a month away from joining us in the real world so why make myself suffer? Not only that but what kind of mother would I be if I didn't allow to you participate in all of the wonderful food during this season?

Antipasto Kabobs

Here is yet another baby shower appetizer...they were really yummy...minus the olives. I am not an olive fan if you couldn't tell...lol!


Anitpasto Kabobs~

Ingredients:
1 pkg. refrigerated cheese tortellini
40 black olives
40 green olives
2/3 C. Italian dressing
40 slices of pepperoni
20 slices of hard salami, halved
20 wooden kabobs

Directions:
1.) Cook tortellini according to package, drain and rinse in cold water.
2.) In a resealable plastic bad, add tortellini, olives, and dressing. Refrigerate for four hours or overnight.
3.) Drain and discard dressing.
4.) On each kabob, thread one of each olive, two slices of pepperoni, slice of salami, cheese tortellini. You may choose whatever order you would like for them to go in.

*Kathy also added little cubes of cheese to each of her kabobs since her kabob sticks were on the longer side. The cheese was a nice addition especially for this mother to be who needs her calcium!!

These were very yummy and one of my favorite items, without the olives of course!