Days of Summer: Cooking Adventure #1

Hi Everyone!!

Before I go on with the real point of this post, I just wanted to give a shout-out to my fellow friends and classmates of UT Health Science Center DPT class of 2014! First year down, two more to go! I plan to go full force with my blogging activity during the summer since there aren't gait deviations or neuro tracts to study for (granted with the incredibly notorious second year fall semester coming up, I will have to brush up on everything I've learned so far every few days). So far my summer will consist of work, volunteering, cooking, picture taking, knitting, DIY, the list goes on.....!!

I thought that Friday after my last final I would go out and celebrate, but I ended up sleeping. In fact within the past 48 hours I've spend 2/3 of it sleeping. Sad, to say, but no shame in it. However, today I finally got up and decided to cook. I was craving Pad Thai and so I decided to give it a try. The last time I cooked this it was for someone special (yes, some of you may know who he is, lol), and needless to say it didn't end up tasting like the pad thai at restaurants. But I quickly found out that the sauce is KEY:

My Easy Peasy Pad Thai Version
1. Pad Thai Sauce - you can easily sub and not have to do this portion if you already have a brand pad thai paste in handy! I got the recipe from here. In my opinion, the sauce is what makes the pad thai.

2. Putting Everything Together
Ingredients:
bag of peeled and deveined shrimp 
hard tofu
minced garlic
green onion
bean sprouts
rice noodles
1 egg
crushed roasted peanuts
lime

Start by placing your pad thai rice noodles in a bowl of hot water and set aside until needed. Additionally, put your bean sprouts in vinegar (not to much!) to make it extra crispy when ready to add. Heat wok to a little over medium. Pour in vegetable oil. When the oil is hot, place shrimps and tofu to fry. After one minute place minced garlic with the shrimp and tofu. Crack one egg in the middle, wait about 15 seconds, then mix the egg with the shrimp and tofu (you might want to wait a while for the egg to cook even more, mixing the egg when half of it isn't cooked can make for a really messy pad thai). After shrimp is thoroughly cooked, mix in the pad thai sauce, let it sizzle! Afterwards mix in the noodles, add 1 teaspoon of water to make noodles softer. When the noodles, tofu, and shrimp are all equally coated with the sauce, mix in green onions and bean sprouts. Mix for two more minutes then turn off the stove. After your plate your pad thai, sprinkle it with crushed peanuts and place a lime wedge! So easy!

I couldn't sleep tonight without cooking something sweet... I thought cupcakes were the remedy. However, I want to step away from that zone and do something different- at the same time be thoughtful with the ingredients that were available to me (let's face it, I'm lazy and I don't want to leave to house to get ingredients). And ta-da, banana almond muffins with chocolate chips popped into my mind. I first had the revelation when I saw a bunch of uneaten Hershey's kisses Kate left out. And I have to admit these things are DELICIOUS!!! I love them, and I will definitely share them with everyone when I get the chance to.

Chocolate Chunk Banana Almond Muffins (did I mention no eggs or milk - yes, vegan?!)
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 ripe bananas
1/4 cup canola oil (vegetable oil can be used as sub)
2/3 cup of soy or rice milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
almonds
chopped chunks of chocolate



Preheat oven at 350 degrees F. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, and salt into large mixing bowl. Puree ripe bananas and mix in a smaller bowl with soy milk, oil, and extracts. Put contents of smaller bowl in with the contents of the larger bow and FOLD not mix the two wet and dry ingredients. Mix in almonds and chocolate chunks. Line your cup cake tray with cupcake liners and fill each 2/3 using an ice cream scooper. Place into oven and wait 20-25. Viola! No icing needed!

Alright that is all for this Sunday! Finally going back to my knitting as I fall asleep tonight... I am so excited to have all this free time!! God bless!

Jacq