I found this recipe through Pinterest, and we have all fallen in love with it. The flavor is so good, yet there are very few ingredients and it is very simple to make. The original recipe is by Lizzy Writes, and I have changed nothing. Her suggestion about ginger has also been very helpful — freeze it. She chops it into sections, which I am trying, but I’ve also discovered that grating it fresh and wraping the grated ginger in aluminum foil to freeze it works as well.
1/2 – 1 teaspoon crushed red peppers (to desired spiciness)
1 bunch green onions, thinly sliced
Heat a large skillet or wok over medium heat and brown hamburger with garlic in the sesame oil. This works best if the beef is fresh or unthawed.
Drain most of the fat and add brown sugar, soy sauce, ginger, and red peppers. Simmer for a few minutes to blend the flavors. Serve over steamed rice and top with green onions.
We very nearly had a crisis last night. I was sitting down to type up this recipe so I could schedule it for this morning when I realized I couldn’t find my notes. This is one of my original recipes, so it didn’t exist anywhere except wherever it was I put it. As you can see, I finally located it in the back of a pink notebook that I’d been taking notes in for something else.
One of my favorite things to cook is Chinese food. Ever since I was old enough eat things that didn’t come out of a baby food jar, my parents have been taking me to their favorite Chinese restaurants trying to teach me to love Chinese food. I guess it worked, since I’m now known around our house as “the red-headed Chinese chef.” I keep hearing how terrible soy sauce it for you, though, and I’ve been wondering if there’s a way to decrease the amount of soy sauce in our food without sacrificing flavor.
This recipe is the result of that experiment. Before this, I’d cut the amount of soy sauce in some dishes by up to half (adding rice wine to make up the difference), but this is the first time I’ve tried a full stir-fry without any soy sauce. The results were encouraging. It was a nice white sauce, similar to Moo Goo Gai Pan. Be sure not to leave out the salt — without the sodium in soy sauce it’s bland until the salt is added.
Note: if you’re going to serve this with long-grain brown rice, start it cooking before you put the chicken in the marinade. It usually takes about 45 minutes to cook.
Cooking the chicken
Marinade
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/2 teaspoon fresh, grated ginger
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon rice wine
Cut the chicken into bite-sized cubes. Mix in the marinade ingredients in a bowl and add chicken. Marinate for 15 to 20 minutes.
Sauce
Decided to try some of this bean flour I had in the cupboard instead of my usual tapioca starch. It worked pretty well
1 cup chicken broth
2 teaspoons fresh, grated ginger
2 tablespoons flour or starch
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon rice wine
1 tablespoon honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
Whisk the sauce ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside. Prepare desired vegetables. I used carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and green onions. Other suggestions include bamboo shoots, zucchini, and button mushrooms.
Let the sauce bubble until tit thickens a little
Heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook chicken until cooked through (no pink). Add vegetables and stir fry until just tender (they should still be a little crunchy if you bite into one). Chicken juices should be evaporated by now. Add sauce and bring it to boil. Stir while it bubbles and thickens, about 3 minutes. Serve over rice.
I made this cheesecake for a potluck last week. It is my favorite cheesecake for fall, and also works well as a winter dessert. Since trying it with this oatmeal crust, I’ve stopped using graham crackers at all for this cheesecake. This crust works well for other fruit cheesecakes and can be used with a New York style cheesecake.
No need to butter the pan — this crust doesn’t stick
Combine, mix well and press into 9-inch spring-form pan.
Filling
2 (8-oz.) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
Be careful when spreading the batter. It sometimes pulls up the crust if moved around too much.
Beat cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla at medium speed with electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing at low speed after each addition. Pour over crust.
Topping
4 cups peeled apples, thinly sliced
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
Sprinkle the topping evenly
Toss apples with combined sugar and cinnamon. Spoon apple mixture over cream cheese layer. Sprinkle with pecans.
Bake 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes or until center is almost set. Cool before removing rim of pan. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.
Drizzle with caramel ice-cream topping just before serving.
There are few baked goods that I feel like I could sit down and eat the entire pan in one setting when it comes out of the oven. This is one of them. They taste good after they cool down, too. I usually bake them on a Friday for church services on Saturday, and there are never any left by Sunday. It’s a quick dessert, so if you need something last-minute for Thanksgiving tomorrow, these blondies would work.
Cream together the butter and brown sugar. Beat in egg. Stir in flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir in nuts and chocolate chips. Spread batter in a greased and floured 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Bake at 350°F for 25 to 30 minutes.
I’ve always thought that a land flowing with milk and honey sounded a little underwhelming. I like both, but surely there were better things (like chocolate or unicorns) that a perfect land could be filled with. But then a few weeks ago, the thought popped into my head that it wasn’t just milk and honey God was giving them, it was all the things which could be made using milk (dairy) and honey (sweetener). Ice cream, pasta sauce, pretty much every recipe on this blog. In itself, the milk and honey promise was deeper than I thought, and it was also symbolic of all the physical blessings God promised physical Israel for obedience (Deut. 28:1-14).
I’m sure there were Israelites who said something like, Milk and honey? That’s it? “We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic,” those were much better (Num. 11:4). They did not understand that what God offered was infinitely better than what they used to have.
How many times do we devalue God’s promises, choosing instead to cling to things in this world because we do not realize just how much better the things God wants to give us are? In C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, he says that if we think we want less than God offers — wishing “God had designed us for a less glorious and less arduous destiny” — we are “asking not for more love, but for less.”
Sometimes we wish for things that are not good for us because we do not fully understand or value what we are being offered. God loves us too much to let us settle for a curse when He wants to give us a blessing. That’s why He keeps trying to bring us back to Him when we stray. Just look at how many times, in the midst of just punishments for sin, He begs Israel to come back to Him for their good (Hosea 11).
This is not my favorite brownie recipe, but it is by far the easiest to make. Dump all the ingredients in one bowl, mix, pour in a pan, sprinkle with nuts or chocolate chips, and bake. That’s it. You don’t even have to wait for butter to soften, since they take oil.
Combine first seven in gradients in a large bowl and beat until smooth. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in baking pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and/or walnuts. Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.
I found this recipe through Pinterest, and we have all fallen in love with it. The flavor is so good, yet there are very few ingredients and it is very simple to make. The original recipe is by Lizzy Writes, and I have changed nothing. Her suggestion about ginger has also been very helpful — freeze it. She chops it into sections, which I am trying, but I’ve also discovered that grating it fresh and wraping the grated ginger in aluminum foil to freeze it works as well.
1/2 – 1 teaspoon crushed red peppers (to desired spiciness)
Like An Anchor 