Category: Uncategorized

Easiest Sweet and Sour

I’ve tried sweet and sour before on this blog, when the blog was just a tiny baby, making its first little peeps.

Let’s just say that meal was not one of my finer moments. I was just learning how to cook and used some weird recipe from the internet. My family graciously ate it, although I think it was decidedly more “sour” than “sweet.”

Since then I’ve found a foolproof sauce recipe!

Chicken and Veggies
1 lb chicken breast, cut into cubes
1 lb mixed veggies (frozen or fresh will do)

Sweet and Sour Sauce
1/3 cup rice vinegar
4 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp ketchup
2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 4 tsp water
1 tsp soy sauce

Directions

Cook whatever meat you’re using (we used chicken in just a tiny bit of oil) in a wok or large frying pan.

When it’s cooked through or mostly cooked through, add vegetables. Today, I used “key largo blend” frozen vegetables containing green beans, red bell peppers, and orange & yellow carrots.

I put the lid on, allowing the vegetables to steam themselves. I try to never overcook veggies so they keep most of their nutrients. Plus, overcooked veggies are mushy and yucky. It’d be safe to say that I usually undercook them–I heat them through but they stay firm, fresh and crunchy.

Once the veggies are un-frozen, pour the sauce in!  Heat it until simmering and let it boil down some so it’s thicker.

Unless you bread the chicken at the start, it won’t be like restaurant sweet & sour, but it’s healthier and tastes great

Moving

Just kidding. Yesterday we seriously toyed with the idea of moving across town to a 3-bedroom house with a fenced in backyard so that we could get a dog and really live the high life. We got the info, crunched the numbers, everything.

We aren’t.

It was fun to imagine decorating the house in my style with all our furniture, even having a guest room and an office, but the sad truth is we can’t afford it right now.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get one of these jobs I’ve been applying to and we’ll get the opportunity to move to a big city in another state. Gotta continue to be patient….

Wall Art (Dining Room)

Today’s post is kind of a big deal to me. Last month we painted the bottom half of the dining room. After doing so, we did some minor furniture rearranging. Still, the room didn’t feel finished. The top halves of the wall were empty and sad.

I had big plans of using graph paper and cutting out mini versions of my pictures to do a layout before bashing holes in the wall. I also considered snapping photos of them and the wall and rearranging things on photoshop to present myself with different options. However, none of these things happened. Friday evening, we just charged ahead and hung the stuff.

We were smart, however, and cut out pieces of Christmas wrapping paper to the size of our art and taped them up on the wall for a preliminary evaluation–it’s a good thing we did because it quickly became obvious that the arrangement I had in mind would not work… I wanted the gold frame horizontally at the bottom with other pictures above and to the side of it, but it just wouldn’t have looked good.

Now, the room really looks and feels like a room.

There was even some attempt made to iron the tablecloth before photo time, but the wrinkles were too stubborn even for the Cotton setting. Guess I’ll just have to wash it. I’ve still got plans, though, like finishing painting the chairs (which I’ve said here a million times) and reupholstering those great MCM chairs by the wall with new cushions and blue fabric–it’s going to be my scary first big reupholstery project and that’s why I’m procrastinating on it. On the other hand, those chairs were free (found them at the dump)!! So if I mess up, I won’t feel too bad. Lastly, I’d love to find some vintage cloth or something to go in the empty gold frame. I’m keepin my eye out :)

What do you think? Have you ever braved hanging a group of pictures like this before? I’ll admit–it was pretty intimidating!