Chicken Lettuce Wrap happiness

Last night I surprised myself, and Jake, when I put together a lettuce wrap dinner. We both had our doubts and PB&Js on hand when I started but were happily satisfied with the results. This meal will definitely be an addition to our week day dinner rotation.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Recipe:

1 package ground chicken

8oz water chestnuts, chopped

1/2 cashews, chopped

1/2 cup shredded carrots

2 tbs sesame oil

1 tbs Chinese 5 spice

1 tbs finely grated ginger

1/2 tbs minced garlic

1/2 tbs salt

3 tbs hoisin sauce

2 tbs soy sauce

2 tbs teriyaki sauce

1 head Boston lettuce

Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Add chicken, ginger, garlic, and 5 spice and cook until browned. Add hoisin, teriyaki, soy sauce, and salt and combine mixture. Then add carrots, water chestnuts, and cashews and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve with lettuce leaves and enjoy. 

This meal is also great because it can be made in one pan and is pretty easy to throw together.

Yummy... 

Dessert Party and Super Bowl kind of weekend

This weekend was filled with good food that I did not make. Saturday, Emily M. had a dessert party where she made about 10 different desserts which included lemon squares, chocolate butter scotch oatmeal cookies, strawberry cupcakes, and Oreo truffles. Everything was awesome but I thought the Oreo truffles were pretty intriguing.

Emily M.'s Oreo Truffle Recipe:

12 oz milk chocolate chips

8 oz cream cheese

12 oz Oreo cookies, crushed

Blend crushed Oreos with cream cheese. Roll into bite sized balls and chill until solid. Melt chocolate chips until smooth consistency (melt chocolate in microwave for 30 seconds, stir, and repeat until completely melted). Dip Oreo balls into melted chocolate and let set.

The next night, we arrived at Josh's place for the Super Bowl.

He made a huge Primanti Brothers sub with all the fixings, including the french fries, in honor of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

This bad boy had meat, cheese, cole slaw, tomatoes, and french fries. Yum.

We were sufficiently full by the end of this weekend :)

Vanilla Infused Bourbon

Jake has been wanting to try infusing his Bourbon for a while now. He came across a recipe for vanilla infused Bourbon and decided to give it a shot.

We bought two vanilla beans and split them with a knife. We also scraped the seeds out of one of the beans.

Then Jake threw the two beans and seeds into 1.25 liters of Jim Beam Bourbon. (He poured the Bourbon into an Evan Williams bottle.)

In 48 hours Jake is going to remove the seeds from the beans and just leave the seeds in the Bourbon. He'll then taste it in 4 days and decide if he wants to let it infuse longer. Once the Bourbon is infused , Jake will use a coffee filter to remove the seeds from the Bourbon.

Recipe:

2 vanilla beans split down middle

1.25 liters Bourbon

Remove seeds from one bean. Add both beans and seeds to Bourbon. In 48 hours remove seeds from beans. Throw rinds out and put seeds back into Bourbon. Taste in 4 days and once bourbon is infused, pass the liquid through coffee filters to remove seeds and enjoy.

Beef Welligton Bites failure...

There are some nights where I look in the fridge, see some ingredients that are calling my name, and I whip up a wonderful dinner from scratch without a recipe. Last night was not one of these times. I saw puff pastry and some beef tenderloin and decided that Beef Wellington would be a tasty dinner. Well after over cooking and under seasoning the beef I came up with this:

 I then tried adding a spicy mustard white wine reduction sauce:

Big ambitions but still a flop. I'm not going to post this recipe until I tweak it.

Week 2, Run 3

Today was my second long run which was 3 miles. Luckily it was above 40 degrees and sunny outside so I happily went on my first outside run in weeks. The run went so much better then my previous runs on the treadmill.

Distance: 3 miles
Time: 28:33
Time per Mile: 9:31

This run helped boost my confidence that I will be able to increase my mileage since I felt like I was running at a steady pace the whole time and wasn't overwhelmed by the distance increase.