New Home Page!

I’ve spent the last several weeks adding tags and categories to all my recipes so that adding a search button to the home page will allow visitors to my site to search all the recipes for whatever food they want to cook. So if you are on the home page and want to look for recipes with, say, mushrooms, you can search on the word “mushroom” and tah dah, a search page will list all recipes that include mushrooms.

I’ve also added listings of most recent posts along with a section on followers so visitors might see who else is looking at my blog and perhaps visit your blogs as well. And lastly, which I think is perhaps the least helpful, is an archives of all my blogs by date. If you’ve been following my blog since the beginning and saw a recipe in say, January 2019 but you don’t remember the title or if it was under entries or side dishes, this listing should be helpful.

I hope you’ll find the changes on the home page useful. Thanks for following my blog and I will continue to try to make improvements.

The other thing I’ve been doing the last few weeks, which is something I do about every two years (for the last 30 years!), is working on a recipe for gluten-free bread that doesn’t include eggs. I’ve tried three so far, one came out like a brick which is normal for the recipes I’ve tried in the past. Another actually did rise slightly and was not as dense as most gluten-free breads I’ve tried to make, but tasted awful! The third one just didn’t work at all, didn’t rise, didn’t taste good, nothing! But I’ll keep working on it. I’ve pulled out all my old issues of Gluten Free and More as well as all my cookbooks and I hope to come up with a good tasting, less dense, loaf in the near future. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken

This sweet and sour chicken is baked, not fried, so is healthier as well as delicious! The soy sauce substitute in my frig was running out of time and rather than freeze it, I decided to try a new recipe and here’s the result. Served over the vegetable fried rice (see earlier blog), this is a hearty, well balanced, fairly easy dinner. Since the chicken needs to marinate in the sauce for at least 2 hours, plan ahead. Serves 2-4 depending on how much chicken is used.

In a gallon zip-lock bag mix:

1/2 cup soy sauce substitute

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1/4 cup water

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons mustard powder

1/2 cup date sugar

1/4 dry ginger or 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust vinegar and/or sugar to your taste before adding:

1 1/2 to 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs

Refrigerate and let marinate at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9×9″ baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Add the chicken and marinade to the dish making sure the chicken pieces don’t overlap. The marinade will cook as well so no need to worry about bacteria from sitting in the frig with chicken but if it concerns you, simply save out a 1/2 cup of marinade before adding the chicken to pour over the chicken once its in the baking dish.

Bake for 45 minutes – 1 hour. Serve with rice or the vegetable fried rice. Garnish with scallions.

Quick and Easy Vegetable Fried Rice

I made some Chinese Sweet and Sour Chicken today (see my second blog of the day) and had a little substitute soy sauce left over so thought how about some fried rice. One of my favorite dishes, my mother always made it with bacon and eggs but of course, not able to do that anymore. So this one is fairly easy and quick if you use frozen brown rice (I love the packets from Trader Joe but many markets now carry frozen pre-cooked brown rice, just don’t use the instant – all the good stuff is gone and you’re left with just carbs!). Checked the freezer and the pantry and sure enough had a nice variety of vegetables so decided to give it a try. Feel free to substitute whatever vegetables you have in your pantry or freezer.

In a 10″ skillet heat:

2 tablespoons olive oil

Add:

1/2 medium onion sliced

3 stalks celery sliced on the bias

1/2 cup grated carrot

1 cup frozen French cut green beans

1/2 cup frozen peas

1 small can, drained bamboo shoots or sliced water chestnuts

Cook over medium heat for several minutes, stir once or twice to make sure vegetables cook evenly. Then turn heat down to medium low and cover. Cook for 3-5 minutes. Add 1 1/2-2 cups cooked (or frozen) brown rice, stir to combine and cover to heat the rice another 3-5 minutes. Add:

2-4 tablespoons soy sauce substitute

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon red chili flakes or hot sauce (optional)

Stir in the sauce and the dish is ready!