Thai Beef & Basil + Chinese Fried Rice Deluxe

That's right, folks! It's a 2 for 1 recipe day! And the cool thing is, if you do it right, the Chinese Fried Rice will practically make itself the next day from the Thai beef leftovers--assuming there are any leftovers :-)

Thai Beef with Basil
The All New Good Housekeeping Cookbook
Serves 4

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons Asian fish sauce--if you've never used this before, just a warning--it's quite potent!
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 beef top round steak (1 pound)--you can also use top sirloin
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 jumbo sweet onion (1 pound), cut into 1/4-inch-thick slices
1 head bok choy (2 pounds)
3 long red chiles or serrano chiles, seeded and thinly sliced (amt. can be adjusted for heat pref.)
3 garlic cloves, cut into long thin slices--you can also use 1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons minced, peeled fresh ginger--you can also use 1 teaspoon of dried ground ginger
1 cup loosely packed basil leaves--you can also use 1-2 tablespoons of dried crushed basil
2 cups cooked rice

In medium bowl, combine fish sauce, soy sauce and brown sugar. Cut steak lengthwise in half, then cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices across the grain. Add beef to fish-sauce mixture, tossing to coat well; cover and refrigerate beef 30 minutes to marinate--if you're using top sirloin, you can cut the marinate time down to 15 minutes.

In large skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over high heat until very hot. Add beef mixture and cook, stirring frequently (stir-frying), just until beef is no longer pink, about 1 minute. Transfer beef to bowl.

Trim and core bok choy. Separate leaves from stems, then cut each stem lengthwise in half. Cut stems and leaves crosswise into 2-inch pieces; wash and drain.

Add remaining 1 teaspoon oil to skillet. Add onion and bok choy stalks and cook, stirring frequently (stir-frying), until tender-crisp, about 4 minutes. Add bok choy leaves and stir-fry until wilted, about 2 minutes longer. Stir in chiles, garlic and ginger; cook 30 seconds.

Return beef to skillet and add basil; heat through. Serve over rice.


Chinese Fried Rice Deluxe
Epicurious.com
Serves 4

This is a very flexible recipe, so feel free to add or omit ingredients based on personal preference or allergy (that's for you & your shellfish allergy Katie!!). Also the secret of making fried rice lies in the use of cold, cooked rice. Freshly cooked rice will only produce a sticky mess.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons cooking oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
2 green onions, chopped
1/2 cup fresh shrimp, shell/devein--can use frozen shrimp, but thaw first (10 min. in bowl under cold running water)
4 cups cold, cooked rice
1/2 cup cooked peas--I would leave these out, since I don't like them, but Kyra does...
1/4 cup canned diced bamboo shoots
any combination of the following:
1/4 cup diced boiled ham
1/2 cup diced cooked chicken
1/2 cup diced roast pork, or leftover Thai Beef with basil :-)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons chicken broth (or 1/2 teaspoon bouillon powder)
1 teaspoon sesame oil

Heat 2 tablespoons cooking oil. Beat eggs with 1/2 teaspoon salt and scramble in oil until firm, breaking into small pieces. Remove and reserve. Heat remaining oil. Add green onion and shrimp and remaining salt. Cook until shrimp shows pink. Break up lumps of cold, cooked rice and add to shrimp. Stir until rice is heated (you may need to add a little more oil), and the grains of rice are separated. Make a hole in the center of rice. Add all the rest of the ingredients except for soy sauce, chicken broth and sesame oil. Stir until thoroughly heated and mixed. Add soy sauce, chicken broth or bouillon powder and sesame oil, and mix evenly through. Salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with additional chopped green onions if desired.

There you have it! I hope you enjoy your "international" cuisine :-)
k~

Attack Ducks with Fangs

Have you ever done something, and then afterwards realize you shouldn't have? This was our fate today.

Kyra & I met our friends, Amanda & Klaire for a play date, and because we were meeting at a Starbucks within walking distance of a pond, we decided to walk around the pond after grabbing our coffee. I also thought I was being the most wonderful mommy ever, because I remembered to bring bread to feed the ducks!!!

We're walking, the sun is shining, and the conversation is good. We noticed lots of evidence of ducks, but not the ducks themselves, which seemed kind of odd. So we continued walking, and then decided to stop for a minute to see if we could find the ducks. At that moment we looked across the pond, and swimming towards us are between 5-7 ducks. Hurray!

I get Kyra out of her stroller, take the bread out of the bag, and I kid you not, I am ATTACKED by these ducks. They are literally rushing me. So I throw a big piece of bread behind them, back into the water, hoping it will distract them. Only 1 or 2 of them fall for that old trick. The rest look at me, as if to say, "How dumb do you think we are? We know you have a whole bag of bread left!", and start advancing on me.

Meanwhile, Kyra is just standing there petrified, and Amanda is saying, "What's wrong with those ducks? I've never seen ducks act like that before!" Then I mistakenly gave Kyra a piece of bread to throw at the ducks. Apparently she was too slow, because one brazen hussy of a duck literally came up and grabbed it out of her hand!! I'm just glad she (Kyra) didn't get hurt, because I probably would have drop-kicked that duck across the pond and then gotten a huge fine from the PETA people.

Anyway, we quickly ran out of bread, so I put Kyra back in the stroller, and we kept walking. It wasn't until we were almost to the far side of the pond that I noticed this little sign posted by the water. Its general message was something like this, "I know it's fun to feed the ducks. However it really messes their systems up, so please don't."

In my defense, we were having a very enjoyable conversation, and I guess my focus wasn't on all the pond signage, all around the pond. Oops! I guess that also explains why those ducks were so aggressive, as I would bet most good people obey the signs...

So, Kyra, I publicly apologize for leading you astray--Next time I promise Mommy will read the signs...

k~

A Night at the Airport

Katie and I were chatting the other day, and she asked me if my folks had gotten home okay from their Cruisin' Europe trip, as she'd expected me to have blogged about it.

Am I that predictable??

*sigh*

Truth be told, I had filed their "picking up from the airport" doings away for a future post, and had written about some other things.

So now, after they've been home for over a week, without further adieu, "the airport post" :-)

Their flight was to come in from Seattle at 10:10pm, so it made the most sense for me to go to the airport to pick them up---I'm the night owl in our family.

I made really good time getting to the airport, as there was no traffic at that time of night. I had brought a book, and expected to sit in the cell phone waiting area & read until they called. However, I was a bit tired, and decided to park the car, go in & get some coffee, and then read inside--it made sense to pay the extra $ to park the car, if it helped me to stay awake driving home.

Coffee People was still open, so I got a small coffee, and found my way to the waiting area by the security gates. I was stunned to see so many people at the airport, that late at night, and on a Monday! The waiting area was packed, and the crowd standing near the incoming passenger lane was 3 & 4 people deep. I wasn't too worried, however, as I was able to find a seat, and knew I had at least an hour before they were to arrive.

If you've ever spent any amount of time at the airport, you know it's a great place to observe people. Between the alarming number of young ones, who insisted on launching themselves on & off of the chair next to me--"why aren't they in bed?" I asked myself..., and the constant parade of interesting people, my book just couldn't compete.

Tell me, what would possess a person to fly in 4-inch heels??? Are you attending a stiletto convention in the sky? I would just love to see you have to run for your flight in those, without breaking your ankle...

And then there was this disheveled guy who looked like he was carrying everything he owned, just wandering around the terminal. Once he stopped a passing TSA agent, and it was just like in the movies when you see a guy on the street slyly approach someone, and say, under his breath, "You wanna buy a watch?"--I don't think he was selling watches, but it was too strange!!

The highlight of my evening though, other than when my parents arrived, was watching this one little girl (about 5 yrs old) greet her mom who had just come home. When she saw her appear in the crowd of people making their way to the baggage claim, she tore her hand out of her dad's grip, ran as fast as she could, jumped into her Mom's outstretched arms, shouting, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" Her mom then smothered her with tons of hugs & kisses, and held her tight.

Absolutely priceless. I literally teared up, right there in the middle of the airport! And although I didn't yell, "Mommy, Mommy" when my parents showed up, I secretly wanted to.

Oh to be young again, and not worried about what people will think about you...
k~

P.S. They had a great time on their trip, but were absolutely exhausted, and all they wanted to do was sleep, sleep, sleep.

Where are your manners?

It might look like I'm piggybacking on Janet's post about holding the door open, but I've actually had this one in the back of my mind for a while now :-)

It seems like these days the use of simple manners, or even common courtesy is more a rarity, than the norm. Folks are in such a terrible "hurry", that they often "forget" how to be polite. And don't even expect to be let in, when we're all stopped in traffic, even if you have the "right-of-way". That is bound to inconvenience someone else, so forget about it!

So what has happened to our society? When did we become so "me, me, me"? Even the small act of saying, "You're welcome" when someone says, "Thank you", has seemed to disappear from our vocabulary.

To prove this point, a local radio station recently did an experiment to see what kind of response they would get when they said, "Thank you". They called 10 local businesses, asked where they were located, and then pointedly and cheerfully said, "Thank you." Only 4 of the 10 responded by saying, "You're welcome". The most popular response was, "Uh huh", with "No problem" and "thanks" close behind. The worst were a couple of the businesses that simply hung up without even saying goodbye! Now that's customer service.

Here's a challenge: In your conversations in the next few weeks, listen to what you say, and the others around you, when someone says, "Thanks". I think you'll be amazed at how absent "You're welcome" is...

All for bringing "You're welcome" back,
k~

Sweets for the Sweet :-)

Fall is definitely here, and that means pumpkin season is right around the corner!!!

Although I'm not normally a big fan of eating anything pumpkin, I have to admit, these Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars are to die for.

The recipe actually came from a local real estate agent, who included it with her monthly newsletter, so I don't know its original source...

Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
5 tablespoons soft butter/margarine
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts (I leave these out as I'm allergic to them)
8 oz cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon allspice
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup Libby's pumpkin (solid pack)
2 Eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine flour & brown sugar in medium bowl. Cut in butter/margarine to make crumb mixture (reserve 3/4 cup for topping). Press remaining mixture into bottom of 8 x 8 pan. Pat down & bake for 15 minutes. Cool. Combine remaining ingredients in large bowl. Beat until fairly smooth and pour over baked crust. Sprinkle with reserved crumb topping. Bake 30-35 minutes. Cool & refrigerate overnight. Cut & serve.

Just a note: I brought these to our family Thanksgiving one year, and they were the first dessert gone, even faster than the pies!

Enjoy!
k~

Come read with me

Every Tuesday morning, one or more of our local library branches has Storytime for the younger set, and this has quickly become one of Kyra's favorite past times.

Last week the newest library in the Washington County group held their first story time to begin at 10:30am. They also weren't sure how well-attended it would be, so they opened it to all ages, from birth to pre-school.

Well it was so popular, that by 10:15, you could hardly find an empty spot on the story rug. Moms & kids were packed in like sardines. In fact, I overheard a mom afterwards on her cell phone saying, "Ack! I made the mistake of dropping by the library this morning, and they were holding storytime. There must be like 500 kids here!" Obviously a slight exaggeration, but there were a lot of bodies in a pretty small space.

We happened to get there a little early, so were able to snag a spot on the rug, near the far book shelves. Although this was good because we could see & hear everything, the nearness of all those books, just begging to be pulled off the shelf, was a little too tempting for Kyra.

As you can see in the picture below from their website, Kyra ultimately caved to the draw of the books. Every other child is at least facing in the direction of the story teller, while our daughter has her back completely turned away from her (she's the one on the far right, with the dark hair, by the book shelves--sorry about the smallness of the picture. I couldn't make it any bigger without losing the resolution).


So, maybe she's a little young yet, for organized story time, but it gets us a chance to get out, meet other moms with kids around her age, and she does love books. And regardless of how much she actually "learns", her great-grandmother, who was a librarian, would be so pleased!

I will leave you with words by a famous doctor, from one of Kyra's favorite books:
Left foot, left foot, right foot, right. Feet in the day, and feet in the night.
k~

Here comes the sun...

Although we still have a couple days left of official summer, the weather is feeling & looking more like fall every day. And with fall in the Pacific NW, you never know what kind of weather you're gonna get, even on the same day: rain, sun, rain/sun mixed, all clouds, etc.

The other day was a perfect example of this. We woke up to clouds & overcast skies, but then partway through the day, the sun came out. Then the clouds took over again, and no more sun.

So Kyra & I are playing in her room, and the sun goes behind a cloud. She looks outside, looks at me, and says in a very demanding voice, "Sun back on, Mommy!", as if I had the magic ability to turn the sun off & on. I said, "Oh, honey. You'll have to talk to Jesus about that. He's the one that controls the sun, not Mommy." That seemed to satisfy her, and soon enough, the sun came back out, and she gleefully shouted, "Oh look!!!! Sun back on!"

Loving the simple things in life,
K~