Welcome to my kitchen!

Welcome to my kitchen!

People never believe me when I tell them my kitchen is tiny. So let me show you…

 

 

That’s it!! There are no secret crevices or nooks. What you see, is what you get. Granted compared to some apartments in New York City this might be considered a deluxe kitchen. But let’s face it I don’t live in New York City, I live in Salt Lake City, which is a small to medium sized city. You know, the kind of city where cooking and baking is very important. Plus I love cooking, but my 18” of counter/prep/dry my dishes space has just not been cutting it lately.

 

In addition to my actual kitchen I do have a ‘breakfast’ space but I don’t eat there I’ve turned it into a small office and craft space. See my previous post on this makeover from January 24, 2012 or just look that these pics as a little refresher.

 

Why am I telling you all of this? Well because I’m basically a genius! I decided that the storage bench needed to go, well not go, go it just needed to be moved into a different room. Then I hit the stores looking for a small kitchen island/cooking space, and guess what suckas I found one! So basically I doubled my prep/counter space and added some great storage too! Onh yes and I don't think I ever posted my giant attempted art project so I guess you might notice that too hahaha.

 

Of course I wanted to start cooking right away. So I hit the store and bought some yummy stuff to make a few new recipes. The first one is a honey soy tilapia. Let me start by saying that I’ve never even tried tilapia before, but I’m trying to eat more fish. So I basically said what the hell let’s try it. I found this recipe at allrecipes.com Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

2tbsp honey

3 tbsp soy sauce

3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp garlic powder

2 (3 oz) tilapia fillets

Cooking spray

1 tsp black cracked black pepper

Directions:

Mix the honey, soy sauce, vinegar and garlic all together in a bowl. Place the fillets into the mixture and put in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Preheat the oven at 350. Spray a baking dish with cooking spray. Once the tilapia has marinated place it in the baking dish add some pepper and cook for 15-20 minutes.

I’m shocked with how much I loved this recipe. It was super good. I served it with steamed veggies.

Here are some pictures of the process.

Prep

mix

marinate

Bake/Eat the goodness

 

Next I made a Chinese Chicken Stir Fry which I found on Eat Yourself Skinny! blog although I made a few small changes (just omitted a couple of things) here’s my version below….

Ingredients:

3 chicken breasts

1 red bell pepper, sliced thin

1 stick of celery, chopped

3 skinned carrots

½ white onion, diced

2 tbsp light soy sauce

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp olive oil

Dash of salt and pepper

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Chop up all of the veggies and cut up the chicken breasts into cubes, season the top with some salt and pepper. Set aside. Grab a small bowl, mug or something and mix soy sauce, lemon juice and cayenne peppers, set aside. Heat up a skillet on medium heat and add some olive oil. Add your veggies to skillet and sauté for about 3-5 minutes then add the chicken and flavor mixtures to the skillet and cook for about 15 minutes, a bit longer if the chicken isn’t done yet. YUM!

Here are my pictures.

Prep

more prep

saute your veggies

add your chicken and cook until you can eat it!

 

Now with this I would typically serve over rice, but I’ve been cutting unhealthy carbs out of my daily routine. In some ways I’ve been attempting to eat Paleo. But I’m not perfect so these recipes aren’t full Paleo but they are fairly closish. ANYWHO so instead of rice I picked up some Shirataki noodles. Which basically are made from roots of plants or something, some of them are made with soy (tofu) but not the ones I bought. I heard about these a few years ago and tried them basically because I love pasta and they are 0 calories and 0 carbs. However I had a horrible experience, they were disgusting! It turns out I was just dumb and had no clue how to properly prepare them.

Well I figured it out.

So what I did was get my colander over the sink. I cut the package open and dumped the noodles straight into it. I already had my cold water running. Because these noodles stink like fish, and I’m not a fan of fishy smelling things.

So I rinsed them for 1-2 minutes in the cold water.

Then I simmered them for 2-3 minutes.

Rinsed again in cold water and guess what they didn’t smell like fish anymore! Yahoo!!! Then I just cut them up a little bit because the noodles are kind of long.

Then since I’m eating them with my stir fry I decided to flavor them with a little soy sauce.

Now if you’re going to try these noodles you need to know a few things. Like they are not like pasta, in fact I think they would taste gross with most pasta sauces, I’ll let you know in the future. The texture isn’t like pasta either it’s kind of like a firm gelatin. Also when cleaned properly they are basically flavorless so I kind of think I might cook some, add flavoring and just eat with some steamed veggies and maybe a protein.

I hope you found something you’ve enjoyed in this massive post!

Cheers friend!