Teriyaki Chicken and Stir-Fried Baby Bok Choy

So, once again, I spent a bunch of time not updating this blog (although I had been cooking a lot for a while... and then sort of... stopped.)... But, actually, I've been busy now that I've adopted this little guy:

I'm absolutely obsessed with him, and I supposed the feeling's mutual considering he's sleeping next to me as I type this.

Today's meal was actually leftovers... but, I made homemade teriyaki chicken with white rice and stir-fried baby bok choy. (To get rid of the baby bok choy before yet ANOTHER one of my bushels rots in my fridge.)

The teriyaki recipe was from here... and the bok choy recipe from here.

The sauce didn't thicken the way I would have wanted, but it was still delicious (especially as left overs for the next two days)! I saved the teriyaki sauce so I could pour it on when I reheated it. The baby bok choy was perfect, however. 

These feelings would go well with some pasta...

Some spaghetti carbonara - with farmer's market Irish bacon! Recipe from here.

Today was an emotionally intense day, and really rough for me. Work is getting progressively worse, and so is this month... as if dumpster diving for my keys wasn't bad enough.

Can't remember if I wrote about this earlier, but about a week ago, as I was taking out the trash from my store, I threw my keys in the dumpster as I was heading to my car... And had to spend the next hour and a half picking through it to try and find them...

No such luck.

So now I'm key-less (save for a spare car key and a spare apartment key) and, unfortunately, demoted back to 8 dollars an hour. Not exactly the salary of my dreams.

After two days of ramen, I thought I'd change up my food repertoire from Japanese food and made some carbonara... surprisingly easy, and really cheap. (If you don't use fancy bacon I guess.) My bacon's been frozen for... months.... so who knows how good it was... Definitely not as good as when I first got it! Still, the recipe is easy, doesn't make too much, and, after I got past the whole eggs being the sauce thing, quite delicious (and filling)!

Here's hoping Halloween is better... (Although I work the closing shift.)

Shoyu Ramen

Shoyu ramen- recipe from here.

I fudge most of my recipes and just kind of add things to taste, but I used this one as a base for making my own shoyu ramen!! One of my absolute FAVORITE foods of all time.

Where I'm from it is absolutely impossible to find authentic ramen so I'm constantly craving it but at a loss for where to get it. And the only place I can think of to get it FROM is 3 hours away, so unless I want to make a 200 mile pilgrimage for ramen, I'm sort of SOL.

This recipe (at least how mine turned out) tastes EXACTLY like the ramen I used to eat in Japan!! I had beef lying around so I used that and I used bok choy because I'll actually eat it, but you can add pork or hard boiled eggs... standard ramen things.

YUM.

Apple Crisp!

Some homemade gluten free (vegan!) apple crisp! I got the recipe here!

I'm trying desperately to get rid of all the apples I've acquired on the 3 separate apple picking trips I've gone on this October... So after making a large vat of applesauce, I still had a butt ton of apples left, made some of this... and still have a whole half bushel left... 

I'm not really complaining because I love apple based most things but ugh, man, there are so many apples in my apartment...

Anyway, the recipe for this is easy and has limited ingredients! It's delicious with just a HINT of coconut flavor (not too much, as I hate the taste of coconut).

Gyudon

Homemade gyudon! Recipe found here.

So I am like the least healthy person, but I try to eat things that are easy to cook and my favorite style of food is Japanese!

Gyudon was like my favorite cheap meal in Japan. I know Yoshinoya is supposed to be gross, but as far as I was concerned it was DELICIOUS. So I decided to run to the Asiam market and try to make my own - with MASSIVE success. The recipe at Little Japan Mama came out amazingly. I've been eating the leftovers for like, 3 days.

It's easy and filling, and I definitely recommend authentic gyudon too... 

Fall Activities...

So once again I've totally forgotten this blog. What else is new... I've been keeping this around for me in case I need to vent to myself or keep it around just to remember what was going through my mind when shit went down, you know...

Today my friend told me a bunch of personal stuff - getting married being one of them! And ended with, "thanks for being a real friend, Sam... like, a true friend." Which ALWAYS throws me. I'm not sure how many people hear that on a fairly regular basis, but my friends like to tell me that and it surprises me every time. Not saying I'm not, necessarily, but all I really do is listen... and say what I want about it. ...Thinking about it I'm not that great of a friend, really.

Drove up to Vermont this weekend with a friend to go apple picking and to show her around. The food up there is phenomenal, and mostly organic! Also, one of my favorite restaurants (a ramen place) has the best gyoza I have ever had. So if you're ever in Burlington, VT - Check out HJ House! Delicious!

Anyway, I made a huge vat of applesauce with all the apples we picked - perfect for fall (which is now JUST starting to hit us)...

Delicious!

Decluttering the Bathroom

What I'd like to call this post is "un-fucking the bathroom," because, let's be real, my bathroom was a tragedy. Between things being knocked over and emptying into the bottom of the drawers, and my mom deciding to reorganize everything I own (I know, I'm moving out soon, really.) the bathroom was...

Ground zero.

When I'm stressed out I clean. Deep clean. Like, take everything apart and put everything back together, so here's my declutter "advice."

• Organize: Things you want to throw out, things you want to keep. Then, hair products, make up, lotions, shampoo, etc... whatever you want.
• Condense: If you're anything like me, your bathroom (and everywhere) is a bobby pin graveyard. My bathroom drawers were basically just piles of hairpins, cotton balls, and hairties... so I grouped them all as I found them, and put them in boxes, and then put them together. NEVER AGAIN WILL I SEARCH FOR BOBBY PINS! ... Well not for a week at least.
• Throw Out: See things you thought you'd gotten rid of years ago? Throw it out. That thing you MIGHT decide to use? You probably won't. Throw it out. Anything I had to question whether or not I'd use it, I threw out, save for some fancy face wash I'd been talked into from some mall kiosk workers. It cost an arm and a leg, I'll save it if I want.

It DID take me the better part of an hour and I came out of it in a crazy rage - which could be because of my stress level... But, the ordeal was a definite success:

Ahhh, sweet organization.