Chai and more musings on Tea

I've been in a major mood for an iced chai latte. So in my dear old Rainbow, I purchased some Chai concentrate from my dear old Rainbow foods. I bought the Oregon Chai, regular and brought it home to make my first at-home iced chai latte.

YUM! Definitely different than Caribou's chai but I can appreciate it for its difference. This one has more spice and vanilla to it.

I also purchased some new Jasmine tea. I have a love hate relationship with jasmine tea. For a bit I'll really like it but then I don't. But last friday, I discovered a really good one, Numi organic Jasmine tea. It was hands down the best one I've had. So I couldn't resist when I saw it on special at Rainbow.

I think it's about time to make myself a mug of it now!

What's for Dinner 4/11/10

Post-Pampered Chef party, I was super inspired to do some cooking, so tonight we had coconut rice beef fajitas. I got the idea from TGI-Fridays, of all places. We had fajitas from there that were served with coconut jasmine rice and they were fabulous! I've also come to realize that minute rice is no longer cutting it for my rice consumption. So after some googling of coconut rice, I decided to undertake this myself using the following recipe:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 3 cups jasmine rice or any other long-grain rice, washed
• 1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut milk
• 2 1/2 cups water, or as necessary
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large pot with a tightfitting lid, heat the oil over medium heat until it starts to shimmer. Add the onion and stir and cook until soft and translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat evenly with oil.
2. Stir the coconut milk and pour it into the pot, followed by the water, salt, and sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil. Stir and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook for 35 to 40 minutes or until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender.
3. Turn off the heat and let the rice rest on the stove, covered, for 5 to 10 minutes. When ready to serve, remove the lid and fluff the rice with a fork or chopstick

this recipe came from www.Chow.com , specifically this link. They used shallots as well in their recipe which I omitted.


Observations from cooking:

• My liquid cooked down much faster than the 35-40 minutes allotted for cooking. It actually only took mine about 25-30 minutes and I even added about 1/2 cup of water 1/2 way through cooking. So it's definitely something to watch over.
• I also reduced the salt by half because 1T sounded like it could be too much.

Overall it was a pretty simple recipe. I encourage you to check out the link to the recipe and check out their suggestions. They had a good one for a rule of thumb for how much water to add. And I like to check out user comments for a recipe ahead of time too in order to help tweak it, or decide against making it.

After cooking, I served it on tortillas with steak fajitas, sour cream and cheese.

Homemade Cold Press Coffee

Warmer temps are here.This means it's the time of year when I guzzle down Cold Press Coffee in mass quantities! With the help of my grinder and my handy dandy french press (which currently only collects dust), I decided it was high time I tried to make my own.

I measured out 8 scoops of coarsely ground beans. I used my Perennial Blend beans from Caribou for this.

After putting the grinds in the press, I filled it with cold filtered water from my refrigerator. I covered it with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight (approximately 16 hrs total).

This morning, I took it out of the refrigerator. Skimmed the grounds off the top with a spoon. I then put the strainer for the french press on and strained it.

Poured over ice and Voila! Cold Press Coffee at home.

Verdict: I think it turned out fabulous! I only wish I were set up to make this in jugs because my french press only will hold about 2 cups. Although, it's probably a good thing that I can't make it in a jug! I would definitely consider buying a strainer so that I could make this in a jug if I'm ever having a summer party.

A healthy lunch

I believe I posted already about my asian sesame salad. Today I decided to try it in wrap form. I picked up some pre-grilled chicken for protein. Put it on a small tortilla.  Added that to some lettuce, peppers, matchstick carrots. Topped with toasted sesame dressing.

Review:

SUPER YUM! except, 1 small tortilla wasn't quite enough to satiate my hunger, so I ended up supplementing it with a salad of the same ingredients. Maybe with a larger tortilla, my hunger would have been finished.

This could be a nice quick lunch kit if I had a full time job and such a thing as a lunch at work.....

What's for Dinner 3/23/2010

Cheese Garlic Chicken with Rice with Herves de Provence

Quite a mouthful.

I decided to venture into the world of non-instant rice.  I found a recipe for Rice with Herbes de Provence. I don't have that herb mix, but read the author's comment to use Rosemary, Thyme and Marjoram instead.

Tonight, I also decided to follow the directions for a cheesy garlic chicken from the back of the lipton soup mix

Results:

The rice cooked down way faster than the 20 minutes was supposed to take. I instead added the rice to cooking chicken and finished out the time.

The chicken did not cook in 20 minutes. I aimed for 35 (in a convection oven, no less). I thought it was done, so I covered it in cheese (mozzarella and parmesan), allowed the cheese to melt and served.

Well.... about 1/2 way through my piece of chicken, it changed in texture. Yeah. I'm thinking it wasn't completely done. *ARGH. So not only was the meal not that great, but now I'm worried about aforementioned possibly not fully cooked chicken.

FAIL.

Breakfast burrito

I used to hate eggs. The texture, lack of taste, etc made me shy away. But as I've grown up, my tastes have changed. So now, I like eggs.

That said, I've always wanted to try a breakfast burrito, but never had the guts. Today I decided was that day.

How I made it:

I scrambled 2 eggs (2 eggs, a dash of milk, 1 piece kraft singles american cheese, pepper).
I put some of it in a small tortilla, added about 1T of salsa on top of it and a dash of cheese.

Ta-Da!

I could have scrambled only 1 egg for such a small tortilla. So I had a breakfast burrito and some scrambled eggs.  :) It was an easy breakfast. Maybe in the future, I'd incorporate some peppers and other sources of protein instead of relying on the salsa. It wasn't extremely flavorful but was a good quick breakfast.

The best benefit: a good protein source from the egg should keep me fuller than defaulting to a cereal bar or a sugary snack. And it fits into my new effort to cut down on sugar!

Cutting down on sugar

I consume WAY too much sugar through pop and other means. I've undertaken a 90 day challenge and decided cutting down on sugar intake is one of my sub-goals. This whole cutting down on sugar thing is difficult, but hopefully it'll encourage me to find better breakfasts and be more conscious of what's going into my body.

I'm starting by not adding sugar to my daily coffee. I've already started drinking black coffee at work because I don't have time to grab sugar and I need to be able to explain coffee unaltered by cream and sugar. It's actually not a very difficult switch for me because I already like things like plain espresso and more "bitter" drinks. So if its already not necessary AND I get good quality coffee from work, this is an easy switch that can stand to save me about 1-1.5 tablespoons of sugar per day! My only caveat is that if I go somewhere with bad coffee and I absolutely need coffee, I can add whatever it takes to make that swill drinkable. :-D


The rest of this goal should be helped by cutting down on my soda consumption. There is a lot of sugar in Sprite (my go-to beverage).So between the 1 T I'll save not adding sugar to my coffee, I should save another 3.5T of sugar per day not drinking pop.