Hibachi Noodles

Original Recipe & Photo from Best Veg

Alright, since we are long overdue I’ll get straight to it…

Hibachi Noodles

 

Ingredients

Japanese dried noodles (wound in circles)

1-tablespoon oyster sauce

2 tablespoons reduced sodium soy sauce

8 tablespoons splenda

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons pure sesame oil

1-teaspoon garlic chili

Directions

Cook noodles according to package directions.

In a jar combine the remaining ingredients and shake well to combine.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add ½ the sauce to the hot pan, immediately add noodles, add remaining sauce, and toss well for 2 minutes.

Okay, so as always I had to make changes in part because I didn’t have these exact ingredients and also because I didn’t want to disappoint you :)

First, I bought Chinese Noodles aka Chow Mein Noodles because they were what looked best at the store I was in at the time. I’m pretty sure you could get away with any kind of noodle and I may even dare to say regular noodles (spaghetti) but I don’t want to lead you astray. Let’s see, I also used Sugar instead of Splenda because we do not use splenda and instead of Garlic Chili I opted for straight up garlic (2 large cloves per sauce batch) and some Siracha for a kick. Finally, as an unintended change I used toasted sesame oil because even though I went to the store to specifically buy NON toasted sesame oil I came home with toasted. Now before you blame me for not reading the label I did and it said “Natural Sesame Oil” no mention of toasted. Yet, when I poured the oil for the recipe I was like “Wow that’s pretty toasty smelling” so I rechecked the label and then read the ingredients… “Toasted Sesame Oil” – RATS!!

Oh last little change was that I made 1.5 times the sauce since we like our food pretty strong, and boy I’m glad I did!

The end product was goooooood stuff. It actually tasted like we ordered in! Ya – that good. Logan devoured his and said he could eat it again tomorrow. If you are a meat eater I would definitely see pairing this with some sesame beef for example… or you can be a little piggy like us and just eat a large bowl!

*On a side note: if you happen to go to the original location of any recipes, this recipe in particular is being advertised as Vegan-Friendly. I want to point out that this is NOT the case and in fact Oyster Sauce is anything but vegan. Just a heads up in case eating vegan is something you are looking for.

Noming Score: 3.5/5

Tuscan Tomato-Basil Cream Pasta & Gaaarrrlicc Bread (sort of)

Om nom nom nom… Om nom nom nom… Om nom nom nom. Oh sorry… I was uh remembering our dinner and fell into a food coma. It was such a wonderful food coma too!

Before I send you into your own food coma, I have to admit we ate our dinner on the floor tonight. We like to call times like these “picnics.” Sometimes we do this by choice, other nights – such as tonight, without much choice. You see, I have decided to take over the kitchen table with crafts. And once I get started crafting, well I’ll be at it for awhile – so you could say picnics are going to be pretty common around here for awhile. Oh well, Winston (our friendly household rabbit) sometimes likes to join us on the ground for our meals. Now and then he even brings his own noms – hay.

So even though we ate on the floor tonight Logan said he still felt “special” aww I know I’m amazing – go ahead you can say it. I really didn’t go out of my way and I cook every night so nothing was very special about this meal except for maybe how yummy it was. We had ourselves…

Tuscan Pasta with Tomato-Basil Cream

Original Recipe from My Recipes 

Ingredients

1 (20-oz.) package refrigerated four-cheese ravioli

1 (16-oz.) jar sun-dried tomato Alfredo sauce

2 tablespoons white wine

2 medium-size fresh tomatoes, chopped

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Garnish: fresh basil strips

Preparation

1. Prepare pasta according to package directions.

2. Meanwhile, pour Alfredo sauce into a medium saucepan. Pour wine into sauce jar; cover tightly, and shake well. Stir wine mixture into saucepan. Stir in chopped tomatoes and 1/2 cup chopped basil, and cook over medium-low heat 5 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Toss with pasta, and top evenly with 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Garnish, if desired.

Om nom nom nom… Om nom nom nom… Oh! Sorry!

This recipe is uber easy to make. I do recommend though going the extra step to buy quality tomatoes as they are definitely a big part of the flavoring. Now if you are like me and unable to find sun-dried tomato Alfredo after searching half a dozen stores – I’ve got the next best thing for ya… sun dried tomato paste! I got mine at Meijer – so no specialty stores needed for this one. Granted I will admit I bought pesto instead of paste and it all worked out in the end, but I would definitely go with paste if I would have reread the dang jar. I saw the price and a word starting with “p” so naturally because we are talking about me here, it was the wrong one. I would add maybe 1-2 Tbsp or more depending on taste and how much you love yourself some sundried tomatoes. Heck you can buy and cut some packed sundried tomatoes and throw them in. Just please buy the vacuum sealed and not the stored in oil ones… oil packed baaaaaaadddd!

As for the Alfredo you could also easily make your own, which really isn’t hard to do if you’ve never done it before and tastes a MILLION times better as well – but store bought worked for me tonight.

Only changes I made beside the previously mentioned, was salt & pepper to taste (which I feel does unsaid for every recipe on the planet) and I mixed my drained ravioli into my pan of sauce and let it cook for another 5 minutes to get the flavors melded a bit more.

To go with our meal I also roasted a few bulbs of garlic. If you haven’t hard roasted garlic on warm buttered bread you haven’t lived. It’s easily one of my top 5 favorite things to eat EVER!!!!!! It’s sooo simple too. How I do it is to…

Roasted Garlic on Buttered Warm Bread

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the tops off an entire bulb of garlic so just the top of the cloves are now exposed. Lightly brush olive oil on top and wrap in tin foil. Repeat for each bulb. Then simply throw into the oven. *If your bulbs are funky shaped or small you can place them (still wrapped in tin foil) into a muffin pan while they cook to keep them standing. Cook for approx. 30 minutes. You want them to be translucent and a little golden on top. 

Then butter your warmed bread and smear on some garlic lovin!

So if you haven’t figured it out by now dinner was nom nom gooood! And frankly I can’t wait to eat leftovers tomorrow because I know it will be even better!!

Noming Score: 4/5