Home Made Beef Jerky

Prep: 10 minutes Bake: 12 Hours

Ingredients:

1 lb Carne Asada (thin Beef steaks)
1 cup Soy sauce
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 tsp Garlic powder (or 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced)
1/2 tsp powdered Ginger (or 1 tsp grated fresh Ginger Root)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F
Place steaks in baking pan single layered (do not overlap). Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl and pour generously over steaks, rub all over the steaks to make sure the flavor is evenly distributed.
Bake at 200 F for 12 hours!
store in an airtight container in your fridge. (at our house the jerky does NOT last long enough to worry about going bad!)
Enjoy!

Chocolate Sandwhich Cookies

Prep: 5 minutes
Bake: 10 minutes
Finish: 5 minutes

Instructions

Cookies:
2 boxes of Dark Chocolate Cake Mix (preferably Duncan Hines)
4 eggs
2/3 c. of vegetable oil (or butter, or substitute)

heat oven to 350 F
Mix all ingredients until well combined. drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet, bake for 10 minutes. Allow cookies to to sit for a minute on the cookie sheet so they can harden enough to be moved. cool on wire rack.

Frosting:
8 ounce package of cream cheese
1 stick (or 1/2 c.) of butter
4 or 5 cups of Powdered Sugar
2 Tablespoons of milk for texture

Cream the cheese and butter in a mixer and slowly add sugar incorporating well. Add milk if the frosting is too thick. you want it kinda thick because your putting it between the cookies and you dont want it to squish out!

Assembling the Sandwich:
If youre like me then you made all your cookies a different size! So partner your cookies as much by size as you can! Then drop a spoonful of frosting on the flat side of one and squish the other one on top with the flat side down! (the flat side is the side that was on the pan while baking, you get it, right?)

Hawaiian Poke

This is a DELICIOUS recipe I found online on this Hawaiian website!

Poke is one of my favorite Hawaiian foods! When my sisters lived on Oahu, they took us to this little market ont he North Shore called the Kahuku Superette and we bought this stuff called Poke (pronounced poh-kee, or poh-kay) It is basically a raw tuna salad marinated in local seasonings. Very easy, very fast to make, and VERY delicious over a cup of hot white rice!

Warning, this dish is for adventurous eaters!

Prep: 10 minutes

2 lbs. Ahi Tuna, cubed into 1/2 to 3/4 inch squares
3 oz. Chopped Green onion
3 oz. Diced Onion
2 oz. Chopped Ogo (fresh seaweed)
1 tsp. Red Chili Flakes
2 tbs. Soy Sauce
2 tbs. Sesame oil
Hawaiian salt to taste

Secret Ingredient: Kukui nut

Combine in mixing bowl; add dry ingredients and chill.

i like how it tells you to chill at the end, lol just kidding.

I pretty much followed this recipe to a T, although I put SWEET onion instead and I did not add the kukui nuts, because there arent any where im from, but it was still good.

Trader Joes Guacamole Kit

Prep: 20 min

Ingredients

2 Ripe Avocados
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Shallot
1 Lime
1 Jalapeno Pepper*
1 Ripe Roma Tomato

Cut avocado in half, scoop into bowl.
Mince the garlic and shallot, place on top of avocado.
Chop tomato and jalapeno pepper. *if you want it less spicy make sure you leave out as many seeds as you can. Place in the bowl with the other ingredients.
Cut lime in half and squeeze juice into bowl.
Stir it up and enjoy with chips or as a garnish for enchiladas, nachos, tacos, etc.

First Things First

Hello everyone, my name is Alise Lawrence. For those of you unfamiliar with me, I have known Sarah for...oh man, 18 years. For reasons I won't go into (sheer unadulterated laziness), I have been the silent / missing collaborator of this blog... until now. I have always enjoyed cooking, and so in October of 2006, I decided to enroll in and attend a culinary school named Kitchen Academy in Hollywood Ca. When I finished, I realized that the cooking repertoire of the home chef might potentially benefit from my own ideas and personal experiences gained from school and being a home chef myself. It is the sincere intent of myself, Sarah, and this blog to do exactly that, to give home chefs a leg up in the kitchen through techniques and inspiration.

Now that the introductions are out of the way, first things first: Aside from imagination, a chef can only be as creative as their tools and ingredients allow them to be. Not having all the necessary ( I say necessary because certain things like colanders or strainers, while nice to have, aren't detrimental to most cooking processes) tools can stop you from accomplishing even the most basic of tasks in the kitchen. That said, here is a list of things personal experience has taught me are handy to have in a kitchen. Most of them are probably already in your kitchen. Anything in parenthesis are good to have, but ultimately up to your discretion.

Tools

• Kitchen / Chef's knife


• Paring knife


• Bread knife


• (Filet / Boning knife)

• Whisk


• Mixing spoons


• Spatula


• Measuring spoons


• Measuring cups, wet and dry, there is a difference


• (Rubber spatula)


• (Colander or a strainer)

Ingredients

• Onions


• Garlic


• Rice


• Potatoes


• Pasta


• Flour


• Butter


• Chicken, beef or vegetable bullion


• (Carrots, celery...even I don't have these all the time)


• (Canned or frozen vegetables)


• Any spices of your choice (i.e. rosemary, thyme, basil, parsley, sage, bay leaves, pepper flakes.....)

Sorry this post was so long, but I felt that I had to make up for lost time...J/k. I'll be back soon with another couple of posts discussing basic stock making, and general ingredient substitutions in recipies. Always, Alise.

Slow Cooker Barbecue Pork

I dont usually do slow cooker recipes but since they are so easy and quick to assemble and cook all day long, It is sometimes faster than preparing everything all at once in the evening!

Prep: 1 minute Cook: 8 hours

1 - 28 oz bottle of your favorite BBQ Sauce (or homemade)

1 - 5lb pork loin

Make sure your pork fits into the slow cooker, cut it if you have to. Pour Bbq sauce onto pork. cook on LOW for 8 hours. Serve on a bun or eat it straight out of the slow cooker!

Craftastic Monday!

Ive been wanting to do this for such a long time, so I finally did it!

I entered Craftastic Monday on this AWESOME blog!! Check it out!