Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Pepper Steak ... My VERY Favorite Meal

I mentioned during my blog commenting challenge last week that my mom's Pepper Steak is my favorite meal of all time. In my book, there is nothing better than this dish. I could eat it every day! 

While I've had pepper steak elsewhere, it has never lived up to my moms version. One reason is I've never seen anyone else fry udon noodles for the base! That makes it so out of this world! I hope you'll give this one a try and let me know what you think!


Pepper Steak
Source: JennaBlogs.com
Serves: 4-6

1 package dried udon noodles
1.5lbs lean round steak cut into strips and pounded into 1/4" thickness
1-2 green bell peppers, sliced into strips
2 large tomatoes, sliced
1 container (32oz) low sodium beef broth
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce
Corn starch (the amount you will use may vary, see below)
2 Tablespoons paprika
1/2 Tablespoon garlic powder
2 Tablespoons butter
Vegetable oil for frying

Note: Be sure to use low sodium products in this dish. If you use the regular sodium broth and soy, it will be overwhelmingly salty and no good!

Slice your steak and pound with a meat mallet. This will help to tenderize the meat. Add paprika and toss on your cutting board to coat. 


In a large, deep skillet, melt butter. Add meat in one even layer. Brown over medium on one side and then flip to brown on the other. Sprinkle in your garlic powder (and salt and pepper if desired). Once meat is browned, cover with broth. Reduce heat to simmer and cover. Let simmer for 45 minutes or longer.


Meanwhile, slice peppers and tomatoes (I actually don't use the tomatoes, but mom does). Boil your udon noodles until just cooked, according to package directions. (Dried udon noodles pictures below). Also, combine water and soy sauce. Set aside.


Drain udon noodles well, and then heat another skillet over medium high heat. Add just enough vegetable oil (do NOT use olive oil) to coat the bottom of the skillet. Place a layer of udon noodles in the skillet, let brown on one side and then flip (I usually flip them using a pair of tongs and a spatula).

Add cornstarch (start with 2 Tablespoons) to the soy/water mixture. Add to the beef mixture. Stir well for a few moments and if sauce hasn't thickened enough, continue adding 1T cornstarch mixed with 1T water until dissolved into the mixture. Taste for seasoning as well - you may want to add a little more soy sauce. Once sauce is the desired taste and consistency, add in peppers and tomatoes. Let simmer for five minutes, then serve.

Serve meat sauce over fried noodles. Enjoy!

Monday, July 29, 2013

Spicy Potato Salad

Off topic, but I just wanted to share that Zulily has Canon Rebel T3's on sale today for $399 (reg $600). It's a great deal for a great DSLR camera. Check it out here!

I love potato salad! And as much as I love it, sometimes you just want something different. I had been thinking about making a spicy version for awhile, and finally got around to it. It was great! Coming up with new and exciting recipes is one of my favorite things to do, and I'm excited to share this one with you!


Spicy Potato Salad
Yield: 2-4 servings

2 large russet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 3/4" slices
1 small red onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup mayo
Cayenne pepper
Chili powder
1 chipotle chili in adobo sauce
Salt
Olive Oil

Peel and slice your potatoes in 3/4" slices (see picture below). Place in a pot and cover with water. Bring to boil and cook until almost done (test with a fork). 

Meanwhile, over medium low heat, sauté onions in about 2 teaspoons olive oil. Season with salt. Once onions are translucent and ready to begin turing a light brown, add garlic. Cook for 1 minute and remove from heat. Set aside.

Remove slices carefully to a baking sheet lined with paper towel to soak up water. Season with a sprinkling of salt, cayenne and chili powder. 



Heat a grill pan over medium heat and add a little olive oil so your potatoes won't stick. Place potatoes seasoned side down, and then season the other side. Cook until brown grill marks appear, then flip.

Finely mince your chipotle pepper. Mix with mayo in a large bowl and then add onions/garlic. Once potatoes are cooked, remove and dice into 1" pieces. Toss with mayo mixture. Add salt if needed. 

Serve warm.

Friday, July 26, 2013

The Last Day!



Welcome to the LAST DAY of the Commenting Challenge!




Thank you all so much for participating this year! I hope you enjoyed the challenge as much as I did! Thanks to everyone who tweeted me topic suggestions as well! =) I used your suggestions for Wednesday, Thursday and Fridays topics!
Todays Topic:
What's your very favorite meal EVER? It can be home made, mom made, store bought, restaurant, etc. 

This is such an easy one for me! It's actually a recipe I haven't posted yet...probably because when I make it, I scarf it down too quickly to snap a picture of it! The recipe is another one of my mom's (because she's an awesome cook!) and it's her Pepper Steak. It's steak cooked in a brown sauce served over fried Udon noodles. It. Is. SOOOO. Good! I'll have to make it again soon and commit myself to taking pictures before I eat it!



One of my favorite things to eat out is actually a dessert (shocker!). You're going to laugh because it's a simple one but it's really my favorite...the Italian Chocolate Cake at Johnny Carinos. Have you ever had it? It's got yummy toffee bits on top of a rich icing that's slathered over a moist chocolate cake. Are you drooling yet?   ;-)

To Participate:
~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky. The linky is located on Monday's post only.
~ Link back to MONDAYS blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. Tuesdays prompt will be provided on Monday, Wednesdays on Tuesday etc so you'll have time to write them beforehand. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

DAY FOUR of the 4th Annual Commenting Challenge!


Welcome to Day 4 of the Commenting Challenge!




Todays Topic:
It may be July, but who is thinking about Christmas gifts already? I know I am! Share some of your gift ideas for this upcoming Christmas season and/or share about the best gift you have received!

I know some of you are thinking I'm crazy (and maybe I am) but I already have Christmas on the brain. It is my very, very, VERY favorite time of the year! I love decorating our home, baking TONS of goodies and of course, buying gifts!

I know some of you are super talented and can make your own gifts (AWESOME!) but I did not really get a good crafting gene. I did, however, get the baking gene, and one of my favorite gifts to give everyone I know is a tray of homemade goodies! I'm not going to post all the recipes here (it would be one long post!), but I'll link to them below:
Spread Cookies
Peanut Butter Brownie Cups

Also, I have listed over 300 stocking stuffer ideas on my blog! You can check them out here and here!

Fridays Topic:
What's your very favorite meal EVER? It can be home made, mom made, store bought, restaurant, etc. 

To Participate:
~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky. The linky is located on Monday's post only.
~ Link back to MONDAYS blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. Tuesdays prompt will be provided on Monday, Wednesdays on Tuesday etc so you'll have time to write them beforehand. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

4th Annual Commenting Challenge: DAY THREE!


Welcome to Day 3 of the Commenting Challenge!




Todays Topic:
Who doesn't love Pinterest? Share a project or recipe you've found and completed, your favorite pins or if you aren't a pinner, share a favorite tip with us (cleaning tip, cooking tip etc). 

I LOVE PINTEREST!


Just had to get that off my chest.  I'm going to cheat a bit today and link to a couple of my old posts, that have some of my very favorite pins on it. You can find my favorite pins post by clicking here and my pins that worked post here.

I've been lucky to have a lot of my recipes and other posts become popular on Pinterest. My most popular recipe has been on Pinterest's favorites page multiple times. My chicken roll ups are super easy and a kid pleaser as well! Another very popular recipe is parmesan chicken salad. A dear friend of ours who was a caterer shared that recipe with me and its become a staple at all of my friends baby showers! 

I even used Pinterest when we built our new home! I kept my Dream Home board updated constantly and showed pictures to our builder and sub contractors. It was so helpful! 

Thursdays Topic:
This idea came from one of my twitter friends (actually, today's topic did too!)!

It may be July, but who is thinking about Christmas gifts already? I know I am! Share some of your gift ideas for this upcoming Christmas season and/or share about the best gift you have received!

To Participate:
~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky. The linky is located on Monday's post only.
~ Link back to MONDAYS blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. Tuesdays prompt will be provided on Monday, Wednesdays on Tuesday etc so you'll have time to write them beforehand. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

4th Annual Commenting Challenge DAY TWO!!

Welcome to Day 2 of the Commenting Challenge!




Todays Topic:
What's your favorite TV show/series/reality show? If you don't watch TV, what about a favorite movie or book series? 
Hopefully others who read this post will watch the same shows and you can start some wonderful discussions in your comments section!



I am a HUGE reality TV fan!

You name it, if it's reality TV, I probably watch it. I love Real Housewives of everywhere, the bachelor, Tia and Tamera, summer camp, whodunnit, big brother, hgtv star, so you think you can dance, food network star, the great food truck race, sister wives, all the TLC wedding shows...the list goes on. And on. AND ON. 

So, since I told myself I had to pick just ONE for this post, I'm going to pick Big Brother. If ever there was a reality show you could get completely immersed in, it's Big Brother. After all, they have 24 hour feeds online...now, I don't watch those (I barely have time to watch the show 3x a week!) but I do follow some twitter accounts that watch all the feeds and tweet the important stuff. 

I have to say, I've never been so angry watching a show before this season of BB. I really had hoped CBS would kick Aaryn off for her racist comments. I can't believe they would subject the other house guests to the things she was saying. 

If you're watching, who do you hope will win? I love Howard and I actually like Elissa even though her sister drove me crazy when she was on the show. I also really like Helen and McCrae, and I think it would be great if they were in the final four!

Wednesday's Topic:
Who doesn't love Pinterest? Share a project or recipe you've found and completed, your favorite pins or if you aren't a pinner, share a favorite tip with us (cleaning tip, cooking tip etc). 

To Participate:
~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky. The linky is located on Monday's post only.
~ Link back to MONDAYS blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. Tuesdays prompt will be provided on Monday, Wednesdays on Tuesday etc so you'll have time to write them beforehand. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!



Monday, July 22, 2013

4th Annual Commenting Challenge: DAY ONE!

Welcome to Day 1 of the commenting challenge! I can't believe this is the fourth year! Thank you for joining in!



Todays Topic:
Some of us have "About Us" pages with our info on them...who we are, where we live, who is in our family, etc. and some don't. Also, some of us use various forms of social media (twitter, facebook etc) and others don't. For your post on Monday, you can talk about who you are and/or link to your About Us page and also share about your social media.

Where do you interact with your blog friends? On Twitter? Only in the comments? Share links to your social media accounts and if you don't have an About Us type page, give us a little background on who you are, what you blog about, etc!



I'll give a quick synopsis of us (you can find more on my Our Family page). I'm Jenna and I've been blogging for just over 5 years now! I started my blog before I had kids, thinking I would chronicle our infertility journey, but I finally ended up pregnant right after I launched it. My husband and I have been married for close to 8 years, and we went through 2+ years of infertility and a miscarriage before we had our two sons, Brayden and Brody. Our now 4 year old, Brayden, spent 5 weeks in the NICU as a baby and it was the scariest experience of our lives. Blogging through that led me to meet so many wonderful and caring people and I will forever be grateful for the prayers, comments and emails I received during that time!

Now I consider myself 50% food blogger, 50% everything else blogger. I love cooking and often post new recipes here. We are in the process of trying to adopt our third and final child, and I have blogged very openly about the private domestic adoption process (this post has a lot of links to posts I've written about our process, and you can search "Jennas Journey Adoption" to find more recent posts!). I also post about lots of other random stuff...crafts, vacations, books I love, beauty product recommendations and recently, my 20lb weight loss (here's a post on that). 

As far as social media goes, I love Twitter! You can connect with me there by clicking this link. I'm on twitter daily and have made so many awesome in real life as well as bloggy friends there! Also, I'm a huge pinner (find me here!) and I have a facebook page for my blog. You can find that here.

Tuesday's Topic:
What's your favorite TV show/series/reality show? If you don't watch TV, what about a favorite movie or book series? 
Hopefully others who read this post will watch the same shows and you can start some wonderful discussions in your comments section!

To Participate:
~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky.
~ Link back to todays blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. Tuesdays prompt will be provided on Monday, Wednesdays on Tuesday etc so you'll have time to write them beforehand. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!


Friday, July 19, 2013

Details on the 4th Annual Commenting Challenge & Monday's Topic!



Thanks for all the feedback on my last post! I've decided to keep the same format as last year, so here's how things will work!

The commenting challenge will again last 5 days (Monday - Friday of next week). 

I will post a prompt for each of the five days, so that you will have a new blogpost for your readers to view everyday. I'll post Monday's prompt at the bottom of this post. The topics I'm posting are just suggestions...use them as you see fit.

The goal again this year is to comment on 10 blogs per day - more or less as you can.

Feel free to grab the logo I created above and use it on your posts. Just right click and copy/paste.

My post for Monday with the linky will go live at 8am central time.

I'll be asking for topic suggestions on Twitter, so feel free to tweet me @Jenna05.


To participate:

~ Link your blog's main page, not an individual post on the linky.
~ Link back to MONDAY's blog post on my blog because it will have the linky in it. Encourage your readers to join in my linking up there as well!
~ Write a blogpost for each day of the challenge. Remember, I'll be providing a topic each day, so if you don't have something already written, just use my prompt. I will provide the prompt for Monday below, and then on Monday's blogpost will be Tuesday's prompt etc. 
~ Comment on 10 blogs (more or less is fine to) per day.
~ If you find a blogger you love, add them to your blogroll, twitter, Facebook etc!
~ If possible, schedule your blog posts for 8am Central Time so they all go live together!


Mondays Topic:

This is two fold!

Some of us have "About Us" pages with our info on them...who we are, where we live, who is in our family, etc. and some don't. Also, some of us use various forms of social media (twitter, facebook etc) and others don't. For your post on Monday, you can talk about who you are OR link to your About Us page and also share about your social media.

Where do you interact with your blog friends? On Twitter? Only in the comments? Share links to your social media accounts and if you don't have an About Us type page, give us a little background on who you are, what you blog about etc!

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Who's up for a FOURTH Annual Commenting Challenge?

For the past few years, I've hosted a commenting challenge here on my blog. I've loved doing it and helping introduce bloggers to one another and grow your comments! Normally, I would have hosted the 4th Annual CC last week but I was gone on vacation.

So, this is short notice but who is interested in participating in the challenge next week?

Also, last year, due to feedback from years 1 and 2, I posted topics that you could choose to use as inspiration for your daily posts. Did you all like that? If so, I will post topics again this year. You don't have to blog about those topics, but sometimes it's difficult to come up with something to blog about every day for 5 days!

Let me know in the comments if you'll be participating and if you like the idea of topics for each day!




For Reference:

Commenting Challenge Year 3
Commenting Challenge Year 2
Commenting Challenge Year 1 (the linky for this one disappeared)

Thursday, July 11, 2013

First Trip to the Movies!

Last week we decided to take the boys to their very first movie, Despicable Me 2! They LOVE Despicable Me. I'll admit it...I do too! It's such a cute movie. 

First, we swung by Target thinking they would have some plush minions or something but all they had are these itty, bitty plastic minions that are seriously about 1" tall. Can you spot them in the picture below?

Obligatory shot in front of the movie poster:
Inside the theatre:

Brayden did great. He climbed up in my lap because he had a hard time keeping his seat down (I guess they don't have the child boosters at this theatre) and we ate popcorn and watched the movie. Brody did okay...occasionally he sat with Brayden and I, then with Chris, then back to his seat, then he patted the dad in front of us on the head, then back to me, and so on. I think once he's a little older he will really enjoy it. 

The movie was really cute! Have you seen it?

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

A Garden Tea Party

Last week our family friend Teresa (the one responsible for THIS delicious recipe...oh and THIS one too!) threw a gorgeous garden tea party for my moms birthday and her one year anniversary of her heart surgery. It was the most gorgeous party I've been to! She is super talented as are her three daughters and they threw a magazine worthy party. 

Me, my mom and my sister-in-law:


Look at this table setting! Pinterest worthy, is it not?


One of Teresa's daughters folded these napkins origami style. Inside of them is my moms monogram.


Some of the spread:

Grilled fruits:
Chicken cordon bleu:
She also made scones, mushroom tarts, chicken salad, ham, chicken and egg salad sandwiches, salad, angel food cakes with ganache carrot cake sandwiches.

She also made these lemon blueberry trifles, chocolate pots de creme (which are my favorites!):

One of Teresa's daughters made this cake! How pretty is that?!

It was a beautiful party! Happy birthday mom!

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Perfect Summer Pasta

 Who doesn't love pasta?

I am not a fan of heavy pasta dishes in the summer, so I came up with this light and dare I say refreshing, pasta for summer.

This recipe is delish when freshly prepared, hence the ingredients list below makes only enough for 2-4 people. It's so easy that I don't bother refrigerating it - instead, I make it fresh every time.


Perfect Summer Pasta
Yield: 2-4 servings

1/2 lb angel hair pasta, cooked and drained
1/3 cup EVOO
1/2 cup freshly chopped parsley
1 tablespoon pre-minced jarred garlic
1/2 teaspoon (or more) crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper
1/2 cup freshly grated romano
1/2 cup freshly grated asiago

Cook and drain pasta. Meanwhile, combine all remaining ingredients except parsley in a bowl as shown below:


Toss hot pasta in ingredients. Once tossed add in parsley and more cheese if desired. Enjoy hot or at room temperature.
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