Seafood Pasta

So a few days ago we made seafood paella for dinner (even though I posted about it earlier today) and apparently my parents really liked the seafood... so my dad bought some more and decided to make a seafood pasta dish tonight.. I guess they were getting sick of the constant korean food for dinner?  I <3 korean food but I guess I'm not complaining :)

Too hard to write out a full recipe and I didn't take pictures throughout this time so I'll just brag that I had some amazing seafood pasta for dinner tonight.

You can't see the linguine because it's buried under the red ocean but I promise you it's there. With italian bread for dipping and a simple salad of romaine, cherry tomatoes, honey goat cheese, and sliced baby bell peppers, it doesn't get much better than this :)

What's in the picture fed 5 people and is only half of what we made.. yay lunch/dinner tomorrow!

Seafood Paella

My dad's a closet gourmet chef.. so when my mom left me, my brother, and my dad to fend for ourselves for dinner one night, we decided to try our hand at Paella.  A multi-step process but so totally worth it.  I will be explaining in urey-recipe terms.. basically meaning not real metric measurements.. you'll see what i mean.. it might be hard to make this at home while just following this recipe..

What we used:
1 large onion
1-2 bell peppers (red/green)
couple garlic cloves
1 can diced tomatoes
3-4 cup rice
1.5lb  chicken breast
4-5 links chorizo sausage (we had spicy ones. yum)
SEAFOOOD delight!! (aka shrimp, scallop, mussels, clams, squid, king crab legs) or any subsection of this.
fillet of tilapia (just because we had it)
chicken stock
water
saffron
paprika
parsley

What we did:
1. Cube the chicken and slice the sausage into 1/2" thickness.  Cook chicken in some olive oil seasoned with salt and pepper.  Set aside chicken and cook up sausage in same pan (no need to have extra dishes to wash)

2. While the meats were cooking, chop onions and peppers and smash the garlic.

3. Once chicken and sausage cooked (slightly undercooked is ok too since they'll be cooking more in the paella), set aside and sear scallops and shrimp.

4. Saute onions, peppers, and garlic in some olive oil in a BIIIIG pan (this pan will be used for the paella)  Once onions translucent, add the rice and coat with the oil.

5. Add canned tomatoes, chicken stock, water, couple shakes of paprika (not sure amount of liquid total because we just kinda followed how we make korean rice..) i would say we did 4.5 cups of rice with 8 cups of liquid...??

6.  While you're waiting for it to come to a boil, wash the shellfish, slice the squid into rings, (we) cut the crab legs into small sections for easy eating.

7.  Once liquid comes to a boil, add crab, clam, mussels, chicken, sausage, and pinch of saffron and mix thoroughly.  Lower heat to a simmer and wait.

8.  When most of the liquid is absorbed, add shrimp, scallop, squid, and whatever else you have that I may have forgotten to mention and mix..  we placed the tilapia on top so it wouldn't be all crumbled.

9.  Cover for last few minutes of cooking and also raise heat a little to get the socarrat (crust of rice at the bottom of the pan)    Add some chopped parsley for garnish and voila! 

10. Dig in :)

Linsanity?

I don't want to seem a bandwagoner with the whole Jeremy Lin phenom... but even before Jeremy Lin blew up and became crazy famous, I had bought Knicks tickets as Jonson's Christmas present for a February game.  It just happened to be a few games after Lin went crazy and shat on everyone.  It ended up being a Knicks vs. Nets game in MSG.  We were thinking this game would be sorta boring because it it against the Nets and Carmelo Anthony was coming back to play after his strained groin... honestly we were expecting a blowout...

watching the players warm up. Jonson and I full of cuban food and mojitos (yumm) and all settled in to watch the the Knicks kick the Nets in the balls.  The beginning of the game was as expected.. knicks leading by ~10 points but then oohhh do the tables turn.  The knicks players weren't making their shots! and Deron Williams was pooping 3-pointers everywhere!  I was yelling "De-fense" at the top of my lungs but i guess the players didn't hear me :( the scoreboard should have looked like this at the end of the game..

If you can't see the scoreboard it says knicks 123 nets 18.. would have been linsane if that was true at the end of the 1st quarter.. I didn't even see the final score because we left with 3 minutes on the board to catch the lirr back home, which was filled with disappointed and cranky knicks fans.. the game itself was exciting to be at though. everyone boo-ed anytime kris humphries touched the ball... everyone cheered when deron williams was fouled out.  the knicks lost because of my curse.  every game that i've gone to (a grand total of 3), the team that i root for (who are usually playing crappy opponents) loses! but i would never give up a chance to go to another game. maybe ill just secretly root for the wrong team so that they lose?  anyways go linsanity! :) here is a blurry blurry picture of jeremy lin haha

A kangaroo's best friend

your kangaroo lost a family member this weekend. my chihuahua, Baby, went off to join Fluffy in doggie heaven because of a heart failure.  At least she'll have someone to play with up there.  Rest in peace Baby.

I'm the biggest loser!

You are talking to a slimmed down kangarooo :D.  At work, we did a company-wide biggest loser competition where everyone who wanted to participate paid $10 and we weighed in on 1/9/12.  Due to the wide range of body types and sizes, we made it so that 2 people who lost the highest percentage of their initial weight would win the prize money.  This made sense because it's easier for a heavier person to lose 10lbs than it is for a lighter person to lose 10lbs. It might not even be healthy to lose that much if you are lighter in the first place.  So after a month of salad lunches and going to the gym for hours on end.. I WON! It was only $80 in winnings but still makes me feel awesome. Won some money, lost some weight. I lost 4.7% of my weight in 30 days.  Second place was 4.3% even though counting pounds he lost more overall.  I'm proud of all of my coworkers working hard to become healthy together, motivating each other (though at one point there was some sabotage going on.. leaving jars of nutella or chocolate bars on people desks as "gifts") but regardless congrats to everyone.  We lost a total of 44 pounds combined! yay CPC!  And now we go out for chinese food buffet for lunch.... x.x

don't judge book by its cover

so last night i went out to dinner with a friend and we were trying to figure out what to eat for dinner.. we decided on chinese and my friend insisted we go to this place called china pavilion.. i have driven by this place and even eaten at restaurants in the same plaza as this place for the past 13 or so years... and never once have i stepped foot in or ordered take-out from this place.  It just looked like a typical chinese take-out restaurant from the outside.  china pavilion.. sounds so generic right?  I guess it's not called golden dragon or anything like that. but you get my gist. So i was a little hesitant because a place like that would probably have bad "real" chinese food and unhealthy non-appetizing "american" chinese food. but my friend insisted saying this place is the best chinese food restaurant he knows. we go in and sit. (service was really slow btw) but the interior was actually surprisingly impressive and ornate.  definitely larger than i had expected, with three separate rooms, one with a full bar.  on a wednesday night, i would have thought this place would have had maybe 1-2 other tables occupied.. but hit me over the head again, an entire room was full with bustling people and the other rooms speckled with families.  WOW. and mind you.. this is a restaurant that is literally attached to an "all you can eat" hibachi/sushi buffet for $7 dinner. so you gotta know this place has good food.  I knew then that i was in for a treat because when i looked at the menu, each entree was $18-25! If people come and pay that much for chinese food when they can get the same thing, all you can eat, right next door for $7, they're doing something right.

So when we finally ordered, i decided to try the Dragon & Phoenix. It was half General Tso's Chicken (i know so american..) and half shrimp and vegetables in white garlic sauce.  and my friend got just an entire place of General Tso's Chicken (partly why i wanted to try it).  O.M.G.  I never knew general tso's chicken could be considered an amazing dish! The chicken was pure white, tender, and the sauce... oh man.  There was a little bit of sauce on the chicken but the flavor was actually cooked into the breading of the chicken so that it was crispy. crispy is the key word.  no matter where you get general tso's chicken, it's always soggy, mushy, whatever other adjective you would use to describe baby food. but this place, there's this crunch.. makes you feel like you're not eating a jar full of saucy sweet msg.  so enough about the chicken. (definitely getting take-out from this place more often.. i'm going to get fat.)

The 'prawns' as they called it, nice plump pieces of shrimp sauteed with snap peas, water chestnuts, broccoli, bell peppers, baby corn, garlic, and some white sauce that i can't place. so good! and that's a high compliment after being next to the general tso's chicken.  they used orange slices to create a barricade so the sauces didn't mix. very smart because i'm allergic to oranges and those oranges would probably taste nasty if you tried to eat them anyways.  and portions.. the picture below was taken after i had had my fill of food (with white rice not photographed) i'm so excited for dinner today! i'm having leftovers :)

in conclusion, never judge a book by its cover, or a restaurant by it's store front.  i will be recommending this place to any friends that visit the little town of orange and make them get general tso's chicken even though it's considered the most american of "chinese foods" next to chicken and broccoli.

Just to tag something to the end of this, after this dinner we needed a sweet fix but didn't want to beat our bodies to death with all the unhealthy foods so we decided to go to a little froyo place called Nuvita.  i had gone once when they first opened and it was just a small bump in the middle of the parking lot of yet another plaza and it was just soso.  since they, they had spruced it up and added coffees teas and other hot beverages.  smart.  but i was in a froyo mood.  so many flavors to choose from, but as a creature of habit, i always get original :) just a dollop with fresh fruit and mochi.  tried something new and threw some toasted coconut on top. it was a great end to the day chilling and eating froyo in a starbucks-like environment with wifi and couches sprawled everywhere. playing scramble and words with friends and just catching up with a friend.