What We’ve Cooked Lately

I thought it was time to round-up some of the dishes that we’ve been cooking lately.  A few months ago, I took over the weekly meal planning and grocery shopping duties.  Todd still does the majority of the actual cooking at the stove, but I plan, shop, and prep the meals before he comes home from work.  I may do a blog post about the tools and my method of weekly meal planning, if you guys seem interested.

One of my goals in life is to learn to cook some authentic Chinese dishes similar to what my mom used to make for us.  Todd and I attempted the Pork & Chive Dumplings.  We didn’t make the wrappers from scratch, we just used frozen ones from the supermarket.  But we made the pork & chive filling from scratch, and the chili oil from scratch. 

We thought it was very good!  But we’re going to try a few more different recipes and then pick our favorite.

We saw the episode of Milk Street where they went to Taiwan to eat street market food.  One of my favorite fond memories of childhood in Taiwan was the grilled corn from the street vendors, so we had to try to make this Taiwanese Grilled Corn!  It was also very good, but no exactly like my childhood favorite, so the search continues!

The 3rd classic Chinese dish we made was Mapo Tofu from Woks of Life.  It did turn out yummy, but I think I bought pork that was too lean.  Next time I’ll try with a fattier ground pork.

We made homemade from scratch pizza at home!  We did purchase a pizza stone and a pizza peel for getting pizzas in and out of the oven.  We used the America’s Test Kitchen One Hour Pizza dough recipe.  We made two pizzas, one for me and one for Todd.  The crust was chewy and crunchy, delicious!

I started perusing the site Eating Well and found a salmon recipe that we tried and LOVED!  It really was so tasty!  It was this Roasted Salmon with Smokey Chickpeas & Greens.  Definitely 5 stars and will be making it again!

Another Milk Street recipe we made was Sichuan Chicken Salad.  It was good too!

A couple more salad-y dishes we enjoyed… Speedy Beet and Bean Salad with Herb Vinaigrette, except we added rotisserie chicken too. 

Farro Salad with Asparagus, Sugar Snap Peas, and Tomatos

A very flavorful chicken dish that we made for Todd’s family when we visited in August… White Balsamic and Terragon Chicken.  Here we separated the chicken and the sauce.

An absolute favorite that we’ve made several times recently is Chicken Curry in a Hurry with Basmati.  It is SO GOOD and it’s easy, you make it with rotisserie chicken.  You can buy ready to heat naan bread at grocery stores.  Also, you MUST get the mango chutney because it really turns this dish from good to GREAT!

Another Indian inspired dish we tried was Punjabi Aloo Gobi.  We didn’t super enjoy this one, mainly because of the very strong flavor of the hing.  If you try it, let me know what you think!

These Beef Kofta Meatballs with Roasted Vegetables was absolutely delicious!  I love Middle Eastern beef kofta at restaurants!  I could NOT believe that we could make such similar beef kofta meatballs at home, I was so excited when we tried it!  It was great!

Another Woks of Life dish we tried was Red Curry Noodles with Chicken.  We liked it!  Ours didn’t look very red.  It was very easy.

Seared Tofu with Sweet Chili Sauce and Broccoli – very healthy dish

America’s Test Kitchen’s Chicken and Dumplings is SO good!  To save time, we used rotisserie chicken.  You would need to add more fat (such as butter) to duplicate the taste if using rotisserie chicken.

One of the first things I learned to make in the pressure cooker (Instant Pot) was Tex Mex Chili Mac, and we still love it!  It is from the America’s Test Kitchen Pressure Cooker book, but this one seems similar except we use ground beef.

A recent favorite is this Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe from Skinnytaste.  Yum!

Last but not least, I’ve fallen in love with steel cut oats again, now that I’ve learned to make it in the Instant Pot!  So fast, and so yummy!  I put fruits, pecans, and honey in it.  I make 2 cups, which is good for 8-9 breakfast servings!  Just keep in a glasslock container in fridge and eat it the whole week.  Add some milk and heat up.

Well, that was a lot of recipes thrown at ya.  Cooking good food at home is one of our enjoyments, so we do it on average 4 dinners per week.  See ya next time!  If you try any of the recipes, I’d love to know what you think!

Read More »

It’s the Little Things | August 2019

The last few months, I’ve been slowly been upgrading the tools and organizational products we use almost every day.  Based on my own experience, I’ve noticed that if it’s something that annoys me a little bit every day, then it’s worth spending a little bit of money to fix the problem, whether that means better processes or better tools.  We put up with small annoyances in life, but when you add them all together, it really can impact your overall well-being and happiness.  So these little improvements make me just a little bit more joyful and happy every single day.  It’s the little things sometimes!

Today I’ll show you four things we’ve purchased in the last month to make our lives better.  I didn’t have the foresight to take any “before” photos, so I only have “after” photos.  I’ll try to remember to plan ahead next time, because I think I’d like to make these posts into a semi-regular thing on this blog.  Small upgrades that make life easier or better!

First up is this $6 stainless steel toothbrush and toothpaste holder for my bathroom counter.

We had been using just a plastic cup to put our toothpastes and toothbrushes into.  We each had one.  But we all know how often you have to actually wash the cups, because it can get gummy and gross in there.  I thought this stainless steel holder was much more attractive and hygienic!  So far so good and I like it.

The next three things are kitchen related.  Ever since I quit my job last year and became a stay-at-home-wife-and-business-owner, I’ve spent a lot more time in the kitchen.  I prep veggies and fruits, I chop and prep meals, and I cook a lot more.  Almost every week I notice something annoying about our kitchen tools or processes, LOL.  So I have upgraded/replaced some tools to make our kitchen life better.  To me, it’s totally worth it to remove obstacles for something you want to do MORE of.  I wanted to cook and clean more, so I wanted better tools.

First is a vegetable peeler.  This $7 food prep peeler is an upgrade to our Kuhn Rikon one that we got from Sur La Table many years ago. 

The OXO one has a way better and more ergonomic grip.  I peel a lot for food prep nowadays (sweet potatoes, beets, etc.), so a tool upgrade was necessary.  I’m really excited about this one!

Next, it’s an organization upgrade for inside the spice cabinet.  We used to have all our spices big and small just sprawled inside the spice cabinet.  We had a wire stand so we could fit more spices on top of each other, but you really couldn’t see the spices hidden in the back.  One day I just got tired of it and bought this $13 two-tier lazy susan that fits inside our kitchen cabinet. 

Now we can see all our spices!  Not only that, but Todd went and alphabetized each tier, so it’s even easier to find what we’re looking for, ha ha!  I love this upgrade!  It’s just one of those things where it’s so cheap and has made such a positive impact, that you wonder, “Why didn’t we do this years ago???”

The last kitchen related item is this $16 salad lunch container. 

Todd brings his lunch to work almost every day.  When I worked I brought my lunch too.  It’s rare for us to have to buy lunch, unless it is a pre-planned lunch with coworkers/friends.  We bring our lunches because it’s more nutritious and healthy, and because it saves SO MUCH money to not have to buy lunch out every single day.  Lately during the summer, we’ve been eating more salads for dinner and Todd’s been bringing salads to work for lunch.  We didn’t have a good system/container for bringing salads.  You want to keep the wetter ingredients separate from the lettuce.  And you want to have a good container for the dressing too.  While you could bring three separate containers for all these things, it got to be a pain.  So when I saw my friend Jen’s video on meal prep, I was smitten with this salad-to-go container.  It is perfect for bringing salads to work!  You put the lettuce in the big tub, then you put the wetter ingredients, cheese, and maybe meat on the top tray, along with the dressing in the little container.  I would have bought two of them, if I were still working! 

And by the way, if you love meal prep, cooking, and cleaning videos, you need to go subscribe to my friend Jen Chapin’s channel on YouTube!  She has taught me so much and has inspired me to keep my kitchen cleaner and meal prep.  She was a scrapbooking friend but now she’s expanded her channel into meal prep and I’m totally enjoying it!

These are a few of my recent little life upgrades.  I love that these things don’t cost much but make life so much easier and better.  I hope to make this type of post a regular thing (monthly?) going forward.  Do you have any little things that you’ve upgraded that makes your life way better?  Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear!

Disclosure:  links used are affiliate links.  I make a tiny commission if you choose to purchase products from my links.  They are at NO cost to you.  It’s just a tiny amount to offset my blogging expenses and blogging time.  You are not obligated to use the links at all, but I thank you if you do! 

Read More »

I’m Back

I haven’t blogged for about four months due to technical issues with Open Live Writer’s interface with Blogger.  I HATE the Blogger web interface, so blogging was no longer fun for me and I gave up.  I kept checking Github threads to see if someone was kind enough to volunteer his/her time to rewrite Open Live Writer to fix the issues, and lo and behold last Friday when I checked the thread, someone named Nick Vella did!  So now I’m back to blogging, except I’m still considering migrating my blog to self-hosted Wordpress so I never have these issues again.  But that would require research and lots of work, and learning the technical details on my part. 

Todd and I are doing really well, and I am personally doing well! 

Here are some bigger things that happened while the blog was dormant.

• I started reading and watching videos about skincare and have been really interested in it for the last three months.  My 49-year old face looks more glowing and wrinkle-free than before! 

• We watched Game of Thrones’ final season, Season 8.  Sigh.  We loved that show.
• We discovered a couple of new-to-us Chinese restaurants:  Szechuan Chef and Shan Xi Magic Kitchen.
• We turned in the Kia Soul electric car (lease was up), and we purchased a used 2017 BMW i3 electric car for Todd.

• Todd played an entire season of intramural softball at Illumina.  They lost in the first round of playoffs.  I went to 4-5 games.

• Todd went to Trailhead DX in San Francisco.
• We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary!

• We took a week off in July and staycationed here in SoCal.  We went on a bay cruise.  Spent a day up in San Clemente.  Went to Coronado.  Learned to make Chinese dumplings at home.  Had breakfast out.  Went wine tasting.  We did most of the activities with a Groupon and it cost less than 50% of the regular price!  Woo!

• We went to Nashville, TN for Con of Thrones!

• I went to jury duty.
• I drove to the US-Mexico border for my Global Entry interview.  I’m now a Global Entry cardholder, so I can go through the expedited customs line when I return from a foreign country.  And Global Entry includes TSA Precheck, which I enjoyed immensely when we flew to Ohio.  Two minutes through security!
• We flew to Ohio to spend a few days with Todd’s family.  Todd’s sister Amy had her second baby while we were there!  AND Todd attended his 30th high school reunion!  The funniest thing was when a guy he knew in high school said in front of everyone, “Now what guy our age still has a full head of hair like that??!”  Apparent Todd does.

• My sister Joyce and I put together a 75th birthday party for our dad in LA.  She and my nephew Andrew flew into LA and we drove up.  We had a Chinese banquet at Newport Seafood and invited several of my dad’s friends.  We had two big tables of people to celebrate my dad.  It was grand.

So now we’re caught up!

Read More »

Confessions of a Midlife Housewife Newbie

As you all know, I was never a homemaker type of woman. I worked full time at a really taxing (no pun intended) corporate finance job for 25 years. I was telling a good friend last month that I'm learning how to do things around the house and it's actually really satisfying. In the last six months, I've learned to cook new things, made meals for entire weeks (OMG!!), adhered to scheduled laundry days, and learned general housekeeping skills. It may seem antiquated or mundane to some people, but it's given me life skills and satisfaction. It's much different than my corporate job, but satisfying in this stage of my life. I think the takeaway lesson is that we don't have to be one thing in our life. You can be different things at different times, or multiple things all the time. It's just important to grow, learn, and be satisfied, whatever you do.

Also, I've learned to never go to the grocery store next to the elementary school at 2:55pm.

Todd and I have always split up household tasks in the 24 years that we’ve been married.  However, I’ll be the first to admit that he did more than me.  He cooked dinners for most of our married life.  It started because when we were first married, I was in a long-hours stressful job and he wasn’t.  Then I was working full time and going to graduate school at night to get my MBA.  He got better and better at cooking, so he just kept doing it.  In the last few years, I’ve learned to cook quite a few things myself.  TV cooking shows and Pinterest has helped with that.  In 2015 I cooked a new recipe every week for 6-7 months.  You can find all the “What I Cooked” posts on my blog here.  You can also see them all in one place on my “Stuff I Cooked” Pinterest board! 

More recently, Todd has been really busy at work with his project going live, so I’ve been trying to do more cooking.  The first picture in this post was a Chili Glazed Tofu dish that I made last week.  It always takes me way longer to cook anything than I think it does.  I didn’t follow the recipe exactly and just kind of winged it.  It turned out rather well. 

One of my favorite ways to cook dinner is in the Instant Pot, or a pressure cooker.  I’ve made this Tex Mex Chili Mac a few times and it’s a winner.  It’s from the America’s Test Kitchen Pressure Cooker cookbook.  But this recipe seems similar. 

I’ve also made various versions of chicken & dumplings, because it’s one of my favorite things to eat.  I think this version is from The Kitchen.

Todd and I split up the various house-cleaning duties.  I’ve taken over laundry the last two years, mainly because I’ve been very particular about the way my clothes are folded, LOL.  I adopted the Marie Kondo style of clothes-folding so that I could put my clothes away vertically into my drawers.  That involves different folding and folding into smaller but sturdier structure.  I really couldn’t expect Todd to do that, so I took over the laundry. 

For the 24 years when we both worked outside the home, we did all the laundry and cleaning on the weekends.  Now I can do a lot of chores and errands during the weekdays, which frees up our weekend time together for more fun.  That was actually one of the goals we had as a couple when we decided that I would resign from my job, and we’ve been able to achieve that.

I guess what I would consider a very important job that has been my domain ever since we’ve been married is money management.  I have been managing our money and paying bills since the beginning.  It’s because that’s where my expertise was.  Accounting and finance was my jam.  That fact actually brings me to my current housewifeing situation… I guess I’ve managed our money well enough over the years, that I could resign from my job and stay home now.  I managed all our savings, investments, 401k, mutual funds, asset allocation, insurance, mortgage, refinancing, other loans, etc. for 24 years.  Sometimes I wonder if Todd even knows how much money we have, or where our accounts are.  Oh I kid.  He knows.  We cross-train each other on our tasks from time to time, just in case.

So that’s kind of where I’m at in the role of housewife the last six months.  I thought by now I’d be itching to go find a part-time job in finance again.  But no.  Between my business Pacifica Grace Studio and running our house, I’m quite busy and fulfilled!

I’ve been thinking of blogging more about personal finance topics, since that’s an area where I have a lot of knowledge that I could share.  What do you think?  Is it something you would be interested in reading here at listgirl.com? 

Read More »

What I’ve Been Up To + A New Venture

Thank you so much for all your comments from my last blog post.  I was overwhelmed that anyone is still reading this blog, and that some of you took the time to comment so thoughtfully.  I appreciated it very much!

I meant to blog more often, but I was doing other things and got busy with a new venture.  I will talk about it towards the end of this post.  First a recap… each one of these things probably deserve their own post, but like I said, I got kind of busy in October. 

Towards the end of September we went to Mickey’s Halloween Party at Disneyland!  I had gotten tickets back in July as a celebration of me leaving my job.  We had never been to this special event before.  It ran from mid-Sept to October 31st at Disneyland, on certain nights. 

There were no lines on most rides during the party.  We got to trick or treat too.  There was special Halloween fireworks over Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, and special Frightfully Fun Parade.  It was the most fun I’ve had in a long while!  I highly recommend going next year if you’re local to SoCal.

We went to Ohio in mid-October to visit Todd’s family and to enjoy fall festivities.  We don’t have fall weather in San Diego in October, so I loved bundling up and doing fall things!

We went to the Castle Noel in Medina, the largest Christmas museum of its kind!  We saw one of the original Elf movie costumes there and we were so excited! 

We went to a farm and picked out pumpkins, ate corn and apple cider, and went through a corn maze.

We had a family pumpkin carving contest.

This was ours (Todd and I were a team).  It’s the Corpse Bride.

Whose pumpkin reigned supreme??

And we watched a Buckeye game together.

Speaking of which, of course college football season started back in September.  We’ve been enjoying our football Saturdays!

Todd did another triathlon!

I went to the beach a couple of times.

We hung out with friends.

I finally finished all the Harry Potter books for the first time!  And saw all the movies!  I loved them!  I went to the library (OMG, freeeeee books!) and read books.

And I cooked meals. 

Instant Pot Chili Mac

Thai Green Curry Tofu with Bok Choy

Chicken Enchiladas

Chicken and Dumplings

Let’s see, what else have I been up to?

I’m launching my own business!!!  For the last month I’ve been setting up my business, getting permits, product testing, scent designing, designing labels, branding, graphics, making test products, concepting out product photography, etc.  It’s taken me full time working every day.

Can you guess what my new business is?

I am opening a new Etsy store to sell handmade soy candles and wax melts!  I’ve name my store Pacifica Grace Studio.  It’s a name that really means a lot to me.  I will talk about it in a separate post.

Store will be here on Etsy.  You can follow on Facebook and Instagram too!  There just may be launch special coupon codes on social media! 

I’m aiming to launch on Thursday, November 15th.  Obviously that’s only 8 days away and I have so much to do before then.  But stay tuned to the blog or follow on social media for any updates on launch date and special coupon discounts for followers.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last two months since leaving work. 

Read More »