A Night Of Homemade Asian Goodness

 

Tofu or Chicken with Ginger and Black Bean Sauce

Last night, I made a version of a recipe that I've been making for quite a few years. I don't remember where I found it. I think it was in some magazine we had lying around the house. I believe it was sometime around 2013. Wow, it's been over ten years ago! How time flies when life deals you a few blows.

Anyway, instead of using tofu, this time I used chicken breast. We had some large chicken breasts in the fridge and they needed to be used. I cut them into small pieces and fried them in a wok. I then added the whites of green onions, ginger, and garlic to let them start getting flavorful. Then I added small crowns of broccoli to stir fry. I then poured in the sauce, tossed, and covered for about 5-6 minutes. I made some rice towards the end of cook time and had it ready in a bowl. I spooned the goodness over the rice and topped with the green onion pieces.

I can't put into words how much I love this dish. The sauce is the kicker! The flavors that are packed into the sauce are wonderful. I must say that it wasn't only the sauce that was full of flavor. After cutting up the chicken, I seasoned it with Slap Your Mama and with Badia Complete Seasoning. The combination of the flavors were exceptional and I enjoyed every single bite.

Just so that everyone can make it, here's the recipe. Being totally honest, I've never used the peppers nor the star anise. I tried the dried mushrooms the first time I cooked this, but since then, I've never wanted to. If you want mushrooms, buy either sliced or unsliced mushrooms and add them later. I always liked adding broccoli to mine and I add it to stir fry before I add the sauce. For the green onions, it is best to chop those starting at the white end. Place the white part into a bowl and then chop the green parts into one inch pieces and put them in another for garnish added last. For the tofu, you can get either firm or extra firm. Either will work. Just make sure to not burn the tofu or let it stick to the bottom of the wok. If you don't have a wok, you can use a large frying pan. I would tell you to go buy a wok for your home and learn the joys of cooking in it.

Tofu with Ginger and Black Bean Sauce

5–6 dried black Chinese mushrooms (optional)
1 cake (10 oz/300 g) firm tofu or other choice of meat
3 tablespoons oil
1–2 dried red chilies, cut in half and deseeded (optional)
4–5 large cloves garlic, smashed
6 slices ginger
1 whole star anise pod (optional)
6 green onions (scallions), cut into sections

Sauce

3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon black or yellow bean paste
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1/2 cup (125 ml) water (or use chicken stock)

Instructions

1. Soak the mushrooms in warm water for about 20 minutes to soften, then drain. Remove and discard the stems, cut the caps in half and set aside.

2. Cut the tofu into bite-sized cubes. Place in a colander to drain.

3. Combine all the Sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

4. Heat the oil in a wok or large skillet until hot, but not smoking. Add the chilies (if using) then the tofu, turning gently with a spatula until all the pieces are coated with oil and shaking the pan occasionally to prevent sticking. Fry until the tofu just begins to turn yellow but is not brown or crispy.

5. Add the mushrooms, garlic, ginger, star anise and half the green onions and stir-fry gently for 1 to 2 minutes.

6. Add the Sauce and stir carefully to blend. Cover the wok, lower the heat and braise for 5 to 6 minutes, adding a few tablespoons of water if the Sauce becomes too dry.

7. Add the remaining green onions to the wok and transfer to a serving dish.

Let's go for a really long walk!

 

Every day is a winding road...

I really got depressed about my weight last year and started tracking all the food I ate while walking every single chance I got. Every time I got out to walk, I would walk 6 miles or more. I love walking on the local Suwanee Creek Trail. It's such a relaxing walk. If you walk from the top to the bottom and back, the total milage is more than ten miles. I've done it before and it felt great. I'm sure there's someone screaming...."What the hell are you thinking?! That's insane!" Let me explain.

I love being outside. The fresh air is intoxicating and the exercise is so good for everyone. More people should be getting outside and going for refreshing walks. Granted, we in the northern hemisphere are now in the bowels of summer and it is going to get much hotter than it is now. This week, we in the state of Georgia are looking at 90+ degree weather each day. When I walked outside the house yesterday, it felt like I was walking in a sauna. No joke....the heat almost took my breath away. Fat people have that feeling when they walk out into air soup in the South. It's the added insulation!

I had lunch today with the husband at Waffle House and then stopped by the Jesus Chicken place and got a Peach Milkshake which I love with all my heart! It's the best milkshake around...at 620 calories. I will need to take a long walk today to get those calories taken off my calorie budget for today. That's one good thing about taking a walk. Calorie burning is necessary for either losing weight or weight maintenance. I was raised on a southern diet of vegetables, meat, and bread with pure lard added into all of it. Sure, there is weight issues in my family but the shit food didn't help anything or anyone. If it did anything, it added to heart issues, blood issues, fat issues, and probably mental issues. At nearly 48 years old, I had to do something to start reversing all the bad that food did to my health.

Last year, I had a test run to see if there was any calcification in my heart walls. Thankfully, the result was a zero. That's great since that leads to heart disease and heart attacks. The grand father-in-law just had his third heart attack and it looks and sounds scary as hell. That's something I wouldn't wish on anyone. It hurts everyone around to see someone in pain and in the hospital, but the person suffering is the one getting the brunt of it and needs some life changes. Maybe the beer, cigarettes, and whatever else could be lessened. We'll be standing by to see.

After 60 years, it's still going

 

Like sands through the hourglass...

It debuted in 1965 and Days of Our Lives is still going strong. Well, as strong as it can living on a streaming app owned by NBC/Comcast, Peacock. In the past couple of years, the decision was made to move the show from public broadcast television to the Peacock app. I'm sure there was a financial reason for doing it, but it was a decision that many people hated. It's not hard to see why they hated the idea.

Before it was removed from television, it was one of the remaining four soaps still being broadcast. ABC Network has General Hospital. NBC had Days of Our Lives. CBS had two soaps...The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. Granted, out of all the remaining soaps, DAYS was the least awarded (sadly) and the ratings weren't the best. I think that is because of generations. Not the show Generations, which was a soap that was on NBC in the 2000s. It was controversial, but that's for another time. General Hospital has a very loyal and long time following. 

Like viewers of DAYS, GH has had viewers since its debut in 1963. It is a daytime ratings booster for ABC and I feel like it is in a perfect time slot that fits the schedules of younger people getting sucked into soaps. On CBS, Y&R airs earlier in the day which is more of a housewife time frame, unless someone takes a break long enough to watch. I'm speaking in terms of the Central Time Zone where Y&R airs from 11am till noon. The state news is at noon for 30 minutes and then B&B airs for 30 minutes. This used to be perfect timing when soaps were a common thing on daytime television. After B&B, As The World Turns aired from 1pm to 2pm and then The Guiding Light was from 2pm to 3pm. For moms that didn't want their kids to watch soaps, that was perfect timing for the kids to get home and the television to be smut free. That's not the case for the Eastern Time Zone where the shows air an hour later. The Guiding Light was coming on here just as the kiddies were getting home. Those were the days.

I'm currently watching the DAYS episode from May 19th of this year. I'm a month behind! Thing is with soaps...you can be a month or more behind and almost pick up where you left off if you don't have the ability to view past episodes. I have the Peacock app for that reason and to see all the other shows and movies on it. I mean...who doesn't like Murder She Wrote?! 

Anyway, for a show that's been on for 60 years, one would wonder how someone could keep up with stories and timelines. Maybe that's my superpower. I used to watch DAYS with my mom as a child and things stuck. I remember weddings, killings, evil doings, and births. I can weirdly sit down and draw out a family tree of all the families on the show. The Horton, Dimera, Brady, Johnson, and the Kiriakis families are pretty much all tied together through marriages, affairs, and other life events. We see that in real life. People say it's just smut, but hey, soaps only get their cues from real life. The only thing that isn't real life is the snatching of babies from the hospital, switching blood test results to make baby daddies think they aren't, or someone dying nine different times and coming back until the actor dies in real life. That really happened. On both DAYS and GH! Not the frequency, but the coming back from the dead bit. On GH, it may not have been death, but they wouldn't go away and stay away. The Cassadine family was as ruthless as the Dimera family is on DAYS. There always has to be a villain or there wouldn't be a story. It's always conflict - resolution.

I'm pretty sure no one is going to read this, or if they do, they won't get this far. I could go on and on about DAYS because I love its history. It's not a girly thing to love a soap. It's a program and I've watched it for a long time. These characters are somewhat family to me now. The good ones and the bad ones equally have a place in my brain. There are characters that I hate with a fiery passion and there are those that I love with as much passion. The ones on it presently aren't the worst. There have been some crazy ones through the years...Satan being one of them. That storyline went on for way too long. Thankfully, that writer is gone and has been replaced by writers that understand the history of the show and want to incorporate it into current lines. I appreciate that and hope they continue. I've seen enough dying and coming back to last me the rest of my life. New characters are needed to keep the show going and the interest in it to continue. There are people from the past that could be brought back and there are children of the families that could also be brought back or even shown for the first time. That's a financial issue and one that DAYS has been worried about for years. Hopefully Sony will continue to be a part of the production along with the Corday family that started the show.

What a wonderful sunset over Lake Lanier

 

Photo on an iPhone 14

This has to be the best sunset picture I have ever taken. Maybe it's the best one I've ever seen. I wanted to get a picture for a friend that couldn't get the sun to show up right on his phone. I took this one and it blew all of our minds. It's like a marble floating in the sky. It really was a lovely sunset on my friend's porch by the lake.

I get mentally lost in this place!

 

B&N Bookstore

Every time I enter this place, my brain goes in a thousand different directions. Magazines, books, toys, music. What's on sale?! Has Christopher Rice written a new book. Has Barnes & Nobel thought to stock Christopher Rice books along with his mother? The answer always seems to be no. Alas, if you can’t find the book in this place, you can always go to the many local private bookstores and there's a good chance you will find it.

Find Happiness

Life on the couch

Some people would say that we have a boring life. I don’t think we do. We like to be comfortable. We’re not at the club every night. We go when we want to see people but we don’t feel the need to go there all the time and spend mass amounts on booze. It’s just not our thing. Sometimes, we just want to lay on the couch and rest. 

At Work...Maybe Mentally

 

Taking a work break

Do you ever get to that point where you need to lie back and simply breathe for no other reason than to remind yourself that you're still a living person? Sometimes, that very important to do. Just take a break and lie back, count to 100 or more, and try to center yourself. It could be work related, but it doesn't have to be. It could be body aches taking your concentration away. It could be the fact that you were lying around till 2am, hoping that you would eventually get tired. For me, I had fallen asleep sometime around 3am and slept from 7pm-11pm on the couch. I woke up to the other half crunching on Doritos.

"What time is it?"

"It's around 11 o'clock! You've been asleep. Shocker!"

I fell asleep because it was raining so hard and that's all I could hear. You know that sound of constant rain falling on the roof. It's not a tin roof thankfully. I was raised with that. We have an asphalt shingle roof which muffles the rain to more of a hum. It can make me fall asleep sitting upright.

The other half woke me up around 6:30 this morning because his parents were supposed to have picked him up to go somewhere but decided to do that later. I moved to the bed for an hour or two of cuddle time. It was nice but we all have to get up sometime and do something with our day. I'm here.