Mongolian Beef Recipe

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs of tender beef cut into small strips

1 Green pepper cut into strips

Sweet onion chopped in big chunks

Chopped green onion or scallions

Minced garlic about 2-3 tsp

Ginger paste to taste 2-3 tsp

Sweet soy sauce to taste a few Tbsp.

Soy sauce to taste (a couple of tsp)

Flour ¼ cup

Asian spice or Chinese 5 spice 2 tsp

Sesame oil 1-2 Tbsp

Cooking oil (I used peanut oil) enough to coat the bottom of the pan

Put about ¼ cup of flour and a couple tsp of Asian spice or Chinese 5 spice in a gallon size plastic zippered bag. Add the pre-cut meat into the bag and shake to coat.

Coat the bottom of your pan with oil, add a couple of Tbsp of sesame oil for flavor. Sauté’ the sweet onions and peppers and a little bit of the green onions. Once slightly soft, set the veggies aside but keep as much oil in the pan as possible.

Using the remaining oil from the peppers and onions, (and adding more oil if necessary), sauté 2-3 tsp of minced garlic (or feel free to use a fresh clove or two depending on desired taste). Add the meat and fry until brown. Turn off heat. Add ginger paste, soy sauce, and sweet soy sauce until well coated (the sweet soy sauce is the key to this flavoring).  Add the peppers and onions back into the mix and top with more green onions. Suggestion: serve with rice. 

Hmong-style Eggroll Recipe

1 sweet onion

About a dozen chives

1.5 lbs of pork (ground yourself in processor or buy ground pork)

16 oz cole slaw mix

10.5 oz of bean threads or rice noodles

½ Tbsp white pepper

½ Tbsp black pepper

½ Tbsp salt

1 Tbsp Asian seasoning (or Chinese 5 spice)

3 Tbsp soy sauce

½ Tbsp of Hoisin sauce

1 Tbsp sesame oil

4 eggs

Serve with Sweet Chili Sauce (I recommend Mae Ploy brand with a little water for easier dipping).

Spring Home Spring Roll wrappers (in the freezer section of Asian markets)

1-2 eggs (or just the yolk if you prefer) for sealing the wraps

Oil for frying (I highly recommend peanut oil)

Sweet chili dipping sauce (I recommend the Mae Ploy brand cut with water for dipping)

I recommend chopping the first five ingredients in a food processor. Mix all the ingredients together until well combined. Spoon onto wrap, roll and seal, drop into medium high heated oil. Fry until browned. 

Chinese Dumplings Recipe

16 oz cabbage (coleslaw) mix

½ c. soy sauce

1 small onion

1 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 Tbsp chives

1 tsp sweet chili sauce

1 tsp white pepper

2 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp dumpling sauce

1 tsp hoisin sauce

2 Tbsp ginger paste

1 Tbsp sesame oil

1 Tbsp Shao Xiong cooking wine

1 egg

2 lbs ground pork

Approx. 100 dumpling wrappers (mine were 3 ½ inches across)
Dumpling Sauce for dipping

The beautiful thing about dumplings is that if you don’t like (or don’t have) something from this list you can simply omit it. Play around with the recipe to make it to your taste. If you want an excellent dumpling that tastes as good as what we tasted in China then follow the ingredients closely.

To make them: throw everything on this into a big bowl. I recommend using a food processor to chop up the cabbage (coleslaw mix) and the onion.

Also, if making 100 dumplings at a time, you might want to “cheat” and use a dumpling press. I got mine from Amazon.

To assemble: make sure your wraps have thawed out. Have a small bowl of water nearby so you can moisten the wraps. Put about a dinner teaspoon size wad in the middle of your wrap. There are lots of great websites and videos for instructions if you want to check those out.

We prefer ours to be pan-fried. Put them in a big skillet and fill with water about half way up the side of your dumplings. Add a couple Tbps of oil in the pan before the water gets hot. Put a lid and let the dumplings boil till they’re soft (6-8 mins) then take the lid off and boil out all the water until there’s just oil left to brown the bottoms of your dumplings. Enjoy!

Butterbeer Cupcake Recipe

My girls LOVE Harry Potter and I mean LOVE HP! (They love many YA book series). They can't wait for our trip to visit Harry Potter World. We realize that life is short so we love to celebrate. Recently we celebrated HP's birthday. The girls made a replica of his cake from the first movie. Yesterday I decided we needed Butterbeer cupcakes so I came up with this recipe for what we think Butterbeer would taste like :)

Here's the recipe:

Cupcakes

¾ c. water

½ c. milk

4 eggs

1/3 c. butter

Mix wet ingredients

¼ c. brown sugar

¼ c. white sugar

Mix sugars into wet ingredients

1 box butterscotch pudding

1 box golden butter cake recipe

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Pour into greased or lined cupcake pans. Bake at 350.

Frosting

1 c. vegetable shortening

1 c. powdered sugar (approx.)

2 tsp. vanilla

Add ¼ c milk and more powdered sugar till desired consistency or sweetness

Caramel topping

Combine ½ bag of caramel candies and 2 Tbsp butter in a sauce pot on low heat (or double boiler) until melted smooth. Pour ½ c. heavy cream in a mixing bowl, add caramel sauce, and whip on high till desired consistency.

Lucky

To my beautiful daughters, beloved college girls, and every other person longing for a  “significant other”…

Recently someone told me I was lucky to have found Chris, such an amazing, godly, loving husband and daddy. Well, let me tell you, yes I am indeed blessed to have him, but luck had nothing to do with it.

You see in order to have this amazing guy as my husband, I had to be ready when he came along. I was not occupying my time with the wrong person. I stopped believing the lie that in order to be considered valuable I needed to have a boyfriend.  My sense of security and identity didn’t rest in someone else. Instead, I figured out who I am without a significant other; I found my identity in Christ. And it was beautiful. I stopped looking for a boyfriend and instead started looking for loyal friends and companions. The way to find loyal and great friends is to be one. Our society has it all wrong: we don’t have to seek a boyfriend, we just have to be a great friend! A relationship shouldn’t start off as boyfriend and girlfriend. Trust me, I’m a relationship expert (see profession and degrees).  ;)  So my beloved, beautiful darlings, please stop looking for a boyfriend, stop believing the lies that you need to have a boyfriend in order to be considered valuable, find out who you are, find your identity in Christ, be satisfied in your relationship with Him, and see yourself as He does. He sees you as beautiful. And so do I. So will your great friend that might someday become your best friend and maybe even your husband.

Too Many Stars

I recently attended a science competition that my daughter had entered with her school team. While the program and competition are really neat, I couldn't believe the awards ceremony. Medals were awarded for fourth place, FOURTH PLACE. If that wasn't enough, ribbons were given to teams that earned 5th-11th place. Seriously?! 11th place?! I love my daughter and I love watching her compete; and while I am quite proud of her, I don't believe 11th place is worthy of celebrating with a ribbon...

We have been blessed with two beautiful, wonderful, super intelligent daughters.  They are totally brag-worthy. They earn spots in many competitions. I believe I am developing an allergy to bees; spelling bees, geography bees, bee bees...

Between them our girls have pretty much earned just about every academic honor possible for elementary school children. At the end of the school year their elementary school hosts an awards ceremony. IT...IS...PAINFUL! Our then, 5th grader, earned the highest academic achievement award for EVERY category. She also broke some records and earned some significant honors. Instead of just calling her up once and listing her honors, she had to keep walking across the stage to receive her awards. Receiving the special recognition is fine for the most significant awards, however, that day the girls walked away with enough paper awards to wallpaper an entire bedroom. In my opinion that is WAY TOO MANY AWARDS. That day students were given an award for completing 25 Accelerated Reading points. To put it into perspective our daughter earned over 600 AR points (100 points is expected of 5th graders). An award for completing 25 points is saying "Congratulations, you read significantly less than expected of you."

So what is wrong with giving an 11th place ribbon or an award for completing 25% of what was expected? Quite a bit. I've been noticing it more and more with my first-year college students. They turn in a paper that is not even close to the requirements laid out for them in a rubric and act shocked when they don't receive an "A" grade. They seriously don't understand why I have graded them so harshly, clearly I don't know what I'm doing; After all, they've never received such a low grade on a paper before (C's = F's in their minds).  It is at that point I remind them that they've never been to college before and then show them where I had grace with their papers.

We're raising a generation of people who are entitled and ok with doing the minimum work but expecting the highest honor. They are essentially mediocre students that believe they are far above mediocracy. How can we blame them when we've given them awards for 2nd to last place and for doing 25% of what's expected of them?

I'm not saying abolish all awards, excellence should be rewarded, but too many gold stars diminish the value of the star.   Giving students awards for mediocre work creates students who are ok with being mediocre instead of striving to be and do better and, at the end of the day, we all lose from that.