Chicken and Shrimp Yakisoba

Yakisoba Recipe

What you need:

Fortune Brand Yakisoba noodles.  It comes with Yakisoba season packets already in it.
1 small package of Chicken Tenderloins (approx 1 lbs, trimmed, you can also use any other meat or tofu if you want)
Otafuku Yakisoba Sauce (you use the sauce to your liking along with the spice packets)
Sesame Oil
Fresh Ginger Root (4 thick slices cut in halves, so 8 pieces season the dish nicely)
Salad Shrimp, or precooked shrimp
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce
Fresh or minced garlic (I am lazy and get the big Spice World jars of minced garlic and use a teaspoon)
1 can of Sliced Water Chestnuts
Olive Oil and Sesame Oil (you can use any veg oil)

Fresh Veggies, chopped.
Cabbage
Carrots
Yellow Onion
Carrots
Broccoli


Get out a bowl with warm water and take the noodles out of their packages and add them to the warm water.  Break them up gently with your clean hands. Let them soak for a few minutes, then drain the noodles.  Set aside noodles until ready for cooking, which will not be until the end of cooking up the dish.

Rinse and drain shrimp and set aside in a bowl.  The shrimp will not go in the pan until the end of cooking.  Salad shrimp are precooked so you just need to rinse and drain. I usually use about 1/2 cup of salad shrimp.

Cut up your cleaned veggies and place them in a bowl. Keep your cabbage in separate bowl though. Add in Ginger with this bowl of veggies.  The ginger flavor will cook into the dish nicely.  If you do not have any fresh ginger, you can substitue Ginger Powder. If you want your cabbage crispy, you do not add the cabbage in until the end of cooking the dish. As for the other veggies, I clean them up, cut them and place them in the same bowl and throw them in the pan to cook together after the chicken has been cooked.  I like crispy cabbage so that is the last thing that gets added to the dish. Add oil as you will need it in the pan. 

Trim up Chicken Tenderloins, place in a bowl and season chicken with a sprinkle of Sea Salt, black pepper and add teaspoon of Teriyaki Sauce, and a squeeze of Yakisoba Sauce and mix it up.  Set aside. 

Get your wok and coat pan with Olive Oil and Sesame Oil and chopped garlic.  I try to go light on the Sesame Oil as to add a light sesame flavor to the noodles.  Heat pan on Medium and saute' your chicken.  As it is cooking add a little bit more of the Yakisoba or Teriyaki sauce.  Once the chicken looks pretty cooked, throw in your veggies on low heat.  This will keep your veggies crispy. Cook veggies and chicken for about 2 minutes together. I like my veggies crispy so just a few minutes is all the veggies need.  Once that is done, I throw in the drained noodles and I add 1 packet of Yakisoba seasonings from the noodles packs to the noodles.  I stir fry the chicken, veggies and noodles with the seasoning and then I add in some of the Yakisoba Sauce to the dish.  I keep the heat on low while mixing up noodles, veggies and sauce. My family loves the bottle sauce so we go a little heavy on that.  Once that is done, I add in the cabbage, water chestnuts and the salad shrimp at the end of stir frying and mix it up until everything is coated in Yakisoba sauce.  I cook on low heat until everything looks cooked and is seasoned to my family's liking.

Finished result.

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Cold Process Soaping Fun!

It has been a long time since I last posted an entry on this fun little bloggy blog that I have. I keep telling myself that it is time to get back to doing some fun crafty things and blog about it, but time seems to elude me! I have been really busy this past year with my kids, their school and just general life craziness. I also had some health issues last year and because of it, I almost closed my bath and body store down. After talking to my amazing customers about a possible closure, they all talked me into keeping my store open, and to be honest, I am glad that they did. Having my store and making bath and body products is really the best thing for me to focus on when not focusing on my kids. It is fun hobby that I find truly rewarding. After a rough year, I decided to really focus on growing my bath and body business this year and to get back to doing what I love, which is making products for my customers. This year I decided to attempt my hand at Cold Process Soap. It was by a happy accident that these amazing Peppermint Calendula Baby Baff Bars came to be. I was making up a batch of Whipped Diaper Butter to stock in my store and the batch didn't quite turn out so great. It just wasn't fluffy enough and considering that I have never botched up a batch of Whipped Diaper Butter in the past, I was pretty upset that all of those wonderful oils would go to waste. Plus, that was a lot of money that I lost when you really think about it. It takes me about 4 hours to batch up about 70 oz of whipped diaper butter and I felt like I lost all that time that I could not get back. I decided to make a good thing come out of the bad situation. I saved the botched batch of oils in an airtight container, I realized that I only needed a few more items like Safety goggles and gloves to do the Cold Process Soaping stag. Yay, the oils will not be going to waste afterall and I converted the recipe to a Cold Process Soap Recipe and out came these wonderful Peppermint Calendula Baby Baff Bars. I had ordered Lye a long time ago but I have been so busy with other parts of my business that I set the Lye aside until something told me to make some soap from scratch. Well, losing that much in precious oils was my inspiration to get out all of my supplies and try my hand at cold process soap. I plugged in the numbers (ounces) of my oils into the Lye Calculator on Bramble Berry's website, got out all of my soap making supplies, followed a Cold Process Video Tutorial and had a blast making soap the old fashioned way. The video I followed is this one. It is a wonderful and easy to follow video. Here is how my first batch turned out (see below). Since then I have made a few Castile Blocks to use in my soap bits batches and will be making lots more Cold Process Soap Bars over he next few weeks. I need to get some more loaf molds and soap cutters. All that I have is a crinkle cutter and I would love to have straight lines in my future soap bars. I am so happy with the bars, and I must say that these Peppermint Baby Baff Bars totally rock. Since making them, I have used the bars habitually to clean and my gosh do they lather nicely and make my skin feel so soft. I absolutely love making Cold Process soap! I can't wait to make my next batch of Baby Baff Bars. It is so much fun making soap from scratch. Plus, I have got to say how awesome these bars are on my skin! I think I mentioned that already though.
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Buffalo Wing Seasoned Crock Pot Chicken

Today we made Buffalo Seasoned Crock Pot Chicken. It was very tasty.
What you will need:
A Crock Pot
1 cup of water or enough to make about an inch of water in the bottom of the crock pot
2 packets of McCormick Original Buffalo Wing Seasoning Mix Salt and Pepper to taste and to your liking. 1-2 teaspoons of chopped garlic

Place about 1 inches worth of water in your Crock pot. Mix in Garlic, water and 1 packet of Buffalo Wing Seasonings. Place cleaned up whole chicken in crock pot. Coat whole chicken with 1 packet of Buffalo Wing Seasonings, some salt and some pepper and place lid on crock pot. Cook on high for about 5-6 hours. Make sure throughout the day that there is a little bit of water in crock pot. It helps to keep the chicken moist. We had it in the crock pot for about 6 hours and did not have a dried out chicken. It was very moist.

My family was in love with this and they said the chicken had great flavors. I am thinking that the next time I do this, I will coat the chicken the day before with the seasonings and some salt and pepper. Either way, it was a big hit with the family. We served it with fruit, mashed potatoes and gravy. Oh and my husband added a side of Bleu Cheese dressing to dip his chicken in. He wanted to get the wing/bleu cheese flavor and experience. We have decided to start cooking our whole chickens in the crock pot, from here on out. The chicken stays moist. Here is the finished chicken.
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Bento Lunch

I found some old pictures lately of some Bento Lunches that I made for my daughter. This has always been one of her favorite lunches. In her lunch is some Mini Bagels with plain Cream Cheese cut in halves, hard boiled egg sliced and placed next to the bagels and for her treat was some fresh strawberries and bananas and apples with lemon juice, and some Cocoa Krispies for her dessert. Ashley loves her Bento Boxes. We need to get back to getting her to take luinches again.
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Paper Covered Clothes Pins

What is a good way to spend your recovery time in bed from the Stomach Flu? Well, evidently I figured that crafting in my bed was a good idea. It really isn't because it is not comfortable, but I was determined to get my clothes pins covered. Before I got sick, last week I found a tutorial on dyeing up natural wood clothes pins. I dyed them up last week and had them drying over the weekend. They were all dry by last night so I decided to bring them up to my bed, and get my crafting on! I grabbed my supplies (exacto knife, fabric cutting board, Mod Podge, Sponge Brushes, decorative paper and paper plates) got some old towels out, an apron on and started to cut and cover the dyed clothes pins with some of my fun printed paper that I have. I do not recommend crafting in your bed however unless you have the right accessories to do so and good hips that won't hurt sitting in the same position for two hours, heh. I took the appropriate measures to prevent glue from getting on the bed with old towels and a plastic cover. Just trace the pins with your exacto knife cutting out the shape of clothes pins and you will have your paper to cover your pins. Lay a coating of Mod Podge on the top of the clothes pin and lay the paper down. Let dry, then do same for other side. Once both sides were dry, I coated the top of the paper on each side to give it the Lustre effect. Below is what they look like finished.
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New Giveaway for Soap Bits

My last giveaway on Hyena Cart was a little messed up. It was my first time running one on The Creative Mamas Congo and I managed to ball it up! I decided to do another giveaway just on my basic Hyena Cart store. Up for grabs is a Mini Bag of Soap Bits in Bubble Gum Soda Fizz Scent. It is awesome! Winner pays shipping but the bag is free. Open to US and Canada folks.

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24 Hour Store Giveaway! Enter to Win my Soap Bits!

I am having a 24 hour Giveaway on The Creative Mamas Congo. Giveaway starts on March 16th, 2012 at 12 pm, and ends on March 17th, 12pm. Bag is completely free. I will cover shipping costs to the winner as long as they live in Canada or the US. :) Enter and good luck!




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