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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Simple Fried Rice


INGREDIENTS:
2 cups rice
2 carrots
1/2 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp sesame oil
salt to taste
a pinch of chili powder
a pinch of cumin
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 Tbsp soy sauce

Cook the rice in the rice cooker. Heat up the olive oil in the wok or a frying pan. Cut up the carrots, onion and garlic in the food processor. Fry them in hot oil stirring continuously. Add spices (cumin, chili powder and salt). Add cooked white rice and stir again. Then add vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce; and stir everything to evenly distribute all the spices and sauces.
Serve as a side dish with fish or meat.


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Let's do some music today. Why not. Maybe this would make a good listening music while cooking:


Friday, November 19, 2010

Braised Greens


Hello there,
I landed just a couple of hours ago, and I already prepared my first meal. I have 3 roommates this weekend, and we had a quiet Friday evening with some wine, cheese and my braised greens. This is the first time I made braised greens. Actually, the idea came from the tapas place in Portland where I went to eat just for their kale salad, which they did not have. Then I decided to order braised greens, it sounded good at the time. But they didn't have that either. 2 days later, at home in California, I saw some random greens in the fridge and realized I am still up for braised greens. So, I made some. It was not bad! I will definitely make more.


INGREDIENTS:
Summer greens
olive oil
Sesame oil
salt or seasoning salt
paprika


Wash and cut up the greens. Heat the oil and fry the greens. Salt to taste and add other spices. Fry for a couple of minutes. Serve as a side dish. Braised greens are also good with cheese and crackers.



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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Happy 1st Birthday Tasty Makes Happy!


It’s hard to believe it’s already been one whole year since I started Tasty Makes Happy. Time flies. During this exciting year, I added over 100 recipes. Some of those recipes were sent to me by my dear friends. Svetlana, Natasa and Sasha- thank you for your contributions!

When I created Tasty Makes Happy, I didn’t know much about blogging. Actually, I knew nothing at all. But with the lack of other sense of accomplishment, I thought I’d give it a try. I started reading about blogging, blog promotions, online advertizing & associate programs, buzz words, and a bunch of other stuff I never knew existed. Then I realized- blogging is a whole science by itself. One year later, after putting many, many hours into writing posts, doing research, fixing photos, and battling blogger, Tasty Makes Happy has come a long way- it is making me whole $0.60/ month. Now I have to figure out how to spend all that money!

During this exciting first year of blogging about food, I have checked the statistics of the visits many, many times per day. I might even say that I am a little obsessed with looking up the stats of my blog. But hey! It’s exciting to know that 50 people read it every day. I like to see what recipes are more popular, and what countries the visits come from. Sometimes, I even get comments and messages from the readers, and that is a special treat.


For all of you who follow my blog, you have probably noticed that new recipes are becoming more seldom. I have not lost the passion for cooking! It’s just that my job requires me to spend more and more time in Portland, and I do not have the time for cooking or blogging. Currently I spend the whole work week in Portland, and I get to go home only on weekends. While in Portland, I stay at the hotel, and needless to say, I do not cook at all. When I go home on weekends, I am pretty busy and during the day and a half I get to spend there, I do not do much cooking and even if I do, I don’t take photos or blog about it.

Sadly, I have no new recipes to post for Tasty make Happy’s 1st Birthday. Instead, I will share some of the exciting foods that I’ve been eating in Portland. Being on the expense report, I tried some cool places on town that normally never would if I had to pay for them myself.


Here is one pasta dish I had at an Italian restaurant- it was a special, a spicy special they said. I decided to try it anyways, even thought I don’t do spicy. Well, it was not spicy at all. Anyways, I chose to post this photo because it looked cool. Two weeks later, I visited the same restaurant and they presented the same special. Then I realized it was not so special anymore.


Next photo was taken at a small Hawaiian place where I like to eat because they have pulled pork. It is not as good as the BBQ place I often go to, but this picture made it in just because it is funny. It has 2 grammatical mistakes in one sentence: “All are meals are slowed cooked”.


Oh, this one was actually good food. It was a sea food place a bunch of us went to one evening. It was good food and fun times. I like going places with my coworkers; they are all exciting people to be with. I did not order this dish, my coworker Dallas did. It looked so exotic and cool; I couldn’t help but put this little crawfish on the photo shoot.


Hmmm, this one you can’t even tell what it is. But I assure you it was tasty! It was some kind of fish in orange sauce.


I bet you can all recognize the blooming onion. That thing disappeared in seconds. Then some stakes disappeared. Then a couple of 22oz beers disappeared as well. That evening, I was passed out at 10:30PM.


Let’s not forget my favorite food of all times- sushi! This one is some volcano roll, it was on fire!


This is not an ordinary pasta dish. I ordered this dish because it was made of wild boar, and I’ve never had a wild boar before. It was tasty but nothing too exotic. As you can see, I had no problem finishing the last bit of this dish.


And the last one is fish tacos. Nothing Special, but colorful.