Chang Chang Chang, Chang of Fools

Okay... Quick - your favorite thing at PF Changs? If you didn't say Lettuce Wraps, you lied. Thursday I decided to try my amazing cooking skills to try my hand at making my own lettuce wraps.

It was delicious. But goodness, if I had 2 hours to prepare a dinner, we'd be eating gourmet much more often.

Since I was making a "new" dish, I had to make a back-up dish. My back-up dish was grilled squash and zucchini with potstickers and steamed rice. Unfortunately, since our lettuce wraps turned out pretty good, we had WAY too much food.

The only thing really missing from my lettuce wrap was the delcious spicy sauce that they give you at the table at PF Chang's. My soy sauce just wasn't enough. Good, but not good enough.

He isn't drugged. I promise. He had had a very long day and was humoring me by taking a photo of him eating dinner. He's a great model when he wants to be.

Recipe:

PF Chang Style Lettuce Wraps

16 Boston Bibb or butter lettuce leaves (I used regular lettuce)
1 pound lean ground beef (I substituted chicken)
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves fresh garlic, minched
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons minced pickled ginger (I used "fresh" canned ginger)
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar (very strong-do not use too much)
Asian chile pepper sauce (I used Sriracha, about a teaspoon or so)
1 (8 oz) can water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
2 teaspoons Asian (dark) sesame oil

Directions
1. Rinse whole lettuce leaves and pat dry, being careful not to tear them (yeah right). Set aside.
2. In a medium skillet over high heat, brown the ground beef (or chicken) in 1 teaspoon of oil, stirring often and reduce heat to medium. Set aside.
3. Cook the onion in the same pain as the meat, stirring frequently. Add garlic, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, ginger, vinegar, and chile pepper sauce to the onions. Stir in chopped water chestnuts, green onions, and sesame oil and continue cooking until the onions just begin to wilt, about 2 minutes.
4. Add meat to mixture and turn heat to low. Stir and mix all together for about a minute.
5. Fill lettuce about 1/3rd full and spoon mixture in. Wrap up like a taco and Enjoy! Add soy sauce if desired.

(keyingredient app on my iPad)

Home Improvement

So Saturday morning, Josh wakes me up at 7:30 am and has decided that we need to re-do our front yard landscaping. Woo hoo. After a little convincing, I agreed...at least to price it out. What people don't understand is that when Josh and I go "price it out", we usually just buy. We are impatient that way.

Anyway, our house has front stairs up to the front door that the underside of the cement is exposed from the ground settling away from it. It looks tacky. Really tacky. But... not as tacky as the half dead spirea plant under our main windows. I can never tell which is actually spirea and which is just plain weeds.

BEFORE:

Our plan was to build a type of retaining wall around the stairs and the area under the main window, obviously removing the spirea. Day one was stinking exhausting and I thought seriously about calling someone professional to come finish it. I didn't do much, I wish I could say that I worked harder than Josh, but there just wasn't enough actual "to-do" for two sets of hands. Pretty much I critiqued the "level" of the stones, chose the pattern of where they would go, and transported stones from our stack on the driveway over to wherever Josh was working. Day two was better, I think. We had a significant amoung completed before the sun went down on Saturday and only needed to finish the last turn on Sunday. We had to make a last minute trip to Home Depot because we were about 20 stones short of completion. Anyway, phase one is complete of our front yard home improvement!

AFTER:

Annoying

I am so sorry I was delayed on showing pictures of our awesome trip to Belize. However, it should be noted that the BRIDE has yet to post any pictures on her blog either. I win. On another really annoying note, I hate how each time I try to post a blog, it inserts these enormous spaces between my paragraphs. I just spent 30 minutes posting, editing and fixing the spaces, posting, editing and fixing the spaces, yelling, cussing, nearly crying, posting and saying "screw it, no one really cares if my lame posts have spaces, right?". Right. Anyone know why Blogger hates me?