Friday Recipe: Honey Sriracha Chicken

Do you get a craving for something with a kick to it every once in a while?

I certainly do, and I am also 100% on board the Sriracha flavour train!

This super easy stir-fry chicken comes from Prevention RD, written by Nicole Morrisey. The mouth-watering photos come from her blog as well!

This is a recipe that takes almost no prep time, and is dead-easy to make (and almost impossible to screw up!). I love these sorts of recipes for when I get home after a long day at both work and school, because I can quickly turn out something that is healthy and delicious. One other great thing I love about stir-fry recipes is how versatile they are – you can mix up the sauce, but sub in whatever meat or vegetables you want and if you’re feeling confident in your skills, you can leave the road map behind and experiment!

This particular recipe is easy and basic, and calls for cubed chicken to be stir-fried with the honey-sriracha sauce. I try to get a lot of vegetables into my meals, so last time I made this I also through in a LOT of broccoli, which takes the sauce really well! I imagine that bean sprouts would also mix well with this particular recipe, and certainly any other type of meat you have on hand could be cooked up instead of chicken.

Honey Sriracha Chicken

• 1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
• Lots of delicious vegetables (broccoli, snap peas, whatever!)
• ⅓ cup honey
• 2 Tbsp sriracha
• ½ tsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
• ½ tsp onion powder
• ¼ cup water + ½ Tbsp cornstarch
• 4-5 scallions, chopped (for garnish)

Heat oil (or use cooking spray) in a large frying pan or wok (wish I had one!), and add the chicken, stirring occasionally until it is cooked through – about 5-6 minutes. Toss in your veggies, and get them cooking, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, mix up in a small saucepan your honey (pro-tip – if measuring out your honey, spray the measuring cup with cooking spray first, and the honey will slide right out, no sticking!), sriracha, garlic powder, soy sauce, and onion powder; bring to a low boil over medium-low heat. In a small bowl, whisk to combine the water and cornstarch; add to the sauce pan and whisk well. Cook until sauce thickens, about 2-3 minutes. Add sauce to chicken and toss to coat.

Serve over top of rice ( I love brown basmati rice), with your scallions to garnish!

Note: If you are lazy (like I am), instead of mixing the sriracha sauce in a saucepan, mix all the ingredients except for the cornstarch in a bowl (and use less water than is called for), and then just toss straight into the frying pan. The consistency will be different, but still delicious!

This meal also freezes really well – I froze at least two portions in tupperware for lunches later on, and it certainly stays delicious. Let me know if you enjoy the recipe!

Friday Recipe: Baguette and Brie Appetizers

Appetizers!

Or, in reality – dinner. Because you know  you are eating that much of this ‘appetizer’.

Om nom nom – super simple baguette, brie cheese, and Farmboy mango peach red pepper jelly!

I love these super simple snacks that are easy to prepare and share. These make an excellent item to have at parties, or to share with a couple of friends while having a wine and cheese night.

This stuff is delicious. Also try the raspberry red pepper jelly!

Bread, cheese, and red pepper jelly are all delicious, and I absolutely love Farmboy variations on red pepper jelly, because they do an excellent job.

Baguette and Brie Appetizer

1 baguette, sliced thinly – or thickly, however you prefer.
Brie -sliced thinly – or thickly – to top each baguette slice.
Red pepper jelly, spooned on top

Bake at 425 fahrenheit for about 5 minutes, or until the brie is melted and delicious!

Enjoy!

Yum! Enjoy with a glass of wine, or your other favourite drink.

Friday Recipe: Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Alrighty, bringing this out of my mother’s recipe book for you!

This is my favourite banana(nanananana) muffin recipe – yes, I am definitely experiencing bias because this is the recipe that I grew up with, but I have had to substitute with other recipes in the past, and never had quite so delicious muffins as when I follow this one.

To me, this recipe is school lunches, midnight snacks, and warming breakfasts – it’s delicious, can be modified to be (less un-) healthy, and is much more delicious than any store bought muffins.  Yes, yet again I am biased – to this day, I do not buy muffins from cafeterias, cafés, or even Timmies (Tim Hortons, if you’re not Canadian), because they are absolutely not nearly as delicious – and certainly even worse for your health – than muffins I can make for myself.

Additionally, this is also the favourite recipe of my young cousin – I will drive for four hours to go visit family, and within ten minutes of arriving, I can almost guarantee hearing the question “Can we make chocolate chip muffins, Emily?”. Even the little people love it!

My cousin is a pro at operating the ‘pulse’ button on the food processor. She is also better at cracking eggs than I am!

Bonus: This entire recipe can be made with a food processor if you own one, which drastically cuts down on prep time! I love my food processor, and bought mine when Zellars went out of business, and I could pick it up for super cheap… Check out your local Target if you want one – they are currently going out of business in Canada, and may have started finally offering better deals for liquidation stock!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

1/4 cup butter
1 cup sugar

3 large bananas
2 large eggs

1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda

Chocolate Chips

Pre-heat your oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Cream butter and sugar. Add bananas and eggs (If you keep bananas around, but find them going bad, toss them in the freezer! When you defrost bananas from the freezer, they actually mix better into recipes than fresh bananas!) If using the food processor, pulse several times – I have found that a couple extra pulses help the muffins to rise better in the oven ( I have no idea why, but it seems to work).

Add dry ingredients – mix/pulse, then scrape down the sides of your bowl/food processor, and pulse again.

Add your chocolate chips, mixing, not processing – as many chips as you feel necessary – and pour batter into a greased muffin pan. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Delicious muffins…

As stated, this is my all-time favourite muffin recipe – let me know what you think, and let me know what interesting variations you can come up with!

Supplementary note: feel like somewhat healthier muffins? Replace all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour, these muffins do well with either!

Friday Recipe: Island Pork

Alright, this one was delicious.

A+, cooking again, telling all my friends about it, delicious.

Sidenote : I love pinterest.

This delicious recipe was called ‘Island Pork”, and came from Little B Cooks, who adapted it from the Gourmet Cookbook. I found it using Pinterest (such an awesome resource).

It was also cheap and easy to make, a definite choice for anyone looking to cook who has little time for prep and little budget.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I try to stick to a weekly meal plan in order to make the best use of weekly flyers and the food in my fridge. Lucky for me, not only was pork tenderloin on sale, but I was also getting points on my grocery card for purchasing it! I got 1400 points, and two pork tenderloins, bringing me a little bit closer to free groceries. I also had lots of leftovers to use for the rest of the week.

It was nice to find this recipe – a lot of recipes for pork call for either a balsamic glaze or a recipe with apples. Finding something that was different was a really nice change from the usual. The spice rub mix uses chili, cumin, and cinnamon, along with some pepper, and creates a wonderful mix of flavours that is rather unique. As for the sauce, I don’t actually have any Tabasco sauce in my fridge, but found that substituting with some sambal oelek – thai chili garlic sauce – seemed to work just fine.

I admit I like to cut corners as well – the original recipe calls for browning the pork tenderloin before putting it in the oven; instead I chose to let the tenderloin marinate for about 30 minutes, and then just popped it straight into the oven and added the sauce about 20 minutes in.

I roasted some broccoli with some of the leftover spice rub, and that was the perfect side dish!

Island Pork

For spice rub:
2 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cinnamon
2 pork tenderloins (2 ¼ – 2 ½ lbs total) trimmed
2 tbsp olive oil

For Glaze:
¾ cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tbsp finely chopped garlic
1 tbsp Tabasco sauce – or substitute with Sambal Oelek (although any hot sauce will likely do!)

Mix together the spice rub, and let the pork tenderloin marinate for about 30 minutes.
Pre-heat the oven to 400 F, and cook the tenderloin 20 minutes, then pull it out and pour on the glaze (which if you were clever ,you prepared during the previous 20 minutes!). Let the pork cook for about 10 more minutes, or when the internal temperate reaches 140 F.

Want some delicious veggies to go along with that? Make a little bit extra spice mixture and add a bit more olive oil than the recipe calls for. Toss your veggies with the mix, and pop them into the oven right after you add the sauce onto the pork tenderloin! They should finish roasting up as soon as the pork it done.

Enjoy!

Let’s talk food.

As a student, I find that I am often short on :

1. Time
2. Money
3. Motivation to eat healthy

How do I deal with this? Well, I haven’t always dealt very well these particular struggles. A little while ago I took a two-year break from school, and worked full time. I found that even when I had more money and time, I still didn’t always eat healthy, would eat junk and pasta for days straight, and always ended up throwing out the vegetables and fruit I had intended to use because they had gone bad.

Although I have always known that a home-cooked meal costs less than pre-prepared items, love both shopping and cooking, and know how to make cheap meals, I’ve never been very efficient with my meal planning. This has led to throwing out food when it goes mouldy, opening up a drawer and finding vegetable soup (not the good kind), and it wastes the money I’ve already spent.

This year, things have changed. I’m breaking down my three major issues, and the strategies I’m using to make the most of what I have.

1. Time.

I wake up between 6:20-7:00 every weekday; no, I do not want to prepare my lunch in the morning. I get home at night anywhere between 6:00-9:00 at night. No, I do not always want to cook a meal. Yes, I want to just sit down and watch TV, and eat whatever is at hand.

Two words: Meal plan.

Three words: Sounds like work.

Tell you what – it’s totally worth the work. I sit down on Tuesdays and plan my meals for the week, down to the snacks and the shopping list. I shop on my way home, and follow that plan – it means making one or two large meals with leftovers for lunches and other dinners, and getting to pull a healthy pre-made lunch out of the freezer later on in the week. I know what days I absolutely will not want to cook, and plan around those days by buying for meals that take 10 minutes and few ingredients, or making sure I have leftovers to combine with fresh veggies (because I do not always love left-over vegetables).

2. Money

Student savings days, loyalty programs, ‘reduced for quick sale’. These are things to look for! As I mentioned above, I now strictly use a meal plan – and the shopping list for that meal plan makes use of all these great ways to save. If you’re a student in Ottawa, you can get a 10% discount on your shopping at most Independent Grocer/Loblaws (PC) locations. Bulk Barn – Canada wide – gives both students and seniors a 10% discount on Wednesdays; just remember to NOT walk down the candy aisles!
Because I shop almost entirely at an Independent, I enrolled in the PC Points loyalty program; every week I receive an email that tells me which items I can earn points on, and they are (mostly) based on things I regularly buy – I almost always get points on broccoli, so these days I eat a lot of it. Every 20,000 points, you can redeem for $20 off your groceries. Use these points religiously, and you can rack up points pretty fast! I redeemed my points late in December, and a month later already have 15,000 points again (biggest points in one shop : 6000!).

3. Motivation to eat healthy.

I’m sure those days happen to everyone – when you come home, and you reach for the box of crackers, or the chips, or whatever is closest at hand, and suddenly realize you have eaten everything in the kitchen. Or, you walk through the grocery store, stomach rumbling, and end up buying only things that are delicious, but not nutritious.
Again, this is where my meal plan helps to a large degree – I already have pre-prepared and delicious food that I am excited to eat when I arrive home, and I don’t have to agonize about the time it will take to prepare something that I’m not looking forward to.
In fact, choosing meals that get you excited is one of the best ways to avoid the junk food trap; by making new, exciting meals, with lots of spices, flavour, and different elements, I actually want to eat these healthier meals over popping open a bag of chips and eating the whole thing as ‘dinner’.

Do you have any strategies you use to tackle these three elements for eating right? Do you have any other major hurdles that get in your way when you want to eat well? I’d love to hear what other strategies you use and enjoy!