Egg Roll Bowls with Spicy Sesame Mayo

This has been a favorite of ours for a while now, and I’m so happy to be sharing it! The original recipe is from Paleo Running Mama and is (surprise!) paleo, as well as Keto and Whole 30. Those are not things that we do here, so I’ve made some small changes to this recipe that make it work for us and uses what we have in the house. If you need those restrictions, head over to her blog! There are so many yummy and healthy things to drool over.

Because of Covid we are all making adjustments to our lifestyles in countless ways. Food and cooking is such a big part of my life that adjusting the way in which I meal plan and feed the family has been a challenge. It’s forced me to get creative, to find substitutes for things in recipes or go in to dinner with no recipe at all, just an idea and random ingredients! I’ve shared the recipe below as I usually make it, but I did have to make a few changes based on what I could get my hands on. Thankfully this is a forgiving recipe!

I love how versatile this dish is. Use whatever combination of vegetables you have or you like. Most if not all of them you can buy pre-cut, so this comes together really quickly. I usually use chicken breasts for this, but couldn’t get any, so I used half of a rotisserie chicken and I gotta be honest, I did not mind that shortcut! You could easily use ground pork, beef, chicken or turkey. Or skip the meat altogether. I like to use red cabbage, but I’d bought a huge bag of cole slaw mix at Sam’s and put that to good use here. To stretch this dish you can serve it on top of rice. However you decide to make it, DO NOT SKIP THE MAYO! It absolutely makes the dish.

Ginger tip! Often when I’m cooking something with fresh ginger I end up having part of it left over. If you freeze the piece on its own it gets a weird texture when it thaws that makes it hard to grate. So I tried freezing it already grated and THAT has been such a fantastic way to have ginger on hand. Just buy a big hunk of it, peel it, grate it (on a microplane if you have one) and freeze in tablespoon portions in small snack bags. You’re welcome.

Chicken Egg Roll Bowls with Spicy Sesame Mayo

From Paleo Running Momma

Ingredients

  • cooking oil (olive, avocado, vegetable)
  • salt and pepper to season chicken
  • 1-2 pounds chicken breasts or thighs, cut into thin strips (can also use shredded rotisserie chicken, or ground beef, pork, etc.)
  • 1 bag shredded carrots
  • 1 bag shredded brussels sprouts
  • 1 small bag red cabbage
  • 1 small bag coleslaw mix
  • 4 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons sesame oil
  • 2 teaspoons sriracha sauce
  • 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated
  • sliced green onions to garnish (optional)
  • Cooked white or brown rice

Spicy Sesame Mayo

  • 1/2 cup mayo
  • 3 teaspoons lime juice
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
  • 2 teaspoons sesame oil
  • 2-3 teaspoons sriracha

Directions

  1. Make the Mayo: Whisk all ingredients together until smooth. Refrigerate. Can be made hours or days ahead of time and stored in a sealed container.
  2. Make the Chicken and Veggie Mix: Heat a generous drizzle of oil over medium high heat in a large skillet.
  3. Season chicken with salt and pepper and add to the pan. Cook fully, stirring so that it cooks evenly, 5-8 minutes depending on the thickness of the chicken pieces. Remove chicken from pan and set aside. *Skip this if you’re using pre-cooked chicken.
  4. Add a little more oil to the pan. Once it’s hot, add all of the vegetables to the pan. Cook, stirring frequently, until vegetable begin to soften.
  5. Add in the garlic and ginger and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring to combine everything.
  6. Stir in the soy sauce, sesame oil and sriracha.
  7. Add the chicken back to the vegetables and stir everything together.
  8. Taste and season with salt, pepper, soy sauce and sriracha if needed.
  9. Serve with a drizzle or dollop of the spicy mayo as is or over rice. Enjoy!

Carson Bakes: Basic Brownies

Hey, friends! It’s been a minute. Or a couple of years. No matter. What’s important here is that I’m actually posting! Only took a pandemic and a quarantine to make it happen. Not what I would’ve planned, but I don’t get to make these decisions.

I’ve had a blog post in my drafts for months but didn’t really even like the recipe I was planning to share and what I’d written felt more like a diary entry than a food blog post. So I didn’t post it and it got all sad and dusty.

Over the weekend when I jokingly mentioned this being the time to get back to the blog, Ben encouraged me to just start posting. So here we go. Bear with me! It will most certainly be a little rocky as I find my footing again. The pics I thought I’d loaded on to my computer are somehow not there, and of course I cleared my memory card after loading them. So it’s iphone photos for you this time!

When we found out that school would be out for weeks I asked the kids what they’d like to do, what they’d like to make, what they’d like to learn, etc. Carson said he’d like to learn how to make brownies from scratch instead of from a box, so we started looking at cookbooks.

We chose this recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook as our basic starting point. Carson wanted to add all kinds of things, but I convinced him that a basic brownie was the best place to begin.

Carson helped every step of the way with this, and I think he could’ve done most of it on his own except for chopping the chocolate. We got to talk about basic baking techniques; proper measuring, lining a pan with foil, greasing the foil, melting stuff in the microwave without burning it, slowly stirring in flour and checking for doneness. We also got to practice cracking eggs…there was one casualty. Thankfully I kept my cool. As many of you know, eggs are not the easiest thing to come by right now! I am really being picky about what we bake next since I only have a dozen at the moment. What I wouldn’t give to have a few chickens right now!

These baked up nicely. They were dense and sturdy, not at all gooey and not actually all that fudgy. They seemed more cakey to me. We did bake them on the longer side of the suggested time so that was probably why. Warm from the pan with a little ice cream is how we liked these best.

We’ll be exploring more brownie recipes and if I can let go of some of my control you’ll be seeing some of Carson’s creative brownie ideas soon!

Stay safe everyone! Hug your family if you can, pray for our world, and go bake something.

Ultimate Fudgy Brownies

From America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Ingredients

  • 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
  • 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
  • 1 stick of butter (8 tablespoons)
  • 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup flour

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350F.
  2. Line an 8 inch square pan with foil, leaving overhang on all sides, spray with nonstick cooking spray or grease with shortening.
  3. Combine chocolates, butter and cocoa in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high power in 30 second increments, stirring well in between, until thoroughly melted.
  4. Whisk together eggs, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl.
  5. Add in chocolate mixture and whisk to combine.
  6. Stir in flour and salt until just combined.
  7. Spread into prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out with loose crumbs attached.
  8. Cool in pan for an hour, remove using the foil, cut and serve.