Noms by Q

Today was a busy day, my mom and I had 3 hours of driving to attend a painting event, and I didn't have a large amount of time to cook like I usually do. Last week when I was planning the meal for today, I remembered seeing tasty looking wraps using a salad bag, so I decided to make those. Ingredients 12.6 oz (or close) salad kit 3 chicken breasts Seasoning I used for each chicken breast: (you can do whatever you would like, depending on your salad kit) Drizzle of olive oil 1/2 tsp garlic salt 1 tsp balsamic vinegar 1/2 tsp poultry seasoning Optional: Spicy mayo Start by seasoning your chicken and baking it in a 375 F degree oven. I've found that my chicken turns out to be a juicer if I bake it from frozen.  While the chicken baked, I got out the rest of my ingredients. I picked out this salad kit because it looked the best the day I went to the store. The beauty of this simple dish is that it can be so different depending on what salad kit you choose.  Prepare your salad kit...

 I've been trying to refine the family's rice pudding recipe to make it creamy and more like a normal pudding. Usually, it comes out more like a casserole, where you cut out a piece and add some milk. I wanted to make a rice pudding consistency that didn't need milk added to be creamy, and I think I finally got it.  Ingredients: 3 eggs 1 can (13.66 ounces) unsweetened coconut milk. 1 can (11.25 ounces) sweetened condensed coconut milk. 4 cups of cooked white rice. Day old rice works the best. 1 cup salted roasted cashews. 1/2 cup raisins. 2 tbsp vanilla extract 1 tsp mace. I use mace instead of nutmeg, but if you just have nutmeg it won't be a huge difference to use that instead.  1 tsp cinnamon 1/4 tsp cardamom Preheat your oven to 350 F. Start by whisking together your eggs, and then adding your milks, spices, and vanilla extract.  Add in your cashews and raisins, and then stir in your rice. Use your whisk to violently stab- I mean, break up your rice clumps. Whisk...

Arayes are Lebanese pita pockets with a savory meat filling, usually served with a sauce of some sort. I saw them on the internet about a week ago, and I thought of the chicken and cheese pita pockets that I used to love as a kid. The crunchy fried pita coupled with the warm spices in the meat appealed to me, and I knew I had to try making these.  Ingredients: 1 onion, minced very finely in a food processor (The recipes I found said to grate the onion, but my makeup was way too nice for that today) 1 1/4 lb. ground beef, lamb, or bison 1 tbsp garam masala 1 tbsp allspice 5 pita breads, cut into 10 halves Salt and pepper to taste Olive oil for frying I served these with a garlic sauce. I started to follow I recipe I found online, but didn't care for it, so I added things until it tasted good. I don't know the exact measurements I used, so I recommend doing some of your own research for a sauce that will go well with these, or inventing your own. I think a regular fry sauce would...

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July :). I thought about making a more classic American meal outside on the grill like hamburgers or hot dogs, but I just made kebabs on the grill yesterday and my fingertips are still recovering from being cooked medium rare lol. I picked up a longer pair of tongs today at the hardware store, so hopefully grilling will go better next time. I had a couple jars of coconut cardamom curry sauce I was excited to try, some pineapple leftover from yesterday, and a partial bag of potatoes I need to get through, and that sounds like a perfect recipe for a curry to me.  Ingredients 4 medium Yukon gold potatoes 10 ounces pineapple chunks 4 chicken breasts cut into cubes  1 medium onion cut into quarters and then slices 4 minces cloves of garlic 3 green onions, the white part sliced to sauté with the onion and garlic, the green part chopped up for garnish.  16 oz coconut milk based curry sauce 1 tbsp garam masala Salt and pepper to taste Optional: w...

So, I channeled my inner suburban dad today and got out the grill. I don't know if it's the summer heat, the people having fun with their fireworks 3 days before the 4th of July, or my summer allergies getting to my head, but I've been enamored with grilling lately. I've made kebabs before, but I did them in the oven rather than on the grill, and I now fully appreciate how simple the oven is. I know I make fun of my oven for taking 8 years to heat up, but it doesn't cook my fingertips to a nice medium rare. However, the flavor I got on these grilled kebabs is something that would be really hard to replicate in an oven. I have some more refining to do on the method of these kebabs, but the flavors were amazing. Ingredients 3 chicken breasts 1lb small scallops Whatever veggies you like. I used yellow zucchini, mushroom, pineapple, pearl onion chunks, garlic clove chunks, bell pepper, and jalapeno.  3 tbsp avocado oil 1/3 cup olive oil 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce 2 tsp Old ...

I originally wasn't planning on posting today since I made a recipe I've posted about before. I made my chicken almond salad (full post here: https://qsnoms.blogspot.com/2024/05/apple-celery-cranberry-chicken-salad.html ), adding some cashews I had in the pantry just because they sounded good. I whipped together a dressing for my salad, making up my own, however apparently the god of salad dressings smiled upon me today because it was the best vinaigrette I've ever made. I'm making this post not only to share what I did, but to remember it in the future.  One problem with this recipe is that I use a special blackberry infused dark balsamic. We have a local italian restaurant here that makes their own flavored balsamic vinegars, so that's where my vinegar came from. Blackberry balsamic is hard to get, I see some bottles on Amazon, but it would be silly to buy a 20 dollar bottle of balsamic to make a salad dressing lol. What I would do to make this recipe with regular...

This is my mom's favorite dish, and this version is much healthier than the versions with deep fried fish sticks. My local grocery store stocks pretty much only one type of white fish at a time, so I always go by that section and see what's there. Last week, there were some good looking cod fillets for sale, so I grabbed them and planned this dish for the week. These tacos are also very versatile, I make them differently every time. Today, I thought I had tomato in the fridge when I really didn't, so I didn't have that in the tacos like I usually do. Also, I was planning to slice my avocado, but they were getting old and had a couple brown spots to take out, so I gathered the good parts and made guacamole instead. Another perk of this recipe is that the fish is made in an air fryer, which makes it super easy, and our oven requires a blood sacrifice to heat up in a reasonable amount of time so it's nice to avoid that.  Ingredients Any white fish 2 limes 2 small avoca...

Indian cuisine has to be one of my favorites, maybe after Japanese. This take on butter chicken is great because it uses a canned sauce, saving a bunch of time, and it's all made in one pot. Curry is also great because it can take all sorts of random veggies that you have in your fridge. Potatoes, carrots, onion, peppers, tomatoes all can be added to a curry, and when covered in the delicious sauce, the dish becomes cohesive. I've made this butter chicken before, but I made it a but more fancy this time, and the whole family loved it. Ingredients: 1 medium onion cut into slices 2 cubed roma tomatoes 2 green onions 5 ish chicken breasts cut into strips 14 oz jar of your favorite butter chicken sauce Neutral oil to fry your veggies in 1 tbsp garam masala  Salt and pepper Optional: Some rice as a side Separate the green and white parts of your green onion, and slice the white parts thinly. Use the green part chopped up as a garnish later. Slice up your onion and dice your roma tom...

Recently, my parents came back from grocery shopping with these really large noodles that I've never seen before, and they wanted me to try to make something with them. They looked like oversized penne noodles. A google search told me that they were manicotti, and it seems like a lot of the recipes on the internet for this type of pasta use the same ingredients as lasagna. My parents think that I would to well on the game show Chopped, where you have to make a meal out of a bunch of random ingredients, so they like to bring back random things for me to try lol.  Ingredients: 14 manicotti noodles The Filling 8 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed 15 oz ricotta 1/2 cup grated parmesan  1 egg 1 tsp minced garlic 2 tbsp Italian seasoning Salt and pepper to taste The Sauce 25 oz container of your favorite pasta sauce 1 lb. package Italian sausage 1 medium onion diced 3-ish leaves of fresh basil cut into strips Olive oil to sauté the onion Salt and pepper to taste Topping 1/3 cup grate...