Lime Pepper Chicken with Garlic Fried Rice

I typically cook for myself or me and my bf. Because of this, I can't use all of the meat and vegetables I have for one dish. When I buy chicken breast or chicken tenders, I cook half and save the other half for another dish. In this case, I used the first half of the chicken tenders in the Glass Noodles with Chicken & Veggies dish. The second half I placed in a zip lock bag and marinated overnight.

Lime Pepper Chicken

1. Marinate the chicken with 2-3 fresh squeezed lime, salt, black pepper and a few bay leaves. Mix well, seal and leave in the fridge overnight.

2. Next day - Line a glass casserole dish with aluminum foil.

3. Place marinated lime and pepper chicken tenders on the foil. Sprinkle a pinch of salt and more black pepper on each tender. Add places of lime around the casserole dish.

4. Bake in oven on 375F for about 45 minutes. If you have less pieces, you can cook it in under 45 minutes.

5. After it's done baking, place of plate and have a side bowl of soy sauce and garlic to add as needed.

Garlic Fried Rice

* I usually cook this when the rice is a day old and hard from being in the fridge

1. Before you cook the rice in the pan, break it apart as much as you can

2. Heat oil in pan. Add lots of minced garlic and cook until it browns a little

3. Add the rice and season with garlic salt, black pepper and salt.

4. Add in 2 scrambled eggs and cook

5. Cook and mix thoroughly

Modified Menudo

This type of menudo is my personal modification of the Filipino style menudo. As I mentioned before, I try not to eat pork. However, that shouldn't stop me from eating menudo! Mix this savory dish with plain white rice or a dinner roll and you have good ole comfort food.

Modified Filipino Menudo

1. Get all ingredients ready: beef (thinly sliced-pork is normally used), raisins, carrots, potatoes, tomato sauce, onions, canned vienna sausage (I used chicken vienna sausage but you can also use the regular kind) and seasoning

2. Prep all your food before cooking by slicing the beef, carrots, onions and potatoes into small squares (similar to the size of an almond). Slice the vienna sausage into 4 pieces. Set everything aside.

* When you peel and cut up the potato make sure to soak it in water. If you leave it out, it will turn brown

3. Heat a little oil in a deep pan. Add a little bit of onion and let it simmer

4. Add the small pieces of beef (or pork if that's what you are using) and season with garlic salt, salt and black pepper. Cover with lid and thoroughly cook.

5. Once the meat is cooked add the potato (remove from water) and carrots. Close lid again and cook.

6. Once your carrots and potatoes are cooked and softened, add the raisins, vienna sausage and tomato sauce. Season as needed and keep the dish on the stove until the tomato sauce bubbles.

7. Eat with rice or bread.

* Remember you can always make these dishes vegetarian by not adding any meat or using mock meat.

Embutido - Filipino style meatloaf

I love making Filipino food! It's like soul food to me. I modified this recipe so it did not have any pork in it. It's usually made with ground pork but I used ground beef instead. Also, Vienna sausage is used in this dish as well but I didn't use it for my version.

Embutido

* Make sure all the ingredients are diced and cut into very small pieces.

* Boil 2-3 eggs for hard boiled eggs. Slice when done and set aside to use later.

1. Mix the following: ground beef, 3 eggs, diced cilantro, diced carrots, diced bell pepper, diced onions, minced garlic, oyster sauce, sea salt, black pepper, basil, cumin, pepper spices, garlic salt, coriander spice, sweet relish, and raisins.

2. Squeeze 1 lime

3. Hand mix everything well

4. On a sheet of aluminum paper, put some of the ground meat mix in the middle and flatten to look like a rectangle.

5. Add hard boiled egg slices in the middle. This is when Vienna sausage is usually added as well, but I didn't add any to this.

6. Use ends of aluminum foil to roll the meat over the egg

7. End result is a tube like shape.

8. Seal inside the aluminum foil and twist ends to close. (looks like a tootsie roll)

This next step you can do either one. I did both because I didn't have a real steamer. I improvised and made a steamer of my own using a metal colander.

9. Place in steamer or bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour

10. After it is cooked, you can slice it into pieces and serve with either sweet chili sauce or Jufran banana ketchup.

I had 2 rolls of embutido leftover, so for lunch on Sunday, I cut up the pieces and pan fried it a little. Mixed with cucumber yogurt and it was gooooood!