Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

My entire life I was always so impressed by people who made their own noodles. I thought for sure this was a couple day process! LOL Also my mom makes a pretty good chicken noodle soup, so I thought I would try doing both.
I followed this recipe for the noodles. I found making noodles was way easier than I thought. Ok my arms hurt a touch but that could be because of my t-rex stature. The only thing I wondered about was when to tell your dough is smooth.... I did some searching and found pics and went by those. Turns out about 7 min of kneading got me the smooth dough I needed. I was unable to find a rolling pin so instead I cleaned off a red wine bottle, because everyone has one of those at home. :) It worked really well actually. I also had no pizza cutter and so I had to use a knife to cut the noodles with....the knife isn't very sharp and so this took longer than I'm sure it takes most people. But the final results were great!

For the soup I asked my mom what she did, and her response was:
1. Boil a whole chicken in a pot for 45 min.
2. Pull out chicken and shreed the meat off of it.
3. Fill up pot with water and add a CAN OF BOUILLON (yeah I'm not kidding, I felt my heart throb when she said that!)
4. Bring it to a boil and then add a bag of egg noodles.
5. Once noodles are done add chicken.
Done.

Well since Troy had highblood pressure and the idea of enough sodium to kill a horse didn't sound that appealing to me I changed it up a little. This may be the first time I didn't follow a recipe and kind of winged it!
 Here is what I ended up doing:
1. Got a big pot and threw in a whole chicken with water and brought it to a boil. I boiled it till the juice was no longer pink. Took about an hour.
2. During that hour I made the noodles using the above recipe I linked.
3. Cut up 2 carrots and 1 medium yellow onion.
4. Pulled the chicken out of the pot and filled up the pot with more water to make it 3/4 full. And added 6 chicken bouillon cubes.
5. Shredded the chicken and added it to the pot while waiting for the water to boil again.
6. Once boiling I threw in the homemade noodles and let them cook.

It was even better than mom's! (sorry mom). 

**Things I would do different next time...

I would add a couple more carrots and I would skimmed the fat off the top of the water once taking out the chicken.
Edited to add: this makes about 12 bowls of soup.

Stove Top Oatmeal

I'm sure many of you are laughing that so many of my firsts this month are cooking things on a stove top! :) But growing up we always used the microwave for everything (popcorn, instant oatmeal, warming beans--which came precooked in a can). I rarely get a microwave now a days. Before having a child that wasn't a problem because good old McDonalds is everywhere (well NOT Trinidad--weird country). But since I would like London to eat well that is no longer an option for us. And unlike me, London likes to eat more than one meal a day. He is kind of forcing me to make better food choices for the family---which is never a bad thing. The cooking part without a microwave or common pre-cooked items has become a challenge for this girl. Growing up I really didn't have anyone to teach me how to cook, let alone cook without a microwave. My father owned a restaurant and we ate there a ton. Heck I worked there and could make side salads (in sizes to feed 100 people though). Luckily it was good food so I didn't have a WAY horrible diet growing up, ok it was bad but I have seen worse! My mom could cook a few things but only about a dozen...and I can cook all of those! :) I have been hitting my Grandma Betty up for cooking help over the last couple years...next month I think I'm going to try her fried chicken and gravy on bread!
So oatmeal is another staple food that most Americans use the microwave for. I wonder how many of my friends actually buy the non-instant stuff?! Oatmeal is also one of those things pretty much all countries have so I can find it easily. So it is making my new things list (and completion for Jan! resolution).
Good old internet searching taught me that you should do a 2:1 ratio with the oatmeal (rolled not steel, 4:1 for steel). Then bring to a boil and cook. I should have paid more attention to how long to cook once boiling. Also it seems you either use water or milk and that either works.
So I made 1/2 cup rolled oats to 1 cup box shelf milk. Brought to a boil and then let it boil (stirring the whole time) until it looked like the instant stuff I ate...i'm thinking this was about 3 min. I didn't look at a clock. The outcome.... Not bad. Its very boring on its own. But I wanted it plain for my first time so I knew what my base was. I think maybe I could have boiled it a touch longer but overall its good. Next time i'm going to find some apples, raisins and either cinnamon or maple syrup. I don't think it tastes any better than the instant stuff, but the texture is a touch better. However it took me maybe 5 min to make the rolled oats and it takes about 3 min for the instant....and the instant has added salt and sugar and is more processed. For the nutritional value I will still with old fashion rolled oats! Now I hear the steel oats are even better for you but take about 30 min to cook....they didn't look THAT much better than the rolled oats so unless there is a big texture/taste difference I don't see the value in it. But I will of course give them a try....first I need to finish off this box of rolled though. :)

Carambola (aka Starfruit)

I'm always lost when I get into the produce section of a store.... I rarely know what anything is. And I even less of the time know how to prepare it. Well today I tried a Carambola (starfruit).
According to the website if unripe it should taste like a green apple. The description as says that mine is ripe. I can see the green apple flavor...but its also citrus like....so citrus apple would be my best description. I took out the seeds, but some people just eat them. They are about like the white seeds in a watermelon for size/shape/crunchy-ness.  I first tried it after brushing my teeth---NOT a good idea. LOL I waited a bit then tried again...much better. I would buy it again and eat them. Not my favorite but not bad...and for me anything healthy thats not bad is worth buying! LOL
London wasn't a fan of it plain, he doesn't like citrus flavor much. However when I put it in yogurt he ate almost the whole thing! So he can't hate it that much.

Stove Top Popcorn

I have always thought that making popcorn on the stove was a very difficult thing to do.... you can thank my mother who ruined a good pot by burning the oil/popcorn so bad on the bottom it was black for years....and it was one of those old thick pots with the yellow outside! Our house smelled like burnt popcorn for weeks... I can remember it as if it was yesterday.
Well we have no microwave here in Brazil so I decided I needed to learn how to do this. It would be so much easier while traveling. I don't ever recall actually eating stove top popcorn in my life!
So I did some searching and read a few "recipes" for doing this. After some talking with friends (yes it takes a village to raise this cook!), I decided to go with plain old butter and yellow corn.
What I did:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup yellow popcorn



I started up my gas stove top on high . This alone still freaks me out... I really need to by one of those point and click lighters because I feel I'm going to burn myself every time I use the match...and the fire extinguisher is on the first floor- we are on the 15th! Got a 2 qt pot and put my 1/4 cup of butter in it and 3 kernels and just kind of moved the pot over the flame. I watched my butter get a little brown and wondered if I was already screwing up. But then one of my kernels popped...and I might add scared the crap out of me! Then I added the 1 cup corn, put on the lid and continued to shake pot. I was so excited when it started popping. I'm such a little kid. After a couple moments I realized my 2 qt pan wasn't big enough because popcorn started pouring out (and then starting on fire since the flame was still going). I quickly dumped some on to a near by cookie sheet and continued to pop. I have no idea how your suppose to tell when the kernels are all done. I had plenty of popcorn so I decided that was good. After eating most of it I realized I had about 1/4 cup of kernels still at the bottom  of the pot but the bottom was also dry. So if your reading this...do I need to put more butter in next time and keep the bottom with butter to get that last bit to pop? Or do I need to just pop longer? I was nervous of burning it. I think my 3/4 cups of kernels that did pop probably made about 8 cups of popcorn. Next time I need to only do 1/2 cup of kernels. Luckily London LOVES plain popcorn...so he got a little pot of it. I love butter...so I heated up some more butter and then covered mine in salt. Oh yummy goodness! I don't think I can go back to microwave ever again.

The old iPod

After 5 yrs of having my product {red} iPod and a couple computers later.... I figured out today how to get the music OFF my iPod and into my iTunes so I could use it with my new iPods!!!! Old red has been on her way out since she feel in the tub in the Philippines. I was practicing hypnobabies in the tub and she got pulled in....shows true character that she was able to still play though!
I got online and did a search and found this site- http://www.macworld.com/article/54342/2006/12/twowaystreet20.html Once I had the program downloaded I found I had to do things a touch different. Once I got the music on to my desktop I wasn't able to do the normal "add to library" function in iTunes. Instead I had to copy and paste the music into my iTunes music folder. But even after I did that it wouldn't show up IN my iTunes....then I found out I had to click on each song (4GB worth) and it then saved it properly. Took a long time and there is probably an easier way to do it.....however I got to listen to my wedding music again!
"Some Where Over the Rainbow" by IZ and "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth has been listened to most of the night <3

Acai

Acai is a local fruit that is pronounced a-sigh-EE, emphasis on the EE not the sigh (so I have been saying it wrong!). I have heard TONS about this fruit from people in the USA on all its amazing health properties. And I know the juice is CRAZY expensive state-side. Since its dirt cheap here I thought I would give it a try. I'm not 100% sure what the fruit itself tastes like because I haven't found that yet. What I did find was Acai na tigel. This seems to be how most of the Brazilians eat the fruit. They take the pulp of the Acai and then mix it with a touch of soy milk or syrup and ice then blend. This makes it into a sorbet texture. They then add sliced banana and sprinkle with granola. To make this little dessert there are a variety of ways apparently.
If you add orange juice to the pulp that seems to be the popular way to drink it. We tried both ways. Not bad, not wonderful either. But i'm told that the location we went to was just ok and that we needed to try more places because its amazing. So I will keep trying.
I forgot my camera in the car when we hit up this stand so here is a picture thanks to Wiki- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%A7a%C3%AD_na_tigela
And a video thanks to youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzVWzBpqz1o