I had some pork ribs in the freezer and I needed to do something with them. I would normally do Asian pork ribs, but have you noticed how many shows on BBQ the Food Network and Travel Channel have been showing lately? I’ve been craving ribs and pulled pork all week long. Anyway, I’m not allowed near a grill or smoker since I almost burned the place down last time, so I decided to slow cook my ribs in the oven.

All I needed was some dry rub. I found a recipe by Bobby Flay and it was DAMN good! The ribs were really flavorful, but of course I needed some BBQ sauce on the side. I had Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce which made the ribs over the top.

Bobby Flay’s Rib Dry Rub

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon granulated garlic

1 tablespoon granulated onion

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon brown sugar (I added 1 1/2 tablespoon of brown sugar)

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon white pepper

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Store in an airtight container. Pack on the dry rub onto your next rack of ribs.

I have 2 stalks of Chinese broccoli in the fridge and I need to do something with it before they goes bad. I’m really horrible about eating fresh vegetables. There’s too much pressure that comes with buying fresh veggies and that’s why I only do canned or frozen. I didn’t even buy the Chinese broccoli. My mother brought it over last weekend. Anyway, I decided to make fried rice with one of the stalks. I didn’t feel like defrosting any chicken or pork and decided to use bacon. That’s right you heard me. Bacon. I love me some bacon.

Ingredients:

1 chopped up garlic clove

1 cup of leftover rice

2 slices of cut up bacon

half a cup of chopped Chinese broccoli

soy sauce

Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce

In a skillet brown the bacon. I didn’t cook it until it was crispy, because I didn’t think crispy bacon would work. I just wanted it cooked. The bacon that I used didn’t leave a lot of grease (which is a good thing)  in the pan, so I added a little bit of olive oil and then added the Chinese broccoli. Stir fry until the broccoli is all toasty. Remove the bacon and broccoli. In the same skillet add 2 tablespoons of cooking oil or olive oil. Once heated, add garlic. When the oil is hot, add the rice. I stirred it around a bit before adding soy sauce and Sriracha. I didn’t measure and did it to my taste. I probably could have used a little more Sriracha to make it spicy, but I didn’t want to get crazy. Add the bacon and broccoli back to the pan and stir fry a little bit more.

Weird, right? It was delicious! Of course, you’d have to like bacon to want to make bacon fried rice.

So, it’s actually kind of fun trying to come up with different meals to make every night. It’s like being on Food Network’s Chopped or Iron Chef. I’m limited to the items that I currently have. Which is pretty sad, because there’s no rhyme or reason to my fridge and pantry. I have random stuff all over the kitchen. Like honey powder. What the frick am I suppose to do with honey powder? I’ll figure something out.

I’m craving chewy Chips Ahoy cookies so bad right now. I’m not allowed to go to the store so I’m going to have to tough it out.

Chips Ahoy. Chips Ahoy. I miss you…..

I felt like something soupy for dinner tonight. I usually want soup when I feel run down. There’s just something about hot broth that makes things better. Have you seen that movie Ramen Girl?

Brittany Murphy (I loved her) was the lead in that movie. It’s about an American woman who goes to Japan and decides to learn how to make ramen. Random right? Well, it’s actually a really cute movie. You should check it out.

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Anyway, I didn’t feel like soup soup, so I decided to make ramen noodles. I didn’t make it from scratch like they do in this movie, but I think I did a pretty good job using leftovers and ingredients I had on hand.

I only used 4 ingredients (not counting water). Notice how the ramen noodles are a spicy shrimp flavor and I am using grilled pork. I did have fresh shrimp in the freezer, but I really needed to use the leftover pork. That’s literally all I had left. Besides, you really can’t tell that the broth is shrimpy. It’s spicy and that’s fine with me.

This meal literally took only 10 minutes. I didn’t have to cook anything, but the noodles. The pork was already cooked and the only prep I needed to do was cut up the green onions. I heated the instant ramen noodles in a pot until cooked. Then I added the pork and bean sprouts. I kept the pot on the burner until the pork was heated all the way through. Then I poured it all in a bowl and added the green onions on top.

I’ve decided to forgo grocery shopping for a month. I want to see if I can cook/eat what I currently have in the refrigerator and pantry. This is scary business, because there’s a hodge podge of random ingredients and products that I have. Since I’m Asian and have an endless supply of rice, I can survive on that. Just add a little soy sauce for flavor. However, the goal is to see if I can create interesting dishes with the ingredients that I have on hand, not pretend that I’m locked away in an Asian prison.

I really don’t know if I’ll be able to do this, but I should at least give it a shot. I should have started this after buying groceries instead of starting this when I NEED to buy groceries. I’m out of a lot of stuff. Especially items that I like to bring for lunch every day. I guess I can bring ramen noodles for lunch, but it’s not very filling.

Anyway, this is what I made tonight. I don’t know what it’s called so I’m calling it Stuffed Egg Foo Young. Now I’ve posted a recipe for Egg Foo Young before so if you want to make that you can click here for the recipe. My mom makes this dish. However, hers is much prettier. She also uses complete and correct ingredients. But isn’t this the point of me doing this? Seeing if I make something edible out of the ingredients that I have on hand.

So, like I said, this is basically egg foo young with a sweet and savory ground beef filling. The egg is suppose to be wrapped around the filling like a pouch, but I didn’t use a big enough pan when I fried it up so the circumference is small.

This recipe yields 1 serving (unless you don’t eat much and then it yields 2 servings)

Ingredients that I had on hand:

2 eggs (beaten)

1 frozen hamburger patty that I smushed up into “ground beef”

4 to 6 grape tomatoes (cut each in half)

1 quarter cup of chopped onions

1 clove of chopped garlic

2 tablespoons of soy sauce

1/2 tablespoon of sugar or use per your taste

In a small pan, heat tablespoon of olive oil or cooking oil. Add garlic and cook until light brown. Add ground beef and cook until almost brown. Then add onions and tomatoes. Let it cook down. I had a lot of grease from my hamburger meat, so I removed most of it before adding the soy sauce and sugar. Have you ever had oyster sauce before? It’s kind of sweet and salty. Well, this is why we’re adding sugar and soy sauce to the beef. Sweet and salty. Once the beef mixture is cooked, remove it from the pan.

In a larger pan, cover the entire surface with cooking oil. You don’t have to use a lot of oil. Just make sure the whole pan is covered with it. Heat it on medium high to high. When your oil is hot, add the eggs to the pan. The eggs will puff up. You’ll want to flip it when the edges are a golden brown. You can always lift up the side and check to see if the underside is cooked. Once your egg foo young is ready (this cooks pretty quickly), put your eggs on a plate and then spoon the beef mixture onto the center.

I ate this with rice. It was pretty good. I didn’t get as much “sauce” from the beef mixture as I would have liked, but all in all it wasn’t bad.

For the past few nights, I haven’t been in the mood to cook or even eat for that matter. I’m hungry, but I don’t want to eat anything in particular. The only thing that sounded good to me was bacon and rice. As children, my mom use to fry up bacon and serve it to us with rice for dinner. It’s not such a bad combination if you think about it. Salted pork and rice. Anyway, it’s one of my most favorite meals of all time and that’s what I’ve been eating for dinner. Every night. Bacon and rice. You can add a little hot sauce or soy sauce. I like to add hot chili oil, because it gives it an extra kick.

It’s just good and really simple. You should try it if you have bacon and rice on hand. I probably shouldn’t eat bacon since I have cholesterol problems, but I’m too tired to make anything else. It’s either this or ramen noodles.