*Note: I was going to do two recipes, but this got long, so we’re sticking to one. I have no idea what either of these go with, but, whatever. Szechuan Chicken Salad, and … well, next time is roasted pork belly. Because who doesn’t love pork belly? (P.S. It’s just bacon, but not cured and smoked.)

First up, the chicken salad. It’s good for fall too, although since I delayed so long apples are as in season as they were. But you know, it’s not as if apples are hard to find year round. What do you need? Chicken, celery, carrots, and apples. I’m actually not at all a fan of sweet and savory dishes, so the fact that I can recommend this says something. I was hanging out with my dad one weekend, and he had to bring food to a Bible study pot luck, so I came up with this.

Of course you wash everything – so that’s not really a step. Once done, cut the celery and carrots into 2″ pieces, then julienne it. (Cut it into thin strips.) For the chicken, you can use chicken tenders (we did), or even a rotisserie chicken from your grocery store. We took frozen chicken tenders, and just boiled them. Shred the chicken. The apples, slice them thinly. I’d say halve then quarter each apple, cut out the core, and keep slicing – use a mandolin(e) if you have one or prefer using that.

Add salt and pepper to taste… and now we get to the Szechuan aspect. Hmm… ok, so I guess we’ll do this. Ingredients being more specific… three medium sized apples. Probably five or six stalks of celery, and two large carrots. And a pound of chicken tenders, or half the rotisserie chicken. Now, you need and want sesame oil. Pour about 1.5 T into the bowl and mix. Add Szechuan pepper oil to taste. (If you like extra heat, add in chili oil too.) Mix. Done!

Now… the Szechuan pepper oil is another recipe in and of itself, and can be used for frankly anything savory. Ok… so this recipe can’t be exactly replicated. The reason is… the small peppers we use I’ve never found anywhere else. Google images tells me they might be Bay Leaf Mini Pepper or Pequin Peppers. The latter might be more similar – they’re Sichuan peppers (Szechuan), they’re also called the “Facing Heaven Peppers” or “Heaven Chiles.”

ANYWAY.

Sesame oil, szechuan pepper corns, dried chiles (anything quality and not smoked), dried shitake mushrooms, and some sort of grinder. A coffee or spice grinder suffices. The picture to the right, incidentally, is the peppers we used that you can’t seem to find anywhere. (My uncle gave us a plant.)

Toast the szechuan pepper corns. Once they’re cooled grind them with the shitake mushrooms, and dried chiles into a fine powder. Heat the sesame oil – not to the smoking point but right before. It’ll shimmer. Dump the powdered ingredients into the pot and  leave it until cooled. OR here’s an easier method: dump everything in the cool oil, cook on low, then once it starts smelling good, cook for about 10 more minutes.

NOTE: If your tolerance for heat isn’t that great, leave the peppers (pepper corns and dried chiles) whole so you can fish them out. Once you can smell it, flip the whole chiles over so you can get all the flavors and essential oils from them. (The bottoms of the dried chiles will possibly be darkened or blackened.)

Once the oil is cooled, put it in a clean jar. If your heat tolerance isn’t that great, make sure you strain out most of the peppers before you bottle it.

So there you go! I hope that made sense…

LASTLY! I discovered these Two Degree bars… they’re really good, and all natural – and what’s really cool about them is that whenever you buy a bar, the company also gives food to a hungry child. I know for sure they’re available nation wide in Whole Food stores.

As you can see there are Cherry Almond, Apple Pecan, and Chocolate Peanut. I’ve tried the Apple Pecan and am saving the others – I might cave and try the Chocolate Peanut tonight.

Well, as you know, my Social Media for Social Good drive is over. I believe our grand total is $8,484.50. Isn’t that a fun number? I love how both years we’ve ended up with a fun result. 2010 was $1,337.00 and obviously you know 2011’s. Now my request – I asked people who donated to send me a header, headshot, book cover, avatar, whatever they wanted and the idea was to make a sort of collage. I don’t have photoshop, sadly, and was going to try to find something online that could handle it.

I guess my request is twofold. Is there any incredibly kind, generous soul out there who would be willing to do that for me? If not… got a suggestion? I was thinking fotoflexor but think it might die under the pressure/amount of images.

For the nothing part… an update on me! 😀 My blog, my universe. I’m sadly still sick. Getting slightly better, I think. But today I had some horrible allergic reaction rash thing. It actually ended up being a good thing though, because the benadryl I took knocked me out. I slept for nearly 4 hours, which is actually more than I had slept the past two days combined. Combined! Of course now the pup is going wild because omg someone to play with me!

Anyway, the sick + knocking out is why I didn’t write anything of more substance. I wanted to do another more in depth results post, about the good you all did for Save the Children, and other organizations.

Lastly… a fun summer recipe.

First, a mint-citrus simple syrup. I made mine with mine and lemon, because that’s what I had. You could of course make it with line, or orange. Perhaps a combination?

Ingredients:

sugar
water
fresh mint
citrus zest [lime, lemon, orange]

Otherwise, you only need a pot, and either a microplane/zester, or vegetable peeler. Add one part sugar, and one part water to the pot. (So if you add 3 cups of water, add 3 cups of sugar). For that amount, I added about 1 cup of fresh mint. I went outside, picked it, washed it, and dried it off – so I wouldn’t throw off the measurements of my syrup. If you don’t want to, you can just cook it longer to get the proper consistency once you add it. I then zested two lemons, and put that in immediately. Once the syrup had reduced by a third, I tossed in the mint. Once it had reduced by half, I turned it off – you could go longer if you want.

I strained the mixture, and put the syrup in small jars. They’ll keep in the fridge for quite some time as long as you don’t stick your finger in them, or a “contaminated spoon” or something. With the strained zest and lime… I actually made myself a drink – ice, the “syrup guts” – a splash of gin, and seltzer. A light and amazingly refreshing drink.

You could also blend the remains and make an amazing granita. Yum – I’m doing that next time.

I took the syrup and made myself a mango lassi smoothie yesterday.

Of course I eyeballed everything, and you can make it to taste… but let’s go with this recipe. It looked gorgeous but I was too lazy to take pictures of the process and style the end result. It was too good and I just wanted to drink it.

Ingredients:

plain yogurt
fresh or frozen mango
ice
mint citrus simple syrup

I threw about 3/4 cups of plain yogurt in a blender/container. I suppose vanilla could work if you want it even sweeter, or mango yogurt for extra flavor if they have it. Then I added 1/4 of a mango I’d cup up and frozen previously. (I like everything colder.) I actually blended this, before adding a glass of ice – and added maybe 2 tablespoons of the simple syrup. You can flavor to taste of course.

Blend. Done! If you want to be fancy you can garnish your glass with a sprig of mint, and maybe a citrus peel curl. For the mango lassi smoothie, I’d actually suggest a mint-lime simple syrup. I think that would taste even better. If you don’t want it to be a smoothie you can of course nix the ice, and just use water, and mix it well. Then it’d be a mango lassi.

Versatile! Enjoy. 😉

So – what’s your newest favorite summer drink?

In which I share some of my random drink concoctions. I never really follow recipes nor do I have a wide selection. (Believe it or not, I don’t drink that much. At all. But at any given time there’s tequila in the house (we cook with it), and generally… rum of some sort. Of course, I have nothing against drinking. After all, I went to The Ohio State University for undergrad, and then law school… well you know those lawyer jokes and their liquid lunches. Plus an internship with the Senate, where I learned what “appropriations” really means in some DC offices… 😉
Still, it’s a fun time to add this song, and fitting, yes?

Also, yes, I took all the pictures in this post. See? Even a total amateur can make drinks that look pretty! Even with a “bad” camera! [I used my phone and you know, winter “light”… not exactly ideal…]

So, here we have three drinks. I don’t know that they’ll appeal to everyone – I’m more of a fruity drinks type of girl, as you can see. First up, we have a drink that I’ve mentioned a few times before – it seems really odd, though many say it’d be a great sangria base. I like it as is. Crushed pineapple and red wine. Obviously you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) go for the really pricey stuff – but you want something palatable. However, if you don’t care, of course you can go for the swill. Especially if you do make it into a sangria. I like taking fresh pineapple and crushing it… if your pineapple is just about to go, you can cook it then crush it… or used canned – the latter I’d be most okay with pairing with the cheapest red wine. A suggestion, if I may – would be a Bota box. Pretty sure my family goes for the Bota Box Old Vine Zinfandel. You should be able to find it at grocery stores or Target (if they sell liquor), and likely your local liquor store as well.

Second drink I give you today… something that uses:

Can you tell what that is? 😀 Just to be cheeky, I won’t tell you. You’ve got to guess. Anyway, you take that, and ice, and gin, and… water, actually. You could use seltzer or tonic if you prefer (we just didn’t have any). Although, I’d actually suggest seltzer instead of tonic because you don’t want it too sweet… and the lovely result is…

It is quite pretty, isn’t it? We had a type of gin I’d never tried or heard of before – Smooth Ambler, which I really liked. It’s quite floral and… there’s almost this hint of… banana O_o actually. Which is especially interesting because I do not like banana. But I loved that drink. So so good.

And lastly… just something cobbled together, because I had tequila, and grenadine. I bought a huge bottle of it, and I really need to start adding it to more things. So… it’s kinda a tequila sunrise, as you can tell there’s orange juice in it as well. Two finger tequila is a staple, and usually 1800 gold as well. Always nice to have a variety, right? Two finger for the mixing… 1800 for the sipping. If you’re going to do shots, I’d say go with Patron. And stay away from Joy (of Joyfully Reviewed) cuz… she might try to kill you 😉

Then… there’s always the nice Irish coffee variations… coffee, Baileys and/or Kahlua, whipped cream if you have it, and if you want to make it even more dessert like, add hot chocolate/cocoa mix, and top it with whipped cream. For the extra kick, there’s that alcoholic whipped cream. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but a number of people recommend it.

So what about you? Do you have a favorite drink? Do you cobble things together from what you have? As a PSA of sorts, avoid cheap tequila. It seems most everyone who has a bad drinking story was felled by bad tequila. What’s your favorite alcohol? I’m quite partial to sparkling wines, myself. 🙂