Chinese Dinner

So we're officially all moved in and unpacked! I absolutely love our new place. I'll post pictures later but for now I'm going to do my first recipe post. For awhile now I've really been wanting to try my hand at making homemade Chinese food. So this week I decided to finally give it a shot. I found this recipe for sweet and sour chicken on Pinterest. I found the recipe here. Here's what you'll need:

-3-5 chicken breasts
-salt and pepper
-2 eggs beaten
-approx 1 cup of cornstarch
-oil to fry the chicken in (The original recipe calls for canola oil but I used vegetable oil)

First you'll need to rinse and chop the chicken into 1 inch cubes

Once the chicken is cut, dip the chicken first in cornstarch and then in the egg (this can and will get REALLY messy). The fry the chicken till its golden brown.

Once the chicken is fried, put it into a baking dish. I used about 3 chicken breast and it fit perfectly into a 9x13 dish. Now for the sauce. You'll need:

-3/4 cups of sugar

-4 tablespoons of ketchup

-1/2 cup of apple cider vinegar

-1 tablespoon of soy sauce

-1 teaspoon of garlic salt

The original recipe calls for distilled vinegar, but some people were saying that it was a little to vinegary so I took used apple cider to cut the taste down. It tasted delicious anyways. :) Just mix all the ingredients together until smooth.

Once all the chicken is fried and in the dish pour the sauce over the chicken, make sure you turn over the chicken so the sauce gets on both sides. Once that's done put the chicken into the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, then turn the chicken and put it in for another 15.

Trust me the chicken looks as good as it tastes. Now to compliment the main dish. I searched high and low for an easy and simple lo-mein. I finally found it here. Its pretty simple and straight forward. However I made a few mistakes with it (crazy right?). It was mostly just little things, my mind has been pretty scattered brain lately. I had twice the amount of pasta needed and forgot the vegetables, but it was still decent. The final addition to the meal was Chinese doughnuts. You usually find these at buffets, but the were always my favorite. These are pretty simple to make as well. Get some refrigerated biscuits, fry them, let them drain on a paper towel and roll them in some sugar. They tasted great! Put all these things together and you have a wonderful Chinese meal at home.

Michael really loved all of it, and requested it to be made again. So in my book that's a win. :)

Looking Ahead

Life has been busy as our upcoming move is getting closer (next week!). Cleaning the apartment has been my major focus right now as I've already packed some and don't have to much left to pack. The apartment wasn't in the greatest condition when we moved in, nevertheless I'm making sure the place is spotless. So I've been scrubbing the floors (I mean literally on my hands and knees scrubbing) and vacuuming every corner. There's no reason this place shouldn't pass inspection (they would be crazy if didn't). Anyways, I want to share with you some things that I'm looking forward to at the new place.


1.  Location Location Location

The location of the new place is such a huge blessing. Its just minutes away from Michael's work and minutes away from everything else that we will most likely be making weekly trips too (i.e. grocery, laundry, gas station etc). It's also in a great area of town. Its going to feel like a major upgrade from where we are at now.

2. Paint!

We will be allowed to paint the walls! I was really excited when we heard this. I thought I wouldn't be able to paint until we owned our own place (if that ever happens). The ideas have been coming in full force for possible colors. I really love this color green for the kitchen. It brightens it up!

3. Patio

Last summer I kept wishing I had a place I could just go sit outside and relax, maybe plant some flowers and just enjoy the fresh air and this summer I'll be able to do just that! 

4. Pets

Isn't he the cutest thing?

My long desire for a dog may soon be fulfilled! Allowing pets was one of the main things we were looking for in the next place. Michael and I tend to disagree on what dog to get. I'm a big fan of large dogs whereas Michael likes the smaller ones. However, we've both have agreed on a sheltie. Michael grew up with having a sheltie and I just adore the cuteness!

Where for Art Thou.....Motivation?

Motivation has not been my friend lately. I just can't seem to get myself up and do things that need to be done, like cleaning, and organizing and my personal favorite (sarcastically speaking) packing. Oh yeah, did I mention we're moving? It's kind of a last minute thing, it was our original plan to move once our lease was up but then we were thinking that maybe we should stay another six months to save a little bit more money. We've been looking at different places to move to that would be closer to Michael's job. Recently we went to go visit an apartment complex that was in a great location. Just minutes away from everything. We ended up falling in love with the place. So we took a look at our finances, moved some things around and now we're moving! I'm really excited. I've been wanting to move out. I'm not the biggest fan of our apartment, but we won't get started on that (we would be here all day). The only bad thing is that we're moving in 5 weeks (yikes!). It's a good thing we don't have to much stuff, but I still have to go through all of it and sort out all the collected junk. Packing is one of the things I hate doing. It takes me forever just to pack a suitcase, imagine an entire apartment! I'm hoping this non-existent motivation will not last very long.

The Family is Growing!

Big news! Around 7 yesterday morning my brother and sister-in-law brought their special bundle of joy into the world. So I now have another nephew. Here's a picture of the little stud:

Isn't he a cutie?

Michael and I were able to see him last night when he got off work. His name is Romain (pronounced Roman) Carter. I'm so loving this little guy! Michael also seemed pretty happy holding him. ;) So in the past year I went from having no nieces or nephews to having four!

Cuteness runs in the family ;)

These are the other cuties. Unfortunately they don't live near us anymore, but hopefully we'll see them again soon.

A New Year

Let me start out by saying Happy New Year! 2012 was a hard but good year. I'm really looking forward to this coming year, so many new things to look forward to. I have posted anything on here in awhile which I probably did on purpose. I tend to clam up and keep to myself when things get really stressful. Since my last post, Michael left his job at Sitel and is now working at Delta Air Lines. We feel really blessed for this great opportunity. The pay and benefits are more than we could have hoped for. Anyways, I've decided to try to get back into blogging (try being the key word). I'm staying at home now so I need something to keep me busy when I have nothing else to do. So here it goes...

In honor of the New Year I'm going to share with you my New Year's resolution. You may or may not know that my husband is French. He spend most of his life in France and he considers that his home. I used to live overseas as well. My family were missionaries in Romania. I learned to speak Romanian, not completely fluently but enough to get around. Anyways, I've realized I'm starting to lose my touch with it, and its making me kind of sad. I took pride in the fact that I knew another language. So getting back to my New Year's resolution. I've decided I want to learn French. I've been wanting to learn for awhile but have never acted on it. Both Michael and I would love to move over to France sometime, both of our hearts lie in Europe. So learning French now would be a big help for the future. I also want our future kids to grow up knowing the language so it would be helpful to know some of it by then. I told Michael about it and he seemed pretty excited about it. I also told him that I wanted his help and that the only way that I would be able to completely learn it is if he held conversations in French with me. I regretted telling him that really quick. He got all excited and started speaking French constantly. It was pretty late and I was tired so I finally convinced him to stop for the night. But I did get roped into watching a French movie, which wasn't so bad but would be better if I understood it. Anyways, we'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed!

Bringing in the New Years with my beloved.

What I Miss Most

Lately I've been missing a lot of food that's in Romania but sadly not here. I like the food here, but the food in Romania was just absolutely amazing! For instance, they had amazing bread which you could get fresh. The soup over their was to die for! All their soup is homemade, which takes a lot of effort but the finished product was heavenly. They also have amazing chocolate just like most European countries do. But what I've been missing the most is a pink grape fruit flavored soda.

Frutti Fresh: Pink Grapefruit (yummmm)

I absolutely love this stuff! It's like a little fruit party in my mouth. This stuff has a strong smell, I could be sitting four feet away from a glass filled with it and I could smell it, at least it smelled good. While on one of my trips to the grocery store I tried seeing if I could perhaps find something similar to hear. Here's what I found: 

I found it at Walmart for less than a dollar. I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't the same marvelous pink color as the one in Romania but as long as it had a good taste I wouldn't mind. I could not wait to get home and try some. I found this drink to be ok but not amazing, it didn't have quite that strong of a flavor that I was looking for but still doable. Never the less my search still remains. There's this new product that came out not to long ago and is in a bunch of commercials and stores, its called the SodaStream. Its a device that makes soda from tap water. At first I wasn't that interested in it till I realized they had...

THIS!!!!!!!!!

I now really want one! The only problem is that they are more than I can afford right now. I've heard great reviews on the product itself so I'm giving myself high hopes for this particular flavor. This will more than likely make it onto my Christmas wish list this year. Till then I'll just have to sit and let my mouth water. ;)

Here We Go Again

I really need to do better at keeping up with this blog. Life just seems to be so busy. Recently there have a lot of changes to adjust to. I just quit my job a couple of weeks ago. I had been contemplating on quitting my job for a long time. I was good at my job and did very well, but it just became to overwhelming. For the first month we were there we had classroom training. I was doing really well then, but once we actually started taking calls it started going down hill. I was doing really well the first few weeks, I wasn't overwhelmed. I'm not exactly sure when it all started to go bad I just know that I began hating my job. I stuck with it though because I knew we needed me to be working. So I continued working. After awhile my mental stress was going through the roof. Michael and I had talked about me quitting on a number of occasions but by the time it came to go to work again, I just felt to guilty to actually quit. Then a couple of weeks ago I had my breaking point. One of the other major call centers that works along side of us is located in Colorado Springs. So when the wild fires started the call center was shut down. That put everyone in our call center on mandatory overtime. I think that pushed me over the edge, I was already there it was just a matter of time before I couldn't handle it anymore. Michael and I sat down and talked over things, looked over our finances and decided that I should quit and look for something else. I was expecting to be stressed once I quit but I actually felt relieved. Now I'm on the oh so familiar quest in finding a new job. I have come across several good possibilities but only time will tell. Waiting as always been my least favorite part. ;)