Hannah and I had so much fun Saturday night – making dinner together!  And believe it or not, she suggested Pork Dumplings – my vegaterianish daughter requested pork!

I blame myself for Hannah’s love of Asian food.  It’s literally her favorite cuisine and she could eat some form of it every night of the week – sadly, her husband doesn’t have the same desire she does – it’s like me and Tony with pizza!

 

It was a bit of trial and error for the filling – we used my new food processor for the filling, and realized quickly that we should have just used a spoon and a bowl – we were working off a bunch of recipes and one said to add an egg to the mixture to help bind it, but mine ended up being really thin.  So I added more pork (reflected in the recipe below) and that worked fine.

We were doing stories and not taking as many pictures, but this is the steamer basket we used – thanks google šŸ˜€  We put about 3 inches of water in a pan, then put the steamer basket on top, and placed napa cabbage leaves over the metal part to rest the dumplings while they steamed.

We watched several videos on how to make the dumplings pretty, and lets just say that’s going to take some practice on our part.  They didn’t turn out too bad though!

We steamed them for 9 minutes with a lid on – they got nice and fluffy and puffy, then did a quick grape seed oil pan fry to crisp the bottom.  

I tagged Hannah on my Instagram post and within about an hour she had about 200 friend requests – her page is private so don’t be offended if she doesn’t accept your request. . . she kicked it up her pan fry by adding toasted sesame seeds – loved the crunch of hers.

You don’t have to use our dough though!  We had plenty of time and loved experimenting in the kitchen, but you can easily buy the prepared wonton wrappers you can find in the produce section of most grocery stores – my package cost $2 (on sale for 2/$4).

It’s the same points either way – 1 point per dumpling.  Place about a heaping teaspoon of filling in the middle, seal with water, pinch and then place 2 tablespoons of water in a pan and steam them with the lid on to cook the filling and steam the wrappers – about 3 minutes.  Add 1/2 teaspoon of grape seed oil in the pan, and pan fry for another minute over medium heat.

I also sprayed a bit of Pam for good measure.

Look at that crunch!  And make sure to have the chord of your mac book in the background – its a good photography trick šŸ˜›

We ate an early lunch, so my test batch with the wrappers became my 6 point dinner.

Guys – I have to give a shout out to Marion’s Kitchen.  They sent me a variety of their sauces and I am blown away – most are 1-2 points a serving.  This one (I’ve only opened two!) is like crack – so flavorful and delicious.  You can find these in Walmart in the United States.  I used a tablespoon of this in the filling, as well as drizzled over the top and tossed in our sesame green beans we made on Saturday night.  So good.  

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While I was sick and had no energy, I binge watched Marie Kondo and her tidying show on Netflix.  The bane of our existence (not including our basement which is about a month worth of posts!) is our pantry.  I love that my late husband built it for me, but we’ve never really been able to organize it, and well, let’s face it, for me to keep up with it when Hannah cleans it.

We adjusted some shelves, took some of the lessons from the tidying show, and I am so happy with the results.

I had to laugh because my “before” picture didn’t show up, I’ll have to add that later.  But now all of our baking stuff is on top, perfectly labeled.  We have one basket of pasta, one for rice.  Breakfast stuff in the same spot.

I bought sesame oil for our dumplings Saturday, only to find three bottles of sesame oil in three different places when we cleaned out my spice cabinet.

 You should always buy spices in small batches.  I know this, yet for some reason I had giant containers of dried basil from Sam’s Club that really smelled like nothing anymore.  We whittled it down to these three shelves – it was so nice to just reach in and grab the oregano when I was meal prepping my greek chicken for my lunch today.

We rewarded ourselves with a late lunch/dinner out.  A new sushi place called Tasty Sushi opened in our town.  Hannah and I love the agedashi tofu – this was so good.

I got the seared ahi tuna off the appetizer menu – check out that rising Phoenix!  

It was made out of a purple carrot!  I also ordered plain fried rice on the side, but holy balls it had giant chunks of onions in it – I managed to scrape together about 1/2 a cup without onions.  I counted 3 for the fried rice, 1 for the tuna, 3 for the tofu and then 3 for misc. – the sauce/oil, etc. in preparing the food.  Sometimes you just have to guess with the points, but I think 10 points is about right.

This used to be a Dunkin Donuts so it was weird to see it like this.  We will definitely be back – and noticed on the menu that they have a lunch special from 11-3 – most of the meals were $8 – you can’t buy Jimmy Johns for that price!  

And we are back to Monday.  I am at about 80%.  Still coughing a bit, but I slept through the night.  Friday night I had my first bout with insomnia – I am so sorry for anyone who suffers from that (including my sister in law!).  I am going to be 51 in a few months and I can count on one hand how many times I’ve not been able to sleep.  I think on Friday night I woke up at 2:30 and didn’t fall back to sleep until 4:45.  I was so wide awake I wanted to get up and clean or cook!

But then I remembered that I have roommates, and thought the better of it.

Happy Monday my friends – did you set yourself up for success this week?  We’ve got this – remember, you are in control, not the food. 

Make it a great day!