House of Tsang-Review & Giveaway

A few weeks ago I was offered the opportunity to try and review 6 different sauces and oils from the House of Tsang product line.

 -          House of Tsang® Bangkok Padang Peanut Sauce

-          House of Tsang® General Tsao Sauce

-          House of Tsang® Ginger Flavored Soy Sauce

-          House of Tsang® Sesame Seed Oil

-          House of Tsang® Sweet & Sour Stir Fry Sauce

-          House of Tsang® Hibachi Grill Sauce Kobe Steak

I was happy to do so because we've been in a bit of a supper rut lately and I knew it would be the perfect way to jazz things up.  I'll show you how I used each product and then tell you what you could win at the end.  :)  Here's a bit of background info first, though:

Food is an important part of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration and certain foods are included for their symbolic value: noodles are served for longevity, oranges for wealth and prosperity and a whole fish for abundance and togetherness. The Chinese New Year began on January 23, 2012 and ushers in the Water Dragon. The year promises to be full of excitement, exhilaration and also lots of celebration!  Whether you're looking for an Asian meal on the go or just want to give your favourite dishes a different twist,House of Tsang® products bring the flavors of Asia into your kitchen. With House of Tsang® sauces and oils you can mix and match to make memorable, flavorful dishes you’ll love—right in your own home.

First I used the General Tsao sauce to make a quick chicken stir fry with green bell pepper and basmati rice:

Can you believe I've never tried General Tsao sauce before?!  The spiciness was a nice surprise; I quite enjoyed it!  Our next meal included the Ginger Flavoured Soy Sauce, the Sweet & Sour Sauce and the Pure Sesame Oil.  I used the following ingredients to make a play on fried rice:

 The first step was to cook a 1/2 cup of quinoa in 1 cup of water for 15 mins then I quickly scrambled the egg and set it aside.  I chopped the onion and sautéed it with some garlic, added the quinoa to the pan along with the egg and 1 cup of peas.  Once everything was heated through I added a few good shakes of the ginger soy sauce and a little sesame oil.  While the quinoa was coming together I had another pan going with some chicken breasts.  When they were cooked through I added the Sweet & Sour sauce and dinner was served!

THIS was a delicious meal!  I used the Kobe Steak Sauce to make a nice stir fry the other night.  I simply combined some leftover roast beef, mushrooms and a tomato with about a 1/4 cup of the sauce.  I served it over pasta with a side of broccoli:

Here's Noah's plate, minus the broccoli, all mixed up:

This sauce had a nice tangy flavour, but by the end of my meal I found it a bit salty.  Keep in mind that this is probably more a marinade than a stir fry sauce, though!  :)  And last, but not least, the Peanut Sauce!  I had plans for this one right off the bat, but it took a few nights before I could actually get to it.  I made a chicken pizza!

I topped a (gluten free) crust with some tomato sauce then topped it with chicken breast strips and roasted red peppers that I tossed with the peanut sauce.  A bit of cheddar cheese sealed the deal.

Yum, Yum, Yum!!!  We all really enjoyed these products and I can't wait to cook with them again.  Certainly makes for a quick, easy and tasty meal that doesn't take forever to cook.

So friends, how would you like to win exactly what I've reviewed for you here?  Here's what is up for grabs:

This prize contains the 6 sauces, marinades and oil that I received as well as some beautiful chopsticks; a $25.00 value!  To enter, please complete the following (easy) steps:

1) You must "like" the House of Tsang Facebook page
2) Tell me which sauce you'd cook with first

That all, folks!  PLEASE BE SURE TO LEAVE 2 SEPARATE COMMENTS!!  That doubles your chances of winning!  You'll have until Sunday, February 19 to enter and I will randomly select a winner on Monday February 20.  Best of luck to all!


Bye for now!!

T'is The Season....

.....to be BUSY!!  Hi folks!  How is everyone doing?  Are you all caught up in the craziness that is December just like me?  Between work, Christmas shopping, hockey, dance and the end of Sarah's volleyball season I've barely had time time sit at the computer, which I am sure is the case in general.  Instead of posting here I decided to use that time to continue reading all your blogs.  I haven't been commenting as much, but I have been keeping myself up to date with you guys!

On Sunday Noah's hockey team had a game in a border city.  Whenever we play there I plan a quick trip across the border for a little shopping.  This time we only hit Target because it had been raining pretty heavily all day and we were afraid it would freeze before long.  Getting stuck in the States wouldn't be such a bad thing; just extra money for us that could be used in other areas right now.  :)  We actually went to Panera first because, as is the case more often than not lately, Noah was starving.  That kid eats more than me these days and is still only weighs 59lbs at almost 10yrs old!  LOL  Because I'm pretty much gluten free, sandwiches were out for me.  I went with the Chopped Chicken BBQ Salad with a side of potato chips:

This was delicious!  I already used some of the ingredients in this as an idea for dinner.  More on that to follow...I pretty much found everything at Target that I wanted to.  I can't post everything, though, because some of the items are gifts!  Here are the edible goodies I bought:

Anyone know how to rotate photos in blogger?  I don't have WLW at work and can't figure out how to do it!  DOH!!  If you can help leave me a comment, please & thank you!  Jason LOVES the Archer Farms corn & black bean salsa!  I've had to hide those Mounds bars and Fage yogurts from my son...AKA...bottomless pit!

I also managed to stick to my meal plan last week.  Monday was pizza night.  While the fam had some oven ready pizza, I made a pizza for me using Udi's GF pizza crust.  I've never tried it before and really enjoyed it!  My toppings included a (leftover) GF hotdog, spinach and cheddar cheese.  I used salsa as my sauce:

Next time I will cut back on the baking time.  The crust got a little too crisp for me, but that was my fault, not the product. (*note: I bought these Udi's pizza crusts on my own).  Here's a picture I took of the leftovers that I enjoyed for lunch the next day:

Tuesday we had a FREE night!  I took the opportunity to roast a chicken with onions and garlic for dinner.  I also made steamed broccoli & quinoa to go along with it.

That's mango chutney on my plate beside the chicken.  ;)  On Wednesday we were out of town until 7pm.  Knowing this would be the case I made and baked off meatballs Tuesday for subs.  All I had to do when we got home was heat them with tomato sauce, toast the buns and melt the cheese.  The fam had sub buns while I ate mine on a GF burger bun:

Thursday was quick and simple; turkey sausage, brown rice & peas;

The plan was to have chicken stir fry on Friday, but we ended up at Boston Pizza after a bit of Christmas shopping.  I went with a personal Szechuan on GF crust.

I took one bite of this and realized that instead of the Szechuan sauce that's suppose to come with this pizza, it was plain old tomato.  Instead of sending it back and waiting for another pizza, I just had the server bring me a ramekin of the sauce and I put it on myself.  :/  Seeing as I already had the chicken out of the freezer, we enjoyed our stir fry Saturday night!

As you can see, there is some rice spiral pasta on the side there.  I also made sure I got more veg than chicken.  I'll leave the fam to the meat!  LOL  And that's that for my "meals of the week"!  I gotta admit, I can't wait to get some natural light again at dinner time!  All my pictures look so blah.  :(

I don't really have a set plan for this week.  From Sunday to Saturday Noah is on the ice every night but Thursday, so I'm kinda winging it.  I have a loose idea of what I'll be making each day, but don't want to commit to it.  I'll leave you all with a photo of the kids school pics!

Man, they are growing so FAST!!  One last little thing!  I tried to post this yesterday, but Blogger was behaving badly!!

Bye for now!!

A Week of Dinners

Ola!  How was everyone’s week?  I was sidelined with a head cold, but tis the season, right?  I blame it on the office.  Something is wrong with the heating system and the temp didn’t go above 68* all week.  One day when we got in it was 63*!!!  My hands and feet were pretty much ice cubes all week long.  Not fun.  Have you caught “the dreaded” fall cold/flu yet?  At least I found some pumpkin spice coffee to keep me warm!  
The Redbrick Cafe is a family favourite around here.  I went in one day last week looking to buy this coffee and they were sold out!  They did tell me that I could purchase it at a store just around the corner so I hightailed it over there for a bag.  Earlier in the week I made a delicious GF pumpkin muffin recipe.
I find life much easier if I am sure to keep GF “treats’ around the house that I can just grab and run with.  It’s easy to get cranky if I need a little something something and there’s nothing that I’m able to grab a handful of.  These muffins fit the bill perfectly.  Unfortunately (or fortunately) the fam loved them, too so the batch didn’t last very long!  I should note that the only 2 changes I made was to use pumpkin puree, not pumpkin PIE puree and I used almond breeze instead of water. 
My weekly menu plan was successful yet again.  Wednesday was they only night that things were switched up.     Let’s take a look, shall we?  Monday night was Pork tenderloin chilli served over cheesy buckwheat waffles: Waffles can be such a fun base to savoury meals.  Bonus if you have kids because waffles just make dinner that much better!  We topped our waffles off with some avocado hummus:   Tuesday was chicken night.  I didn’t want to BBQ the breasts because we ate our chicken that way all summer.  I garnered my creative juices and decided to stuff’em!  I cut a pocket into the thickest part of the breast and filled it with basil pesto, roasted red pepper strips and cassata cheese, which is an Italian cheese comparable to mozzarella with a bit sharper of a flavour.  I made steamed green beans and red quinoa as sides: This was my favourite meal of the week by far!  Wednesday was suppose to be pasta with sausage Bolognese sauce night, but nobody was feeling like pasta so I made breakfast for dinner.  I toasted the last of the cheesy waffles, scrambled 8 eggs and used the sausage meat to make patties.  These were pretty easy; I just added some spices to the meat and formed small burger shaped patties.  I baked them in a 350* oven for a 1/2 hour.  The kids loved them!  My plate consisted of eggs, GF bread and leftover chicken and green beans: Thursday saw a beef roast in the crock pot.  I added about 1 cup of water and seasoned the roast with garlic and seasoning salt and let it alone for 10 hours on low.  I should mention that the meat was still a bit frozen when I put in or I would’ve only let it go 8  hours.  I steamed some broccoli and made a pot of mac n’ cheese for the fam.  I finished off Tuesday’s quinoa: Noah had an out of town hockey game Friday night so dinner had to be QUICK and on the road.  I baked off 2 Ristorante pizza’s for the fam: And made myself an egg sandwich on rice bread with avocado hummus and cassata cheese: Meal of champions, right there!  Haha!  Another perk to meal planning is that there are leftovers for lunch everyday of the week.  And sometimes for breakfast, too!  I had 2 lonely (sweet) waffles left in the freezer from last Sunday so I toasted them this morning and topped them with some peach preserves and slivered almonds: YUM!  Here’s a shot of the peach preserves, which I bought yesterday on a whim.
 
Summer in my mouth, right there folks!  I’ll leave you with a photo I took of Pepper yesterday.  I seem to be a pro a getting him mid yawn which makes him look SO mean!
I die!  Remember, you can see what’s on the menu this coming week over at my facebook page!
Bye for now!

A Few Gems

I feel like I’ve been gone forever again!  LOL  My blogging “schedule” has certainly become anything but routine.  I just can’t seem to bring myself to sit down with my laptop when the weather’s been so nice!  To be honest, I use to prepare most of my posts from work, but extra responsibilities (which were obviously needed) have prevented me from doing that.  I do have a few things I wanted to update you all on, though.  Like some new (to me) eats!  Last Sunday we made the hour long trip to Whole Foods (and Lululemon) where I picked up a few gems. 
These 365 coconut frozen fruit bars are officially my favourite summer treat!  Not only are they pure coconutty goodness, but they’re chalk full of coconut pulp!  YUMMY!! I know some may dislike pulp, but I dig the texture of it….always have.
I L-O-V-E SOL burgers and these rice & mushrooms patties are no exception.  Jason actually found these and put them in the cart.  A year ago that NEVER would’ve happened!  LOL These Green Cuisine tempeh burgers were also a find at Whole Foods.  I love the texture that tempeh has!  I mostly enjoyed these done up on the BBQ then served on an Ezekiel English muffin with goat gouda, spicy mustard and lettuce. These Gardein Tucson breasts were a HIT with Jason and myself.   I’ve wanted to try Gardein for some time now, but just can’t justify the cost.  When I caught these on sale a few weeks ago, I snatched them up.  I served the “breasts” over a bed of WW couscous for a quick, delicious meal.   Even Jason, who is a total meat & potato kinda of guy, gave them a thumb up.  We’ve really been minding our plates lately.  Lots of fresh fruit (and veg), salmon, meat “alternatives” or poultry (the sausages in the following photos are all turkey sausages), quinoa and couscous perked up with various veggies and cheese.  We’re slowly moving to a “diet” (HATE that word) that is as local and fresh as possible which is SO much easier to do in the summer months.
The beans you see ^^^ there are fresh from my garden.  As in, pick’em, wash’em gently steamed’em, ate’em!
Here’s a look at how my other plants are getting on: Everything is later than usual due to cold, wet weather in May & June, but things are starting to pick up!
We have been enjoying some treats, too!  Noah was at a sleep over last weekend so Jason, Sarah and I tried out a local “hole in the wall” type   Italian restaurant.  I find restaurants that are very unassuming usually have the BEST food and Pauli’s was no exception!  We loved our meal!
Sarah’s Orangina brought me right back to Italy and my roasted onion, goat cheese, prosciutto pizza was to die for!  Jason ordered a chicken parm dish with a side of pasta which he inhaled.  All their sauces, dough’s, pasta, etc are homemade, on site.  The way it should be, right?  ;)
On to some non food goodies!  I wanted to show you a shirt and pair of shoes that I snagged at 50% off this past weekend! LURVE!!!  The shoes are super cute and very comfortable and the shirt is in my fave colour!  SCORE!  And last week Jason and I attended an awards assembly at the school to see Noah receive a HEART award for cross county: Sarah also got a Win It award which is given for having a good attitude.  I think they got the wrong kid.  ;)  LOL  So proud of them both!  
So I think I’ll stop here.  I have a few other fun posts planned and a review coming later this week, so you’ll be seeing me more frequently….I promise!!
Bye for now!!