Hot and Sour Soup

Let’s get one thing straight.  I am no cook.  I will nevereverever turn this into anything even close to a foodie blog.  My diy stops at mixing paint, not ingredients.  Maybe I’ll share a recipe or two that I’ve found somewhere that’s really good and always easy but I’ll never be showing off my cooking skills because, well, they are nonexistent.  The hubs on the other hand, he’s another story. 

So, with that out of the way, I recently found a recipe to the best soup ever in the history of soup.  Hot and sour courtesy of those culinary geniuses, the Chinese.  Hot and sour soup is my fave soup ever and quite possibly my fave food.  A little hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in Steubenville, Ohio (miss you Hong Kong…tear) makes thee best h & s I’ve ever, ever had and down here in Mobile, well the Chinese have yet to get it right.  But, whilst in the mood for it the other night, I invoked pinterest and found a recipe that looked pretty easy and pretty good.

Ready for it? 

Here ‘tis.  Click for it.

I made a couple of tweaks to the recipe however - instead of the fresh gingerroot, I added a 1/2 tsp. of ground ginger, I skipped the scallions because I forgot to grab some, I used black pepper instead of white (Google told me the only real difference is looks), and I added a tid bit of extra soy sauce to my bowl de jour before I downed it.  I might also mention that letting the soup sit for an hour after cooking is better than eating it right away.  That way, the flavors mingle and soak into each other and ohhhh, it’s so much better.  This recipe doesn’t make the ‘hottest’ hot and sour so to add a little more kick you might want to add some hot pepper oil or flakes or something of the sort.

Update:  I was wrong-o about the no-difference between black and white pepper.  As it turns out, a wise commenter informed me that – “The heat actually comes from the white pepper. Give it a try, it is really different than black pepper and believed to have many curative properties. Sometimes you can find small pre-filled grinders of white pepper in the spice section. It "makes" the soup.” 

Here are the Chinese ingredients I used:
 
I found all of them in the “International Foods” section in our grocery store.

Here’s what my hot and sour looked like right before I inhaled it:

So good.  So very good.  It was gone in a day and a half because I had it for dinner the day I made it, and lunch and dinner the day after.  I’ll be making it again in less than 24 hours only to have it gone just as quick.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

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P to the S…Lily told me that she’s positive hot and sour soup helped labor commence for both of her boys so if you be of child-bearing age, take note.  I know what I’ll be drinking in t-minus six months.  :)

What I Wore Sunday – Got the Blues

I found this blue maxi skirt at Dirt Cheap this past fall and couldn’t resist shelling out the $5 needed to bring it home with me.  The only issue, easily resolved, was that it was an XXL.

  Well, my trusty sewing machine and I finally got down to work on it a couple of weeks ago.

I had two options of shrinking this baby down.  One was taking a few inches off one side which might’ve made it a little too tight and hard to walk in and we all know what happens, or could happen, to a mother of multiples wearing a long skirt she can’t walk in while carrying those tots.  Get the picture?  Yeah, it’s not pretty. 

Instead, I simply cut off the existing elastic band, fabric and all, pinned and sewed a new hem, threaded the old elastic through the new hem, sewed the ends of the elastic together, and stitched up the remaining hole in the hem like so:
 
[Ummm, sorry about the awry finger…totally not intended.]

So, the skirt is exactly the same width only a little more gathered than it’s XXL prequel. 

Here’s how I wore it to mass:

Cardi:  Old Navy, old
Tank:  Walmart
Maxi:  Dirt Cheap (Target by Mossimo)
Belt:  Vanity
Linking this one up with Fine Linen and Purple, as usual!

And, I’m usually not one of those moms (which is totally cool, just not me), but I squeezed the girls into these dresses-now-shirts one last time so we could have one of those matching moments.
 
First time and probably last time but it sure was fun.

Oh, and little did I know the maxi skirt club was meeting tonight so I got a friend to snap a little pic of that gathering.
 
It’s Lindsey, mwah, S, and Emily…eight sets of legs with only one set to be seen.

 

So that’s that.  In case you’re wondering, here’s the progress of the dresser drawers:
 
They’d be done if it weren’t for a slight mishap involving a magazine page and the wind (second drawer from the bottom).  There’ll be a little buffing and one more coat of the best spray paint I’ve ever used and then it’s up and at ‘em for all to see!  I can’t wait!

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In other news, we got to see the bean in the oven via ultrasound this week.  A cutie already and if I could guess by how fast it looked like it’s heart was beating, I’d say another girl is present but we’ll see!  The old wives tales of heart beats hold no water in science but it’s fun to think they do, right?  It’s also fun to imagine who he/she will look more like, Cecilia or Seraphia, or maybe neither. 
Also, do you like hot and sour soup?  It’s my fave and I finally found and tried a recipe this week and it turned out awesome!  I will be sharing with you fellow Chinese eaters!  Also, I have all the details on how to paint images onto clothes using freezer paper!  That’s how we got the numbers onto our onsies/tees for #3’s announcement.  Fun stuff!  And last, I’m so thankful we’re expecting but so bummed that the impending bump will keep me from getting into this swimsuit this summer that I recently found:
 
How cute is it?!  I’m obsessed and determined to snatch it up at year end for next year!

Have a great week everybody!  I'll be back before week’s end for more so I hope you will be too!

Going .com

Goodbye .blogspot.com and hello plain ‘ole .com!  If I’m going to do this whole blogging thing, I’m really going to do it and for one thing that means going dot com.  In my mind, it makes our little blog here a little more official and makes us/me a little more motivated to keep it updated on the regular.

I’ve been researching a teeninsy bit about going .com for a few months now and everything I’d start reading about doing so made me a little nervous about taking the step because it all seemed way beyond my web knowledge.  Well, then I found this little sweet spot of info from Spice Up Your Blog.  What’s awesome is that they included a little video in the post they wrote on going .com with Blogger that walks you through the super-simple process.  After going step-by-step with the video, we were up and running in 15 minutes and all I had to do was click a few buttons.  It’ll cost us $10 a year to have our own domain which is just perfect for this cheapo and her fam. 

If you’re blogging with a platform other than Blogger or if the domain name you want is already taken, this tutorial unfortunately won’t work for you.  Sorry.  We originally wanted to go with beaninlove.com but somebody’s got it and it would’ve cost us at least $60 to get GoDaddy.com to research who and possibly obtain it for us.  No thanks.  Adding “blog” to the end of our domain didn’t bother us a bit even though Blogger was kind enough to offer these options:
 
Well gee thanks but I’ll leave legumes for the next bean and I’d rather dance with love than hate so beaninloveblog.com is just peachy.

Anyway, I had planned on revealing the freshly painted nursery dresser to y’all today but it’s not quite done.  It is painted but, after a few minor happenings, needs a little buffing and one more coat.  I’ll have it and a little tutorial on it up this week, promise.  Hope to see you then! 

I Slit A Sheet

Three sheets I slit.  Three common sheets I slit. 

And that’s how curtains became a part of our bedroom oasis.  I cut three twin sheets in half, cut them to the length I needed them, hemmed all cut sides, and hung them.  And, it only cost me $15. 

When we moved in to this house, I was dying to get our master bedroom together and in some semblance of “our space”.  So, after slapping up some paint (BM’s Heaven on Earth color-matched to Olympic low-VOC paint), moving in furniture, and making the bed, one of the first things we did was hang some curtains.  On a free whim, I used what we had which was one pair of extra-wide toile curtains from IKEA.  I cut each panel into thirds (we have three windows in our room) and we hung them on some cheap curtain rods we got from Big Lots.  I think the rods were $5 each or something like that.  Cheap.  Well, the rods were great and did the job but the curtains were a little to sparse…scratch that, they were just plain ugly:
 
Looking back makes me cringe…do you ever have those what-the-heck-was-I-thinking decorating moments?  Lesson:  Free decorating is not always better.

So, months later after I came to my decorating senses, I snatched up three flat twin sheets (Target brand) from Dirt Cheap for $5 each, slit ‘em and hung ‘em a little higher, and the room magically looked 100 times better. 

Sometimes I wish I would’ve spent an extra few dollars and bumped up to queen-size for thicker curtains but for now, we’ll just continue rolling with the twin theme. 

We have even bigger plans on the back-burner including a curvy, padded headboard, new pillow covers all around, a transformation of the existing bed skirt, a diyed slipcover for the raspberry elephant in the room, some chunky lamps (currently on the thrifting hunt), raising, painting, and spicing up (think mirrors!!) the existing nightstands, a coffee table turned bench for the foot of the bed (said coffee table is currently in hiding underneath the bed), some picture hanging, and whatever else pops into the dome piece by then.  Like I said, all of this is on the back-burner and all of it will be on the very cheap, per the usual.  The padded headboard WILL be done before #3 gets here so this mom has a comfy place to rest her back during those middle-of-the-night feedings?  The rest though?  Who knows.  Eventually.  :)

What I (We) Wore Sunday – On Repeat

It’s another outfit post…look out.  I’m still not sure what’s so fun about taking pictures of what I’m wearing and posting them for the world to see.  But, it is.  Maybe it’s the success of finding something “new” to wear from old clothes.  I don’t know.  I usually try to include an alteration but my alteration of the week is in the laundry.  It’s a maxi skirt and it’ll be coming your way next week.  Wait for it…wait for it…

So back to the outfit selfies.  I love Fine Linen and Purple’s What I Wore Sunday link-up because it’s all about dressing up for the Big Man.  Growing up we always dressed up for Sunday Mass (a rule in our house) and, while I know God doesn’t really care about what you’re wearing (unless it’s inappropriate in which case I think He does care because He loves you and wants you to respect yourself – whole ‘nother convo, whole ‘nother day), it’s important to me to forgo the norm yoga pants/t-shirt combo and put a little pep in my normal mundane step for Him.  Soooo, back to business.

Here’s what I wore yesterday:
  
What?  It’s the same thing as the last WIWS post?  Pshaw.
If you wanna know but you probably don’t:
Top:  Thrifted (altered)
Sweater/Cardi:  Callie’s Closet (as in, my friend Callie was purging and gave me two bags full of clothes and this was in one of ‘em)
Skinnies:  Tarjay
Pointy Toes:  Famous Footwear (I think?)  from back in my college days

And, BONUS!  I roped in a couple of my cutest-ever homies to participate.  I don’t think they fully knew what they were getting themselves into but look, here they are:

We’ll call them Linda and Bessie…I’ll keep they’re real names secret in case any stalkers emerge cause they’re that cute.

Lindsey (left)…I mean, Linda… -  her cardi is from AT Loft, her tank from Old Navy and very old therefore very short and in which case her skirt from Target pulled up high came to the rescue (so smart that girl).  You would never know!  All is bottomed-off with super-stylin Lucky shoes from Belk.

And Blakely (right)…uh, Bessie…is totally hobo-chic in her cardi from Anthropologie, top from Academy, BCBG skirt from Dilliards, and Converses covering up some super-cool wool socks that I can’t even remember the name of but which remind me that I need to ask her why the heck she was wearing wool socks when it was 1000 degrees outside.  Also, can you believe this is her second outfit?  She spilled something or other on the first and so put this together quick.  My second outfit is usually on because a spit-up incident and is always way not-cute because I don’t have the motivation to try again…

Envious?  You know you are.  I wish I could throw on outfits half that good.    Teach me your ways girls, teach me your ways.

Oh look!  It’s the three of us:

(Something’s off about this pic but I can’t quite put my shoe on it…….)

Per the usual, I’m linking the three of us up at Fine Linen and Purple.

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P to the S – Did you notice we’re a for real .COM now?  We are!  -beaninloveblog.com-  Super, super easy process.  I’ll spill the deets on that diy later this week!