2 Affordable Recipes using Fresh Garlic

For today's post, I'm going to share two quick, easy and affordable recipes that use fresh garlic.

The First Recipe:

Vegetable Chow Mein

Growing up, my mom made a lot of stir-fry - which I loved as a child, and still to this day. However, Brian isn't as fond of stir-fry as I am (unless it has massive amounts of meat in it). With this in mind, I looked in our fridge and thought "seriously....what am I going to make for dinner tonight." I looked over at Brian and said "hunny, how can we not have anything in the fridge already?" and his response "I don't know". Typical man, but I love him. :)

Okay, so onto the actual recipe.

Ingredients

• 4 cups cooked angel hair pasta or spaghetti pasta noodles (this works best if they are left overs with no seasoning or sauce already on them)
• 1/2 cup soy sauce (personally, Kikkoman is my favorite, but use what ever brand you prefer).
• 1 tbsp corn starch
• 1 tbsp olive oil (or a little more depending on how big your pan/wok is)
• 1 clove fresh garlic, minced
• 3 eggs
• 2 chopped bell peppers (I used one green and one red, and of course, other vegetables can be used as well)

How to do it

1. Heat oil and minced garlic over medium heat
2. Let the garlic and oil do a little dance until the garlic scent really comes through
3. Add 1/4 cup of the soy sauce
4. Let the soy sauce marinate with the garlic and oil
5. Add bell peppers (and/or other vegetables)
6. Cook vegetables for 10-15 minutes, or until they are soft and yield to the stab with a wooden cooking spoon

1. Add noodles and the other 1/4 of soy sauce

1. Push everything in the pan/wok onto the top side, leaving room on the bottom side
2. Crack 3 eggs onto the bottom side of the pan and whisk them together

1. Allow the eggs to scramble until they are almost all cooked (you want them wet, not dry)

1. Combine with noodles and vegetables
2. Turn onto low heat, stirring every so often
3. Serve with some other awesome food and you've got an affordable and quick meal

The Second Recipe:

Homemade Garlic Noodles

This is a pretty simple recipe - using only 5 ingredients.

Ingredients

• Noodles (any type to be honest, I used angel hair pasta since that's what we had) (make as much or as little as you want - I made about 4-5 cups of cooked pasta)
• 1 tbsp Butter
• 1/2 tbsp Olive Oil
• 1-2 cloves Fresh Garlic - chopped (not minced) (1-2 depending on how garlic-y you want them)
• 1/2 tbsp Salt (I used Hawaiian Red Sea Salt because I like the complexity of the flavor, but use whatever you have)

How to do it

1. Boil noodles as if you were cooking noodles normally, strain and return noodles to the pot
2. Combine the butter, oil, salt and chopped garlic with the cooked noodles
3. Stir until everything is blended together well
4. Serve

Reasoning Behind Using Garlic

Honestly, the only reason that I started using garlic recently was because it was something I had sitting on my kitchen counter and I didn't want it to go bad.

I'm not a huge fan of unwrapping garlic because it always feels sticky to me, and the skin always gets stuck to everything...yuck!

Anyways, these recipes are by no means perfect, and things can always be added to them to make them even better - this is just the way that I make them and have found to taste pretty good :)

Loco Moco's - A Classic Hawaiian Dish

Imagine an empty white plate - with nothing on it. Now imagine that you were sitting on the beach in Hawaii with that same white plate, but this time it is filled with food. What food items do you imagine on the plate? Fruit? Something sweet and taste like an island? What about rice, eggs, gravy, and a hamburger patty? Well - today I'm going to show you how to make the perfect loco moco.

Loco Moco's are something that many locals eat - it can be eaten as a breakfast, lunch, or dinner and it is very quick and simple to make.

Ingredients

• Rice (preferably white, but brown works too)
• Hamburger patty (we used a turkey burger)
• 2 eggs per person
• Mango
• Brown Gravy (we used teriyaki sauce cause we didn't have any gravy)

Cook Time

• Preparation: 5 minutes at most
• Cooking: 15-20 minutes depending on your method of cooking the rice

Directions

1. Cook Rice in either a rice cooker or on the stove.
1. You're going to want about 1-2 cups of cooked rice per person depending on how hungry the person is (1 cup uncooked rice yields about 2-3 cups cooked rice)
2. Cook hamburger or turkey burger according to package, or if you're making it from scratch heat on the stove.
3. Make 2 sunnyside up eggs PER PERSON. You want the yolks to be runny.
4. Slice up 1/2 mango for each person. Don't know how to cut a mango? Watch this video to learn how!
5. Heat brown gravy (if using)
6. Place burger onto a plate
7. Put rice onto plate, covering part of the burger
8. Carefully place the two sunnyside up eggs on top of the rice and burger. It's okay if the yolks start to run into the rice and burger (this is a good thing).
9. Pour on desired amount of brown gravy or teriyaki sauce.
10. Place mango onto the side of the plate.
11. Pour your self a glass of mango, guava, or any other sort of islandy juice.
12. Enjoy!

The total cost of this meal was pretty cheap - I buy rice and eggs in bulk and the turkey burgers were $5.70 for 12 burgers (Brian and I only used a total of 2). The gravy or teriyaki sauce were already in my pantry, so I didn't have to buy that and the mango was around $0.67.

Have you ever had a loco moco? If so, what did you think about it? If not, would you try it now? Let me know in the comments below!