Coconut Curry

I really love thai food but had a hard time finding any thai recipes that tasted good when made at home. I finally found a pad thai recipe I loved in the Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. That book is full of all sorts of amazing recipes and I use it all the time. Another gem I found there: coconut curry.

This is a great meal because most the main ingredients come from canned or jarred ingredients (curry paste, coconut milk) meaning I can make it anytime I want. I just throw in whatever veggies are in my fridge, and sometimes chicken if I feel like going all out, and then bang. 30 minutes later I have really awesome curry.

Here's the recipe as The Steamy Kitchen makes it but with my additions and edits also.

Coconut Curry

Ingredients (feeds 4):

• 4 oz thai red curry paste
• 4 cups coconut milk, divided
• 1 TBS fish sauce (I used 1/2 TBS because I think 1 full TBS makes it fishy)
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 fresh kaffir lime leaves, torn (I've never used this)
• 6 oz chicken breast, cut into cubes (I omit this most the time and just make veggie curry)
• One 8 oz can of sliced bamboo shoots (I'll leave this out about 50 percent of the time)
• 1/2 cup red onion, sliced
• 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil (I omit this most the time)
• My addition: whatever veggies I have on hand, lightly steamed
• Veggies included in the above photo: carrots, yam, broccoli, asparagus, small potatoes

Directions:

1. Cook some rice in a rice cooker.
2. Add the curry paste to a medium pot and turn the heat to medium-low. As the pot heats up, the curry paste will begin to fry. release its oils and become fragrant. It's best to keep the heat fairly low as you are doing this - otherwise the curry paste can burn.
3. When the paste is fragrant pour in half of the coconut milk and turn the heat to high. Whisk until the curry paste has dissolved into the coconut milk. Pour in the remaining coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar, and kaffir lime leaves. Bring the curry to a gentle boil and then add the chicken, bamboo shoots, and red onion. Let simmer for 5 minutes to cook the chicken. Once the chicken is cooked add in the other steamed veggies. Turn off the heat and add basil.
4. Serve over steamed rice.

The Side Eye

This just in: the side eye is my new favorite thing of late and I try to use it/drop it into conversation whenever possible.

Urban dictionary defines side eye as, "A facial expression expressing one's criticism, disapproval, animosity, or scorn of varying levels of intensity towards another person. Defined by one person looking at the other out of the corner of their eye(s) with a scowl, as their head is turned in a different direction. Often an invitation for a fight or confrontation of some sort. "

Exhibit A:

Embrace it. Adopt it. Own it. It's the best.

That Baby Shower Weekend

I threw my friend a baby shower over the weekend which is something I love/hate to do. I stress out because Pintrest is the ruiner of all real-life expectations and sets impossible standards. So the planning makes me a bit nutty but then once it all comes together and is beautiful and everyone has a great time -- well that I love. And then I forget how stressful it was and I offer to throw more! more! more! showers.

And then Andrew rolls over and dies from disgust. Poor guy.

Photos for your viewing pleasure. I forgot to take any pictures once it was completely set up because people were arriving so imagine this with the juice cartons off the table and straws in the glasses.

I couldn't find a table cloth big enough so I bought a 16' drop cloth, cut it and painted it with fabric paint.

Those pumpkins were hallowed out and housed minestrone and butternut squash soup. When you don't own proper serving ware you get creative.

The menu {with links}: minestrone soup, butternut squash soup, homemade bread, honey butter, pumpkin bars, and texas sheet cake.

Gnome Sweet Gnome

For awhile there, back before my job became insane, I got a little crafty. And when one is crafty there is nothing to do except make gnome paraphernalia.

 

See, when Andrew and I were just married we went to Color Me Mine and he painted a gnome and I painted a bowl and we named the Gnome Richard and we threw away the bowl when we moved. Richard has been with us ever since. The guardian of our abode, if you will. But Richard was just kind of standing there and people were confused so I decided he needed something to tie his presence to our home.

 

A door mat.

 

So I made a GNOME SWEET GNOME doormat and now all my neighbors ask if I collect gnomes and offer to give me their discarded lawn gnomes. I politely decline.

 

Here's a step-by-step so you can run out and make your own customized doormat. Don't scoff, this is totally catching on.

 

Supplies: 3" Stencils ($4), tape, a doormat ($7-15), spray paint ($5), paper grocery sacks

 

Step 1: Tape your stencils together so the words are nice and neat.

Step 2: Tape the word to your doormat, tape paper around the word so as to prevent excess spray paint/halo effect.

Step 4: Spray the paint thoroughly, keeping the can perpendicular to the stencil. Let it dry for a few minutes and then pull the lettering off.

Step 5: If you are doing repeat words then spray those at the same time. Saves time. See below for an example.

Step 5: Wait a day and do the middle word so the top and bottom word can dry. The next day I used a 4" stencil for the middle word to make the SWEET pop! Then I covered all the mat with paper and sprayed.

 

Then I put it outside my front door and let the neighbors talk about that crazy gnome family. As it should be.

PR... What's that?

This may be really PR nerdy of me but something GREAT happened at my job today and I wanted to share. I get a lot of questions about what exactly I do. I work in public relations and probably 50% of my job is media relations which means that I call/email/stalk reporters and see if they are interested in writing about my client/product/news.

Recently I sent a pitch to SheKnow.com – one of the biggest women’s websites in the world with 18 million readers – to see if they wanted to write about my product, GoToMyPC.

Below is my pitch and the article. Please notice how the author basically used my pitch word for word. That may seem like plagiarism but in the PR world that makes you feel like this:

My Pitch:

Hi Mary,

Blah blah blah, would you like to cover GoToMyPC?

· GoToMyPC- You're in a VC funding meeting and you realize you've forgotten your presentation. It's on your home PC, not your laptop. Holy crap. What do you do now? If you're a smart entrepreneur, you use GoToMyPC and instantly access any application or file on your Mac or PC from your iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire and Android device.

The Article (link):

Thrilled.

Belize

A month ago Andrew and I went to Caye Ambergris, Belize and I thought it was about time to document our trip. Ever since our camera was stolen I have been a horrible photographer and I curse that thief on the reg. So, not as many photos as I would like, but enough to remember that we were there.

A few fun facts about Belize/Caye Ambergris.

• It's in the Caribbean so it is gorgeous. Blue waters, hot hot heat, humidity, very tropical. You know, paradise kind of stuff.
• Everyone is Belize speaks English (it is the national language) and then Spanish and Creole is also spoken by some.
• Belize is super cheap and everyone takes US dollars! 2 Belizian dollars = 1 US dollar. Score.
• Belize, to me, had the feel of a third-world New Orleans. Just like in the south the people are friendly, the food is AMAZING (we were there for lobster season and I had a two pound lobster, two nights in a row for $30 USD! A trip highlight for me.), and everything is pretty chill.

We were there 5 days. The first two days were gorgeous and we walked around the town, swam a bit, and went to a Mayan Ruins (pics below). Then the rain came. I'm talking a monsoon. 40 MPH winds, 8 inches of rain in 48 hours, docks blown over kind of storm. It was pretty cool to watch but kind of a bummer on our beach vacation. Our last day there it cleared up enough for us to scuba dive (the reason we went in the first place). 

Scuba diving was amazing. I jumped in and below me was about 15 huge nurse sharks! I freaked out even though we were forewarned that they were there and very friendly. The dive master kept telling me to decend but I refused until Andrew got in the water too so we could go down together. I wasn't going into shark infested waters by myself. The nurse sharks followed us around like dogs as we swam through the reefs. It was kind of eerie but really cool. Another trip highlight.

Day 1: taking the water taxi to the island. 

The view from our hotel room at Corona Del Mar.

Day 2: Back to the mainland for a boat ride into the jungle to visit some Mayan ruins.

Lamani.

On top of another ruin, whose name I forget.

 Day 3: A storm is a brewing.

Day 5: The island clearing up a bit after the storm.

Enjoying a nice chocolate milkshake.

The one and only shot of me and my boo. Glad the picture turned out so nice. It would be sad if the only photo we got together was fuzzy and grainy and whatnot.

One a scale of 1 to 10 - if you're poor(ish) and looking for a tropical paradise vacation getaway, Belize is awesome and totally recommended. Just maybe avoid the rainy season (June - November).

It's a Girl! Baby Shower

My sister-in-law, Saki, is having a baby girl in a month so on Sunday we threw her a shower. Little baby girl Tera is coming so of course we had to give her a proper welcoming party. Have you ever seen the blog Oh Happy Day? Well it is my downfall because it made me want to throw a pinterest-worthy DIY shower which took TONS of work but it was a lot of fun.

With a little help from Martha and her great Japanese lantern collection and some streamers, the place looked like the pink Carebear threw up on it. Exactly as I had hoped.

My mom and Saki are very crafty. They made these lids for the mason jars. We served raspberry Italian sodas in them with pink paper straws... can you tell the theme was pink?

This was for the game. We played baby relay where you get in teams of four and do a sippy cup chug, baby food eating contest, binkie spitting contest, and a adult diaper fashion show. It was hysterical - especially when my mom starting chanting "chug, chug, chug!" causing her teammate laugh and snort all her water.

 And then there was so much food. My uncle is a chef and teaches at a culinary school. I got to go cook with him at the school for hours to make all the amazing food. I loved that part.

    

One month and counting then I'll be an aunt of 5!