Chicken Stew & Kalua Pork Manapua

CHICKEN VEGGIES STEW

Had a get together yesterday and someone left us with a bunch of celery...EWWW. I hate to waste food but that isn't something my family goes gaga for so I decided to make stew--Chicken stew

4 sticks of celery (chopped)
2 carrots (chopped)
1 small onion (chopped)
2 small red potatoes (peeled and chopped)
2 boneless chicken breasts
1 can Italian Stewed Tomatoes (chopped)
1/4 cup of barley
1/2 tbs of basil
1/2 tbs of thyme
dash of salt and pepper

1) Filled a medium size pot with half pot of water, turn heat to medium high.
2) Add in celery, carrots, onions, let simmer for 20 minutes.
3) Add in chicken, red potatoes, and stewed tomatoes and its liquid content
4) Add in barly, basil, thyme, salt, and pepper
5) Reduce heat to low, let simmer until barly and chicken are cooked through
6) Pull chicken out, dice or shred
7) Spoon about 2/3 cups of veggies into a food processor and pulse it a few times (this will help thicken the sauce)
8) Place chicken and puree veggies back in pot, simmer on low until ready to eat

Of course, if you want your stew to be even thicker, add in about 3 tbs of cornstarch mix with 1/4 cup water, allow the pot to boil, then reduce heat, and wait until sauce thickens.

I was debating whether i should put some chopped sausages in there as well but I decided to keep it simple for now. I still got sticks of celery leftover so i might do another stew again!

KALUA PORK MANAPUA

I've done quite a few manapuas previously, and I have stressed that what you put inside is totally up to you! I have made kalua pork manapua recently. Just wanted to share the same recipe with you as the pizza one, except of course you replace all the pizza stuff with kalua pork!

Mini Cheese Burger Manapua (bun)

I like to buy bulk or family size ground beef and divide them up into 1 pound portions, put into ziplog bags, flatten them and put them in the freezer (save freezer space and it actually defrost quicker) as I have mentioned here. When it's time to make spaghetti, I would pull one of the bags out the night before and let it defrost in the fridge. After cooking the ground beef with diced garlic, onions, and black pepper, I would use only half of the cooked ground beef for the spaghetti sauce and save the other half for another dish for another day. This time, the other dish was mini cheeseburger Manapua (buns) for a quick grab and go meal for lil P.

Summer fun bentos

7/6: Bakugan ham sandwich


















Lil P is obsessed over bakugan and pokemon. so I figured I'll try to please him. I had to go through his dark room to dig up some bakugan cards to see how they're supposed to look. To my surprised, he knew exactly what they were just by looking at it and thought it was cool, and ate the whole thing...except for the fiber bar that he absolutely needed. And I found wrappers from chocolate which I did not get for him. He said his friend gave him one. sigh.


6/7: Meatball Sandwich of Onix from Pokemon


















I asked lil P if his friends ever look at his bento. he said yes and told me they wanted to see more pokemon. So I asked him to give me suggestions. He immediately went to his pokemon book and showed me some of the characters. Originally it was a green dragon guy and he said he'll be fine eating lettuce (OMG!) but then I decided to make it easier on me by making him a meatball sandwich. Of course I stuck the fiber bar back in this time and told him he MUST eat that before eating any other snacks!

6/8: Spam musubis and kalbi bento

















Lil P said he doesn't need anything special, so i told him musubis. He said he wanted the ones I buy down at the okazuya, he said it's better than the ones I make, hmph! So I told him I think i can master the way they make theirs and I really think I did! The okazuya really just left out the shoyu, they just put sugar on the spam and fried it. At least that's what I did and he said it tasted the same.

Kalbi on the other hand was made the night before. Lil P's absolute favorite dish so I used Susan Yuen's first bento book's recipe. I made too much as Mr. P and I worked out so hard we weren't hungry for a big meal. So I decided to pack some for my sister for lunch at her office and packed some for myself too. :)

6/9: Pizza manaupa

















Yup, this week is mostly per request. Lil P requested to have the pizza manapuas again. So here it is. I decided to not do the cheese topping but egg wash the top instead so it looks shiny like a baked manapua. This time I'm even smarter by mixing carrot puree into the spaghetti sauce so that he could have some veggies along with his favorite food: pizza! You can find how to make it here, on 6/30.