Yakisoba translated literally is fried noodles. It’s a very yummy Japanese dish. I have never run across anyone that didn’t love it.

First of all, you can usually find the Sapporo Ichiban “Chow Mein” noodles/sauce mix in the international aisle of many grocery stores across the country. It looks like this:

Or if you’re lucky enough to have an Asian Market that carries Maruchan’s Fresh Yakisoba you can use that as well. It looks like this:

I really like the Maruchan’s noodles the best for consistency. However, the sauce packet is powdery rather than liquid like the Sapporo Ichiban and I find it easier to mix in the liquid sauce base. Both are delicious.

I use 1 pkg per person of the Sapporo Ichiban or two (2) whole packages of the Maruchan Fresh Yakisoba to feed my family of four. This usually leaves us a serving or so for leftovers.

OK on to the recipe:

Yakisoba

pork, beef sirloin or hamburger (the amount will vary based on the number of servings you are making. I use a pound of pork or sirloin or about half pound of ground beef), slice pork or sirloin into stirfry sized strips
1/2 head of regular cabbage (sliced)
handful of bean sprouts
1/2 pkg of matchstick cut carrots (or 2 med. carrots sliced into small thin sticks)
1/2 onion (sliced thin)

1) Brown meat in large skillet or dutch oven, set aside.
2) In same pan, add a smidge of cooking oil and saute veggies until tender, set aside
3) follow directions on your yakisoba package to boil noodles until water is mostly gone. (usually 3 mins, do not overcook noodles or it’ll be mushy)
4) Add sauce packet to noodles and mix in well.
5) Add meat and veggies back to the pan and stir in well
6) Enjoy!!!!

Most instructions tell you to put the meat and veggies in before the sauce packets, but I find it harder to get the sauce to spread evenly in the noodles if you do that. You may like to have more veggies or less than the amounts I use so feel free to play with those to your tastes. Happy eating!

Anywho…go visit, there’s yummy recipes and lord knows, lots of talk about food. Yoshi has the power…the power to make me hungry within 10 sentences. He does it every time I talk to him…it’s a wonder I’m not as big as a house!.

You’ll also notice that my good friend, Mert of Almost Somewhat Positive, is also a contributing writer. She’s such a busy bee in the blogosphere!

I have a billion things I need to do around the house. Hubby spent a good part of yesterday doing stuff around the house while I sat on my butt ripping CDs into my iPod. It hardly seems fair, does it? So, I want to get some stuff done around here today to make myself feel better about it. LOL

I have a squillion few subscriptions to magazines that I enjoy reading. Incidentally, that’s how I knew when I became “old”, I suddenly felt the need to cancel my long standing subscription to Cosmo and replaced it with subscriptions to Redbook, Woman’s Day and Good Housekeeping. The information in those three are far more useful to me now than “20 Billion Ways to Satisfy Your Man”. When the boys in Cosmo start to look like they could be your daughter’s friends, it’s time to step away.

In my new found reading material, there’s a ton of recipes that I want to keep. I haven’t decided how to best organize them, so the magazines are in a giant plastic tub. I really need to figure out what to do, before I have an entire room of plastic tubs with magazines in them. What do y’all do with recipes from magazines? Computer programs? Notebooks? Just order take out every night?

I was not in the mood to cook a complex dinner tonight, so I decided we’d try these frozen Chinese dinners that hubby and I bought at the local Wallyworld. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope that frozen Chinese would be all that great but it looked good on the box. Aren’t those usually some famous last words? I made a pot of rice in my trusty rice cooker. This rice cooker rocks btw!

Each box of the Innovasian Cuisine dinners claims to have 2 servings. We had planned on each trying a little bit of each flavor: Sweet & Sour Chicken w/ Vegetables, Spicy Beef & Broccoli and Orange Chicken Breast. We were a bit skeptical of their serving amounts so I decided to make all three packages in their entirety. Also contributing to this decision was the fact that there isn’t a distinct division between the two servings and the sauce is in one packet.

They give you the option to microwave the meals. I wouldn’t reccommend this option because the breading would turn to mush and meats don’t microwave well IMO. I chose to use the pan fry method. Surprisingly, the food more than exceeded our expectations.

Hubby and I liked the Spicy Beef and Broccoli the best. The sauce is very tasty. The spiciness, it’s a creeper so if you’re not a big fan of spicy foods this may not be the best choice. But wowee, it was good! The Hubby and I were almost happy that my daughter didn’t like the beef. She was grossing out over the broccoli, so that probably hastened her dislike. More for us!

The Sweet & Sour Chicken and Vegetables was REALLY yummy! I was amazed at the crispness of the chicken. I was certain that it would be the mush that leftover Chinese tends to be when you re-heat it. It wasn’t at all and the sauce was really good!

The Orange Chicken Breast. Ditto on the crispness. The sauce was okay but I’ve definately had better. The orange was a little artificial tasting but it was still very good.

As further evidence of it’s authenticity: I got the munchies a couple hours after we were done eating. hehe

We’ll be keeping a stock of these foods and will try the other offerings from Innovasian Cuisine. I wanted to share our experience with you all, and I encourage you to try it! It’s tasty and fast to make!

Surprisingly, this was NOT a paid endorsement. LOL

1 Butter Recipe Yellow cake Mix
1 small can of Cream of Coconut (or about half can of the big ones or more if you like your cake gooey, I sure do!)
Enough water to add to the above cream to make total of 1 1/3 cups of liquidy goo
1 Small package Instant Cream of Coconut Pudding
1 stick butter, melted
3 eggs

Mix all ingredients together in large bowl. Pour into a greased and SUGARED bundt pan and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

The sugar coating on the greased pan gives the outside of the cake a sugary crust that is to DIE for. She forgot to tell me about the sugar when she gave me the recipe, until I complained that for some reason my cake didn’t taste as delish as hers so don’t skip that step! She also made this cake one year for a family reunion and put a whole large can of the cream of coconut in one cake. The middle of the cake “fell” and it was GOOOOEY…it also got gobbled up very fast. I tend to err on the side of putting more goo in, everyone likes goo, right?

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