Quick Meal: Loco Moco and Fruit Salad

In a world that is super busy it is easy to ditch the weeknight meals and rely on pre-made dinners or fast food. Unfortunately, for us this is not an option for The Bubs. We are in a constant state of maintaining or attempting to lose weight. The key for us during the week is make sure that our meals are light, healthy and will take on average no longer than 30 minutes to cook up. We tend to be pretty ravenous when we come home from work.

It is difficult at times to make sure that meals don't get redundant and boring. In talking with our friends we hear, "I don't have any time to cook." or "I never know what to make." Our solution is simple: meal planning! Every Sunday morning we sit down and plan our week of meals (this takes us about 30 mins) then go shopping. We often reference cookbooks, online recipe sites, cooking light, or whatever we make up in our heads. Then we write our menu and post it on a white board in the kitchen, this tells what we are having for dinner every night and what our lunch will be.

So in celebration of our simple weekday meals we bring you The Bubs' Quick Meal ideas. This means we will share our weekday meals and weekday tips with you readers in hopes to bring back weeknight meals!

Quick Meal: Loco Moco and Fruit Salad

The Bubs Loco Moco Recipe:
Ingredients:

• 1⁄2 lb Ground Sirlion
• 1⁄2 Small Onion
• 1 Celery Stalk
• 2 T Worcestershire Sauce
• Salt and Pepper
• 2 Eggs
• 2 c Cooked White Rice
• 1 cn Pre Made Beef Gravy

Instructions:
Cook white rice according to package.

Mix ground sirloin, onion, celery, salt, pepper and Worcestershire Sauce. Make 2 Patties.

Fry up patties when the patties are almost cooked fry up eggs to your liking and heat up gravy in microwave.

We arrange our Loco Moco in this order: Rice, Patty, Gravy and Egg on top.

For the Fruit Salad we cut up 3 different types of fruits and mixed them with 1 tablespoon of Honey. There you have a quick fruit salad.

Total Cooking Time: Under 30 Minutes

Clams Casino and Christmas Crabs

This weekend was our 3rd annual Christmas Crabs night. Christmas Crabs night usually consists of us getting seafood from Race Street Fish and Poultry. We eat up some yummy crabs and then decorate our house for the holidays. Except, this year we skipped the Christmas decorating (because we will be moving soon).

As always the crabs were delicious and the Pinot Grigio was paired perfectly! In addition to our tradition we decided that it was time we made our own Clams Casino Recipe. Oh my, they were delicious. If you love seafood and love bacon then you will adore Clams Casino.

Unfortunately, while we were cooking we realized that our stove's bottom element went out. So we had to alter our cooking method just a little bit. Instead of cooking it for 10 minutes we had to used the broiler. Luckily, it was still tasty and wonderful.

The Bubs Clams Casino Recipe:

Ingredients:
* 12 Little Neck Clams
* 4 cloves Garlic, minced
* 1⁄2 c Shallots, minced
* 1⁄2 c Red Bell Pepper, minced
* 3 slices Bacon, raw and minced
* 1 tbsp Bread Crumbs
* 2 c Kosher Salt

Instructions:
Line a cookie sheet with 1/2inch of Kosher Salt. Shuck and clean clams. Place on salted cookie sheet.

Cook bacon and reserve fat, set cooked bacon aside. Sauté remaining vegetable mixture in rendered fat until soften and slightly browned.

In a medium bowl mix together bacon, vegetables and bread crumbs. Salt and Pepper to taste.

Fill each clam shell with mixture (it will likely be about 1/2 tsp. to 1 tsp. per clam).

Cook in oven at 450 degrees for 10 minutes.

Adventures in Tortilla Making

Life seems to be getting back to normal! And with normal for us includes home cooked meals! On Friday night we decided it was time to try making corn tortillas.

A couple months ago we had gone to the San Jose Flea Market and bought a tortilla press. Finally, it was time to break that bad boy out and see it in action.



We found a tutorial online and started making our tortillas. They are super easy and super yummy. I don't know that we will buy corn tortillas ever again. Now, of course our tortillas were not perfect.

We thought they needed to be cooked a lot longer than they did (that's why you follow directions folks). We also ran into the issue that they a bit jon the small side for tacos.

So because they were smaller and a little over cooked, we turned dinner into tostadas.

In the end, it has us super charged to make corn tortillas again. And we encourage anyone who has ever wanted to do them to do it. We invested a little bit of time and made something that taste wise blew the supermarket tortillas out of the water.

~N