Erica & Wes' adventures in ramen noodles.

Home creation: beef flavored instant noodles with dried seaweed, topped with a fried egg and crispy onions.

When Wes & I went to Sydney, my cousin, Kent, suggested that we go to a local ramen house. "Ramen," I asked, "those cheap noodles you get at the Asian grocery store for 0.79 dollars a bag?" (I obviously knew nothing about ramen noodles.) One night during our stay, Wes & I walked to Ippudo. (http://www.ippudo.com.au/) It was a small restaurant inside of the mall and extremely packed with hungry customers. The entire staff (dressed in traditional attire) shouted greetings and thank you's in Japanese as each guest entered and left. The menu was both foreign and adventurous, two of my favorite things when trying new foods. Our dinner was good but I wasn't instantly hooked.

Our meal from Ippudo.

Fast forward two years and there are now two ramen houses -that I know of- in Oklahoma City. I've eaten at them both and enjoyed thoroughly the food (Sydney planted the seeds and it just took me a while to come around). I decided to make some of our own ramen concoctions at home. Wes has made "fancy ramen" before and was on board with the idea. Here are some of the bowls we've come up with. (To all you foodies out there...pretty pretty please don't get offended... this isn't claiming to be as good as the traditional ramen served in the noodle houses. It's definitely an easy DIY imitation using instant noodles and creative pairing of ingredients.)

Instant imitation ramen noodle recipe-

       Ingredients needed: instant ramen and whatever you want to mix into it. Simple enough, yeah?

1. If you're using meat, make sure it is pre-cooked. We used leftover protein from the previous night's dinner.

2. Prepare ramen noodles according to instructions on package.

3. When the water is boiling, add in meat & vegetables along with the noodles & spice packet.

4. Add toppings and serve.

Here are some delicious ideas:

Chicken with edamame and eggplant, topped with cilantro.

Duck and zucchini, topped with cilantro and crispy fried onions (not pictured). I put the zucchini in last so it didn't get too soggy.

Shrimp with mushrooms and edamame, topped with sesame seeds. This was my least favorite combination. I don't think the shrimp worked very well.

The possibilities are endless (as long as you're willing to break tradition)! It's a quick and cheap meal. It's also relatively healthy, the only bad part is the sodium content in the spice packet. And it's fun getting to be creative with what you want to add in. We bought a twelve pack of instant ramen for $7 and had cheap, healthy and fun dinners for a month! 

Sadie & Athena are getting treats!

Athena loves to cuddle with Sadie. She hasn't realized that she's gotten a lot bigger than Sadie so the dog stacking doesn't quite work out sometimes. Sadie usually just gets frustrated and retreats to the pet bed after a while.

This will be another feel-good blog with plenty of dog pictures. Because life is too stressful without puppies. Am I right? Speaking of stressful, I still haven't registered RagsReborn with the Secretary of State nor gotten a tax ID, yet.  Ugh. I have at least started my research on the topics. Someday soon I will blog about my legal journey and offer any advice I may have learned. Anyway...
       I have two very spoiled pups- Sadie and Athena...you know them as the stars of my Instagram and they have been featured on my blog several times over. They're adorable and precious so they deserve all the attention. I have decided that I needed to bake them some dog treats on this Sunday afternoon. I bake plenty of cookies for myself and Wes so it's time that I whip up something for the dogs.

       Many years ago, I threw my first dog, Kensington, a birthday party. I lived Downtown and I invited a few of my friends and their dogs to all go to the dog park at the Myriad Gardens. For party snacks, I made homemade dog treats. (from a recipe I found online, most likely from a blog... I get everything from blogs nowadays.)
       A few summers ago, we had a BBQ at my mom's for Kensington and Sadie's joint birthdays. I made the same treats. The dogs love them and they're easy to make. I think it's just chicken broth, oats and peanut butter. They're also gluten free, grain free and all natural with no filler and all that other good stuff that you're supposed to check for when buying dog food. (I swear my dogs eat better than Wes & I do sometimes.)

Homemade dog treats!

#tbt to Kensington's party at the dog park with Cindye, Ninja & Wiggles. They are all waiting on treats. A friend of mine made Kensington a party hat but it must have fallen off. 

Kensington & Sadie's birthday. We are playing catch with the Frisbee and then someone thought it would be hilarious to have Kensington wear the Frisbee as a tutu. He didn't mind.

My vet sends out quarterly pet heath magazines to all of his clients. I think it's call Vet Street or something like that.  There's a pet photo contest in each magazine and I keep meaning to submit pictures...I'll get on that next quarter! The magazine is a pretty interesting read and this last quarter's included a recipe for dog treats. Perfect timing since I was looking for a new recipe! I had already made the other one twice and wanted something different. The recipe that was in the magazine was a bit plain (it was literally two steps... mash together a banana & a cooked sweet potato, then bake). I thought it might be fun to combine recipes. The first one that I have been making is a savory dog treat and the new one in the magazine is a sweet dog treat. Sweet and savory combinations work with human food so why not in dog food?

Homemade Dog Treat Recipe;

      Ingredients- 1 large banana, 1 large sweet potato, 1 cup of oats & 1/2 cup of chicken broth (I don't have any at the apartment so I'll be mixing chicken bouillon into a boiling water to make chicken broth)

1. Cut the sweet potato into chunks and boil until soft. (like really soft... nice and mushy!) 

Remove from heat, drain and peel. If you're like me and find yourself without chicken broth, now would be a good time to make some using the leftover water used to boil the sweet potato. Because sweet potato flavored chicken broth sounds so yummy if you're a dog! 

       To make chicken broth, add 1/2 teaspoon of chicken bouillon powder to 1/2 cup of boiling water. Mix until dissolved. Set aside. 

2. Cut the banana into slices and mash into the sweet potato.

3. Add the oats and chicken broth to the fruit mixture. Mix well. Warning: this will smell disgusting. 

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Shape the dough into cookies, bones, squares or whatever treat shape you want. I went with round cookies because I'm not feeling too creative today. I made mine a little big so Athena would have to chew them. They're also chewy because of the sweet potato & banana. So no just swallowing it whole!!

       Athena doesn't like chewing... if something is small enough for her to swallow, she will. She almost swallowed a Greenie treat whole (and those things are long and shaped like toothbrushes!). She's swallowed entire dog treats and she inhales her kibble. The only thing we can get her to actually chew up is rawhide treats.

       The dogs were waiting patiently for their treats .They're not allowed in the kitchen so they had to sit longingly in the living room. Sadie was still resting but Athena perked up when she started to smell the treats baking.

5. Place on a non-stick baking sheet or parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake for roughly 45 minutes. Let cool, then serve. These only last a few days so have your pups gobble them up before they perish! 

Wes is cooking again...

...and he's making chili. Last week's blog was a bit long so we'll keep this one short. I am also photographing and blogging and sorta helping in the kitchen as Wes cooks & dictates instructions to me (I'm a multitasking extraordinaire over here!) so I don't have much time for storytelling anyway. Wes is quick in the kitchen so this is just a little difficult. Hopefully, I won't leave out any steps. He's my proof reader anyway, so if I leave something out, I'm sure he'll add it back in. Enjoy!

--By the way... my husband's best dish is his slow cooker chili. So.effing.YUMMY. We haven't entered any competitions but if we did, I'm almost certain we'd place. We use the same basics each time: meat, tomatoes, chili powder but we also like to mix it up and do something a little different each time. This combination of meats and vegetables made for an amazing recipe. Its the middle of summer but, what the hey, let's go ahead and make some chili anyway! (Remind me to not get into children's poem or book writing.)--

Wes' Chili recipe-
       Ingredients needed:

• 3 stalks of celery
• 6 small peppers (You can use any combination of any type of pepper you want--all hot or all mild or a mix of the two. We are using banana peppers from our garden. They are a medium mild pepper.)
• 1 pound of ground beef (I was going to type 'tube' because that's what it comes in but Wes made me change it to pound.)
• 9 ounces of beef chorizo (which also comes in a tube)
• 1 16 ounce can of diced potatoes (We used the canned potatoes with jalapenos because we're using milder banana peppers.)
• 2 10 ounce cans of diced tomatoes with lime juice and cilantro (You must get the cilantro lime tomaotes...the other ones aren't as good!)
• 1 tablespoon green onions (because neither of us like traditional onions)
• A tiny "little bit" of garlic (Wes' measurement)
• Wes says he never measures the amount of chili powder he puts in there... let's just say a 4 tablespoons of dark chili powder & 2 tablespoons of regular chili powder

1. Remove the seeds from the peppers and dice them. Then dice the celery.

The man moves too quickly so I only got a picture of the peppers. The celery wasn't diced too small. I would say about pieces a quarter inch thick.

2. Put the diced vegetables in the crock pot along with the garlic and green onions. Also, add the potatoes. It doesn't matter what order you add them in since we'll be stirring them together at the end anyway.

3. Put both meats in a pan and brown them together. Make sure they are mixed up really well. (Check out my action shots!!)

4. Put both cooked meats atop the veggies in the crock pot.

5. Add tomatoes and chili powder. 

Cilantro lime tomatoes only!! I am obsessed with cilantro!!

6. Stir thoroughly to make sure everything is combined.

7. Cook on high for 3 hours. 

       I have no nutritional or serving size/amount for this recipe. I can tell you its pretty spicy, not gluten free and not vegan. We usually have a bowl each for dinner and then there's enough left over for us to do leftovers for lunch the next day. It keeps in the fridge for a few days and you can reheat it in the microwave or on the stove top. 

       Since taking a picture of a slow cooker sitting there for three hours is boring, here is a picture of Wes & Sadie resting after our hard work.