ALOHA SHOYU, WHAT?!

TRY LOOK'UM!!!

Better than Dave Mann saying my bar napkin pencil doodle is cool, ALOHA SHOYU posted my easy fried rice recipe on Facebook. Yeah, it was back in 2014 but I'm a little late to the whole social media thing (just joined the evil FB a year ago). 

Just thought I would share (or brag)! CHEEEEEEEEEEE

SHOYU CHICKEN RECIPE

This is my shoyu chicken recipe, shown here served over white rice with kim chee. As of today I ate 3 bowls of this. 

Ingredients

3-4 pounds of chicken (you can substitute with thighs, drumsticks or even breast meat)

• 2 cups shoyu (soy sauce, I like Aloha Shoyu for this)
• 1-1/2 cups brown or regular sugar 
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar (apple cider vinegar works too)
• 1/2 cup green onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 tablespoons ginger, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Place all of the ingredients in crock pot, cover and cook on HIGH for 5 hours or LOW for 6-7 hours. Makes 4 or 5 solid servings. I basically put as much chicken as I can into the crock pot, long as most of it is touching the sauce. Half way through or so, take the cover off and mix it up.

I also add a half a chopped onion if its sitting around. Also note that the temperature of your crock pot may vary, so the chicken is ready when its soft and is just about ready to fall off the bone. 

I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU

Aaah, fried rice. I love making fried rice out of left overs.
So for today, please taken a listen to this soundtrack while reading this:
Anyone can make fried rice. Why go for drive thru or that eat that frozen burrito again? Just any left over veggies and meat will make something killer.

Captivating.

It came to be using 3 cloves of garlic, left over spam, less than half an onion and some kale I had frozen in a ziplock. And day old (or frozen) rice of course.

Very easy steps.

1. Heat up wok, medium high. 
2. A little vegetable oil. 
3. Toss in spam cut into small cubes, slightly brown edges. 
4. Put in minced garlic and diced onions. 
5. Soon as you see onions start browning a little, put in chopped kale. 
6. Pour in shoyu. 
7. Add pepper. 
8. I always like to go super high heat at the end. 
9. Serve! 

If you got a couple eggs, scramble them until they're about 3/4 of the way done and add them in right before step #8.

ANOTHER ACAI UPDATE

I keep adding more and more ingredients to get my acai bowls right. Good thing is, you can keep all the fruits in the freezer with the acai packs.

As you can see here, I use the following frozen items: Red Grapes, a few ice cubes, a few Mango pieces, half a Banana, Blueberries. Then from the fridge, I add Flax Seed, a splash of Coconut Water and Coconut Milk. All this makes 2 big bowls. Use as little liquid as you can, or add to get the consistency you want.

I've also been adding a small handful of Unsalted Roasted Peanuts in there, to give it a peanut-buttery flavor. I think its much better than using actual peanut butter. Topped with Hemp Granola. A few years ago I would've pointed and said "fuck that hippie shit!" but I'm in fucking LOVE with it now.

AÇAI BOWL REVISITED

It seemed like a while ago when I first posted about making an easy acai bowl. It seems like a while for me at least because my shit has evolved.

I started adding various things, depending on what I have available. Maybe half a frozen banana, little less frozen grapes, some frozen mango chunks, and if I want it tasting nutty I add some almonds or peanuts. Still blending with coconut water.

I like topping it with maple pecan granola.

TERI BEEF SANDWICH WAS SO FUCKING GOOD

•Left over steak (any meat will do)
•Slice up thin

•Grease up pan, fry it up
•Pour lots of teriyaki sauce all over

•mayo on King's Hawaiian roll
•pile on teri beef
•drizzle with Sriracha

STEP BACK! MY FRIED RICE GOING BROKE DA MOUT!

Yup, I said step back. Think I just upped the bar on fried rice. Juuuuust the right amount of basic ingredients can make left overs into a breakfast delight. Seriously, this one turned out super frickin' good.

I used the following:

• Left Over Brown Rice
• Half Can Spam
• 2 Super Fresh Eggs
• 1/4 White Onion
• Handful of Whole Beans
• Shredded Carrots
• Kamaboko (fish cake, for you mainlanders)
• Couple Cloves of Garlic  
• Aloha Shoyu
• Vegetable Oil
• Unknown Chinese Fried Rice Flavor Packet (optional)
• Black Pepper
• Couple dashes of Worcestershire

This is not a actual recipe, no ways - just some simple, basic guidelines if you want to make your own fried rice.

I always just eyeball the ingredients with whatever amount of left overs I happen to have to work with. Key things are to use high heat; preheat that wok, make it super hot. Fry up the spam first, or whatever meat you're using. Then add onions. Then veggies. Add shoyu.

Add rice.  Fry! Add a little more shoyu.

Scramble the eggs on the side, leave it half cooked.

Use as little oil as possible for the fried rice, keep it fluffy by constantly scooping and turning it in the hot ass wok. Add the optional fried rice flavoring packet now.

Add the eggs last.

GRIND!

BOWL OF AÇAI

Oooooh shit, look at the title of this post. I got the little squiggly line on the C and everything! I'm not here to talk about that though.

One of my favorite breakfasts/snacks right now is a sweet bowl of acai. After having them at local smoothie shops, I had to figure out how to make my own. I checked out a video online and started making this easy concoction.

First, I start with Coconut Water, Frozen Seedless Red Grapes and a pack of Frozen Acai

I get this at Whole Foods, a tip from Sensei Kevin. It's $8 for a pack of 4. I use one pack per bowl. Get the sugar free one, the grapes are sweet enough as it is.

I throw it all into a high torque Vitamix blender. I like tossing in 2 or 3 pieces of Frozen Banana Slices and 3 ice cubes too. 

I use about a half cup of Coconut Water. The more grapes you use, the bigger the bowl will get. I use about a full cup of grapes, sometimes more if I'm sharing.

Then blend it all. I like to top it with granola of course. Good granola is important!

• 1 Brick of Frozen Acai (unsweetened)
• Half Cup of Coconut Water (unsweetened) 
• Full Cup of Frozen Seedless Grapes
• 3 Slices of Frozen Banana
• 3 Ice Cubes
• Top with Granola!

Notes:
*Add more Coconut Water to turn it into a smoothie
*If your blender sucks, you might be in trouble
*Yes, you can top it with fresh banana slices too but I didn't have any 
*That pineapple in the background is for dessert later on tonight, fool!

QUICK SAUCY PORK CHOPS

Put frozen pork chops into a pan. Add whatever veggies you have. This time, Sasha happen to have some greens:

Next, add some sauce! You could add a number of different sauces at this point, but I like this one:

Then it'll look like this. Let it simmer for a bit:

Then serve it over rice. Extra sauce on the rice please!

Mahalo nui to Sasha every day!

BAKED KALE CHIPS

Super easy and tasty.
Much better for you than eating gas station potato chips.

3 Ingredients:

1 Bunch of Kale
1 Olive Oil
1 Seasoning (just salt or something like Lawry's is good)

Tear kale off of the stalks.
Put them into a bowl.
Put a little olive oil over it. Not too much.
Mix it in the bowl.

Put the kale onto a baking sheet.
Sprinkle your seasoning.

Leave it in the oven for 15 to 20 min on 350 degrees.
Take it out of the oven when they're all perfectly crispy but don't burn them!

















Then lastly, steal a photo of the final product off the internet because it was consumed by your friends so quickly you didn't get to take a photo.

Trust me, try this one. You will trip.

HEY! MAKE HUMMUS!

Buy super blender!

Use their recipe book!

Mix!

Get some left over tofu, tahini sauce, hummus, maybe some cheese, and wrap it in lavosh bread! or dip with pita chips, whatever!

Winner, winner! quick snack or dinner!

BUY SUPER BLENDER

Get roasted peanuts, lightly salted.

Add to blender, nothing else.

Make your own peanut butter!

REFINING MY SMOOTHIENATOR

I had reported about a month ago on a smoothie I like to make after work outs or to replace meals when I'm on-the-go.

I keep adding/subtracting to the list to make the smoothie healthier but still super tasty so I don't gotta force myself to chug it down. This is where I'm pretty consistently at now:

Ingredients:

• Half to Whole Frozen Banana 
• 8 to 10 Ice Cubes 
• 1 Handful of Unsalted Peanuts (Walnuts and/or Almonds too)
• 1 Scoop of Plain Non-Fat Yogurt 
• Half Cup or more of Coconut Water and/or Milk
• 1 Scoop/20grams of Whey Protein (I use caramel/chocolate flavored)
• Half to Full Cup of Frozen KALE (no stalks)

Then BLEND!

If you think kale is making your smoothie taste funny, add a small spoonful of honey. Kale is going to make your smoothie look green but fuck it, you can't eat enough kale.

We also purchased a Vitamix since my first smoothie post and the shit is like the stroker motor of blenders.

OH SO DIRTY DIRTY

Some dinners can be very easy, especially if your other half is doing the cooking.

So mix in some ground beef

Get this dirty rice mix box

Put it all into a rice cooker and maybe throw in some left over corn.

Voila! you have dirty, dirty rice.

WHAT TO DO WITH TIRED OLD PORK CHOPS ON A LAZY HAZY SATURDAY

These pork chops did not start out old and tired. In fact, they were much better than your average pork chop, considering it came from Future Farmers of America at Buena Park High School. They raise some swine there and Sasha picked up some cuts for us.

The pork chops were marinated in shoyu, Worcestershire and I forget what else. They were a fucking excellent meal a couple of night ago. 

Couple of days later, the left overs are sitting in the fridge. Lonely, tired and lost. Found half a red onion too but nothing else to really go with it. 

Out comes 3 packs of noodles.

Chop up and fry the onions with a little vegetable oil first.

Mix in the pieces of pork, salt, pepper, shoyu.

Boil the noodles. Take them out before they get soft. You want them a little on the firm side. 

Throw them all together into a big pan or wok. Fry fry fry. Add whatever seasoning you got. Get creative. If you only got shoyu (you always have to have soy sauce in your arsenal, come on now), just use that. Sesame oil, you gotta have something. My noodles came with some sauce packs so I added in those bad boys.

Sprinkle some dried seaweed... and then voila! Lonely left overs turn into FRIED NOODLE DELIGHT!

EASY STYLE KALUA PORK CABBAGE

This had been a long time favorite for a lot of my friends whenever Sasha made it for us. It's easy to make so step up and do it.

First get 6 or 7lbs or pork butt or pork shoulder. This will feed 4 big people plus lots of leftovers.

Get Hawaiian salt and liquid smoke ready. If you don't have Hawaiian salt, just use medium grain chunky salt.
Then get small handful of chunky salt and rub it into the pork.
Then just a small cap full of liquid smoke. No more. you add any more than this to 6 or 7lbs and you will regret it.
Think back to the time that dumb ass was text message while you split lanes by him and he nearly (unintentionally) ran you off the road. Remember that rage and get a knife. Stab a few holes in your pork. At this point the pork should be covered in salt and liquid smoke.

Add an inch (or less) of water into your crock pot. It'll need this liquid to cook it. Now put the cover on and leave it cooking for 6 hours, maybe longer, depending on how quick your crock pot can cook. If you need to leave and go to work, go for it. Don't forget to plug your crock pot into a power strip with a breaker on it because I don't want to get blamed for your kitchen being on fire.
And then 6 to 8 hours later the pork comes right off the bone. Take out all the bones.
Shred the meat apart.
After you're done shredding it should look like this. And if you've seen the movie North Shore, you can start repeating the line "broke his stick he shred so bad!" over and over to irritate your significant other.

I usually add fine ground pepper to the pork right around now. Add to taste.


You'll need to chop up about half a head of cabbage.

Like this. Just get crazy but don't chop it up too small.
When you check out your pork and it tastes good and you know for sure it's all cooked, add the cabbage. Let it cook for another 30min to another hour.
Kalua Pork Cabbage in the mutha fuckin HOUSE.

All you need now is good rice (BROWN RICE IS FINE, HATER YOUR WHITE RICE SUCKS ANYWAY). You need good rice, soy sauce and a hearty appetite because I assure you, all your friends will love it. Even your honky friends.