Cheap, Quick, and Easy: Ramen with Peanut Sauce

This is my favorite thing to make when I'm hungry and want something quick. It's seriously so easy and costs very little.

Ingredients:

Sriracha hot chili sauce, Tamarind paste, Milk, Peanut butter, Top Ramen, onion, shredded coconut.*

Start by throwing away the seasoning packet. Ew, that stuff is gross. Besides, the ramen noodles themselves aren't that bad for you, it's just the nastiness in the seasoning packet. Boil some water and toss the ramen noodles in. Boil 3 minutes.

While the noodles are cooking, start chopping your onion. You DEFINITELY don't need the whole onion, I chopped this much

but used maybe a third of that. Basically, not a whole lot but if you really like onion add a little extra. If it seems like way too little, remember that this is just for one person, so think of how much total onion you want to eat.

In your bowl, add some peanut butter, about this much

and some shredded coconut.

Add an amount of milk about equal to the peanut butter

and microwave it for about 30 seconds. Stir it, then microwave it for another 30 seconds. If necessary, repeat.

Mix it up well, and add tamarind paste and hot sauce to taste. I use about a tablespoon of tamarind and a squirt or two of sriracha. Keep messing with it until you like the taste. By this time, your ramen should be fully cooked. Drain the noodles and add them to your bowl, mixing well to coat.


*A note about ingredients: Tamarind paste is probably the least common ingredient on the list. If you don't have any, lemon juice works fine; I prefer the tamarind. I got mine at Uwajimaya. Any hot sauce would work or even chili powder, basically anything to make it a little spicy. Also, coconut extract might even work better than the shredded coconut, but that's just what I have in my cupboard all the time so that's what I use. AND, if you substitute soy milk for the regular milk, it's totally vegan and it doesn't affect the taste at all. I pretty much just use whichever we've got in our fridge and can't tell the difference when it's in the sauce.

Birthday Cinnamon Roll

My favorite cinnamon roll recipe is from this old restaurant in my town that hasn't been around since I was a little kid. They put out a cookbook with some of their most popular recipes and the cinnamon rolls were in it. They're sweetened with honey, and instead of thick white frosting, they have a honey butter glaze with is DELICIOUS. So much better, really.

A few years ago, I was making cinnamon rolls for breakfast for my friends (we got to go to school a few hours late because the sophomores had to take the WASL, so we met at someone's house for breakfast each morning) when I realized it was my friend Nicole's birthday the next day, the day we'd be eating the cinnamon rolls. I didn't have a present for her, so I decided to make a special cinnamon roll "the size of her face." It was deemed a success and I've made one every year since.

Since I was delivering the cinnamon roll this year, and since I've had bad luck getting cake pans back and such (not from her, but my friend's boyfriend totally stole my biggest cake pan) I decided using a disposable one would be the best idea. They even came with lids! And of course, I had to make a silly card. Yes, that is a greater than sign, signifying that the cinnamon roll is actually BIGGER than her face.



Like I said, this is a cake pan, I think a 9 inch one? So that gives you some idea of the size. But you definitely want to see it without the lid so you can see the delicious, shiny glaze.



Yum, right?

Political Paraphernalia and Process

Awhile back, around Super Tuesday, I made these buttons to support Barack Obama.

Then, before the caucus, I stenciled this shirt.

I get pretty bored with the same old candidate shirts and don't think they're especially flattering/attractive, so I wanted to make my own, in colors I like. I've also been really into this style of shirts, with the giant lettering filling the shirt.

So why am I talking about this now? Wasn't the Washington state caucus and Super Tuesday ages ago? Well yeah, but my LD caucus was today, I wore the shirt again, and remember how I said I got a new button maker? It's super old but it works perfectly!

Anyways, I made some new buttons, as well as some more of the smaller ones. In the picture, it's just the one of Obama's face and the small one that I made. The other two were from other people.

The LD caucus was cool, but took a REALLY long time. We were there for over nine hours and I am totally exhausted now. But I actually was elected one of the 10 Obama delegates from my district to go on to the next level, the Congressional District caucus and the State Convention. It was really freaking cool, but I was sooooo nervous when I got up there to give my speech. My mom said you couldn't tell, but my hands were shaking for ten minutes afterward. A couple of my frinds and other people I know where there as well and they stayed the whole time because they wanted to support me as delegate. It was amazing having all that support and people rooting for me. I'm hoping to go on the the National Convention in Denver, I think that would be amazing! I'm so stoked about this, but also ridiculously tired and I've got to work in the morning.