My Chef's Hat - Brown Fried Rice with Chicken & Veggies

I'm sure I've talked about this before, but I'm really trying to incorporate more brown rice into my diet.  I'm a huge fan of rice, but for the longest time I would never make or eat white rice because it's too mealey for my tastes.  Over the past couple of years I'll order it when I go to Asian restaurants, and it always tastes really good and is fluffy, very much like white rice.  These days when I cook rice at home I'll do a 50/50 mix of white and brown.  Not 100% the healthiest option, but a good compromise in my book.

A while back I was looking for a new recipe for rice and chicken.  There's a million ways you can cook it, and I was a little bored with the current recipes that I had.  Of course, off to Pinterest I went and found Brown Fried Rice with Chicken & Vegetables. 

Here is the official recipe version:

And here's my version:

Yes, I realize it doesn't look anything like the picture.  But I've decided that I can't stress too much about that, at least not right now.

I've learned something very important from making this and the kale fried rice a couple months ago: toasted sesame oil has an extremely strong flavor, and using just that oil is ridiculously overpowering.  I now use 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil to make any dish, regardless of how much they say to use.  I just substitute olive oil for the remainder.   I bought some pure sesame oil, and am hoping that it's much more mild so I can use a little more.

Aside from the sesame oil, the dish itself is really delicious!  I had to add some more soy sauce once the dish was cooked to dilute some of the sesame oil flavor.  This was a great one-dish meal, and I liked that it's so easy to substitute veggies you have on hand.  I really think this is the first time I've cooked with edamame. The key is to not overcook them, because then they're mushy and gross.  Thankfully I didn't do that.

Will I make this again?  Of course, with the pure sesame oil.  I'm sure different veggies will lend different flavors, and I'm looking forward to trying them out.

Recipe found on The Lemon Bowl

#48 - Yokozuna - Tulsa, OK

One of the best parts of my job is developing relationships with wonderful people.  The variety of my job duties has afforded me the opportunity to meet so many donors, and two of my favorites are Jo & Diamond, a couple of suiteholders who live in Tulsa.  I swear they've been married for 70 years, and are a definite testament of true love.  You never saw one without the other, and even though Diamond suffered through several illnesses the past few years and had become very frail, Jo still brought him to football games, and every time we scored he would stand up and cheer with the rest of the stadium.  2011 was the last year he was able to come to games, and he certainly got to experience an amazing season. 

Usually for the spring game, suiteholders have to print out their tickets from home, but we always mail them to Jo.  This year, I decided to deliver them myself and spend the afternoon with her.  They live at Montreau, an absolutely fantastic retirement community in Tulsa.  They've got every amenity you could possibly want, and if it's not on site, they've got drivers to take you where you need to go.  I've already told Jo I want to rent out their guest bedroom!  Jo and I talked, drank wine, and had an wonderful time.  Unfortunately, Diamond passed away about a week ago, and I was amazed at the strength that Jo showed when she called to tell me.  She was in amazing spirits, and we even shared a couple of laughs during our talk. 

Rather than go straight back home, I decided to meet Bob for dinner.  We both love sushi, and originally planned to meet him at Sushi House, but it's closed on Mondays.  So instead we went to Yokozuna.  It's right in the heart of downtown Tulsa, and I just saw that they'll be opening another location soon.  It's in a very trendy building, right on the corner, with high ceilings and huge windows looking out onto the street. 

We got there pretty early for dinner, so it wasn't very crowded at all.  Bob and I always like to try lots of different dishes when we get together, and kind of order as we go based on how hungry we still are, and today was no different.  We started with the seaweed salad and the Hot Mess.

I'm honestly not a huge fan of seaweed salad, but it's good for you so I dug in.  It was very fresh, and the lemon helped the flavor.  The Hot Mess definitely lived up to its name!  It was so yummy.  I love that they put a wonton chip on top, and the crunch was the perfect additional texture for this roll.

Next we moved on to the Flaming Volcano roll

Imitation crab, chipotle cream cheese and jalapeño, tempura fried then topped with

langostinos cooked in our creamy volcano sauce. Served with eel sauce and scallions

Oh my, this was amazing!!  Yes, you are seeing an actual flame under the black bowl there, and so the sauce was bubbling.  After a couple minutes I blew out the flame, if only to prevent us from burning ourselves by accident.  I don't really know what a langostinos is, but the whole roll was phenomenal.  I'm sure this was clogging our arteries, and I wouldn't eat this kind of sushi on any type of regular basis, but that night it was worth it.

Next, we moved to the Route 66 roll

Imitation crab, ebi shrimp, avocado, with spicy sauce, rolled in sesame seeds

This was good, but after our very adventurous previous rolls it was just kind of plain.  As if all those rolls weren't enough, we just had to do some dessert...

I don't remember exactly what it was called, and I couldn't find it listed on the menu.  But it was kind of like a bananas foster, and was absolutely delicious.  The ice cream was so refreshing after all that sushi, the bananas were caramelized, and the chocolate syrup topped it off perfectly.

Will I go back?  We already have, after Bedlam baseball!  And I'll definitely be going back again.



#47 - Lucille's, Mulhall, OK

Although Stillwater is a relatively small town, there's still quite a few restaurants that I haven't tried yet.  I'm working on doing that, slowly but surely.  About 2 years ago I saw a big billboard for Lucille's, located in Mulhall, which is about a 20-minute drive from Stillwater.  I'd heard stories about how the original location burned down in 2009, and had recently been rebuilt.  We talked about going to eat there occasionally, but just never found the time to take that much extra time for lunch.

Back in March, Dennicia and I decided to go and check it out.  Although we were both well into our healthier eating phase, we were both also craving some good home cooking deliciousness.  So off to Mulhall we went. 

The new location was built right across the street from the original, and looks like an old-time country restaurant.  As you walk in, there's a tower of mouth-watering looking desserts immediately to your left.  We looked at them, and salivated a little, but pushed past them and to our table.  We got there a little before noon, which was perfect because it wasn't that crowded.  We picked a very good time, because within 20 minutes of our arrival, the place was packed with both sit-down and take-out customers.

I was hungry, and had fully decided that my diet was out the window, so everything looked good.  They claim to have a salad bar, which I think was around the corner towards the back of the restaurant because we couldn't see it.  And we saw nobody eating salad.  But honestly, you don't go to this kind of place for a salad.  I decided on the chicken fried chicken sandwich with fries.  Dennicia got the chicken fried steak.  Once I found out that the onion rings were breaded I got a side of that as well.

My sandwich was delicious!!  The chicken was tender and had tons of flavor.  The bun is just your average burger bun, so nothing really special there.  The fries were really good.  Steak fries aren't necessarily my favorite, but they were hot, crisp on the outside, and delicious.  The onion rings were scorching hot and fabulous.  I tried a bite of Dennicia's, and hers was awesome as well.  As you can see it was almost twice the size of my chicken.  I was a little disappointed for a second, but quickly realized that my eyes were just bigger than my stomach, and continued to enjoy my meal.  Next time I would just get the onion rings instead of fries.

We momentarily thought about trying the dessert, but by the time we finished our meal we were so full that we couldn't do it.

Will I go back?  Absolutely!  The service was a little slow, and got quite a bit slower once the big lunch crowd showed up, but that was really the only negative.