Bacon Rice and Home-Made Iced Tea

Being a stay at home mom has a couple of perks.  First and foremost, is being able to spend more time with my little boy.  Second would be catching up on my crochet, crafts and reading.  Third and probably not my biggest point would be learning how to cook.

Today, since I was being lazy as usual in cooking lunch, I decided just to cook a really simple lazy dish for myself.  It's my favorite Bacon Rice.

Bacon rice and my home-made iced tea

Here's a simple recipe on how I did my bacon rice.

Ingredients:

3-4 slices of bacon
1/2 cup leftover rice
2 cloves of garlic
one small onion
1 tbsp olive oil
ground black pepper

Leftover rice that has gone cold usually are in clumps so to make it all fluffy and easy to cook, mash it a bit free it from itself.

Chop the garlic and onion into small pieces, small enough for sauteing.

Cook the bacon accordingly in the olive oil.  I like mine crispy so I let it cook for a little longer.  Drain the excess oil so that we keep the cholesterol to a minimum.  Set aside the bacon.

In the remaining oil, saute the chopped garlic and onion until brown and transparent.  Put in the rice and  saute it together.  Put in the rest of the bacon and mix well.  I let it stand in minimum heat for 2-3 minutes so that the bacon fat coats the rice well. Not really healthy but it tastes wonderful, so I only do this once in a while. 

Be careful not to burn the rice because cleaning the pan is going to be a nightmare.

My version of Iced Tea

Ingredients:
2 tea bags of Lipton "Brisk" Tea
2 whole lemons
1 liter of water
Honey or brown sugar to taste

Slice the lemon and set aside

I boil 1 liter of water and soak the tea bags until the water goes lukewarm.  (You can soak it less if you don't want to have the strong tea taste that it produces when you soak it for too long)  I place the warm tea in a pitcher, put in the lemons and set it over night in the fridge.

If you can't finish up the tea by the next day, remove the lemons and store the tea by itself.  The lemon slices would be all soggy and yucky by this time.

You can add honey to the mix or brown sugar.

DIY Wedding Bouquet

I recently finished my first ever handmade bouquet made out of satin flowers, beads and ribbons.  The flowers were hand sewn.  Though it took a lot of time, it was really worth it instead of the usual glue it together.   Here's the final product.

The high res photos are still with the photographer and I'll be requesting for it later during the week. As this is my first commissioned project, I asked the bride if I could experiment a little and came to the following conclusions:

1. Satin comes in varying softness (?) i.e. pink was easier to mold than white

2. Organza is hard to mold because of the fabric. Only did a few flowers, and used the rest as a base frill.

3. Soft tulle is nice to sew but clashes with the satin.

4. Buy more beads, less pearls.

5. Main fabric first, supporting fabric should be incorporated later.

6. Need to figure out a nicer looking stem.

If want to have your very own handmade bouquet for your special day or know a friend who is interested in one, drop me a message at roliannetorio@yahoo.com