Taste of Home Pineapple Beef Stir Fry

Okay here is the link to the original recipe:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/pineapple-beef-stir-fry

I thought that this dish was really pretty much delicious. The commissary is known to not have fantastic meat so I think that would have made a big difference. 

I was unable to find beef round steak, so I improvised and got small steaks (and they were boneless so I figure that worked.) This worked okay but it was more difficult to slice than what I would have liked.

The recipe says to marinate the meat for about 30 min in the refrigerator. This worked fine but I think it would have been super delicious if you do some prep and let it marinate over night.

I chopped all of the ingredients while it was marinating so that it would be quick and ready to go into stir fry. I didn't have fresh green beans and just used about half of a can (they still tasted great) and I think next time I would definitely add more green chilies. 
1 Tablespoon made us both go "There are chilies in this?"
So next time I'm cutting up a few more.


Also, I didn't want to go and buy cornstarch just for this meal so I used flour instead. (Use 2 tsp of flour as a substitute)
I ended up browning the meat a little longer, more like 7 minutes. Maybe this was a mistake but my meat didn't appear to be done by the time I was supposed to be removing it. I also poured out some juices, so make sure to really drain the marinade from the meat, because it got pretty bubbly and wild on the stove.

It went great over white rice but to make it more healthy I would definitely go with brown rice. Brown rice is more calorie friendly and this meal would be decently healthy- it's chock full of protein and paired with a fast burning carb (optimal for fat burning diet!)

Super delicious. Only took about 40 min total for prep, marinade, and cooking.

New Design!

As you all can see I have a new theme! The beauty of being new to blogging is I'm still trying to make my page better. I've changed my name from wanderinggrad to the first time house wife (though wandering grad still exists on hubpages with my travel articles)

I'm going to be adding some new page content- in addition to Tales from the Trail, Dog training, and Shit My Husband Does... I'm adding my cooking adventures, Health and Fitness, Paintings, Oahu, and probably more at some point. 

Everything I do around the house during the day!

How Exciting. Enjoy!

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Project 2: My Eisel!

My Valentine's Day Present!

I was super excited for this- I love to paint but I left all of my painting supplies and eisel back home when I moved (moving to Hawaii is expensive enough and I didn't need one more thing) 

However I was beginning to have a crazy lunatic moment because I wasn't sure what to do with myself.

In order to make me feel a little more at home, and to practice yet another project as well as have an excuse to go to Home Depot, he made me my own eisel! 

The beginning stage.....

I got to practice a little bit of spray painting (hah. Not as easy as I thought) and then I decorated all the little fun bits. I pinterested several inspirational quotes that I painted all over the pieces of the eisel.

Nearly assembled!

I can adjust the height of the canvas using the clamp that slides up and down the frame for detailing the painting and for different canvas sizes.

And it folds up conveniently for storage.

Thanks babe I love it =)

Now I can get back to creating more fun projects! <3

Project 1: Pinterest Work Bench

Like any good handy man he needed a work space in the garage, which most importantly began with a work bench.

 He got inspired from Pinterest when he saw this:

And thus he built this:

None of my Pinterest attempts ever turn out that great!

The end spot is reserved for his table saw, which has been living at a friends house for a while. It has wheels on the bottom to be able to roll around easily. Pretty handy!