Eat it or Beat it: Crock Pot French Toast

French Toast is one of my very favorite breakfast foods, but usually when I wake up I am either in too much of a hurry or too lazy to whip up a full batch. So, when I saw this on …

Eat it or Beat it: Baked Pumpkin Seeds

Remember when we carved pumpkins a few weeks ago for Halloween? We told you we were going to save the seeds for a little recipe we had found. It was pretty simple: wash off all the seeds and lay them …

Dishcrawl Charleston

Last night, Morgan and I participated in Charleston’s inaugural Dishcrawl Charleston. It’s a trendy idea that has apparently become quite popular in big cities and someone decided to bring to the Lowcountry. The idea is much like a bar crawl …

Eat it or Beat it: Waldorf Chicken Salad – With a Healthy Twist

One of my favorite, go to salad recipes is the Waldorf chicken salad. However, all that mayo can be pretty fatty. I decided to try to re-vamp the recipe using plain greek yogurt as a substitute. WHAT YOU NEED: For …

Eat it or Beat it: FUNdamiddles Cupcakes

Hello all! Here at Charleston Crafted, we LOVE cupcakes! I love baking them and Sean loves eating them and so we are always excited to try a new cupcake mix. We spotted this one, FUNdamiddles at the new Super Walmart. …

Eat it or Beat it: Cesar Pork Tortellini Salad

We make a lot of salads (like this one, and this one). While this is still a salad, it’s a little bit different than our every day run of the mill dishes. Ingredients: 1 Cesar salad kit 1 pack cheese …

Eat It or Beat It: Maple Bacon Lollipops!

Last weekend, Morgan and I went to World Market after we had both been out doing some errands. After a long day, we were in the mood for some snacks. Something in particular caught my eye- maple bacon lollipops! I …

Taco Thursday Presents: Eat it or Beat it- SlimCados!

A lot of Mexican dishes call for avocado and it is a great “power food” that you can use to top sandwiches or just eat with a spoon. But are all avocados the same?? While shopping at Publix, we came …

Eat it or Beat it- Cinnamon Toast Crunch Muffins

 I was recently walking down the aisle of our newly-rennovated Super Walmart and stopped at the vast baking mix section. I have been making various breakfast muffins lately, usually on Sunday nights to have as a breakfast item for the …

Eat it or Beat it: Fried Rice for the Entire Olympic Village

I don’t make a lot of rice. It’s good and filling and can be healthy, but it just takes so long to cook, my patience is not up for it. However, you might have read here how we cooked dinner last week for the Ronald McDonald House. A big part of that meal was rice. We bought a 15 pound bag at Costco and thought it was perfect. We totally forgot how rice expands what seems like ten times when you cook it.

So, needless to say, we now have about 7 pounds of rice in my pantry. (I begged RMH to let me leave it but they said no!)

So, Sean and I decided that we would start eating rice a lot. The first order of business- chicken fried rice.  I used to make fried rice all the time in college so I figured we’d be good to just wing it.

We started out by cooking the rice. I planned to make 2 cups of dry rice. You should use a 2 to 1 water to rice ratio, so I added 4 cups of water. Sean took one look and said “That’s it? That’s all I get? I was hoping we’d have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I’m starving now.”

So…. we made 3 cups of rice. For 2 people. Yeah, we won’t make that mistake again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. After we cooked the rice, we put the whole pot in the fridge to get nice and cool. I don’t know why you do this, but I just know every recipe tells you to. Do you know why you cool the rice before frying it? I’d be interested to find out.

While the rice cooled, Sean prepared the chicken. We pan-fried 4 breasts in olive oil with garlic and ginger (dried- the grocery didn’t have any fresh!). Then he took it off the stove and cut it into bite-sized pieces.

While he did that, I chopped up half a white onion, a bunch of green onions, and some bean sprouts. I also thawed out a bag of frozen peas and carrots.

I then started cooking the veggies in oil. I started with extra virgin olive oil and minced garlic. I added the onion and cooked until translucent.

I then added the bean sprouts for about one minute…

…before adding the frozen peas and carrots.

Finally, I added the green onions. I fried everything in the oil for a few minutes and added a dash of ginger. Then I added the bite sized pieces of chicken and stirred.

I dumped the veggie/chicken mix into a bowl. I rinsed my pan, added more oil, and cracked in six eggs. I cooked them until they were scrambled but still a little wet looking.

Then  I added the egg to the bowl. Think we have way too much stuff for two people? Yeah, because we did.

Then we added, you guessed it, more oil to the pan and fried the rice. Way more rice than pan. Sean actually has a huge pan, but we were in my apartment and therefore stuck with this baby. We heated the rice in oil for about five minutes before slowly scooping in all the good stuff. Don’t just pile it on top and try to mix it after. It is easier to slowly work the mixtures together.

We then mixed in soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, and sweet plumb sauce. And stirred… carefully.

In the end we had about ten meals worth of rice. It’s a little oily but delicious. A lot more work than we planned? Yes. A lot more RICE than we planned? Yes. Delicious? YES! This recipe is definitely an EAT IT recipe according to us both.

Will we make fried rice again- absolutely, but not for a while. And next time, I’m thinking a cup and a half of rice, max!

Do you cook a lot of rice? Any tips? Any adventures in the kitchen lately? We’d love to hear!