Braised tofu and broccoli

February 18, 2025 3:39 PM

I've spent the past five days mostly at home, mostly not doing much, and it's really getting to me. Well today it finally feels like I'm getting over this cold. I saw this video for braised tofu a couple of weeks ago, and I've been wanting to make it. It's honestly a bit involved, especially since I also decided to make the broccoli, but I feel like I need to make a pretty dish after this dreary weekend.

There were a lot of steps to this, so it took a while, but honestly, I was pretty relaxed the whole time, even when my dad called me in the middle of my cooking session to ask me about trying to use TurboTax. (I hate TurboTax by the way. But it seems that everyone in my family insists on using it)

Anyway, the end product was very tasty and very pretty! Even though it's just garnish, I made sure to buy sesame seeds and scallions just for this dish. I don't even really like sesame seeds, but I gotta admit they do give a nice pop.

If I ever make this again, I'd probably use a little less cornstarch and I'd use less chili flakes. I do seem to keep making things too spicy for me 🥵

Happy Valentine's Day

February 14, 2025 6:45 PM

Unfortunately, I've been feeling under the weather for the past couple of days, and I'm taking some "sick days". I still wanted to do something a little special to celebrate Valentine's Day, so I bought my boyfriend a pepper grinder from Aldi, and I made some vegetarian shepherd's pie with a heart on it! Some of the filling ended up spilling out after baking it, but it was very tasty!

细姑's salmon

February 12, 2025 9:41 PM

Okay, I don't have great photos (yet!), but what I do have is a recipe! I will show you one of my favorite ways to prepare salmon, which was originally introduced to me by my 细姑 (sort of pronounced "soy go"). She claims that she has since forgotten how she made this, which is why I need to make sure I've documented it!

A very involved Taiwanese beef noodle soup

February 10, 2025 3:41 PM

Every other Friday, I go to my friend's house and we have a co-working session. Technically, I'm not really working, but I do use that time to make updates to this blog! After work, we'll grab some groceries and then we'll cook something for dinner. We seem to have a tendency to pick dishes that take quite a bit of time to prepare, which was especially true this time.

My friend wanted to try the Taiwanese beef noodle soup recipe from the Woks of Life cookbook. I saw that it used spicy bean paste, which is great because I already have it, but it also called for a bunch of things that neither of us had. I went to three different Asian stores to look for cumin seeds, coriander seeds, whole white peppercorn, and pickled mustard greens. And I didn't even find the coriander seeds! My friend ended up getting that from a fourth store. And we still went to Aldi the day of to grab everything that we could get from a non-Asian store.

Unfortunately, after I arrived at my friend's house on Friday, I realized I forgot the spicy bean paste 🙃 It's okay, she had other spicy pastes that we used instead. I was just annoyed that we couldn't use mine.

The recipe states that you need to braise the beef for 20 minutes and also simmer the soup for 90 minutes after that. So we tried to start prepping early, which was a little before 5pm for us. Even with that, it already past 7pm before we got to the "simmer" step. So we ended up eating dinner at around 9pm. (It's a good thing we ate lunch at 4 😅)

But the late dinner time didn't bother me! I thought it was a successful meal. We actually cut back a little bit on the amount of dark soy sauce, but I think it could have used the full amount. Or maybe just more regular soy sauce. It was a pretty dark broth already.

The recipe says that the dish tastes even better the next day, so I took some leftovers home and had some for breakfast a couple days later. It honestly tasted about the same to me, but I thought it tasted pretty good the first night, so I was still very satisfied.

What I ate last week (1/27 - 2/2)

February 7, 2025 2:58 PM

Honestly, I don't really remember. At this point, this post is way late, and unless I'm writing down what I ate the day of, I tend to forget. So here, I just have some extra photos for you:

I made more shumai! I just wanted to see if I could improve on my first batch, and I'd say I did! The shumai wasn't really falling apart as much. I still think the recipe is way too much work, but it was a nice snack to eat throughout the week. And see that smoothie in the background?

I had a few remaining pineapple chunks from my can of pineapple, and whenever I buy canned pineapple I feel the need to use the juice in a smoothie. I love smoothies.

After I made all the shumai, I was still left with a small amount of dumpling wrappers, so I used them the next morning to make some scallion pancakes. These really aren't the ideal type of wrappers to use for shortcut scallion pancakes, but I'm trying to use what I have. They do look a little sad, but they still taste good!

And I know I already made a whole post about this yellow chicken and rice, but here's a bonus pic, as well as a picture of some leftovers the next morning:

Finally, here's some stir fry that I made!

This was another recipe from the Woks of Life cookbook. I was flipping through the pages just to see if I could find an easy recipe that used spicy bean paste. It's not really an ingredient I have much experience with, and I wanted to use it for more than just mapo tofu. I settled on their Farmhouse Pork Stir-Fry, which was pretty easy to make! I even sort of made it again this week, but with a cheaper cut of pork.

So, apart from all that, I blogged about eating things with bread, vegan chili, and kimchi pasta. I took a close look at my spending again and I spent just a little more than I did the previous week on groceries. And just a little less on eating out. But it was pretty consistent between the two weeks.

What I did notice was that I spent a lot of money on meat! (I also include eggs, seafood, and even tofu in that category. It makes sense in my head) Almost $40! I bought salmon, shrimp, ground pork, pork belly, chicken thighs, bacon, and eggs! So, I'm trying to cut back on the meat this week.

And finally finally, I'm trying to add more updates to this site! Have you noticed anything? 👀