flailing in my kitchen v3.1
How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
I had been living in the same apartment since before the start of this food blog, and that was far far far too long for me, but finding a new apartment is a lot of work and I was kind of picky.
But I finally did it! I found a new place and I moved! My new place is a little bigger, though it came with much less storage and countertop space in the kitchen. My dad and my cousin helped me move in, and as part of that, my dad also built me some shelves to make my kitchen more usable.
For most of the week and a half that my dad and cousin were visiting, we were eating food that my aunt packed for us. She packed so much food, but they were also here for a bit longer than we expected, so I ended up needing to make a few meals for them myself. On the very last day, I made some BBQ pulled pork pizza using some leftover odds n ends from a taco night earlier that week. As I was adding the toppings to my pizza dough, my cousin exclaimed "Is that...barbecue sauce? 😯"
I don't know why he was so shocked, because of course it's barbecue sauce! BBQ is the best pizza sauce.
I was honestly pretty impressed with myself for pulling that together so quickly, and I think my dad and cousin were impressed too.
Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the taco spread, but because I only used half a packet of fajita seasoning, I used the rest in some chicken fajitas later that week. I'm a little further from the Giant Eagle now, but there is a tiny grocery store not too far away, and it's good for buying individual pieces of produce. I bought two bell peppers and a lime for these fajitas.
I also checked out a local bagel shop that apparently sometimes has super long lines. The first time I tried to go there, they were already sold out for the day! But I tried again, and I got there earlier this time. I think I just got a plain bagel with some veggie cream cheese. This place is all about customizing your cream cheese. You choose your mix-ins, things like scallions or broccoli or bacon or cheese, and then the bagel person puts your cream cheese and extra stuff in a bowl and mixes it all up. It's like Cold Stone, but for cream cheese.
Anyway, I was so overwhelmed by all the options that I just chose a pre-designed cream cheese mix. The bagel and cream cheese were...fine. Didn't seem worth the $6 price tag 😨
I am not a very heavy-cream-cheese-on-bagel kind of person, which means these bagel places always give me twice as much cream cheese as I want for one bagel. But I know this, so I ended up getting my cream cheese on the side, and I used the other half of it to make pasta.
I was definitely a little worn out from my move-in week, so I wanted to just make some easy meals after that. And pasta's pretty easy. In fact, I made pasta twice that week!
I usually like to make baked ziti, but this baked ravioli is like an easier version of that. And even though I usually hate leftover pasta, there's something about these baked, really cheesy pastas that can withstand the sitting and reheating process, so I happily ate leftovers of this.
Of course, because I've got a new kitchen, that means I have to get used to all of my new-to-me appliances and that's going to make things a little harder at first. The oven was pretty simple--so far that works just as expected. But I'm finding that my stove gets way hotter than I expect it to. I have electric coils now, and I don't know anything about the science of how that heats up the food differently from the flat top stove, but I cannot be cooking everything at a 7 now.
I've made this yellow rice dish so many times in the past, so I was expecting it to be chill, but I think I set the stove heat too high and I made a bit of a splattery mess. I quickly cleaned my stovetop up, but it must have been a little bit later (and darker) in the day because the next day I looked above my (white) stovetop and it was yellow, and I tried to wipe it off, and it would not come off 😱
I looked up how to remove turmeric stains on the internet and I found so many different suggestions on reddit: dish soap, bleach, vinegar, baking soda, oil, magic eraser, sunlight, but the top rated comment said "Enjoy your yellow stove!"
I tried using a magic eraser and I just scrubbed as hard as I could. Some of the yellow did come off, and now the surface is just a very pale yellow and I'll probably forget about it in the future. I wonder how much yellow stain had coated my old stove that I just didn't notice because it was black.
This was a pretty minor incident though. Besides that, I've already had a few instances where I cooked something and it started smoking A LOT, and then I've triggered the smoke alarm 🥵
Remember when I said that I shouldn't use pre-made frozen burger patties? Well, I didn't listen to past self, and for some reason I thought that Aldi's smash burgers would be an easy dinner. Absolutely not. What. a. mess. Never ever ever use those frozen burger patties when I'm cooking burgers on the stove.
Well, the kitchen only really came with the oven, stove, and a fridge, so I had to bring my own microwave. My dad ended up buying me a cute, compact microwave from Walmart, and while my stove gets way too hot, my microwave only uses 700 watts of power! My old microwave was at least 1000 watts, and I had used it so many times to perfect my cookie-in-a-mug and my brownie-in-a-mug, and now I've got to start all over again to figure out the right amount time to cook these desserts.
I've made four chocolate chip cookies in this mug and in this tiny microwave so far, and I'm still tweaking things. I first tried 60 seconds, and then I added 10 extra seconds (shouldn't have added that extra 10), and then I tried 70 seconds, and then I tried 67 seconds 🫲🤪🫱, and then I tried 60 seconds by itself, and somehow this always ends up both too undercooked and overcooked at the same time.
But I think I've rambled on enough for one post. Thanks for reading, and maybe I'll be cooking something more exciting in my next post!
There are no eggs in this post, because I made something vegan. Like actually vegan, not vegetarian with a side of bacon, not vegan but I threw real cheese on top, 100% vegan. We were throwing a birthday party for one of the guys in the dance game community, and he's vegan so I had to make sure to not take any shortcuts here. I made some vegan "butter chicken", which contained no butter and no chicken.
In fact, I even omitted the cashews from this recipe just in case anyone had a nut allergy, and I put all the cilantro in a bowl on the side to not ruin the dish for the cilantro-tastes-like-soap people. Unfortunately I was too lazy to make vegan naan, and the grocery stores don't really sell that, but I did buy some of that seedy bread that I like from Aldi.
This ended up being a huge hit, and it was all gone shortly after I got to the party. And I barely got to eat any! So I decided that I wanted to make another batch. I also thought that one block of tofu was not nearly enough for the amount of sauce in this dish, so I doubled it for my second batch.
I love tofu, especially in curry. I used to follow curry recipes and replace tofu with chicken, now I'm replacing chicken with tofu!
A lot of the recipes I use will tell me to press the tofu to remove excess moisture, but I'm getting kind of tired of pressing it, and I decided to try something different here. I first cut up the tofu into cubes and I let that sit in a bowl of salted water for a while. When I'm ready to use them, I drain the water and pat the tofu dry a little. I'm certainly getting more flavorful tofu this way, and it seems to dry out the tofu just as well as pressing.
Okay, I didn't actually make this completely vegan for the second batch. It is really hard to find a single serving container of non-dairy yogurt. I bought coconut yogurt for my first batch, but I had to trek all the way to Whole Foods and spend over $2 for it. I just bought plain Chobani Greek yogurt for the second batch.
I may have had a little too much food for this second batch because I felt like I had to eat 10 meals of it just to get through it all. But it was very good! At this point I've made this dish a bunch of times, so it's basically one of my go-tos.
Continuing on the egg train! 🪺 🥚 🍳
So my little sister visited me in May, and around that time we like to celebrate a little holiday we made up where we exchange gifts and tell each other "Happy not-a-Mother's day!" I gave her some Pokémon cards, and she gave me a few packs of my absolute favorite MAMA instant noodles with gue diao粿條 - rice noodles.
My dad would always keep these stocked in his apartment, and when I went off to college he sent me a huge box full of them to keep in my dorm room. They were my go-to noodles, and I would always eat them with an egg. As an adult, I don't eat instant noodles too often, but there was one time last year that I thought, I could really go for some Mama mi.
I know it's not actually mi麵 - egg noodles, I just find it rolls off the tongue to say Mama mi
Unfortunately, most Asian grocery stores do NOT stock these! I mean they're not impossible to find like ou nam烏欖 - Chinese black olives, but at least 9 out of 10 Asian stores aren't going to have them. I would know. I look for them every time I'm in an Asian store.
Sometimes I find a similar instant noodle with clear broth, but it has the thin noodles instead. It's the same flavor, so it tastes good, but man, it does not hit the same as the wide, flat noodles.
The noodles come with a seasoning packet, an oil packet, and a spicy packet. Now when I eat something like Buldak, I always use all of the spicy sauce, because I gotta have the full spice-inducing experience. With these Mama noodles, I don't use any of the spicy stuff. I'm not trying to struggle here.
I mostly follow the package instructions. I boil about 1.5 cups of water, and I throw the noodles in and stir them around until they're soft. You do want to give them a good stir because I find that it's very easy for rice noodles to stick to each other. Then I crack in my egg and do some more stirring, and finally I add the oil and seasoning and turn off the heat.
If I have a scallion in my fridge, I usually cut that up and throw it on top as well, because it gives me the illusion that I'm making this healthier and because it makes the dish look prettier. And then I eat this one spoonful at a time, making sure to put a noodle, some egg, some scallion, and some soup, all in each bite. So comforting and so good.
As I was putting the final touches on my previous blog post, I went to go add an "eggs" tag and I realized...I didn't even have an eggs tag yet 😯 But I eat eggs all the time. I thought that I must have had many entries that feature eggs, but I really didn't. So I gotta add more!
My go-to breakfast is beung pue neung飯配卵 - rice with eggs. I never ever ever get sick of it, because who could ever get sick of eggs?! There are also so many ways to cook eggs that I'd still have lots of variety in my meals if I only ever had rice with eggs for breakfast.
My mom made fried eggs for me a lot when I was a kid. You just heat up a pan on high, add some oil, and then crack a couple of eggs. Well, my mom cooks it on high. I turn the dial to about a 7 or an 8 if I'm feeling risky. High heat will give you this really nice crispy edge, but I fear too much for my own safety. Do you know about the time I burned my leg in high school? That was from me trying to cook this very dish.
We always drizzle si iu豉油 - soy sauce on top, but not just any soy sauce, Golden Mountain Seasoning Sauce. It's actually not even labeled as soy sauce at all. I was so in shock when I learned this in college.
A much safer way to cook eggs is to scramble them because then you're supposed to use low heat. Of course that takes way too long, so I'm still cooking my scrambled eggs at a 7. I'm also really basic when it comes to scrambled eggs. All I mix into them is salt, and maybe pepper if I'm feeling spice-y.
I did get a little inspired by this Jimmy O Yang video, and now I always drizzle sesame oil on my scrambled eggs. I actually used to not be a fan of sesame oil, but something changed when I started pouring it over my eggs and now I'm putting it on all my Asian foods.
So I know I've shared photos of marinated boiled eggs in the past, and I'm usually putting them on some type of noodle soup, but I also really like to eat these with rice! (And some giam chai鹹菜 - pickled mustard greens if I have it)
I know there's a lot of different methods for hard/soft boiling eggs, but what works best for me is to:
I've used a few different recipes for the marinade in the past, but recently I've been making a lot of these Quick Marinated Eggs from Omnivore's Cookbook. It uses five spice, and I'm still trying to get rid of it. Honestly, I can't even tell that there's five spice in this. But whatever, it's delicious.
Frying, scrambling, and boiling eggs are all methods that I've been familiar with for years now, and I probably would feel content enough with just those, but any time I see a new way of cooking an egg I gotta try it. So when I saw Kenji's video on Tamago Gohan, I was like "I NEED TO TRY THIS." Plus all I had to do was mix. That's super easy.
Okay, I guess I'm not even really cooking the egg in this. But you don't have to convince me to eat a mostly raw egg. If some knowledgeable person on the internet tells me it's safe, then I'm eating it.
I'll be honest, while I did enjoy eating this, it's not my favorite. I think I like my eggs to stay mostly eggs rather than being so incorporated into the rice. I guess this makes sense, I don't even like omelettes because of the extra stuff in them.
So that was the easiest, quickest egg rice, and this last one is probably the most involved.
I started seeing shorts by Nutrition by Kylie on my youtube feed, and she had a video on steamed eggs, which she says is one of her favorite things to make. I made it, and it could be one of my favorite ways to eat eggs, but I gotta say, it's a little too involved to ever be one of my favorite things to make.
I tried making it again later, and I took some shortcuts, like using the microwave instead of properly steaming it.
Yeah, it was not nearly as pretty and did not have that silky smooth texture. Still tasted good, but it's definitely worth doing all the steps.
But there you have it! Five different ways of enjoying rice and eggs. Some of them I make more than others, but they're all part of my breakfast rotation. Do you have another tasty way to prepare eggs and rice? Please let me know about it!
Hello! You probably noticed that my blog looks different! About a year ago, I asked my friend bogo if he could make some fan art for the blog. I didn't really give him any guidelines, except that I wanted eggs in it, and I think he did an amazing job!
I wanted to incorporate this art on the website, but it also felt like the whole site needed a facelift. Recently, I've grown to really dislike the color green. A few people know why, and if you don't, feel free to ask me about it. It's just the type of thing that I don't want to air on the public internet 😬 But the old design had lots of green, and I wanted something very not-green.
Speaking of eggs, one of my friends told me that if I have some heavy cream, that I could use it to fry eggs, and he told me to look up Kenji's video on fried eggs. Well, for some reason I had leftover heavy cream, and I decided it was time to fry up some eggs.
I don't really have much to say about this, but I love eggs, especially for breakfast, and I love it when I find a new way to cook them. This was no exception. I don't think I would ever go out of my way to make heavy cream eggs because they're well, heavy, but it's great when I need to use up extra cream.
I paired the eggs with a slice of seedy, Bistro Multigrain Bread from Aldi. I'm usually not a fan of bread with all the extra seeds and grains in it, but I really like this bread from Aldi! Sometimes I just toast it and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil and salt on it.
I keep telling myself I need to stop staring at my phone so much, so I've been trying to read during breakfast. This was from February and I was in the middle of reading The Three Body Problem. It was...alright. Tune in next time to see the book I'm currently reading!
