Chipotles in adobo sauce

July 24, 2022 9:37 AM

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for spicy chipotle honey salmon bowls and it looked really good. It claims to be a good "weeknight dinner", but I found it to be way too much work, and it had too many components, so I don't think I'll ever make it again. I didn't even take a picture.

One of the ingredients that the recipe calls for is chipotles in adobo sauce, so I bought a little can of it. I tried a little, and it was so much spicier than I expected, so I didn't use nearly as much as the recipe said to. This meant that I had almost a full can of these chipotles left and no idea what to do with them.

But I thought, "I can improvise! I'll make some fajitas!" So I bought a pack of shrimp and some bell peppers and tortillas, and I tried to throw something together.

It was not good. Honestly. I know they look good in the photo, but tacos always look good. The shrimp just tasted weird. Maybe I marinated it and cooked it for too long. And the marinade I made was also bad.

Okay, so I had to try something simpler. I figured since these were so spicy that I could throw a couple of peppers into hummus and blend it up.

Well, it wasn't really hummus. I only had half a lemon and I didn't have as much tahini as I needed for a single can of chickpeas. And then when I was at Aldi, I couldn't find any pita bread, so I bought naan instead. But it tasted great when I dipped a warm piece of naan in it, and now I think I'll always get naan for hummus.

Finally, I threw some of the chipotles into a large batch of pulled pork for some tacos. This time I actually used a recipe that I know works well, and I just added the chipotles to it. (And sugar! I always add sugar)

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a small piece of pork butt, so I bought a pork loin instead, and man was it dry. But that's okay, it wasn't terrible, so I just decided to buy lots of toppings to put on top.

It also made for some good breakfast bowls.

Blueberry muffins

June 29, 2022 11:18 PM

A couple of weeks ago, I came into posession of a container of blueberries. I really like strawberries and raspberries, but I've never been a huge fan of blueberries. I do like blueberry muffins though, and Budget Bytes just happened to post a blueberry muffin recipe recently so I thought this was the perfect opportunity to make some.

The recipe looked easy enough. Just mix stuff and pour it into a muffin tin. I figured this was going to be a nice, chill recipe, but of course I had to make it more frantic by making it in the middle of my busy workday. I also had a big lump of sugar all stuck together, and when I tried to break it apart, it just exploded in my face!

Sugar explosion aside, these muffins turned out really well! The only thing I modified in this recipe was that I used blueberry yogurt instead of plain yogurt, because they're blueberry muffins.

(Nah, I just bought that because I didn't want a gigantic container of plain yogurt)

It was very tasty. I gotta start doing more baking.

Two attempts at noodles

June 27, 2022 12:12 PM

Last week, as I was browsing through food blogs at night, I stumbled across a stir fry noodle recipe that looked interesting. The pictures looked really good, but the comments were pretty mixed. Quite a few people said it was too salty, but some people really loved it. I'm never sure about Asian inspired recipes from non-Asian food bloggers, but I gave it a shot.

I already had a bell pepper and some scallions. I figured I would just omit the hot peppers, zucchini, and carrots. I did want some basil, but my local non-Asian grocery store only had really expensive Italian basil. So I bought a tiny container of expensive Italian basil. The store does have an Asian section, so I was able to get an 8oz pack of rice noodles. I also bought a single shallot and a single piece of chicken breast. I was running low on soy sauce, but I did have a lot of Golden Mountain Seasoning Sauce, so I figured that was close enough.

The recipe claims that it takes 15 minutes of prep time and 15 minutes of cook time. I decided to time myself. It took me 52 minutes, 44 seconds to make the dish, prep and cook. That's actually faster than I expected!

Heeey that looks pretty good! Unfortunately it was way too salty, just like all of those commenters said it would be. I didn't even put as much soy sauce as it called for! I also don't think the Italian basil made sense, and the noodles from the non-Asian grocery store were...not great.

The peanuts were a nice touch though.

It wasn't so bad that I didn't finish it all. But whenever I'm trying out a new recipe, the cogs in my brain immediately start turning and thinking about how I'd modify it.

• Less salty components
• More sugar
• Get noodles and basil from the Asian store
• Don't bother with the shallot, just use more scallions

So, noodles take 2!

This second attempt was much better! And it was slightly easier for me to put together. I think it took me about 48 minutes, start to finish. If I made this a third time, I'd probably increase the amount of fish sauce a little, add a little bit of dark soy sauce, and decrease the oyster sauce. But I think I'm good on stir fried noodles for a while.

I'd say that the best part about making these noodles was that I got to share it with two of my friends, who both enjoyed eating it (:

Smoothies

June 19, 2022 11:23 PM

So I really like smoothies, but I haven't made them too often myself because I was always too lazy to take out my cheap $10 blender that could barely blend things and was a pain to clean up. But that's all changed now! My mom gifted me a Nutribullet last Christmas, so I've been able to make more smoothies!

Smoothies should be so easy. You just throw stuff in a blender, press a button, and voila, you have a smoothie. But smoothie making has been kind of a struggle for me. I buy so much ice cream and it's not always good. And every time I end up with ice cream that I don't like, I just think to myself, "I can throw this in a smoothie!"

Yeah, uhh, several not-so-great smoothies later, and I'm realizing that it really does matter what ingredients you put in. I am not good at just throwing things together when I make food. So I went and looked up a smoothie recipe. I haven't actually followed this exactly, but I did use it as a guide, and I think I'm getting better at the whole smoothie-making thing!

I'll still throw in some non-conventional items into the mix, like a mango popsicle coated with tajin, but I'm trying to not go too crazy. And I don't know, maybe these are more like milkshakes rather than smoothies because of the ice cream. Whatever it is, it's a very enjoyable frozen drink (: And it's a very good thing to sip on while I'm writing more code for this blog.

Cooking almost every day

June 14, 2022 11:30 PM

I've been cooking a lot lately! Like, almost every day. I'm usually not thinking about the food blog every time I cook, but occasionally, I do take photos. I used to regularly make "Odds n Ends" posts where I would show a few different things I made, without really telling any sort of cohesive story about them. So, here's a quick glimpse into some of the foods that I've been cooking.

I ended up having a lot of that udon noodle soup. In the middle of a busy workday, it was nice to be able to take ten minutes to prepare my lunch.

I've been really into making rice dishes lately. They're easy, flavorful, and they taste even better after I reheat them on the pan. I really like making this yellow rice chicken skillet, but I also occasionally make ground turkey rice dishes too.

Another one of my go-tos is this Mediterranean hummus bowl, which I just took a picture of because I like how colorful this dish is.

I've also been trying out some new recipes! I attempted to make broccoli lemon carbonara, but I don't think I quite understand how to make a good egg-based sauce that doesn't just turn into scrambled eggs. I also really wanted to get that cute pasta shape that was in the recipe, but I couldn't find it, and I had to settle for boring old penne.

It's probably not going to be a recipe that I try to make again, but I still ate it all, and I even packed it for lunch when I went into the office last week.