Enchiladas, twice

August 7, 2022 2:59 PM

I had COVID a little over a month ago, and I was mostly confined to my aunt's guest room for five days. I ended up staying at my aunt's house for a week longer than I anticipated, so once I got back to Pittsburgh I was itching to cook again. I actually only had a week before having to go back to my aunt's house again, but now, NOW, I'm back in my apartment, and I am doing lots of cooking.

I'm trying to remember why I decided to make enchiladas, because I'm not the biggest fan of them. I think I had tortillas in the fridge from a while ago. I also had some of that dry pulled pork that came from a pork loin. Yup, that's why. I wanted to use the rest of that.

I decided to try this vegan black bean and avocado enchilada recipe from Budget Bytes, but of course I substituted the corn for pork in it which made it very much not vegan anymore.

But who cares! I wasn't looking for a vegan recipe. I was looking for an enchilada recipe. And I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how this turned out. After I had prepared the filling, I took a bite and I thought "Wow, this is pretty good". The fact that I could munch on the filling before I baked it in the oven was great, because man, this recipe took a really long time to make and I was getting hungry.

I ended up having a lot of leftover enchilada sauce, so once I got back to my apartment the second time, I decided to make more enchiladas. But I didn't really want to make pulled pork again (and I guess I could have actually gone the vegan route, but uh...I didn't) so I tried a different type of Mexican meat and I made chicken tinga.

Yeah, this was...okay. The recipe listed several methods of cooking the chicken, and I opted for just throwing some raw chicken into the tinga sauce and letting it cook on the pan and then shredding it. I think I should have slow cooked it for a few hours instead. I probably cooked the chicken for too long and it was kind of tough, so shredding it was a pain.

I also had to buy another can of chipotles in adobo sauce, and now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the can again.

But I was still able to make tasty tacos! Even if the meat is not the best, I can just throw it on a corn tortilla with some onions and lime and cilantro and it's a beautiful meal.

Enchiladas ended up being easier the second time around since I didn't have to make the sauce from scratch. I mixed some of the chicken tinga sauce into my remaining enchilada sauce from before and I think I like that it made it a little lighter.

Overall, I'm happy with it! I actually still have leftover enchilada sauce, but I think I'm all enchilada'd out for a while now.

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.