An attempt to satisfy my burger craving

April 3, 2021 7:27 PM

I first learned what the word crave meant some time in elementary school. I distinctly remember this because once I learned what it meant, I used the word all the time. "I'm craving bananas." "I'm craving quail meat." "I'm craving some baby chicken eggs."

(You might think, those are weird things for a 10 year old to want to eat. You're probably right.)

I think my mom told me it was weird that I kept saying that because it made me sound like I was pregnant, so I stopped.

But I think about food all the time, and when I don't get to eat something that I even have a small desire for, it just grows and grows until I finally have some. I had a craving for pizza from Thanksgiving all the way until last month. The thing is, I actually ate pizza several times between Thanksgiving and last month, but none of it was hitting the spot. I was finally satisfied when I got a supreme pizza and a cheesy bread twist late one night after helping my friend move a bunch of stuff to her new house.

Two days after that, she sent me a photo of a burger that she got from the restaurant next door, and I thought, "Man, I want a burger." So, I bought a burger from a nearby restaurant. It wasn't great. I bought another burger from the same place she got her burger. It wasn't bad. I made myself some smash burgers.

It was fine, but it was literally just smashed ground beef, and I like burgers to have a little more flavor than that.

So, yeah, I still haven't satisfied that burger craving.

Chimichurri chicken and fish

April 2, 2021 8:02 PM

Two weeks ago, I made Chimichurri Chicken Kebabs (except not in kebab form) and I also cooked some tilapia.

I first had chimichurri when I was at a restaurant called Gaucho. It's a super popular place in the area and they used to not take reservations, so if you went at noon on a Saturday you'd have to wait in line for like an hour. Was it worth it? Only if you went at 11am when they opened and could beat the rush.

What I liked best about this place was their sauces. I basically think of chimichurri as cilantro sauce. And you know I love cilantro. I buy cilantro almost every week, but sometimes I'm not able to use up all of it. So what do I do when I have sad looking herbs? Blend them up.

Chimichurri is delicious.

I love dumplings

March 31, 2021 9:00 PM

My sister left a strange looking bag of something in the freezer that happened to be soup dumpling mixture. (Sorry, I don't have a picture of that) I'm not good at wrapping soup dumplings, but I decided to throw some extra ground pork that I had in the freezer into the soup dumpling mixture to make somewhat soupy dumplings.

I know, they just look like regular dumplings.

And I don't have anything interesting to say about them.

But they're so good.

Spring rolls with pork belly

March 27, 2021 12:59 PM

I've made spring rolls a lot in the past, but every time I make it I feel like I'm missing something: pork belly. My family always puts pork belly in their spring rolls, and whenever I don't have it, it just doesn't quite hit the spot. The reason I never included it is because pork belly is kind of hard to get around here, and I had no idea how to cook it.

Well, we have a meat place really close to the Asian place, and it turns out that all I have to do is boil the pork.

Simple, right? Well, I don't know. I did just plop the pork belly in the boiling water, but I had no idea how long to cook it for. When I asked family for advice they told me "just take it out and cut it up and see if it's cooked." So I did that. And I did that again. And again. And again. And again. Man this pork takes way longer to cook than I anticipated. I really should have been keeping track of the time or at least noted how much pork I bought in the first place. Can't say I'd change how I cook this next time since I have no idea how long I cooked it this time.

Oh well, it all worked out in the end. I was dipping it in soy sauce and just eating it like that to begin with. So good.

But even better in some spring rolls.

Every time I make spring rolls, I try and figure out where to put the shrimp to make the spring rolls look all fancy like they do in the restaurant. I don't think I ever figure it out. In fact I think I'm getting worse at wrapping these. They definitely looked nicer last time.

Doesn't matter though. These taste so much better. It's the pork belly. And the oyster-sauce-y onions. And it's lunch time, and I'm hungry, so I think I'm going to eat some more right now (:

Pulled pork

March 17, 2021 11:03 PM

A few weeks ago, I was getting lunch with my friend from one of my favorite restaurants: Taco Town. This place is right next to the office that I work in, but because I've been working at home for the past year, I haven't been able to eat here. So we were very fortunate that we happened to order food here on the last day they were open before taking a two month break.

On the other hand, they were out of carnitas that day. How can they run out of carnitas?! It's the best thing on their menu! Taco Town used to be a solid 5/5 stars for me, but recently I've had to dock them a star.

But whatever. If I can't buy carnitas I'll just make them. Except carnitas are a little more work than I like sometimes, so instead I ended up making some chili rubbed pulled pork.

Obviously these are pictures of the prep work, and I actually don't have pictures of the finished product. I invited a friend over for tacos that night, and sometimes you're just having too much fun to take pictures. I can assure you it was delicious though.

This was close to 4lbs of pork. I had lots left over, which meant I had lots of other meals with my pulled pork. Like this meal with garlic parmesan green beans and cilantro lime rice.

The green beans weren't bad, but I don't think I'd make that recipe again.

I also made some guac to eat with this pulled pork. Guacamole is one of the few things I can make without a recipe.

Typically when I make guac, it starts to brown after sitting in the fridge for a day. But this time was different. I had that guac in the fridge for 5 days, and it was still completely green! It was insane! Like I did some sort of magic on it!

I wanted to make the guac to put it in tacos or burrito bowls, but I knew I wouldn't need a whole avocado's worth of guac just for that. I went to the grocery store to buy some chips, and I came across guacamole-flavored tortilla chips, which made me feel kind of nostalgic. I used to hate guacamole, but when I was in high school, I loved guac-flavored chips. I guess that makes sense because guac-flavored chips taste absolutely nothing like guac. Eventually, well after graduating college, I started liking guac, but I still hated avocados. And just two years ago, my sister showed me just how delicious avocados are, and here I am now, loving all forms of avocado.

So many great uses for pulled pork. All were delicious.

(No, I haven't forgotten about carnitas. I'm absolutely going to make that at some point.)