I'm bringing back the food blog

September 12, 2020 9:38 PM

I want to bring the food blog back. But, I'm tired of Wordpress. I want to make something I'm proud of, and I'm starting from scratch. So here it begins, version 2.0 of flailing in my kitchen.

My sister had been staying with me for a while, and I don't know what it is, but I was being a complete bum with her here. I've been exhausted from work--so exhausted that I don't feel like cooking afterwards. So she would cook all the dinners. After that, we were both at home with family for a month or so. And then I become an ever bigger bum. A blob. A loaf of bread.

But now my sister has moved on to the next chapter of her life, and I'm back on my own! So, you know, I gotta cook for myself again.

And look at that! I can still cook! It took me a whole 30 mins to prep this. 7 mins just to mix the spices. You wouldn't think it would take that long to mix the spices, but I have so many spices that half the trouble is finding the ones I need.

It's okay. It was worth it. I love fajitas.

Taking a Break

May 22, 2020 5:19 AM

So, we're at about two months of this quarantine, self-isolation, social distancing thing. I don't know how long I originally expected this to last, and I don't even know how much longer I think it'll last now. Where I am, they've lifted stay-at-home orders, but social distancing is still strongly encouraged. All of the restaurants are still takeout/delivery only.

It's been such a weird time. Work has been incredibly busy, and it's been hard for me to think about food the same way lately. I don't ever want writing in this blog to be a chore, but right now it feels like more of an obligation than a fun side project. So I think I need a break from this. I need to take more time to devote to sleeping, exercising, eating well, having social interactions, staying away from the internet, and just relaxing.

When will I start writing blog posts again? I'm not sure. At least not until things "get back to normal", and even then I might take some more time. But this blog is officially part of my list of lifetime projects. I may take a super long break...but I'll get back to it eventually.

One more thing: I changed the tagline of the blog. It reflects my state of mind a little better during these times.

Until next time.

Social Distancing: Days 57 - 59

May 19, 2020 8:00 AM

Day 57 (Thursday): At this point we're just trying to clear some random foods out of our fridge. One thing that always works for this is pizza. We've already done "normal" pizza and BBQ chicken pizza, so we decided to have some Hawaiian pizza this time.

Oh, my sister also made some cheesy bread sticks to go along with it. I don't think she was terribly happy with this dish, but it still tasted good. And it made a great breakfast a couple of days later. I love leftover pizza.

Day 58 (Friday): For the first time in three weeks, I finally started to relax at work. I had been working so much that I actually ended the day at 2pm! This meant that I was able to cook dinner again!

We bought a few eggplants when we last went to the Asian store without knowing what we'd do with them. But eggplant is always good in stir-fry, and I haven't had stir-fried eggplant in a while. My sister really likes it with egg, so we used that instead of ground pork. We ate all of it that night! And since we had a lot of that honey garlic pork left, we ate that as well. Delicious.

Day 59 (Saturday): I was so excited to make some pork tacos, but when I took out the piece of pork, it smelled kind of funky and after pondering about it for a while, my sister and I decided it was best to just throw it out.

But obviously I still wanted tacos, so I walked to Aldi and bought a whole other pork butt.

Hey, I really wanted tacos. Pineapple and pork go really well together. I was also going to make some sriracha mayo, but I decided to make it interesting and put sriracha in sour cream instead. I'm never doing that again. It was weird.

The tacos were delicious though.

韭菜粿

May 18, 2020 8:00 AM

Garlic chive cake is one of my favorite foods. It is probably #3, right after tacos and sushi.

My grandma makes the best garlic chive cakes. I think I get more excited to eat this than any other food my family makes.

Of course, it involves dough, which scares me, but my sister is here! And she likes to try making everything. So we had to try making this.

And when I say "we", I mean my sister. But I'll try wrapping them! Next time.

Look how well they turned out! My sister is amazing.

We eat these with Shark brand sriracha. I feel like I could just keep eating these and not stop. We're gonna make more next week too!

Social Distancing: Days 52 - 56

May 17, 2020 11:32 AM

Day 52 (Saturday): It's the weekend! Which means no work! Which means I actually had time to cook!

Yeah, that's right. I did the cooking. I really wanted to make some shrimp bowls. Of course, it ended up taking me forever, and it really felt like I made four different things: shrimp, rice, pineapple salsa, and black beans.

But whatever. It was worth it. Absolutely delicious.

Day 53 (Sunday): My sister was feeling lazy (and I've been feeling lazy for the past three weeks), so we just ate leftovers. We had too many leftovers sitting in the fridge anyway.

Day 54 (Monday): We bought this big thing of pork butt in our last grocery shopping trip and I think it may have been sitting in the fridge for just a little too long. So we decided to cook it.

I really wanted to try another pork loin recipe (but using a pork butt), and this honey garlic pork loin sounded really good. Using pork butt for this was definitely a good idea. We also needed a veg and some starch, so we roasted some brussels sprouts and potatoes as well. Overall, it was a good meal.

Day 55 (Tuesday): My sister made 韭菜粿 and I think it's worthy of its own post. So you'll see it in the next one.

Day 56 (Wednesday): When we went grocery shopping earlier this week, we stopped in the Italian grocery store, and decided to look all the different fancy pastas they had. Both my sister and I really like wide noodles, and I normally find fettuccine not wide enough.

But the Italian grocery store had some really nice fettuccine. The one we bought was completely in Italian! It was also a whole $2! I think paying that extra dollar was worth it though. The recipe we used was a bit weird, but it still tasted good.