Social Distancing: Days 7 - 9
March 30, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 7 (Wednesday): So during my multi-grocery store excursion, I impulse bought some Ahi Tuna, because of course I did. And because I was out for three hours, that gave plenty of time for that slab of tuna to already start thawing, so I figured we might as well keep it in the fridge and have Poke the next day.
One of our lessons learned from past poke parties is that we usually buy way too much fish. So we picked out the smallest piece (about 1/2 lb), and we decided to NOT add any extra items to our grocery list because the best way to do poke parties is to just use what you already have.
Another lesson learned is that we should just marinate the fish, and not any of the other ingredients because otherwise it gets too salty. My sister makes the most delicious marinade with soy sauce and other Asian sauces and ginger and garlic and onions and she even included some lime this time!
If you're wondering, yes, we ate everything on that table. There were no leftovers, and there shouldn't be, since this is raw fish we're talking about.
Day 8 (Thursday): We had a planned game night with our cousins this day, so I wanted to make something easy. I still had a lot of pulled pork leftover from a few days ago, so it's taco time again!
I was expecting to do another taco night, so I made sure to buy lots of cilantro and sweet onions. I also happened to buy Mexican cheese, which I wasn't even planning on using for this. (I like putting Mexican cheese in my green bean casserole...which will be for another blog post!) But it adds some nice color to the tacos!
Also, we're sitting here at my dinky table, when I realize how nice the lighting is at one particular spot. And I realize that I have a spotlight in my kitchen that is pointing RIGHT at that spot on the table, and I have two other spotlights and I'm like WHY HAVEN'T I NOTICED THIS BEFORE. I need to buy a ladder now so I can re-angle these lights and give my pictures better lighting for the future.
My sister also made some shaobing. She's so talented.
Day 9 (Friday): So one of my friends is really into those Bon Appetit videos, and I figured I'd watch one to see what all the fuss is about. I'm not really into watching videos about food, but watching this video of this guy making pasta with chickpeas really made me want to make pasta with chickpeas.
Except this is more like soup. Pasta soup? They call it "brothy pasta" which my sister thought was weird, but that's what it is! You eat it with a spoon! We also threw in some kale and celery that we just happened to have. I thought it was great. I'd make it again.
Oh remember how I was struggling to find flour at the grocery store? Well, that's not the only thing we struggled with. We also couldn't find butter. We did find butter substitutes though, so we bought two packs of margarine. My sister used it to make these croissant-like things that don't really resemble croissants at this point, but whatever. It was still tasty.
Social Distancing: Days 4 - 6
March 29, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 4 (Sunday): We are running low on groceries. Especially vegetables. We are completely out of garnish at this point, and I am looking at our list of foods wondering what I can scrape together. I did impulse-buy some fish. And I have some oranges. Hey, maybe I can make that same Winter Citrus salmon my sister and I made last year.
Hmm, but I only have Cara Cara oranges. And I don't have limes. But I do have a lemon! So this is just going to be really...orange. But what can I do for veggies? I still had two bell peppers, and I always have onions on stock. I remembered that I have some fajita seasoning that mixed up a while back. Fajita veggies. BAM. I just need some starch. Since I already did chicken broth rice with the tacos, I figured I'd do something different and make yellow rice this time. Which is making this dish REAL yellow, but whatever. It is delicious.
Day 5 (Monday): I actually have one more planned meal! I saw this sausage and broccoli recipe on Budget Bytes that I wanted to try.
And now I remember why I had extra bell peppers. I was totally saving one for this recipe. Well, we're just omitting that part and using extra onions. And I'm pretty sure that used up our whole onion supply as well.
And so that's it. That's all the meals I could possibly make from what we initially bought on Thursday. Could we have made it two extra days? Honestly, we totally could have. We have leftovers from all the dishes we cooked. Plus we could grab takeout! But we are dangerously low on butter and flour. And my sister is a baker and I will not stop her from baking!
Day 6 (Tuesday): Yeah, turns out the grocery stores have even less butter and flour than I do. I know, I said I'd be flexible and creative, but how the heck are we supposed to bake things without flour?! You can't replace flour! I mean you can use flour substitutes, but those are all gone too! I went to way too many grocery stores. I was out so much longer than I should have been. BUT I WAS DETERMINED TO FIND FLOUR. I actually found some at Target. Thank goodness, because I did not want to have to hit up Rite Aid and the dollar store.
Also, we bought way too many things, and I am never trying to buy two weeks worth of food at once ever again.
Oh you know what else we had trouble finding? Frozen mangoes. We found frozen strawberries, frozen pineapples, frozen peaches, but no frozen mangoes. Well, sorta. We did grab a bag of frozen mixed fruit that just happened to have some mangoes in it. My sister really wanted to make mango lassi, so we went and picked out all of the mangoes in this bag of fruit.
Anyway, we needed something easy for dinner after that whole experience, so we made spring rolls!
Before the Quarantine
March 28, 2020 7:28 AM
Okay, I know we're not really quarantined, but I didn't know what else to call this blog post. I had some pictures of things I made before my sister visited. And I know I can't tie these all together nicely, but whatever. Enjoy the pictures!
I've been on a hummus kick for the past few months. Back when I could still go into the office, I would snack all the time. I don't think I went a single hour without eating something. And the cafe in the office doesn't exactly offer the most healthy options.
So, I'm trying to make sure I have healthier snack options. And since I love chickpeas, that also means I love hummus. And homemade hummus is way way better than anything you can buy at the store.
Remember those fish tacos I made a while back? I actually bought the family pack of tilapia, so I needed to do something with the rest of the filets. I saw a chimichurri fish recipe on Budget Bytes, and you know I love chimichurri.
I was going to buy a head of cabbage for this, but I saw a pack of coleslaw mix on clearance for $1 so I grabbed that instead.
You know a post about lots of food I make wouldn't be complete without tacos. Sweet potatoes were on sale at Aldi, and I also saw these tiny little tortillas at Trader Joes that I impulse bought!
Since the potatoes at Aldi come in 3 lb packs, I still had to so something with the rest of them. So why not continue making more Mexican-inspired dishes?
The chipotle chili powder in the lime crema was a great addition. I think I'm going to always add the chipotle powder in the future.
And to finish off the sweet potato recipes, I also made some beef stew. The sweet potatoes made the whole dish sweeter, which was nice.
For something completely different, here are some pierogies! That I bought from the store, because sometimes I need an easy meal.
Dumplings! The best freezer meal and completely worth the hour of prep time that goes into making a large batch.
And tacos again! Because I love tacos! All recipes on this page get a 5/5 star rating from me. Hopefully I'll remember to post more often in the future.
Social Distancing: First 3 Days
March 21, 2020 7:38 PM
So, my sister's school got canceled for who knows how long, which means she's back with me! And since she's back, you know what that means. We make lots of food and take lots of pictures.
So, when we got home we went grocery shopping, and my mom told us to buy two week's worth of groceries. So we bought a lot of food. But, there is zero chance that we managed to get enough for two weeks. I don't even think we bought enough food for one week. We went through a whole pound of broccoli in one meal!
^ Cilantro Jalapeno Hummus, Sesame Tuna Salad (Budget Bytes) Also a traditional tuna salad and veggies
We're trying really hard to not go grocery shopping again until all our veggies are used up. I think we can last a couple more days. Maybe. But I will not sacrifice healthy, well-balanced meals for this. I know eating veggies with dip might seem like a weird thing to have for lunch, but look at the different flavors! I have all the food groups represented. And I can use up my whole thing of celery, which is great because I don't really like celery.
And we bought so much fruit! Which is crazy for me, since I don't really like fruit that much. But my sister can turn that fruit into delicious smoothies, and I love smoothies.
Of course this means we have to be a little creative. Out of limes? Let's use lemons instead. Out of cilantro? What else do I have that's green? Have the wrong kind of cheese? Doesn't matter, I'll just use what I have.
Yes, I made tacos and replaced limes with lemons, green onion with cilantro, and queso fresco with feta. And it was better than any other taco from a hipster restaurant that I've ever had.
Yeah, we're now officially out of fresh green things to use as garnish. Lesson learned? Buy way way way more vegetables next time.
Slowing Down
February 22, 2020 11:07 AM
You might be thinking, "Slowing down?! Aren't you already making new posts at a ridiculously slow rate?!" and yeah, I am. But that's because my life has been busy busy busy, and I need to slow down what I'm doing in my life. I had a realization while driving home last week that I've been doing way too much. drinking too much coffee, and not getting enough sleep. So, I've officially started a no-coffee diet that I'm going to try and keep up for the next couple of months.
No coffee obviously means I need to get more sleep, and because I'm trying to prioritize sleep, I might actually be cooking less. But we'll see!
One Pot Creamy Cajun Chicken Pasta - Budget Bytes
I want to say I made this because I had cream cheese that I needed to use up, and whenever I need to use up cream cheese, I look for a creamy pasta to make. All of the cream cheese filled pastas I've made have been great, even if the leftovers aren't my favorite. I think this pasta could have used more of the cajun-y taste though. I also think it might have been better if I added more cheese, as it still tasted very tomato-y. Still, this tasted good and I'll probably make it again at some point.
Sushi - Just One Cookbook
Okay, I know I didn't really need a recipe for sushi, but the recipe I linked is what I referred to for making the sushi rice. Of course I just cooked rice like normal and then stirred in the extra ingredients when it was done.
I wanted to make sushi because I had a bunch of those seaweed wrappers and I also had imitation crab in the freezer, and I'm really trying to use what I have instead of buying extra ingredients all the time.
I considered buying one of those bamboo rolling things that make it easier to make sushi but I just tried rolling one on my own and while it wasn't super pretty, it seemed to work well enough so I'll be sticking to my own hand rolling for now. Anyway, I didn't realize how easy it was to make sushi like this. I'll be doing this some more in the future.
One Pan Roasted Kielbasa and Cabbage Dinner - Budget Bytes
For some reason I really wanted some sausage the other day, and I also had cabbage I needed to use up. Kielbasa is basically sausage, right? I think I ended up having extra meat and not as much cabbage as the recipe called for, which isn't really the direction I like to take these recipes, but whatever. This was a nice, easy dish to make.
Posole - Budget Bytes
I considered not posting this because of how ugly I think this picture is, but this did serve me well for four meals. I had a bag of leftover pulled pork in my fridge, and while I did use some of it for tacos, I also used it to make this soup. It was delicious.
Spiced Fish Tacos - Blue Apron
Because I love tacos so much, I also made fish tacos. The recipe calls for catfish, but I use tilapia because I'm cheap. It's been a while since I've made this, but this is one of my go-to recipes. I've made this so many times, and yet, I still haven't tried anything else from Blue Apron's cookbook. Maybe one day.
I actually deviated from the recipe this time, and I used avocado in place of sweet potato. I do think sweet potato would have been better, but I'm really trying hard to use ingredients I already have, and I just happened to have a lot of avocados on hand.
Tomato Basil Pasta with Ricotta - Budget Bytes
Yeah, more pasta! Pasta is easy so I make it a lot. I was actually looking up recipes that use ricotta since I bought some to make ravioli out of dumpling wrappers (that was gross, I'm never doing that again), and I had half the thing of ricotta left. This was good, but I cut the amount of tomatoes in half since I was too lazy to cut up a whole 2 pints. I definitely should have use all of them though.