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.

I have the best sister

May 12, 2020 8:00 AM

Seriously. She cooks and bakes several dishes in a single day, and they're all delicious. She made sourdough bread, and then made grilled cheese using that bread.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in this grilled cheese. You can barely tell there's cheese.

But whatever. It was amazing. You know what else she made with her sourdough? Avocado toast. I didn't really understand the appeal of avocado toast before (or even the appeal of avocados at all), but my sister converted me and now I love avocados.

My sister has been making me these wonderful, aesthetic lunches which give me a nice moment of happiness during my stressful workday.

She even made me poutine! My family went to Canada for vacation and we never got poutine, and I was so annoyed, and ever since then I have been wanting poutine. I don't know how poutine normally tastes, but this poutine was delicious.

And finally, I needed to show off these hot dog buns. For some crazy reason, none of the Asian bakeries in town (okay, there's only one) sell hot dog buns. My sister has made this recipe a few times, and I think this her best batch yet! It was sooooo good.

Social Distancing: Days 49 - 51

May 11, 2020 8:00 AM

Day 49 (Wednesday): I actually felt a little better today, but I still ended up working way way too much. So of course my sister took care of dinner.

We had some mango that was ready to eat, and so my mind immediately went to shrimp tacos.

I love tacos. Tacos are always a good choice.

Day 50 (Thursday): Holy crap, day 50 already?! Anyway, we had some chickpeas sitting in the fridge that I felt needed to be used, so I figured we could make some falafel.

This was a little bit of a struggle, as the falafel patties totally fell apart when we tried to fry them. It's alright though. My sister managed to salvage them, and at the end they came together nicely. We also had some roasted eggplant and leftover orzo pasta, since that seemed appropriate. Overall, a good meal even if we had to go through some mishaps.

Day 51 (Friday): The end of a stressful work week. I was very exhausted by now, so I was definitely not in the mood for cooking dinner. However, my sister is always up for cooking dinner. And she decided to go all out for dinner by making some hand-pulled noodles.

My sister told me that this was harder than she expected. But I think she did a fantastic job. The noodles were delicious.

Social Distancing: Days 46 - 48

May 10, 2020 8:11 AM

Day 46 (Sunday): It's a grocery shopping day. We end up buying way too much food it seems (like always), but this might be the first time in a while that I wasn't as stressed out.

We ended up going to the Mexican grocery store, and I impulse bought some mini tortillas. My sister loves them! She just eats them as a snack! But we also used them for some chicken fajitas. Delicious.

Day 47 (Monday): I don't realize it yet, but it's the start of a very busy workweek. So busy I that I'm too pooped to cook. It's a good thing my sister is willing to cook.

Our fridge was getting crowded with all the groceries we got the day before, so we figured we should cook something that takes up too much space. Along with those tortillas, we also ended up impulse buying some collard greens. We actually had some collard greens on Friday when we got takeout, but it wasn't very good. My sister makes much better collard greens. We ate this with some leftover shepherd's pie.

Day 48 (Tuesday): I was probably at peak stress level on Tuesday. I ran into a problem at work that I couldn't solve, and I had no idea what to do next. Well, I didn't know what to do for work, but obviously I needed a break. Somehow we ended up with so many leftovers in the fridge, so we did another pairing of something freshly cooked with something leftover.

I had half a box of orzo sitting in my pantry, as well as a zucchini in the fridge that I needed to use up, so this was a good recipe to try. I'm usually not a huge fan of pasta salad, but this went well nicely with our leftover chicken piccata.

Social Distancing: Days 42 - 45

May 5, 2020 8:00 AM

Day 42 (Wednesday): During this whole quarantine, I've made sure to have chicken breast stocked at all times. I know chicken breast is kind of boring, but my sister has gotten really good at cooking it well.

Seriously, it was really good chicken. We also had some scalloped potatoes and asparagus to round out the meal.

What a nice fancy, American meal.

Day 43 (Thursday): After eating that chicken and that shepherd's pie, I was starting to feel really sluggish, so I wanted to have something a little bit lighter. I stared at my whiteboard for a while until deciding on making some Greek chicken wraps.

Except I had pita bread, so it wasn't actually wrapped. My sister also made me some french fries since I told her I really wanted some (: We had to be a little creative for the hummus, since I realized in the moment that we didn't have any lemons. We replaced that with some vinegar and orange, which was a really strange combination. Not my favorite hummus, but it was still edible.

The sandwiches all put together were really good though! Once again, my sister did a great job cooking the chicken.

Day 44 (Friday): We ordered takeout. Yup, we finally supported a local business and got some fried chicken. It was alright. The cornbread was dry. I don't take pictures of food I eat at a restaurant, so I don't have a picture of the fried chicken we ordered.

Day 45 (Saturday): Rounding out the American-ish meals, we decided to make meatloaf!

We put the dry cornbread in this, which I think was a good use of it. I think it turned out great.

I know meatloaf isn't very visually appealing, but it had really good flavor. My sister loved it.

Sunday we're hitting up the Asian store and the Mexican store, so that'll spice up our meals for next week.