It's been a while

May 11, 2019 12:40 PM

Yup, life got busy. Too busy to be worrying about a blog that not very many people read. But the blog has always been in the back of my mind, and my brain is still constantly thinking about food. I'm going to be taking this blog in a different direction. Instead of having posts that feature recipes that I've tried out, I'm going to be doing weekly food recaps of my life.

Last year I had a goal to only spend $30 a week on food. I wanted to bring back this goal now that I'm cooking for just myself again, and week one was already a failure. I spent close to $40 on groceries AND I ate tacos at Taco Town!

So, what else did I actually cook this week?

• Caesar Salad w/ Chicken
• Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta - Budget Bytes
• Easy Oven Fajitas - Budget Bytes
• Instant Noodles (I use the stove. It still counts as cooking.)
• Ramen Eggs - Just One Cookbook

Spinach Tomato Pasta was the first meal I intended to make this week, but when I got home from the grocery store, I looked in my fridge and realized I was missing cream cheese. I don't know why I thought I already had cream cheese, and even if I did it definitely would have gone bad in the weeks I was away from my apartment.

Then later in the week, I wanted to make fajitas, but when I got home, I realized I didn't have any onions! And then later that day, I decided to make some Ramen Eggs, but as my water was boiling I realized I didn't have any Mirin! My meal planning was not off to a good start. But, I guess I could always make salads.

My mom eats salad all the time. And as silly as I think her salad habits are, I have to say she makes a really beautiful Caesar salad. So that inspired me to make my own Caesar salad! I don't know how she makes hers so aesthetic because mine did not turn out that nice.

Also, washing and drying lettuce leaves is such a pain. I really don't understand how I'm supposed to dry my leafy greens. I basically just wash them hours in advance and let them sit out, but they're still too wet, and then I use some paper towels to pat them dry, but that's not terribly effective either. I know I could invest in a salad spinner, but I think that seems like a waste of money to buy a tool just for drying lettuce.

Even though I delayed making my pasta and fajitas a day later, I still went ahead and made the ramen eggs since I figured I had to have something that would work. I replaced the mirin with some rice wine vinegar and sugar. I also used seasoning sauce instead of soy sauce, and the eggs still tasted great.

Finally, I ate instant noodles twice this week which is WAY more instant noodle than I should even be eating in a month. But that's what happens when you scramble and keep forgetting a single ingredient in your meals. At least I got to throw my ramen egg in it!

At this point, I've got a ton of veggies to use up, so hopefully that means I won't need to buy too much from the store for next week.

Yellow Squash Pancakes

March 31, 2019 11:09 AM

I'm not really a huge fan of yellow squash. It just reminds me of college cafeteria vegetables because for some reason "mixed veggies" always meant a bunch of sauteed diced squash. But I saw a recipe for Summer Squash and Chive Pancakes on Skinnytaste, which sounded cool since I could just turn the squash into something that doesn't resemble it at all. I didn't actually have chives, but I always have green onions stocked, so I just subbed that in.

No matter how many times I make pancakes, the first pancake in a batch never seems to turn out right. I think I get impatient and don't wait for the pan to fully heat up. And then I try to flip it, and it completely falls apart.

I don't know what it is about "fake" pancakes, but they always taste like egg to me! My aunt used to make paleo pancakes, and all I could taste was the egg. I put exactly one egg in this batch, and if I didn't know what ingredients were in this, I would just call it scrambled eggs. They tasted just like scrambled eggs with chive that my family makes. I feel like there's a genius idea somewhere for making vegan scrambled eggs using yellow squash. But...I'm not vegan so I'll never think about that again.

You'd think I would love this, because I love eggs, but egg-y pancakes just taste like overcooked scrambled eggs to me, and I think overcooking the egg completely ruins the texture and flavor. And yet, these pancakes were incredibly liquid-y on the inside. Even if I kept it on the stove for 10 minutes, it was still liquid-y. So this was just weirdly undercooked and overcooked at the same time. I think it might be better to roast the squash instead of boiling it.

I threw sour cream, feta, and cilantro on top to make this more palatable to me (and also to possibly make it look prettier?). I'm sure the flavor profile is all wrong, but it made it seem less like eggs, so I thought it tasted decent at the end. My sister liked it on its own though!

Not sure if I'll ever make this again. Pancakes are way too much work.

Garlic Chive Boxes

March 22, 2019 7:01 PM

I'm slowing down the rate that I post here, mostly because it's a lot of work, and there are other things I want to devote more time to. But, I'm still thinking about food a lot and I have big ideas for a fun food challenge that I want to start in the future, and what I'll post about in this blog.

But anyway, that's for the future, and now I want to talk about these awesome Chinese Garlic Chive Boxes from The Woks of Life. One of my favorite foods is garlic chive cake, but that's way above my cooking skill level. But these chive boxes totally seemed doable. They're like a cross between a chive cake and egg rolls!

Getting the filling together was really easy, but wrapping these into little envelopes was a bit of a challenge. We re-wrapped the first ones over and over until they finally looked sort of like the pictures.

I'm not completely sure I love the fact that they're double wrapped. This makes it take longer to cook. Maybe next time I'll just roll them like egg rolls. Also next time I'll use an egg wash to seal the boxes.

They were delicious though! I'll definitely make them again.

Spring Rolls

March 21, 2019 12:30 PM

I was at a Pho restaurant last week, and my friend ordered spring rolls, which made me want to make some spring rolls. Because obviously I'm not going to pay for something I can easily make myself.

We don't really follow a recipe for this, as we just get spring roll wrappers and stuff to put inside of them. Giant Eagle was selling 2lb bags of shrimp for $11 each, so I had to get a bag.

When I make spring rolls with my mom, she always sautes shrimp with onions and oyster sauce. I feel like this makes the shrimp not as aesthetically pleasing, but much more flavorful.

The other ingredients we used were:

• Vermicelli noodles
• Green leaf lettuce
• Cucumbers
• Thai Basil
• Imitation Crab
• Cilantro
• Fish sauce and hoisin sauce for dipping

We kept trying to make the shrimps visible and pretty like they do in the restaurant, but that wasn't working out. I'm sure our spring rolls tasted way better though.

Salmon and Green Beans

March 18, 2019 12:30 PM

So Aldi sells frozen salmon at less than $4 a pound, which may seem questionable, and that's why I've never bought it before. Until now. I needed to do something with that other $1 bag of green beans, and I really like this Sesame Glazed Salmon and Green Beans recipe from Budget Bytes.

The recipe is described as "faster-than-takeout", but I don't know about that. I always buy salmon with the skin on, and for some reason my local grocery store doesn't de-scale the salmon. So I usually end up trying to de-scale the fish myself which turns into a flailing mess. But Aldi's bags of frozen salmon are completely de-scaled! And cut into individual sized portions! So much easier.

However, this attempt was still kind of slow, since we cut the green beans diagonally. My mom always cut them this way, and it really helps the flavor soak in. It is a lot more work though.

It is a little odd that the recipe calls for 2/3 lb of salmon and 2/3 lb of green beans. We just used 1lb each. We also made more sauce, and I think we should have stuck to the amount in the recipe, since that has way more sauced than needed. I'd also put less sugar in next time.

Aldi frozen salmon definitely isn't as good as the ones I buy not-frozen, but I think it's totally worth it for the price.