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.

Better Than Takeout

March 16, 2019 12:30 PM

Lately my meals have been inspired by random foods that are on sale at the grocery store. I decided to get some extra chicken breast (in case I needed a little more for that pizza), and it was on sale for $1.48/lb which I figured was a decent price. I also saw these 1lb bags of green beans for $1 each, and I impulse bought two of them.

I used two Woks of Life recipes. With the green beans, I decided to make Sichuan Dry Fried String Beans. I ordered this at a local Chinese restaurant once and they were delicious. They were also like $10, so when I saw that Woks of Life had a recipe for it, I had to try it.

Originally, I had intended to use both bag of green beans, but we ended up saving the second one for a different recipe. But that's why there's so much pork. I think I'll use a lot less pork next time, or even omit it completely.

We also made Thai Chicken Stir-fry with Basil and Mint. Except we didn't use mint. This had a very strong fish sauce smell, which is great, since I love fish sauce. I probably should have doubled the basil since I didn't use mint.

So delicious and way cheaper than takeout

BBQ Chicken Pizza

March 14, 2019 12:30 PM

So I was staring at my list of foods that I have in my kitchen wondering what I should cook. I had a chicken thigh and a half, some shredded cheese, and a lot of onions. I mean I can put onions in anything, but I really had a surplus of them so I wanted to feature them in a dish. They always taste good caramelized, but I only ever think of using caramelized onions in burgers and pierogies.

And then it hit me when I was walking home from work one day: BBQ chicken pizza. Barbecue chicken is my absolute favorite type of pizza. And I had everything I needed to make it.

At least I figured I did. I could have sworn one of my go to food blogs that I frequent had a BBQ chicken pizza recipe, but I couldn't find it in any of them. But hey! I don't need a recipe for pizza. You just put a bunch of stuff on pizza dough.

And since my sister is here, we made the dough from scratch. I still am not comfortable enough with dough so I probably would have bought pizza dough from Trader Joe's if I didn't have her help.

Our pizza toppings (before baking):

• Hickory Smoked BBQ Sauce
• Colby Jack and Monterey Jack Shredded Cheese
• Chicken Thigh and Chicken Breast
• Caramelized Onions

And then some green stuff (after baking):

• Cilantro
• Green Onions
• Avocado

More food that doesn't really go together

March 12, 2019 12:30 PM

So I mentioned in a previous post that Aldi had really thin asparagus. Normally I wouldn't buy any, but they were on sale for the past two weeks, so I went and looked for the bag with the thickest stalks (which were still really thin). I needed an asparagus recipe and I came across Crispy Parmesan Asparagus Sticks from How Sweet Eats.

It seemed like a great idea since I had both Parmesan and breadcrumbs, and the recipe actually called for super thin asparagus. But I started breading them, and I realized how much of a pain it is to bread asparagus. Way too much effort for a tiny asparagus stalk.

I also had some potatoes that looked like they were getting kind of sad and growing too many eyes, so I sliced them up and made these Roasted Potato Wedges with Shawarma Sauce from Budget Bytes. The sauce was way too salty so I think that should be cut in half. I would probably also just cut the whole sauce recipe in half because now I have a bunch of Shawarma sauce and I need to figure out what to do with it.

And I completely forgot to take pictures of this Unstuffed Bell Peppers rice dish that I made (also from Budget Bytes). It was a quick and easy dish. My sister did remember to take one photo of it, combined with the potatoes and asparagus.