Stir Fried Veggies and Chicken

February 23, 2019 6:26 AM

Somehow in all our cooking, I feel like we have too much food and not enough food at the same time. We're just always running out of vegetables! I am very adamant about having vegetables in every meal I cook. I can leave out meat, or I can leave out a starchy element, but I need vegetables. And I found myself going to the grocery store almost every day just because I needed more veggies.

So I decided to subscribe to a service that delivers produce on a regular basis. I kept seeing ads for Misfits Market on Facebook, and I wanted to give it a try. My first box contained the above produce and at full price, it's $23.50. This is what their site says:

We ship fresh, imperfect produce for up to 50% less than what you pay in stores.

I'll say this. The produce is probably better looking than what I get at Aldi, but definitely not cheaper. But then again, the Misfits Market produce is organic, and I never look at the organic section in Aldi.

But, on to the meal I cooked!

Since I had an eggplant, I needed an eggplant recipe. The first idea that came to my mind was to stir fry it, so I checked The Woks of Life and I saw Stir-fried Eggplant, Potatoes, and Peppers. I had some potatoes in my box of produce and some bell peppers in the fridge so that was perfect.

I always think of stir fry as a really easy method of cooking, but this was kind of complicated, with the putting things in the wok and taking them out, and putting them back in later.

And just because it is nice to have meat in my meals, I also made Thai Peanut Chicken from Budget Bytes. Chicken drumsticks are still on sale at Aldi! We added more fish sauce to the marinade and also upped the amount of soy sauce.

It was a lot more effort than I wanted to put in for a weeknight meal, but it was delicious.

Dinner for 4

February 18, 2019 5:33 PM

I did some serious flailing around in the kitchen the other day. My mom and her friend are visiting me, and she last minute (okay technically I had more than a minute) asked me to make lunch for her. My sister was still at work, and unfortunately I didn't take any good pictures.

But hey, we have some pictures of dinner!

We made three different things: sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, and salmon. The potatoes were deep fried, but we didn't really follow a recipe.

I used the same brussels sprouts recipe as I did earlier this year. I think I'm going to completely change it up next time though and bake the brussels sprouts.

For the salmon, I did try a new recipe though: Hot Honey Salmon from How Sweet Eats. It was good, but not my favorite way to prepare salmon. I think I prefer the Citrus Salmon.

You know what happens when you cook for 4? You don't have as many leftovers.

Odds 'n Ends

February 16, 2019 10:15 AM

Somehow we seem to have both too many and not enough leftovers in the fridge. So, this past week had some quick meals and side dishes to accompany the leftovers.

Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter Sauce, Spinach, and Walnuts from Budget Bytes

Man what a long name for a recipe. It's pretty self explanatory though. Aldi had shrimp and crab ravioli so I decided to try it out with this recipe. It's good, but really not that seafood-y. We also threw chives in this. It was an incredibly easy meal to make, so it's good for a weeknight.

Chili Roasted Sweet Potatoes from Budget Bytes

Beth paired this with the cilantro lime drumsticks, and since I also had a couple of sweet potatoes I needed to use up, I figured I'd do the same thing. Roasted sweet potatoes are always delicious.

Roasted Heirloom Carrots with Feta, Truffle, and Lemon Zest from Skinnytaste

Except we didn't use truffle oil and I'm pretty sure those are just regular carrots. We just have a lot of carrots in the fridge since I bought them from Aldi, and you have to buy a whole bag of them.

This was surprisingly good. I think we'll roast more carrots tomorrow.

Honey Walnut Shrimp

February 15, 2019 4:10 PM

Also known as Mayonnaise Shrimp.

I know I've eaten this at Chinese restaurants plenty of times, but I never really got excited for it until my aunt decided to make it for Thanksgiving one year. Ever since then, it's become one of my family's most requested Thanksgiving dishes.

And this year my family had it for Chinese New Year. But my sister and I didn't get to go home so we had to make it for ourselves. Shrimp was on sale this week so I had to buy it!

We used this Walnut Shrimp recipe from The Woks of Life. It was delicious, but I think it could have used more breading though. It also only called for a pound of shrimp and it claimed to make 4 servings, but those must be some tiny servings. We made 1.5 lbs and I think that might have been enough for 3 people.

I'll definitely be making this again.

Drumsticks and Broccoli

February 11, 2019 9:00 AM

Chicken drumsticks were on sale at Aldi for $.69/lb so I wanted to make something using them.

Budget Bytes is always my go to place for recipes, so I looked up ones with drumsticks and I decided to make Cilantro Lime Chicken Drumsticks. We doubled the recipe since I bought a value pack that came with 12 pieces of chicken.

I think the recipe is great, but next time I'll marinate the chicken in a bowl instead of a bag. It's too much of a pain to try and scrape off the marinade inside a plastic bag. I only broiled it for 3 minutes, and next time I'll go with 4. Some of the drumsticks could have used a bit of crisping up on top.

And because I think vegetables are important, I also bought broccoli and roasted it, just like in this Chili Roasted Broccoli recipe. This is my absolute favorite way to prepare broccoli.

To be extra fancy, we added chives to the mashed potatoes.