New apartment

August 29, 2026 5:59 PM

I had been living in the same apartment since before the start of this food blog, and that was far far far too long for me, but finding a new apartment is a lot of work and I was kind of picky.

But I finally did it! I found a new place and I moved! My new place is a little bigger, though it came with much less storage and countertop space in the kitchen. My dad and my cousin helped me move in, and as part of that, my dad also built me some shelves to make my kitchen more usable.

For most of the week and a half that my dad and cousin were visiting, we were eating food that my aunt packed for us. She packed so much food, but they were also here for a bit longer than we expected, so I ended up needing to make a few meals for them myself. On the very last day, I made some BBQ pulled pork pizza using some leftover odds n ends from a taco night earlier that week. As I was adding the toppings to my pizza dough, my cousin exclaimed "Is that...barbecue sauce? 😯"

I don't know why he was so shocked, because of course it's barbecue sauce! BBQ is the best pizza sauce.

I was honestly pretty impressed with myself for pulling that together so quickly, and I think my dad and cousin were impressed too.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the taco spread, but because I only used half a packet of fajita seasoning, I used the rest in some chicken fajitas later that week. I'm a little further from the Giant Eagle now, but there is a tiny grocery store not too far away, and it's good for buying individual pieces of produce. I bought two bell peppers and a lime for these fajitas.

I also checked out a local bagel shop that apparently sometimes has super long lines. The first time I tried to go there, they were already sold out for the day! But I tried again, and I got there earlier this time. I think I just got a plain bagel with some veggie cream cheese. This place is all about customizing your cream cheese. You choose your mix-ins, things like scallions or broccoli or bacon or cheese, and then the bagel person puts your cream cheese and extra stuff in a bowl and mixes it all up. It's like Cold Stone, but for cream cheese.

Anyway, I was so overwhelmed by all the options that I just chose a pre-designed cream cheese mix. The bagel and cream cheese were...fine. Didn't seem worth the $6 price tag 😨

I am not a very heavy-cream-cheese-on-bagel kind of person, which means these bagel places always give me twice as much cream cheese as I want for one bagel. But I know this, so I ended up getting my cream cheese on the side, and I used the other half of it to make pasta.

I was definitely a little worn out from my move-in week, so I wanted to just make some easy meals after that. And pasta's pretty easy. In fact, I made pasta twice that week!

I usually like to make baked ziti, but this baked ravioli is like an easier version of that. And even though I usually hate leftover pasta, there's something about these baked, really cheesy pastas that can withstand the sitting and reheating process, so I happily ate leftovers of this.

Of course, because I've got a new kitchen, that means I have to get used to all of my new-to-me appliances and that's going to make things a little harder at first. The oven was pretty simple--so far that works just as expected. But I'm finding that my stove gets way hotter than I expect it to. I have electric coils now, and I don't know anything about the science of how that heats up the food differently from the flat top stove, but I cannot be cooking everything at a 7 now.

I've made this yellow rice dish so many times in the past, so I was expecting it to be chill, but I think I set the stove heat too high and I made a bit of a splattery mess. I quickly cleaned my stovetop up, but it must have been a little bit later (and darker) in the day because the next day I looked above my (white) stovetop and it was yellow, and I tried to wipe it off, and it would not come off 😱

I looked up how to remove turmeric stains on the internet and I found so many different suggestions on reddit: dish soap, bleach, vinegar, baking soda, oil, magic eraser, sunlight, but the top rated comment said "Enjoy your yellow stove!"

I tried using a magic eraser and I just scrubbed as hard as I could. Some of the yellow did come off, and now the surface is just a very pale yellow and I'll probably forget about it in the future. I wonder how much yellow stain had coated my old stove that I just didn't notice because it was black.

This was a pretty minor incident though. Besides that, I've already had a few instances where I cooked something and it started smoking A LOT, and then I've triggered the smoke alarm 🥵

Remember when I said that I shouldn't use pre-made frozen burger patties? Well, I didn't listen to past self, and for some reason I thought that Aldi's smash burgers would be an easy dinner. Absolutely not. What. a. mess. Never ever ever use those frozen burger patties when I'm cooking burgers on the stove.

Well, the kitchen only really came with the oven, stove, and a fridge, so I had to bring my own microwave. My dad ended up buying me a cute, compact microwave from Walmart, and while my stove gets way too hot, my microwave only uses 700 watts of power! My old microwave was at least 1000 watts, and I had used it so many times to perfect my cookie-in-a-mug and my brownie-in-a-mug, and now I've got to start all over again to figure out the right amount time to cook these desserts.

I've made four chocolate chip cookies in this mug and in this tiny microwave so far, and I'm still tweaking things. I first tried 60 seconds, and then I added 10 extra seconds (shouldn't have added that extra 10), and then I tried 70 seconds, and then I tried 67 seconds 🫲🤪🫱, and then I tried 60 seconds by itself, and somehow this always ends up both too undercooked and overcooked at the same time.

But I think I've rambled on enough for one post. Thanks for reading, and maybe I'll be cooking something more exciting in my next post!