Lettuce Wraps

January 24, 2019 10:04 PM

Man, there are not enough hours in the day. I come home from work, run an errand, cook dinner, eat dinner, wash the dishes, shower, and then it's already 9pm! And I told myself I was going to prioritize sleep this year. When am I ever going to have time to actually write blog posts?!

I gotta catch up on posting about the things I've cooked. So here's some pork lettuce wraps I made a few weeks ago.

I actually bought lettuce to put in a hamburger, but I used maybe two leaves of it for that so naturally I decided to make lettuce wraps. I really like the Asian Chicken Lettuce Wrap recipe from skinnytaste, but I do make a few modifications.

• Replace ground chicken with ground pork.
• Replace shiitake mushrooms with whatever mushroom is cheapest.
• Use 2 whole scallions instead of 2 tablespoons of scallion. I don't even know how you're supposed to measure scallions in tablespoons.
• Don't use iceberg lettuce. It is really hard to eat a lettuce wrap with iceberg lettuce.

We used green leaf lettuce...which was also hard to wrap with. Why do people like wrapping things in lettuce anyway? Next time I'll just make a taco.

Shrimp Tacos

January 25, 2019 6:34 PM

Yeah, I wasn't kidding with my last post.

I don't impulse buy very often when I'm at the grocery store, but when I do, it's almost always seafood. And seafood goes on sale at least once a month. So I guess I impulse buy a lot. I got a frozen bag of shrimp the other day, and I had a single tomato in my fridge that needed to be used, so I decided to make Super Simple Shrimp Tacos from Budget Bytes.

I think the recipe is pretty fantastic on its own, but I had to modify it to fit what I had in the kitchen.

• I only cut up one tomato...because that's all I had.
• I used "Asian Chopped Salad" mix instead of an iceberg salad mix. Because I don't know when iceberg lettuce is ever the ideal vegetable to use for anything.
• I cooked a whole 1.5 lbs of shrimp. There is more than enough marinade for it.
• And I turned the sour cream into Lime Crema. With cilantro! That's what really takes it over the top.

Breakfast Hash

January 26, 2019 9:41 AM

So I don't work at google, but my company has its fair share of free food opportunities. Once a month, there's leftover breakfast, and it's always the same thing: a hash of potatoes, eggs, bacon, cheese, and onions. It's delicious, and almost certainly bad for you, so it's probably a good thing I only have it once a month.

But I always think...I can totally make this myself.

But when I don't follow a recipe, my food ends up being questionable, so I was really excited when I saw a Cheesy Bacon And Egg Hash recipe from Cafe Delites.

As far as adjustments are concerned, if cooking on the stove, I absolutely recommend cooking the bacon first and then using the bacon fat to cook the potatoes. I think I'll bake it next time though. It was a little too crispy for my tastes.

Odds 'n Ends

January 26, 2019 3:02 PM

Because not every meal has a story. At least not one I can remember.

Sheet Pan Greek Chicken and Vegetables from Budget Bytes

Can't remember all the things I changed in this recipe, but I know I used cilantro instead of parsley.

Shrimp Scampi Florentine from All Recipes

The shrimp in the pan wasn't as aesthetically pleasing, so we only took one type of photo. This is probably my favorite recipe from All Recipes, so I might make a full post about it in the future.

Spanish Chickpeas and Rice from Budget Bytes

We made this the other day since my sister mentioned really wanting some Spanish rice. As you can see in the photos, I replaced the artichokes with green bell peppers because that's what I had on hand. And I used chicken broth instead of vegetable.

And yes, everything in this post is garnished with cilantro.

Dumpling Party

January 26, 2019 10:45 PM

I know they call them "pot stickers" but you really don't want them to stick to the pot. Because then you can't take them out of the pot, and you end up with dumplings that are missing bottoms.

We switched to a non-stick pan for the second batch. I guess you can't really tell from the picture though, since the bottoms are hidden.

One of my friends made a pretty salad to go with the dumplings. Apparently he was supposed to use green onions, but Aldi was out of them so he used red ones instead. Red onion is not a good substitute for green onion.