Tilapia tacos

February 20, 2021 12:26 PM

First of all, I'm going to lessen the frequency of these blog posts. I'm trying to take it easy and also free up my time for other things. But I'll still be cooking, and I'll try to post at least once a week.

After impulsively buying tilapia a few weeks ago, I decided to finally make some tacos with it. Blue Apron has a catfish taco recipe that's been one of my go-to's, and I thought that if they have one good fish taco recipe, they must have others. So I went and searched for "fish tacos" and these are the top results:

• Tomatillo Pork Tacos
• Salmon & Cilantro Rice Bowls
• Smooth Salmon & Homemade BBQ Sauce
• Garlic & Olive Tilapia
• Sheet Pan Pesto Salmon

Wait wait wait, these aren't fish taco recipes, these are fish OR taco recipes. Blue Apron, you gotta work on your search code. What is it with recipe sites and terrible search algorithms?

So after scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling I finally stumbled upon Baja-Style Tilapia Tacos.

These tacos were easy to make, and they tasted pretty good too. But they're fish tacos. Of course they taste good. I don't know if I love the combination of avocado and orange, but it seemed to work well enough. The only problem with this recipe is that it doesn't work well for leftovers. The avocadoes end up browning.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I used green cabbage instead of red because it was cheaper. I also used corn instead of flour tortillas because that's just what I had already. As much as I think grocery store brand corn tortillas are awful, Aldi corn tortillas are actually pretty great once you toast them in the pan. And finally I added cilantro because of course I added cilantro.

Oh, so, I also went grocery shopping today, and as much as I told myself I wasn't going to buy any more meat/seafood, I ended up impulsively buying another bag of tilapia. It was $5! That's even cheaper than when impulsively bought it last month!

Breakfast of Champions

February 26, 2021 9:51 AM

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my aunt and she recalled a time (well before I knew how to cook) where I made home fries for my little cousins to eat. And she kept saying how all I did was cook a single potato and it took me forever to cut and cook it, but my little cousin ended up loving it. And something about the way she described this story just cracked. me. up.

I was also inspired. I needed to make these home fries again. (Which is why I bought that 5 lb bag of potatoes) I had two sad looking potatoes left, so I figured, it's now or never.

I see why this took me forever. Cutting up potatoes is a lot of work. But I'm on PTO today, so it's chill and I can take my time to make myself a proper breakfast, and a proper breakfast means I need to also cook eggs.

Fried eggs are probably my favorite breakfast item. Turn up the heat to HIGH, throw in some veggie oil, crack a couple of eggs in the pan and watch it sizzle. It needs to sizzle and bubble up. If it doesn't sizzle it's not hot enough. This is exactly the type of thing that caused me to burn my leg in high school, but don't worry! I wore long pants. I was prepared this time.

I did, however, accidentally break the yolk as I was scooping the eggs out of the pan, causing me to let out some profanities. But that's okay. That happens. This is me flailing in my kitchen after all.

I even threw cilantro on top of my food because I was being fancy weird and wanted to give myself the illusion of a well-balanced meal. But also because I like to throw cilantro on anything and everything savory.

Home fries. Eggs. A piece of beef jerky. That's what I call a Breakfast of Champions.

Fried rice

February 27, 2021 9:51 AM

Last Sunday I made some fried rice.

I needed an easy, filling meal for a lazy Sunday and I figured this Chinese Sausage Fried Rice 香肠炒饭 recipe would be good for this. In Teochew, I think I would tell my family I ate 炒饭合腊肠  (cha beung gat lat chiang).

There was a decent amount of prep work involved, so it took a while, but it was easy.

I think I may have had more rice than I needed. The recipe called for 5 cups of cooked rice, which is the most unhelpful measurement since I needed to cook the rice first and I have no idea what the ratio of "uncooked rice cooker cups" is to "cooked rice measuring cup cups". I used 3 cups of uncooked rice cooker cups, and I think I should have at least doubled the sauce.

But overall, this was a good meal that I would definitely make again. The best part of this was definitely the crunchy bits of rice at the bottom of the pan. If I have extra time, I'll reheat this again on the stove, which makes it even better.

Just like my mother, I had to add some sriracha to top this off. Well, not exactly like my mother. She would have had this swimming in hot sauce.

Mashed potatoes, chicken bites, and brussels sprouts

March 2, 2021 11:03 PM

It's later than I should be up for a worknight, but I'm excited to show off what I've been working on for the past two days: Tags! This is just the first iteration of it. More to come.

Last week I made a meal of mashed potatoes, garlic chicken bites, and brussels sprouts, except I spread out cooking the different components on different days so it didn't all come together until I made the brussels sprouts.

For the mashed potatoes, I used this slow cooker mashed potatoes recipe from Budget Bytes. I had that huge bag of potatoes, and I rarely make mashed potatoes so I figured I'd give this a try. It was alright. Needed some herbs. And more butter. And salt. And garlic. And maybe some cheese. I don't have a picture of the mashed potatoes because that's kind of boring on its own.

The garlic mushroom and chicken bites was a recipe I had saved for a while. I unfortunately didn't have chicken thigh, so I had to settle for chicken breast. Would this have tasted better with chicken thigh? Absolutely. But it was still good. I followed the recipe pretty closely except I also added half a cup of chicken broth because I thought it needed to be a little more sauce-y.

I didn't use a recipe for the brussels sprouts. I just cut them in half, tossed them in salt, lemon pepper, and olive oil, threw them in the oven at 425°F for about 10 minutes, and then finished them off in the broiler for another minute. Delicious. I could eat the whole pound of brussels sprouts all in one sitting, but I made sure to save some for two more future meals.

Oh! I also made gravy. The recipe told me to keep whisking until all the lumps were gone. I didn't do a very good job of that. Just don't look too closely at the photo.

Origin story

March 3, 2021 9:33 PM

This post has no pictures. Just a personal story.

I was a really, really picky eater growing up. It seemed like all I really liked eating was porridge with salty fish, salty olives, or salty eggs. I barely touched school lunches until I was in high school. But slowly, over time, partly from going to college and partly from my little sister telling me how much she loved certain foods, I started to expand my tastes.

I ended up gaining 30 pounds during my first semester of college. That's right, I quadrupled the Freshman 15.

At the time, I hated cooking. Hated having to come up with meals, hated going to the grocery store, hated the prep work involved, hated the way my own food tasted, and hated the cleanup that went along with it. Not to mention I was absolutely terrible at it. My mom might have tried to teach me how to cook a few times during high school. I distinctly remember trying to make stir fried cabbage. My mom insisted on turning the heat up to high and dumping all of the cabbage into the pan even though it barely fit. It was a mess.

I couldn't even cook easy things. I burned my leg once in high school while making eggs. I had put oil in the pan and when I cracked the egg in it, the oil splattered and a huge piece of it hit my upper leg. It created a scar that lasted for about two years.

Throughout college, I got used to eating out all the time. Yeah, it was expensive, but it felt justified. At one point, I figured I would just make enough money so I'd never have to cook again. But after two years of living in a dorm, I moved to an apartment, and I figured I'd try to be more of an adult.

I lost all the weight I had gained as a freshman after a year of living in an apartment. I attribute part of that to running everyday. I also attribute that to the fact that I was cooking for myself. Honestly, it was a struggle. I cooked so many meals and felt so dejected so many times because my food was awful.

Because cooking was such a struggle, I went back to eating out more. I got a decent paying job right out of college, so I figured I had the money for it. But then something happened that has nothing to do with food at all. I got bored at work. I got so bored that I had an existential crisis sitting in my cubicle wondering if my life was going to be like this for the next 40 years.

No. No it wasn't. I refused. I started saving up money and making it my life goal to retire as early as possible. But that meant I needed to stop eating out so much and I needed to start cooking meals again.

While browsing through early retirement forums, I stumbled across Budget Bytes, which is a food blog focused around making easy, cheap meals. I tried one recipe and it changed. my. life. Holy crap, I can actually cook things that taste good.

Eventually, I hit a point where I was consistently getting disappointed at restaurants because it was never as good as the food I made myself. I had a complete 180 shift from where I was in college.

At the time of writing this, it's been about five years since that first delicious meal that I made. I've gotten better at cooking since then, but I still have so so much more to learn. What started out as a way to save money has transformed into both a passion of mine and a forever project.