Some southwest inspired meals

March 6, 2021 9:59 PM

For some reason, I keep buying milk at the grocery store, then realizing it's about to expire so I scramble to find something to make with it, and then once it's gone I end up buying another quart of milk because I need it for something else.

Anyway, this time when I looked up recipes that use milk, I came across this Chili Cornbread Skillet. So I read the recipe and it looked pretty simple. Make some chili, mix up some cornbread mix, put it on top of the chili and then bake it.

The only thing I wasn't sure about was What pot or pan do I use? The recipe said to use a 4qt skillet. I don't know if most pans are labeled with their volume, but mine aren't. I had a deep skillet that I wanted to use, but I wasn't sure if it was big enough. So I actually went and measured 4 quarts of water and started dumping it in this skillet. Turns out it only holds 3.5qt. Alright, I'll use my pot instead.

Look at all that extra room in the pot! I totally could have used my skillet! That would have been so much better and so much more aesthetic. Plus I had preheated my oven not realizing how close the two racks were and then I needed to awkwardly remove one to make the pot actually fit.

Overall, this recipe was alright. A good number of commenters said that this was bland and I have to agree with them. I doubled the amount of salt, but I think I should have doubled all the spices. The cornbread was also kind of bland. It needed more sugar at least. And maybe the whole thing needs more cheese because I barely noticed it in between the chili and the cornbread.

I really enjoyed the leftovers though. I reheated the cornbread part in the toaster oven and the chili part in the microwave, which worked out well.

Today I made another southwest-y dish: Creamy Chicken Fajita Pasta. The reason I decided to make this was because I happened to have half a block of cream cheese and 2 bell peppers that I needed to use up.

Now this was delicious. I really like the pasta recipes on Budget Bytes. And cream cheese in pasta is great. Problem is, I still don't like leftover pasta, and I have a feeling this will go from a 5/5 meal to a 3/5 meal in leftover form.

Cake in a mug

March 13, 2021 9:57 AM

If you've been paying attention to the blog, you'll notice that I almost always make savory food. I'm not really a huge fan of sweets (unless it's ice cream or a smoothie, then I'm a huge fan of sweets with no self control). My little sister was always the one that did the baking. I don't really know how to bake anything, so I never make dessert for myself.

Okay, there's one exception to that.

I absolutely love making this Cinnamon Nut Swirl Mug Cake (except I never put nuts in it). For a "cupcake" that you bake in the microwave it takes way more effort than it should, and uses up way too many measuring spoons, but it's so worth it. And it's the perfect size, so I'm not tempted to eat too much dessert.

Pulled pork

March 17, 2021 11:03 PM

A few weeks ago, I was getting lunch with my friend from one of my favorite restaurants: Taco Town. This place is right next to the office that I work in, but because I've been working at home for the past year, I haven't been able to eat here. So we were very fortunate that we happened to order food here on the last day they were open before taking a two month break.

On the other hand, they were out of carnitas that day. How can they run out of carnitas?! It's the best thing on their menu! Taco Town used to be a solid 5/5 stars for me, but recently I've had to dock them a star.

But whatever. If I can't buy carnitas I'll just make them. Except carnitas are a little more work than I like sometimes, so instead I ended up making some chili rubbed pulled pork.

Obviously these are pictures of the prep work, and I actually don't have pictures of the finished product. I invited a friend over for tacos that night, and sometimes you're just having too much fun to take pictures. I can assure you it was delicious though.

This was close to 4lbs of pork. I had lots left over, which meant I had lots of other meals with my pulled pork. Like this meal with garlic parmesan green beans and cilantro lime rice.

The green beans weren't bad, but I don't think I'd make that recipe again.

I also made some guac to eat with this pulled pork. Guacamole is one of the few things I can make without a recipe.

Typically when I make guac, it starts to brown after sitting in the fridge for a day. But this time was different. I had that guac in the fridge for 5 days, and it was still completely green! It was insane! Like I did some sort of magic on it!

I wanted to make the guac to put it in tacos or burrito bowls, but I knew I wouldn't need a whole avocado's worth of guac just for that. I went to the grocery store to buy some chips, and I came across guacamole-flavored tortilla chips, which made me feel kind of nostalgic. I used to hate guacamole, but when I was in high school, I loved guac-flavored chips. I guess that makes sense because guac-flavored chips taste absolutely nothing like guac. Eventually, well after graduating college, I started liking guac, but I still hated avocados. And just two years ago, my sister showed me just how delicious avocados are, and here I am now, loving all forms of avocado.

So many great uses for pulled pork. All were delicious.

(No, I haven't forgotten about carnitas. I'm absolutely going to make that at some point.)

Spring rolls with pork belly

March 27, 2021 12:59 PM

I've made spring rolls a lot in the past, but every time I make it I feel like I'm missing something: pork belly. My family always puts pork belly in their spring rolls, and whenever I don't have it, it just doesn't quite hit the spot. The reason I never included it is because pork belly is kind of hard to get around here, and I had no idea how to cook it.

Well, we have a meat place really close to the Asian place, and it turns out that all I have to do is boil the pork.

Simple, right? Well, I don't know. I did just plop the pork belly in the boiling water, but I had no idea how long to cook it for. When I asked family for advice they told me "just take it out and cut it up and see if it's cooked." So I did that. And I did that again. And again. And again. And again. Man this pork takes way longer to cook than I anticipated. I really should have been keeping track of the time or at least noted how much pork I bought in the first place. Can't say I'd change how I cook this next time since I have no idea how long I cooked it this time.

Oh well, it all worked out in the end. I was dipping it in soy sauce and just eating it like that to begin with. So good.

But even better in some spring rolls.

Every time I make spring rolls, I try and figure out where to put the shrimp to make the spring rolls look all fancy like they do in the restaurant. I don't think I ever figure it out. In fact I think I'm getting worse at wrapping these. They definitely looked nicer last time.

Doesn't matter though. These taste so much better. It's the pork belly. And the oyster-sauce-y onions. And it's lunch time, and I'm hungry, so I think I'm going to eat some more right now (:

I love dumplings

March 31, 2021 9:00 PM

My sister left a strange looking bag of something in the freezer that happened to be soup dumpling mixture. (Sorry, I don't have a picture of that) I'm not good at wrapping soup dumplings, but I decided to throw some extra ground pork that I had in the freezer into the soup dumpling mixture to make somewhat soupy dumplings.

I know, they just look like regular dumplings.

And I don't have anything interesting to say about them.

But they're so good.