Poultry seasoning

June 3, 2024 9:35 PM

I have had a tiny little container of poultry seasoning sitting in my cabinet for the past...10 years maybe? It expired at least 7 years ago. I don't know why I have it. I'm sure some recipe called for it, but I couldn't tell you what it was. And it's been bugging me because I have no idea how to use this ingredient. But it's over. I finally used up all of the poultry seasoning, and I am never buying poultry seasoning again in my life.

When you google "recipes with poultry seasoning" all you really end up with are recipes for how to make poultry seasoning. But there was one recipe for a baked chicken and even though I pretty much never cook bone-in chicken, it didn't look too hard to make.

Simply having baked chicken didn't sound like much of a meal, so I decided to make mashed potatoes to go with it. And that still didn't sound like a meal, but making three things is a little too much for me, so I bought bagged Caesar salad from Aldi.

It wasn't too bad. I don't think I'll make this chicken again though. It was very seasoned on top and barely seasoned elsewhere. But I was really happy with the gravy and I could eat the unseasoned bits of chicken with the gravy, so overall, I'd call this a success.

Cucumber guac shrimp bites

June 8, 2024 6:07 PM

Continuing with my blast from the past, I decided to make avocado cucumber shrimp appetizers, which is something I made way back in 2019 when I first started the blog. I had half a cucumber left over from another meal, and I thought that it was time to revisit this and actually make it better this time.

First I had to buy my ingredients, one of which was an avocado. Now I could have gone to Giant Eagle and spent $2.50 on a single probably-already-ripe avocado, but that seemed ridiculous when Aldi sells them for 99 cents. The only problem is that Aldi's avocados are pretty much never already-ripe, so I had to wait three days before I could make it. I even tried putting it in a paper bag, but that did not seem to really do much. I also bought shrimp the same day and immediately put it in the fridge to thaw, and that was a little dicey because I was worried my shrimp might go bad before my avocado was ready to eat.

But today my avocado was finally ready! And I mashed it into a nice guac-without-the-onions. I sliced up my cucumber, and I cooked my shrimp (which was totally fine). I've learned that the key to cooking shrimp on the stove is to just watch over it and not multitask and take each shrimp out right when it's opaque.

These turned out really well! I bought "jumbo" shrimp, which in my opinion is really just "large", but it also seemed just a tad too big for one bite for me. I ended up cutting up the shrimp into smaller pieces to get it to be bite-sized. But it was delicious, even if it was a bit cumbersome to eat.

Along with my cucumber avocado shrimp bites, I also made myself a single quesadilla. I had some leftover slices of velveeta cheese, and while I hate how pre-packaged, individually-wrapped sliced cheese tastes on a sandwich, maybe it would be okay in between some corn tortillas.

It was terrible. Never ever ever use sliced cheese in a quesadilla.

I made the pasta a little too salty

December 14, 2024 2:18 PM

A guest post from my cousin Leng

Getting here was quite the ordeal; It was a story of intrigue and betrayal. Plot twists! O' Mennonites! A story too long and drawn out to regale in a single blog post, but the short of it was I arrived three hours later than expected. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my final destination-- homeland of Gian'Iggle, a city with at least one river and probably at least one bridge: Pittsburgh (the 'Burgh).

During my time on that train, I had plenty of time to decide what I would cook. I told Jeje that if I stayed at her place this weekend, I would cook a meal so she wouldn't be cooking all the time. The problem is, I'm a "throw things together and hope for the best" kinda guy. I don't really cook foods with names. I started thinking of meals I knew the names of. "Does pasta count?" I thought to myself. My work caters lunch, and one of the foods I remembered trying was the Winter Cajun Pasta from Fireworks Pizza in Arlington. I gave it a quick Google search, and lo and behold, a recipe from Budget Bytes appeared. Long time fans of this blog already know-- it seemed like it was meant to be. I had decided that's what I would make, and I instantly started to get hungry. So, I ate the small bag of roasted chestnuts I brought with me as emergency provisions.

At last, I arrived at the Amtrak station. I want to say thanks to my Jeje for picking me up at the station at the incredibly late/early hour of 3am (with yummy Kent mangoes), and to Dan for setting up such a wonderful comfy mattress for me to sleep on during my stay.

When I got to Jeje's apartment, I knew I needed to sleep because tomorrow was the Big DDR Holiday Party, but for some reason I couldn't. In a vain attempt to lull myself to sleep I tried listening to a two hour video on Spongebob lore, but it was so bad I couldn't bear it. Instead, I opted to rest in silence, to drift off to the sound of the rumbling heater. I hope I have the energy to dance hard today!

Oh, here's the link to the recipe! I opted to substitute the chicken with kielbasa.

Happy new year

January 2, 2025 7:51 PM

It's finally 2025! I've been waiting for this since like...January 2024!

Yeah, 2024 was a lot. I did a lot. I cooked a lot! But I did not food blog a lot. I only made four posts. (I'm not counting the one my cousin wrote) And I ended 2024 the same way it started, by being sick. It's a little unfortunate, but it's not so bad that I can't start off the year right.

So on January 1, 2025 I wanted to cook something. My first thought was to make some curry, but the curry blocks that I thought I had in the fridge weren't actually there. Then I was thinking I would make some peanut stew because our friend gave us a piece of ginger, and I figured I should try to use it. I made this whole grocery list, and I even planned out a second meal, but then I realized that Aldi was closed because of course they're closed on New Years. And I had intended on buying almost everything on my list from Aldi because there are certain things I just do not want to buy from Giant Eagle.

Okay, so I scrapped that idea and decided on...hummus. Yeah, I know that's more like a snack and not a meal, but I've really been wanting to make some caramelized onion and balsamic hummus.

I already had two onions in the fridge, and you know what else goes well with caramelized onions? Pierogies. I had some frozen pierogies sitting in the freezer, and I figured that if I pair pierogie with some veggies, that's basically a meal. The holidays were pretty heavy so it was good to eat something light.

I ended up buying some green beans because they're pretty easy to cook and because the green beans at Giant Eagle are not that much more expensive than the ones at Aldi. But at Giant Eagle they just have green beans in bulk, and I'm the kind of person that will pick up each green bean individually and inspect it before putting it in my bag. So I was hunched over picking out beans one by one until I got a headache and decided that 0.91 lbs of green beans is good enough.

My boyfriend cooked the pierogie. He likes to first boil them and then toast them in the toaster oven with some spices and shredded cheese. It's pretty good! If I ever write a cookbook, I'd feature them.

Mapo tofu

January 4, 2025 12:08 AM

I've been really into cooking tofu lately. In the past I would look at a tofu recipe, but I would replace the tofu with chicken, and honestly? I don't know why I did that. Tofu usually tastes better. And it's cheaper! It's only $1.55 for a block of tofu at Aldi! I think that's cheaper than the Asian stores around here!

So for a while I wanted to try making some mapo tofu. I've actually never had mapo tofu from a restaurant before. But a couple of my friends have made it and shared it with me and it was pretty good when they made it, so I wanted to try it myself. I decided to follow the recipe from Woks of Life, which claims that it's

the true blue, authentic real deal—the spicy, tongue-numbing, rice-is-absolutely-not-optional, can't-have-just-one-scoop mapo tofu that you get in the restaurants

Sounds a little scary actually 😬

Well, first I had to buy some spicy bean sauce. I initially looked in one of the local Korean grocery stores because it's nearby, and they were selling really large jars of it, and there was no way I was buying that much spicy bean sauce when the recipe called for 2 tablespoons at most. I ended up buying the smallest container I could find from another Asian store. It was 6 oz and I ended up making mapo tofu at least 4 times to get through it all! But I finally did today (actually yesterday, I'm just publishing this late), and I even used up some of that ginger.

The first time I made this, I tried to follow the recipe as closely as possible. The only things I changed were

• using extra firm tofu rather than silken (it's all Aldi sells)
• omitting the fresh Thai bird chili peppers
• and adding a little bit of Chinese five spice because another recipe called for it, and I really have no idea how I'm going to use up all of this five spice

And man was it peppercorn-y. SO PEPPERCORN-Y. I guess some people like the numbing effect, but I want maybe a hint of numbing. Not this.

It was also really oily. I think it's supposed to be like that, but it's a little too much for me.

So the next time I made it, I cut the amount of oil in half and decided to just cook it all in one pan. I would make the chili oil first, and then just leave it there to cook the rest of the dish with. I also cut the amount of peppercorn to 1 teaspoon.

These changes were good! But I think that keeping that chili oil in the pan the whole time made the dish really spicy. And I honestly don't handle super spicy foods all that well. Maybe it was this spicy the first time I made it, but I was so distracted by the peppercorn that the spicy-ness didn't hit me as hard.

So I kept making this and lowering the number of dried chilies, but it was still way too spicy. I also tried using silken tofu one time, but that really did just all fall apart.

So today, I told myself I would not put any dried chilies in this dish so it would not be spicy at all.

Okay, maybe one wouldn't hurt. I do have a really large bag of these dried chili peppers. Actually, two shouldn't be so bad...maybe three.

Nope, I made this too spicy again. At least I've finally used up the can of spicy bean sauce.