Teriyaki chicken and stir fried broccoli

January 4, 2025 12:00 PM

In order to use up the rest of that piece of ginger, I decided to make some teriyaki chicken and broccoli. Trying a Made with Lau recipe always feels like I'm cooking on expert mode, but the results area always really great so I figured it would be good on a Friday night where I have more time. In order to prepare, I made sure to watch the youtube video the night before and take notes in my journal.

Some steamy stir fried broccoli in a wok, right after I finished cooking it — *Right after I finished cooking the broccoli!*

And yes, it was time consuming. I still feel like stir fries are some of the hardest things for me to make. I had to wash the broccoli in a special way, cut it up, and blanch it before I got to the actual stir frying part. I ended up using so many pots and pans (especially because I also needed one for the chicken).

But it was really tasty so I think it was worth it.

A closeup of the stir fried broccoli in a dish

A closeup of the cooked teriyaki chicken, with the broccoli and my journal in the background — *You can see my notes in the background!*

I thought that cooking the chicken would be easier, and I guess it was a little easier, but I still struggled to give it a nice dark brown color. If I make it again, I think I'll marinate it in a bag instead and make sure to jostle the chicken around more so the marinade really gets into all of the pieces of chicken.

I also thought about doing the whole, cooking two things at once, but I am not at that level, so I actually finished cooking the chicken before I started cooking the broccoli, which meant having to microwave the chicken right before eating it. It's okay, still tasted good.

An overhead shot of the plates of chicken and broccoli sitting on my counter

Chicken, broccoli, and rice on a plate

And I'm trying to embrace my new philosphy of living life as inefficiently as possible so it's okay that dinner takes me a while to make.

Filed under: chicken broccoli

Kimchi spring rolls

January 7, 2025 12:09 AM

I often decide on a dish to make because of a single ingredient that I have that I want to use up. A few weeks ago, that ingredient was a bell pepper. I was looking at bell pepper recipes on Budget Bytes, and I had honestly made most of them before, but one of them seemed pretty different, kimchi spring rolls.

Now I make spring rolls all the time. And I think my spring rolls are pretty darn good, but sometimes it's nice to switch it up and try other fillings. The recipe is labeled as an appetizer. It's pretty light, and it's vegan. Of course I didn't actually make it vegan. I had a small amount of imitation crab left over from another dish, so I added that into the spring rolls. It was pretty good! The kimchi filling was interesting, in a good way. The only thing I didn't love was the dipping sauce, which I thought was way too salty, and I ended up adding extra agave into it to try and balance it out more.

I used up all the imitation crab in one meal, so when I had it again a couple of days later, it really was vegan! I told my aunt about my meal and she said "No meat?! Child, does it even taste good?" Yeah, I told her of course it tastes good and you don't need to eat meat during every meal.

I actually hadn't taken a single bite of my spring roll yet, but after eating one I thought "...this could use some meat" 😅

So more recently, I wanted to use up the rest of my kimchi and peanut butter, so I made another batch of that kimchi filling. And I also bought fresh shrimp from Aldi because this spring roll tastes better when it's got some protein. For a while, I avoided buying Aldi's fresh shrimp because I didn't fully trust it. I don't know why, because I always buy their fresh salmon, and I think it's great. When I finally did buy their shrimp, it turned out great!

A bunch of spring roll ingredients sitting on the table

As I opened the shrimp this time, I took a long hard stare at it and I also sniffed it really closely. It had a slight smell to it. I had bought some Aldi shrimp a couple of weeks ago and I waited a couple of days to cook it, but I ended up trashing it because it smelled off. This was kind of similar. But the smell wasn't as strong and I only noticed it if I put my face real close to it. I decided to just risk it and cook it. After I cooked it, I took a bite of one. It was alright. Not amazing, but it tasted like shrimp.

A wrapped spring roll sitting on a plate with spring roll ingredients in the background — *I wanted to wrap all my spring rolls before eating any, just for the sake of the photo, but I was too hungry*

I don't think I fully trusted this shrimp though. I kept inspecting it some more and sniffing it. Inside of the spring roll, I barely noticed the shrimp and those tasted fine. But it was still bugging me too much, and after I ate three spring rolls with shrimp, I decided to take out my teriyaki chicken and put that in the fourth roll instead.

Anyway, that was a few days ago, and I feel fine and I never got a stomachache, so I guess that shrimp was perfectly fine. I made another batch of spring rolls yesterday, and I ate more of the shrimp. I even ate a little bit more today, but I ended up not finishing it all. I think I might be avoiding Aldi's fresh shrimp again.

Four spring rolls sitting on a plate — *This time I *did* wrap them all in advance!*

Four spring rolls cut in half and arranged in a plate bowl with fish sauce and some veggies — *I learned that the trick to make ugly spring rolls look pretty is to cut them in half*

Questionable shrimp aside, these spring rolls were pretty good!

Filed under: spring rolls

Using up what I have

January 7, 2025 10:42 PM

So I had most of a lemon sitting in my fridge for the past week because it was left over from my hummus and my green beans. I really could have gotten by with a single lemon that day, but I ended up buying two, and here I was with 4/5 of a lemon. I was struggling to find a creative use for this lemon, so I decided to make more hummus.

Hummus and some sliced veggies — *I did not bother making this hummus look pretty*

I just stuck with regular hummus today, but man, homemade hummus is so good even without any fun add ins. The only thing it was missing was some pita bread. I ate it with cucumbers instead, and even though I don't really love cucumber, I had half a cucumber in my fridge so I figured I should try to get through it.

I actually was originally going to make some Mediterranean hummus bowls, but I ended up pivoting to something else entirely after I bought some queso fresco and one of those pre-marinated pork butts from Aldi.

I had a lot of random ingredients in my fridge, so I decided to try to use those up rather than buy even more stuff. Pulled pork and queso fresco is kind of Mexican leaning I guess? Maybe I could make a burrito bowl! I had some lettuce, a tomato, some onions. This could work.

Pickled onions, lime crema, potatoes, queso fresco, lettuce, tomato, and a little bit of pulled pork all sitting on the table

I did end up buying a container of sour cream and a lime from the store today because I thought that this needed some sort of sauce. I thought about making a salsa, but a lime crema seemed easier so I ran with that.

I also ended up pickling the onions because I had some red wine vinegar and I figured this could give my bowl some extra flavor.

What I didn't include was rice. For once in my life, I actually don't have any cilantro and I didn't feel like buying any more. I did have some potatoes though. So uh, I guess that's the starch in this dish. I've been wanting to roast potatoes with mayonnaise for a while, and even though that doesn't really make any sense with the rest of the ingredients I just rolled with it.

A closeup of the potatoes

Okay, these potatoes were actually so good. I didn't follow a recipe or measure anything, but I threw in some mayo, some garlic, some thyme, some paprika, some salt, some pepper, and the rest of a container of dried rosemary that I've had for who knows how many years. And then I roasted it. Maybe one day I'll post a proper recipe of this.

The completed bowl of all the random stuff — *The lighting was so bad that I actually edited this*

As far as the dish as a whole? Eh, it was kind of weird. Honestly, the worst part was the pulled pork. I felt like it was way too salty and kind of overcooked, but maybe the overcooked part is my fault. But I did still eat everything that I put in my plate-bowl, and then I munched on more potatoes when I was done.

Filed under: bowl meal potatoes

Comfort food

January 10, 2025 9:10 PM

Well, I still haven't gotten over this sickness that started over the holidays. I haven't felt terrible, but my throat has been sore and there's some extra nasal congestion. I'm pretty okay during the day most days, but night time is the worst. I'm going to have a lot more free time now, so I'm hoping I can sleep in a little more and finally get better.

Anyway, since I've been sick, I've been wanting to eat more comfort food, and in my mind, comfort food is not only comforting to eat, but it's also comforting to make. It might not be a quick meal, but it's an easy one where I can relax and you know, not flail in my kitchen.

Vinegar, chicken powder, various sauces and bowl with a little bit of everything

One of my go-to easy and satisfying breakfasts is to make some dumpling soup. And while I do like wrapping my own dumplings, I always go with some store bought mini dumplings for my dumpling soup. I like mini dumplings because I can't eat a regular sized dumpling in one bite. And it's awkward to have to cut your dumplings even smaller when you're eating them in a soup. (Okay, I'll admit, I still cut up the mini dumplings in my soup)

All I do is boil 10 or so dumplings, and then I throw in some sauces to give it some flavor. I usually end up adding:

Black vinegar
Light and dark soy sauces
"Granulated Chicken Flavor Soup Base Mix" (It's basically chicken flavored MSG. This gigantic container is enough to last a life time)
and a dash of something spicy (right now that's this "Sichuan Gold" sauce that I got from a Hot Ones box)

I taste it and maybe add a little more of something. Then I top it with some scallions and/or cilantro.

Dumpling soup in a bowl with a book in the background — *My sister made me that bookmark!*

It's so good, and such a nice way to start my day.

So in the past when I've made Japanese style curry, I've always included chicken and I made it with curry powder (not Japanese curry powder so who knows how Japanese this really was). But I had seen other people just buy those curry blocks and I figured I would give it a try because it sounds so much easier! And at a local meetup last year, someone had brought some curry and they used tofu, and ever since then I had been wanting to try tofu in this instead.

I'm sure I could have just tried to make a similar recipe as the chicken one, but I'm really bad at throwing things together, so I googled "golden curry with tofu" and the first thing that comes up is a reddit post which linked to this Vegan Japanese Tofu Curry recipe, and it sounded so good and I had to try it. (Also I seriously appreciate that this recipe webpage is simple and has no ads and doesn't totally drain my phone battery while I'm viewing it)

A plate bowl of tofu curry with rice and some cut up scallions in the corner

I actually first tried it a few months ago, but I keep going back to it because it really is so good. I mostly follow the recipe as-is, but I actually halve the amount of curry blocks, and I think it's plenty flavorful. I also use chicken bouillon instead of veggie just because that's what I have. But I'm definitely going to keep this in mind as a potential vegan dish to make if I need one.

It required a little extra attention to fry up the tofu because I'm flipping every single one of these tofu cubes one by one just to make sure I brown as many sides as possible, but there's something nice and relaxing about standing at the stove and seeing the tofu slowly get nice and golden.

A side view of the tofu curry and scallions, with some steam rising up — *Look at that steam!*

I always pop one of the tofu cubes in my mouth before I throw the rest into the curry. The final result is so comforting and so delicious.

Finally, I wanted to share some mac n cheese that I made. I love making mac n cheese. One of my go-to mac n cheese recipes is from Budget Bytes. The recipe actually has pretty mixed reviews, but I think it's great every time I make it. And I like that I can use up a little bit of hot sauce in it.

Me holding the casserole dish of mac n cheese — *We were struggling to take a good photo of this one. I blame the night time artificial lighting*

Making mac n cheese definitely takes patience. You have to make a roux in the beginning and you need to keep stirring the milk+flour+butter mixture until it thickens. When you start stirring it, it seems like it's going nowhere, but slowly and surely it thickens up and then you can start mixing in the cheese. I don't know, maybe I just like to keep mixing things.

Taking a scoop of the mac n cheese out — *We ate a lot of it at once!*

I decided to actually throw this one in the oven after I was done putting it all together on the stove. Sometimes baked mac n cheese can get a little too dry, but this one had so much cheesy sauce. Adding the extra shredded cheese and letting it broil (and watching it broil the whole time so it doesn't burn!) was definitely a nice touch. But next time I'll try to remember breadcrumbs!

Filed under: soup curry mac n cheese

Mostly veggie filled fajitas

January 13, 2025 11:25 AM

I keep running into this pattern of wanting to use up some random thing I have in the fridge, and in the process of doing that, I accumulate some other random thing I have to use up. Remember that lime crema that I made? Well, I did have a plan for the rest of the sour cream, and I made salsa chicken for that (sorry, no picture). But I didn't plan for the fact that I still have extra lime crema and a partial lime!

So, my first thought was that I would make some fajita veggies to go alongside my salsa chicken. I happened to have two bell peppers because I bought a three-pack when I made the kimchi spring rolls. But when I cut open one of those peppers, I found that it was moldy 😱 So I only had one good bell pepper, and I decided against fajita veggies completely.

Until yesterday, when I still had extra lime and one cut up bell pepper. Now it's fajita time for real. I knew I wanted three bell peppers for this recipe, and instead of buying yet another three-pack, I actually bought two individual bell peppers, so I would finally stop having a left over bell pepper (even though I'm pretty sure the two peppers cost more than three of them together).

A spread of all the things that went into the fajitas: tortillas, pickled onions, lettuce, cilantro, queso freso, lime crema, and the chicken and veggie mix — *I love a good meal with lots of components*

It was really nice to be able to use other ingredients that I already had, like the pickled onions, queso fresco, lime crema, and lettuce. And even though these are chicken fajitas, there's really only one pound of chicken in this whole recipe. It's mostly veggies, and it felt like a healthy balanced meal.