I made the kimchi pasta again

February 5, 2025 6:37 PM

I wasn't actually going to make a post about this. I just wanted to try the kimchi pasta recipe again, with some tweaks. I used some pork loin instead of bacon, and cream cheese instead of heavy cream because that's what I have. And I was having a chill afternoon, prepping all the ingredients in advance.

In the youtube video, Aaron tells you that rather than use a knife and cutting board, you should probably put your kimchi in a bowl and use scissors to cut it, so you don't stain your cutting board. Well, I was trying to do that, but then I somehow dropped the bowl 😱

and kimchi spilled all over my cutting board! And my clothes! It's a good thing I didn't actually start cooking the pasta yet because I had to wipe the kitchen floor and wash and change my pants and tide pen my sweatshirt. I've been saying for years that I should get an apron.

Oh, the pasta ended up looking like...every other pasta I make. 😅 But it tasted different! It was more kimchi-y, which was good!

Toast

February 6, 2025 1:22 PM

Some time last week, I bought a sour dough round from Aldi. I don't eat a lot of bread, but I figured it's good to switch up my grains. So here are three different dishes that I made with this bread.

First, a breakfast. There's this really expensive cafe that makes a delicious smoked salmon toast, but it costs over $16 and I'm not about that life anymore. So I'm making my own for an eighth of the price.

I actually really like toast, and I should make more of it. Smoked salmon is a bit bougie, but I also like hummus or an avocado spread on toast!

Next I have a chicken salad. I really just wanted to use up some relish because I bought some to make a hamburger sauce a while back, and now I kind of regret it. The hamburger sauce was just okay, and now I have a jar of relish that I don't know what to do with.

I've put relish in tuna salad a bunch of times in the past, but I had never actually tried making chicken salad before. I tend to like tuna salad better, but for the sake of variety I decided to try to make a chicken salad. What I probably should have done was follow a recipe, but I decided to just wing it and throw stuff together! I added mayonnaise, sweet onions, green onions, dijon mustard, relish, cranberries, poppyseeds, and even some honey roasted peanuts.

The end result was...eh. It wasn't awful, but I didn't really have a desire to keep eating it. I'm really not good at the whole "throwing things together" thing. But I did finish all of it over the course of a few more breakfasts because I am not wasting food.

And finally, I was able to use up the rest of my jar of pizza sauce by making some pizza melts! When I was younger, my dad would sometimes toast some sliced bread with pizza sauce and cheese and give that to me as an after school snack. I liked it at the time, though it didn't really sound quite as appealing to me now. Honestly, a pizza sandwich is the type of thing that barely sounds like a recipe to me.

But oh my god, this sandwich I made last week was SO GOOD. The herb parmesan butter really takes it over the top. The first one I made had mozzarella since that's your typical cheese for a pizza, but I ran out of that and tried taco cheese and pepperjack as well and they both still tasted great. Now I'm never going to have trouble finishing leftover pizza sauce.

What I ate last week (1/27 - 2/2)

February 7, 2025 2:58 PM

Honestly, I don't really remember. At this point, this post is way late, and unless I'm writing down what I ate the day of, I tend to forget. So here, I just have some extra photos for you:

I made more shumai! I just wanted to see if I could improve on my first batch, and I'd say I did! The shumai wasn't really falling apart as much. I still think the recipe is way too much work, but it was a nice snack to eat throughout the week. And see that smoothie in the background?

I had a few remaining pineapple chunks from my can of pineapple, and whenever I buy canned pineapple I feel the need to use the juice in a smoothie. I love smoothies.

After I made all the shumai, I was still left with a small amount of dumpling wrappers, so I used them the next morning to make some scallion pancakes. These really aren't the ideal type of wrappers to use for shortcut scallion pancakes, but I'm trying to use what I have. They do look a little sad, but they still taste good!

And I know I already made a whole post about this yellow chicken and rice, but here's a bonus pic, as well as a picture of some leftovers the next morning:

Finally, here's some stir fry that I made!

This was another recipe from the Woks of Life cookbook. I was flipping through the pages just to see if I could find an easy recipe that used spicy bean paste. It's not really an ingredient I have much experience with, and I wanted to use it for more than just mapo tofu. I settled on their Farmhouse Pork Stir-Fry, which was pretty easy to make! I even sort of made it again this week, but with a cheaper cut of pork.

So, apart from all that, I blogged about eating things with bread, vegan chili, and kimchi pasta. I took a close look at my spending again and I spent just a little more than I did the previous week on groceries. And just a little less on eating out. But it was pretty consistent between the two weeks.

What I did notice was that I spent a lot of money on meat! (I also include eggs, seafood, and even tofu in that category. It makes sense in my head) Almost $40! I bought salmon, shrimp, ground pork, pork belly, chicken thighs, bacon, and eggs! So, I'm trying to cut back on the meat this week.

And finally finally, I'm trying to add more updates to this site! Have you noticed anything? 👀

A very involved Taiwanese beef noodle soup

February 10, 2025 3:41 PM

Every other Friday, I go to my friend's house and we have a co-working session. Technically, I'm not really working, but I do use that time to make updates to this blog! After work, we'll grab some groceries and then we'll cook something for dinner. We seem to have a tendency to pick dishes that take quite a bit of time to prepare, which was especially true this time.

My friend wanted to try the Taiwanese beef noodle soup recipe from the Woks of Life cookbook. I saw that it used spicy bean paste, which is great because I already have it, but it also called for a bunch of things that neither of us had. I went to three different Asian stores to look for cumin seeds, coriander seeds, whole white peppercorn, and pickled mustard greens. And I didn't even find the coriander seeds! My friend ended up getting that from a fourth store. And we still went to Aldi the day of to grab everything that we could get from a non-Asian store.

Unfortunately, after I arrived at my friend's house on Friday, I realized I forgot the spicy bean paste 🙃 It's okay, she had other spicy pastes that we used instead. I was just annoyed that we couldn't use mine.

The recipe states that you need to braise the beef for 20 minutes and also simmer the soup for 90 minutes after that. So we tried to start prepping early, which was a little before 5pm for us. Even with that, it already past 7pm before we got to the "simmer" step. So we ended up eating dinner at around 9pm. (It's a good thing we ate lunch at 4 😅)

But the late dinner time didn't bother me! I thought it was a successful meal. We actually cut back a little bit on the amount of dark soy sauce, but I think it could have used the full amount. Or maybe just more regular soy sauce. It was a pretty dark broth already.

The recipe says that the dish tastes even better the next day, so I took some leftovers home and had some for breakfast a couple days later. It honestly tasted about the same to me, but I thought it tasted pretty good the first night, so I was still very satisfied.

细姑's salmon

February 12, 2025 9:41 PM

Okay, I don't have great photos (yet!), but what I do have is a recipe! I will show you one of my favorite ways to prepare salmon, which was originally introduced to me by my 细姑 (sort of pronounced "soy go"). She claims that she has since forgotten how she made this, which is why I need to make sure I've documented it!