Odds 'n Ends

February 16, 2019 10:15 AM

Somehow we seem to have both too many and not enough leftovers in the fridge. So, this past week had some quick meals and side dishes to accompany the leftovers.

Ravioli with Sage Brown Butter Sauce, Spinach, and Walnuts from Budget Bytes

Man what a long name for a recipe. It's pretty self explanatory though. Aldi had shrimp and crab ravioli so I decided to try it out with this recipe. It's good, but really not that seafood-y. We also threw chives in this. It was an incredibly easy meal to make, so it's good for a weeknight.

Chili Roasted Sweet Potatoes from Budget Bytes

Beth paired this with the cilantro lime drumsticks, and since I also had a couple of sweet potatoes I needed to use up, I figured I'd do the same thing. Roasted sweet potatoes are always delicious.

Roasted Heirloom Carrots with Feta, Truffle, and Lemon Zest from Skinnytaste

Except we didn't use truffle oil and I'm pretty sure those are just regular carrots. We just have a lot of carrots in the fridge since I bought them from Aldi, and you have to buy a whole bag of them.

This was surprisingly good. I think we'll roast more carrots tomorrow.

Dinner for 4

February 18, 2019 5:33 PM

I did some serious flailing around in the kitchen the other day. My mom and her friend are visiting me, and she last minute (okay technically I had more than a minute) asked me to make lunch for her. My sister was still at work, and unfortunately I didn't take any good pictures.

But hey, we have some pictures of dinner!

We made three different things: sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, and salmon. The potatoes were deep fried, but we didn't really follow a recipe.

I used the same brussels sprouts recipe as I did earlier this year. I think I'm going to completely change it up next time though and bake the brussels sprouts.

For the salmon, I did try a new recipe though: Hot Honey Salmon from How Sweet Eats. It was good, but not my favorite way to prepare salmon. I think I prefer the Citrus Salmon.

You know what happens when you cook for 4? You don't have as many leftovers.

Stir Fried Veggies and Chicken

February 23, 2019 6:26 AM

Somehow in all our cooking, I feel like we have too much food and not enough food at the same time. We're just always running out of vegetables! I am very adamant about having vegetables in every meal I cook. I can leave out meat, or I can leave out a starchy element, but I need vegetables. And I found myself going to the grocery store almost every day just because I needed more veggies.

So I decided to subscribe to a service that delivers produce on a regular basis. I kept seeing ads for Misfits Market on Facebook, and I wanted to give it a try. My first box contained the above produce and at full price, it's $23.50. This is what their site says:

We ship fresh, imperfect produce for up to 50% less than what you pay in stores.

I'll say this. The produce is probably better looking than what I get at Aldi, but definitely not cheaper. But then again, the Misfits Market produce is organic, and I never look at the organic section in Aldi.

But, on to the meal I cooked!

Since I had an eggplant, I needed an eggplant recipe. The first idea that came to my mind was to stir fry it, so I checked The Woks of Life and I saw Stir-fried Eggplant, Potatoes, and Peppers. I had some potatoes in my box of produce and some bell peppers in the fridge so that was perfect.

I always think of stir fry as a really easy method of cooking, but this was kind of complicated, with the putting things in the wok and taking them out, and putting them back in later.

And just because it is nice to have meat in my meals, I also made Thai Peanut Chicken from Budget Bytes. Chicken drumsticks are still on sale at Aldi! We added more fish sauce to the marinade and also upped the amount of soy sauce.

It was a lot more effort than I wanted to put in for a weeknight meal, but it was delicious.

Poke

February 24, 2019 11:30 AM

I love poke. It's one of my favorite things to have for a meal, but it's something that I always thought I had to go to a restaurant (or Hawaii) for. But as I was scrolling through food blogs, I stumbled across Ahi Poke Bowls with Pineapple and Avocado from How Sweet Eats. And I thought, if she can prepare poke at home, I can do it too!

I went to a bunch of different grocery stores, and I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that most of them didn't have sushi-grade fish. Even Whole Foods didn't have any! I also learned that sushi-grade isn't even a standard thing. It's just the grocery store's way of saying "I think this is good enough for sushi." Luckily I was able to find some "sushi-grade" tuna for $10.99/lb. I bought just under a pound, which is way more fish than you need for two people.

It's a good thing we like raw fish so much. I just chopped up whatever veggies and fruit I had that made sense. We did a make-your-own poke bowl with these ingredients (listed in the same order as in the photo):

• Furikake
• Imitation crab
• Carrots
• Cilantro
• Sushi rice
• Ahi tuna
• Cucumbers
• Cara cara oranges
• Jalepeño peppers
• Green onions
• Ginger soy sauce

I definitely want to have a poke party with friends at some point.

We really like dumplings

February 25, 2019 11:30 AM

We just keep making them and eating them!

Dumplings are just such a good lazy meal. I'll usually make a batch of about 100 and then have about 8 meals of dumplings in the freezer that I can just take out and cook. Since I try to also consume a decent amount of veggies, I made Budget Byte's Thai Cucumber Salad.

We also had dumplings twice when my mom was here! My sister even made the wrappers from scratch. I don't think that's something I'd ever do if she weren't here.

And speaking of dumpling-like things, we also took the rest of that huge batch of mashed potatoes and turned them into pierogies. We threw mozzarella cheese in it just because we had some. Yeah, it tasted weird. It wasn't too bad though.