Yellow Squash Pancakes

March 31, 2019 11:09 AM

I'm not really a huge fan of yellow squash. It just reminds me of college cafeteria vegetables because for some reason "mixed veggies" always meant a bunch of sauteed diced squash. But I saw a recipe for Summer Squash and Chive Pancakes on Skinnytaste, which sounded cool since I could just turn the squash into something that doesn't resemble it at all. I didn't actually have chives, but I always have green onions stocked, so I just subbed that in.

No matter how many times I make pancakes, the first pancake in a batch never seems to turn out right. I think I get impatient and don't wait for the pan to fully heat up. And then I try to flip it, and it completely falls apart.

I don't know what it is about "fake" pancakes, but they always taste like egg to me! My aunt used to make paleo pancakes, and all I could taste was the egg. I put exactly one egg in this batch, and if I didn't know what ingredients were in this, I would just call it scrambled eggs. They tasted just like scrambled eggs with chive that my family makes. I feel like there's a genius idea somewhere for making vegan scrambled eggs using yellow squash. But...I'm not vegan so I'll never think about that again.

You'd think I would love this, because I love eggs, but egg-y pancakes just taste like overcooked scrambled eggs to me, and I think overcooking the egg completely ruins the texture and flavor. And yet, these pancakes were incredibly liquid-y on the inside. Even if I kept it on the stove for 10 minutes, it was still liquid-y. So this was just weirdly undercooked and overcooked at the same time. I think it might be better to roast the squash instead of boiling it.

I threw sour cream, feta, and cilantro on top to make this more palatable to me (and also to possibly make it look prettier?). I'm sure the flavor profile is all wrong, but it made it seem less like eggs, so I thought it tasted decent at the end. My sister liked it on its own though!

Not sure if I'll ever make this again. Pancakes are way too much work.

It's been a while

May 11, 2019 12:40 PM

Yup, life got busy. Too busy to be worrying about a blog that not very many people read. But the blog has always been in the back of my mind, and my brain is still constantly thinking about food. I'm going to be taking this blog in a different direction. Instead of having posts that feature recipes that I've tried out, I'm going to be doing weekly food recaps of my life.

Last year I had a goal to only spend $30 a week on food. I wanted to bring back this goal now that I'm cooking for just myself again, and week one was already a failure. I spent close to $40 on groceries AND I ate tacos at Taco Town!

So, what else did I actually cook this week?

• Caesar Salad w/ Chicken
• Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta - Budget Bytes
• Easy Oven Fajitas - Budget Bytes
• Instant Noodles (I use the stove. It still counts as cooking.)
• Ramen Eggs - Just One Cookbook

Spinach Tomato Pasta was the first meal I intended to make this week, but when I got home from the grocery store, I looked in my fridge and realized I was missing cream cheese. I don't know why I thought I already had cream cheese, and even if I did it definitely would have gone bad in the weeks I was away from my apartment.

Then later in the week, I wanted to make fajitas, but when I got home, I realized I didn't have any onions! And then later that day, I decided to make some Ramen Eggs, but as my water was boiling I realized I didn't have any Mirin! My meal planning was not off to a good start. But, I guess I could always make salads.

My mom eats salad all the time. And as silly as I think her salad habits are, I have to say she makes a really beautiful Caesar salad. So that inspired me to make my own Caesar salad! I don't know how she makes hers so aesthetic because mine did not turn out that nice.

Also, washing and drying lettuce leaves is such a pain. I really don't understand how I'm supposed to dry my leafy greens. I basically just wash them hours in advance and let them sit out, but they're still too wet, and then I use some paper towels to pat them dry, but that's not terribly effective either. I know I could invest in a salad spinner, but I think that seems like a waste of money to buy a tool just for drying lettuce.

Even though I delayed making my pasta and fajitas a day later, I still went ahead and made the ramen eggs since I figured I had to have something that would work. I replaced the mirin with some rice wine vinegar and sugar. I also used seasoning sauce instead of soy sauce, and the eggs still tasted great.

Finally, I ate instant noodles twice this week which is WAY more instant noodle than I should even be eating in a month. But that's what happens when you scramble and keep forgetting a single ingredient in your meals. At least I got to throw my ramen egg in it!

At this point, I've got a ton of veggies to use up, so hopefully that means I won't need to buy too much from the store for next week.

Kitchen Mishaps

May 18, 2019 7:35 PM

My fridge has got some serious issues lately. I impulse bought that expensive dark chocolate ice cream last week, and when I went to go eat it, I realized it was completely melted because my freezer wasn't cold enough. I decided to treat it like a computer, and I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Amazingly, that worked, because the next day my ice cream was frozen again. BUT, then I wanted to eat a salad and my lettuce was frozen! Why is my freezer not cold enough and my fridge too cold?!

Now my toaster oven, on the other hand, has been finicky for the past few months. I've had this toaster oven for many, many years. I had it in my first apartment, but I'm pretty sure it was my family's toaster oven before that. Clearly it's dying because it's caught on fire several times this year. Now it doesn't even close all the way. Sometimes it gets stuck when you try to open it. But it still does a perfectly good job at warming up my tortillas so I'm gonna keep using it until it completely breaks down.

And do you see this? This is what happened after I attempted to turn on one of the lights for my light box. The lightbulb just broke and fell! The other part of it was still screwed in and I stupidly tried to unscrew it with my fingers, which resulted in a cut on my thumb.

Cooking for one

May 19, 2019 7:44 AM

What I made this week:

• Huevos Rancheros - 100 Days of Real Food
• Yellow Rice Chicken Skillet - Budget Bytes
• Asparagus - The Pretty Dish

When my sister was living with me, I was cooking almost every day. We kept cooking and cooking, and it seemed like we had so much food, but whenever I took a break from cooking for one day, it's like all the food disappeared. Well, I had this crazy realization this week that when I'm by myself I could cook three dishes during the weekend and then not have to cook at all during the week.

I know, that's what meal prepping is. But when people say they meal prep, I always envision them cooking two dishes on Sunday and then dividing everything up into individual portions in tupperware containers. Which sounds boring. I like to make every meal feel like a special accomplishment.

And you know what I accomplished this week? I only spent $16 on groceries! On the flip side, I also ate out four times, but one of those meals was on my company's dime.

I'm trying to make sure I include some low effort meals that will last me a while. This chicken rice dish requires very little chopping, and I can make it last six meals. With pasta, I try to not make it last so many meals because I get sick of it easily, but this rice dish still tastes great on the sixth day in a row.

What's nice about this dish is that I can split up the rice and chicken, and then use those individual parts for other meals. I saw asparagus on sale at Aldi for $1.49/lb, which usually isn't that great because Aldi tends to stock suuuper skinny asparagus sticks, and who wants that? But this time the asparagus actually looked decently sized!

I actually made this same asparagus recipe about a month ago when my mom visited, but it didn't quite turn out so well since I was flailing in my kitchen trying to cook three things at once. This time I could just focus on asparagus. The recipe calls for shallots, which I replaced with onions because no one on a budget should ever buy shallots. The recipe also said to cook these for 20-25 minutes. That is way way way too long. I had these in the oven for about 12 minutes and I still think they were in there for a tad too long.

I was very satisfied with the way the asparagus turned out though. The combination of bacon, onion, and parmesan made it very flavorful.

My final dish of the week is Huevos Rancheros, which I was happy to stumble upon a recipe for it since it's probably my favorite brunch dish. Now I personally hate the idea of brunch. You take two perfectly good meals and squash them into one meal, and then get charged way more than you should be charged for either meal. Why would I ever choose to eat one meal over two meals? I've been to a lot of hipster brunch places, and they all feel exactly the same. They serve pancakes, chicken and waffles, and a bunch of random things with an egg on top. And then they try to get you to buy alcohol to make the meal even more extravagant.

But having brunch at home? That's a much better idea. Of course, I didn't make these for brunch. I ate these for breakfast and still had lunch later.

These Huevos Rancheros were okay, but I think the recipe could use a lot of tweaks. The salsa has way too much water, so I would cut that in half. It could also use some more salt and maybe some other spices. I just found it lacking. I also think two eggs is too much. There are plenty of days where I only eat two eggs for breakfast, so having that plus a bunch of other stuff is overkill. The recipe just says to arrange two tortillas on a plate, but I think it's better to first make sure the tortilla is toasted and crispy, and then break it up into nacho sized pieces.

I also substituted the refried beans for some pulled pork that had been sitting in my freezer for a while. Having to use three pans to cook breakfast is a bit much so I wanted to take whatever shortcuts I could. But...I guess this is supposed to be a brunch recipe. And brunch is fancy.

Oh, also I just really wanted to post a picture of more fajitas since I had this two more times this past week. This time I toasted the tortillas on the pan and threw some cheese on top which made them even better.

Stuff I cooked a while ago

June 16, 2019 12:27 PM

I meant to write this blog post over two weeks ago. Then I got really busy, and I went on vacation, and now I don't really remember what I wanted to write about. But I have all these pictures so I should at least show them to you, and maybe looking through them will help jog my memory.

Remember how I subscribed to Misfits Market to get veggies delivered regularly? Well, I canceled it a while ago, but they did send me an email asking me to use their service again AND they gave me a complimentary box. I kind of feel bad because half of this box went to waste. It wasn't my fault though. The produce was sitting in transit for way too long and by the time it was delivered, the ice packs were completely melted, and the spring mix looked really sad. So, yeah, this free box didn't convince me to sign up again.

But, I did get an eggplant that I could use. I really like stir fried eggplant so I made Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce. I know I didn't have any spicy bean paste or ground pork at the time, but it still tasted good without those ingredients.

And to go along with the Asian theme, I made some Sesame Chicken. This is a pretty old Budget Bytes recipe, and it was recently updated to double the sauce. I don't think it needs nearly that much sauce, so I would actually cut it in half now. So easy to make though, and very delicious.

It's really hard to tell from the picture of produce, but I did get some zucchini in a bag (why some things get put in bags, and others don't, I have no idea). Zucchini is not my favorite vegetable, as it reminds me too much of college cafeteria food, but turning it into Zucchini Fritters makes them a little better.

While I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, I really don't like butternut squash. It just tastes like a cross between a sweet potato and a pumpkin, but somehow much worse than either of those. I also don't know what I'm supposed to do with it except roast it or turn it into soup. They also take forever to cut up, which makes them not worth it to cook at all. But hey, this was free and I didn't want to waste it.

I do love salmon, though! This recipe came from a book, so I can't exactly provide a link. I still haven't quite mastered the art of baking salmon. I think I may have put it in the oven at 350 or 400 degrees for 10 minutes, and then broiled it for 5. This was waaay overcooked, but at least the rub was really tasty.

Also mango salsa to go on top of the fish! Because I had mangoes in the box!

For some reason I thought the mango salsa would go with the sesame chicken. I don't think I'd pair the two again.

Oh yeah, I also made collard greens (because it was in the box!), but I neglected to take a picture of the collard greens by itself.

Not box related at all, but I also cooked Shrimp Scampi Florentine, with some pasta added. This dish is always delicious.

I had a dinner with friends where we all made pizza. Anytime I get to choose my own pizza toppings, I will always choose BBQ chicken. For some reason every time my family orders pizza, they ask me what pizza topping I want, I tell them barbecue chicken, and they give me a look and proceed to not get any barbecue chicken. It's okay. I can just make my own.

And finally, here's one last picture of that chicken rice skillet. Because I must have had leftovers from the week before and this picture looks nice.

And that concludes this long, not-very-cohesive post. Honestly, it'll probably be a while until my next post because my schedule is crazy and I'm not going to have too much time to cook. Maybe once the summer is over!