Orange chicken

September 24, 2025 5:44 PM

Back when I was in middle school, a Panda Express opened in one of the local malls. Sometimes my dad would take me and my sister to this mall, and we'd eat Panda Express every single time. We ate there so often that I recognized the man working there, and he recognized us too. Almost every time, I would order orange chicken. And the times when I didn't order orange chicken, I wished I had. I don't know why I liked it so much, but sometimes I feel nostalgic for it, and every time I see a Panda Express, I think to myself, I could go for some orange chicken.

But honestly? It doesn't really hit the same way now. Every time I've gotten Panda Express in my adult life, I've kind of regretted it afterwards. Maybe my body can't handle Chinese fast food like it used to.

But I still get these desires to have orange chicken! I've been travelling a lot lately, and when I was in the airport I could smell some Chinese food and I almost ordered some, but I settled for some Jimmy John's instead. It was alright. I still wanted Chinese, and I decided that I would just make my own orange chicken when I got home.

I had made this orange chicken from Budget Bytes before, and I remembered it being pretty good! I already had all of the sauces I needed so I only had to buy chicken, ginger, green onions, and an orange.

Now the ingredient list called for "1 large orange", and whatever size orange I bought was definitely not big enough. The more detailed instructions said to squeeze out 1/2 cup of orange juice and I think I barely had 1/4 cup! Squeezing oranges is also super messy. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it all completely fell apart.

Anyway, I only bought one orange, so this ended up being not-so-orange orange chicken. But it's okay! It still ended up very tasty and definitely way way healthier than anything I could get from takeout.

And just to round out the meal a little more, I also steamed some broccoli and I served it with rice. It was a very good meal.

Imitation crab musubi

September 7, 2025 2:02 PM

On Friday, I was working at a friend's house, and by the time the workday ended I was SO HUNGRY that I impulsively bought a pack of imitation crab from Aldi. As I was grabbing it, one of the workers there said to me "Have you had these before?" I told her I have, and she said "Oh okay, just making sure, because they're kind of sweet and really artificial tasting." Well, it is imitation crab, so I kind of expect it to taste artificial. I know some people that really dislike the taste of it, but I like it! I'd rather snack on fake crab than on crackers.

Aldi used to sell smaller packages of imitation crab, but now it's like, a whole pound! So I had way more than I needed to satisfy my hunger that evening, and I wanted a way to use up the rest of it (without just...snacking on it some more). I was browsing for ideas online, and I came across some creamy imitation crab onigiri recipes. And that sounded delicious.

Problem is, I don't have an onigiri mold. But what I do have is a musubi mold! I really didn't want to buy any extra ingredients for this, so I used different recipes for inspiration and just threw something together based on what I already had:

• two nori sheets
• short grain rice
• furikake
• mayonnaise
• Shark brand sriracha
• some sad looking cilantro, so I might as well throw that into the mix too

I shredded up some pieces of imitation crab and mixed it with mayonnaise and Sriracha. I cooked a cup of the rice and once that was done, I mixed in a tablespoon or so of furikake. To assemble, I placed half a nori sheet on my cutting board with the musubi mold in the middle of it. I layered in some rice, then some crab, then some cilantro, more furikake, sesame seeds because why not, and then a layer of rice to finish it off!

And then I just pressed down, removed the mold, and wrapped it up!

It was a tasty treat! And I was so happy to use up the rest of my nori as well as the rest of a jar of mayo. I am getting through so many of my sauces and shelf stable ingredients! At this point I'm refusing to buy any long lasting ingredient that will leave me with a bunch of leftover. (Except for like, oil and salt) One day I will get through it all!

Stress-free burgers

August 28, 2025 3:36 PM

A few months ago, my dad visited me, and I made burgers for him one night because he likes burgers and because I know I can make them well enough to his satisfaction. Even so, I've always found burgers to be so much work, so I decided to try and make things easier for myself by buying pre-made frozen patties.

That was a terrible mistake. I think using the frozen patties made it so much more stressful. And it made me realize, cooking burgers on a pan is not ideal. All the fat renders off and just sits in a puddle and then you have a splattery mess to deal with. I had to keep removing all the extra fat from the pan, which was both annoying and precarious. I ended up way overcooking the burgers and they didn't taste very good ):

But a few days ago I saw some french fries and it made me really want french fries, and I also had a burger from my favorite ice cream shop, which was delicious, and I thought, it's time for me to make some burgers and fries again.

I used this ranch burger recipe, which is one of my go-to's. Some people will tell me that I'm really making meatloaf because of the fact that there's ranch seasoning, onions, breading, and egg mixed in with the beef, but I don't care, that's what makes it taste good.

But you know what really made this a successful stovetop burger? I used 93% lean beef. Now I like my meat fatty, but I really wanted to avoid the puddle of fat in my pan, so I splurged a bit on this. (It's okay, it evens out the mayonnaise that I bought for less than $1)

And it totally worked! I cooked the patties and it was super chill! I even used my meat thermometer and I cooked the meat to a temperature of about 140°F, which was plenty cooked.

It did still take a while to prep and cook and clean it all, but the important thing was that I didn't stress out about it, and I didn't make a mess.

The most inconvenient brownie in a mug

May 5, 2025 2:47 PM

I love box brownies. They're so easy to make and they taste just as good as any gourmet brownie I've ever had at a bakery. But the problem with a whole box of brownie mix is that you end up with a whole tray of brownies, and unless I'm feeding a crowd, there is no way I need that many brownies at once. I end up eating way too many brownies in a few days, and I deeply regret it. So I set out to find a way for me to make a single serve brownie.

There are so many recipes for brownie in a mug already, but the problem with most of them is that you don't end up with a brownie. You end up with chocolate cake. And I want a fudgy consistency. I have made so so SO many attempts at this, and I've finally settled on a method that has way too many ingredients and is probably more work than box brownies. But I'm finally happy with it, and I have earned this brownie.

Shanghai style braised pork

May 3, 2025 12:18 PM

I've been a bit mentally tired lately, and so I've been sticking to the basics with my cooking. That means making a lot of the same dishes over and over, and I know that's not very exciting for the food blog. But I've had some photos from the past couple of months that have been sitting on my phone, and I wanted to share these at some point, so here we go!

Remember how I hang out with one of my friends every other week and we pick a dish to make? Well there was one time when another friend picked out a dish for us, and she went with Shanghai style braised pork belly. Except we only had access to Aldi, so we used pork butt instead. I think it was a better choice anyway. We also used granulated sugar instead of rock sugar because that's what we had available.

It was tasty and not too hard to make! The recipe called for waaay more water than we needed so it took a while to evaporate, but other than that it was pretty straightforward. I also stir fried some broccoli using the method from Made With Lau.

And I was even inspired to make it a second time on my own, and this time I was better about not using too much water for the braising process. I also tried using brown sugar instead of white sugar just to see if that would make a difference. I don't think it did.

I did get a little fancy and I bought sesame seeds just so I could have them as a topping. And I stir fried bok choy this time. Overall, I think this attempt was even better! I do want to make this a third time, but with some hard boiled eggs as well. I feel like I missed out on having braised hard boiled eggs this Easter (you know, with how expensive eggs are now), but the egg prices are going down a little!

Anyway, I was originally going to put a lot more dishes in this post, but I feel like I've typed enough, so until next time!