How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
First of all, I've replaced the old header text on the site with a new handmade graphic! You can tell it's handmade because it looks like a 5 year old wrote it (well, a 5 year old that likes loopy l's). Even so, I took an embarrassingly long time working on it. I'll probably try to make a nicer graphic in the future, but this is good enough for today. Oh, but it only shows up on larger screens, so if you're on a phone, please check out my site on your computer!
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming...
Shortly after my dad's and cousin's visit to help me move into my apartment, I was left with a slightly-larger-than-usual amount of ginger. And I was talking to my sister about it:
It's like, too much ginger for most stir fries, and not enough ginger for chicken, but the right amount for salmon
Jeje姐姐 - big sister, I know exactly what you mean
I'm glad she gets it, because I'm not sure anyone else would.
I normally buy ang heu紅魚 - 'red fish' (salmon) from Aldi, but I was feeling a little fancy (and a little lazy) and I wanted to actually be able to eat the skin. The Aldi skin-on salmon is never de-scaled and de-scaling fish is kind of a mess. So I went to Giant Eagle, and I saw that their frozen sashimi grade salmon was on sale for $4.99 for an 8oz fillet!
I'm used to eating steamed salmon with ginger, but I decided I would try something a little different and cook it on the pan. I followed this crispy scallion ginger salmon recipe from Woks of Life because it sounded pretty straightforward, and I swear I've successfully luah烙 - pan fried salmon before, even though I cannot find evidence of it on this blog. 🧐
Well, I must have forgotten, because I totally burned these. I think I was still getting used to my new stove being hotter than I expect. I also didn't make it easy on myself because I used my stainless steel pan instead of my non-stick. I was so worried about it sticking to the pan (but it didn't!) and I think the recipe calls for way more oil than you need because I ended up with a splatter-y mess and I was kind of freaking out.
Okay, maybe the mess was actually because I didn't let the salmon fillets fully thaw before cooking them 😬 Man, what am I even doing?!
Hey, but when you throw all the toppings on top, you don't even notice how burnt it is! And even though the skin is overcooked, I actually way undercooked this salmon. It's basically raw in the middle. But this is the same salmon that I use for poke so I don't really care. In fact, it's preferable this way. (Side note, I dislike seared tuna. Why even bother searing it at all)
I thought the recipe was way saltier than it needed to be, but the fish itself was ho jiah好食 - delicious.
I wanted to try making this again, with adjustments. I figured it would be easier if I just cooked one piece of salmon and cut the recipe in half. But when I got to Giant Eagle, the sashimi grade salmon was on sale for EVEN CHEAPER! It was now $3.99 a piece! pin si便死 - extremely cheap! I had to buy two!
I still only cooked one of them though. I had to make this a little easier on myself. But I still used my stainless steel pan, and I really should have just gone with the non-stick. So I completely omitted the salt, and I also cut the amount of oil in half, and I think those were good changes! But I still ended up burning the salmon!
I did some researching on Reddit afterwards, and it sounds like it might have been better if I cooked the salmon on medium-low instead of medium-high or medium. I'll have to try that next time, but e jua下匝 - next time might be a while from now because I got a little sick of seared (burnt) salmon. I did still have that extra salmon fillet though, so I made some poke! I could never get sick of poke.
And I didn't want to be wasteful, so I took the unused piece of salmon skin and I even fried that up! Using my non-stick pan!
It was hoh sou好酥 - quite crispy and a very nicely cooked piece of salmon skin.
I had been living in the same apartment since before the start of this food blog, and that was far far far too long for me, but finding a new apartment is a lot of work and I was kind of picky.
But I finally did it! I found a new place and I moved! My new place is a little bigger, though it came with much less storage and countertop space in the kitchen. My dad and my cousin helped me move in, and as part of that, my dad also built me some shelves to make my kitchen more usable.
For most of the week and a half that my dad and cousin were visiting, we were eating food that my aunt packed for us. She packed so much food, but they were also here for a bit longer than we expected, so I ended up needing to make a few meals for them myself. On the very last day, I made some BBQ pulled pork pizza using some leftover odds n ends from a taco night earlier that week. As I was adding the toppings to my pizza dough, my cousin exclaimed "Is that...barbecue sauce? 😯"
I don't know why he was so shocked, because of course it's barbecue sauce! BBQ is the best pizza sauce.
I was honestly pretty impressed with myself for pulling that together so quickly, and I think my dad and cousin were impressed too.
Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the taco spread, but because I only used half a packet of fajita seasoning, I used the rest in some chicken fajitas later that week. I'm a little further from the Giant Eagle now, but there is a tiny grocery store not too far away, and it's good for buying individual pieces of produce. I bought two bell peppers and a lime for these fajitas.
I also checked out a local bagel shop that apparently sometimes has super long lines. The first time I tried to go there, they were already sold out for the day! But I tried again, and I got there earlier this time. I think I just got a plain bagel with some veggie cream cheese. This place is all about customizing your cream cheese. You choose your mix-ins, things like scallions or broccoli or bacon or cheese, and then the bagel person puts your cream cheese and extra stuff in a bowl and mixes it all up. It's like Cold Stone, but for cream cheese.
Anyway, I was so overwhelmed by all the options that I just chose a pre-designed cream cheese mix. The bagel and cream cheese were...fine. Didn't seem worth the $6 price tag 😨
I am not a very heavy-cream-cheese-on-bagel kind of person, which means these bagel places always give me twice as much cream cheese as I want for one bagel. But I know this, so I ended up getting my cream cheese on the side, and I used the other half of it to make pasta.
I was definitely a little worn out from my move-in week, so I wanted to just make some easy meals after that. And pasta's pretty easy. In fact, I made pasta twice that week!
I usually like to make baked ziti, but this baked ravioli is like an easier version of that. And even though I usually hate leftover pasta, there's something about these baked, really cheesy pastas that can withstand the sitting and reheating process, so I happily ate leftovers of this.
Of course, because I've got a new kitchen, that means I have to get used to all of my new-to-me appliances and that's going to make things a little harder at first. The oven was pretty simple--so far that works just as expected. But I'm finding that my stove gets way hotter than I expect it to. I have electric coils now, and I don't know anything about the science of how that heats up the food differently from the flat top stove, but I cannot be cooking everything at a 7 now.
I've made this yellow rice dish so many times in the past, so I was expecting it to be chill, but I think I set the stove heat too high and I made a bit of a splattery mess. I quickly cleaned my stovetop up, but it must have been a little bit later (and darker) in the day because the next day I looked above my (white) stovetop and it was yellow, and I tried to wipe it off, and it would not come off 😱
I looked up how to remove turmeric stains on the internet and I found so many different suggestions on reddit: dish soap, bleach, vinegar, baking soda, oil, magic eraser, sunlight, but the top rated comment said "Enjoy your yellow stove!"
I tried using a magic eraser and I just scrubbed as hard as I could. Some of the yellow did come off, and now the surface is just a very pale yellow and I'll probably forget about it in the future. I wonder how much yellow stain had coated my old stove that I just didn't notice because it was black.
This was a pretty minor incident though. Besides that, I've already had a few instances where I cooked something and it started smoking A LOT, and then I've triggered the smoke alarm 🥵
Remember when I said that I shouldn't use pre-made frozen burger patties? Well, I didn't listen to past self, and for some reason I thought that Aldi's smash burgers would be an easy dinner. Absolutely not. What. a. mess. Never ever ever use those frozen burger patties when I'm cooking burgers on the stove.
Well, the kitchen only really came with the oven, stove, and a fridge, so I had to bring my own microwave. My dad ended up buying me a cute, compact microwave from Walmart, and while my stove gets way too hot, my microwave only uses 700 watts of power! My old microwave was at least 1000 watts, and I had used it so many times to perfect my cookie-in-a-mug and my brownie-in-a-mug, and now I've got to start all over again to figure out the right amount time to cook these desserts.
I've made four chocolate chip cookies in this mug and in this tiny microwave so far, and I'm still tweaking things. I first tried 60 seconds, and then I added 10 extra seconds (shouldn't have added that extra 10), and then I tried 70 seconds, and then I tried 67 seconds 🫲🤪🫱, and then I tried 60 seconds by itself, and somehow this always ends up both too undercooked and overcooked at the same time.
But I think I've rambled on enough for one post. Thanks for reading, and maybe I'll be cooking something more exciting in my next post!
My mind has been so distracted about work that I haven't been able to really give this blog much thought. I'm even eating out more, and my body is not happy with that. Anyway, I am still cooking regularly, so I feel like I should at least update this with pictures every so often.
I really like getting bagels from Giant Eagle, which means I also end up buying cream cheese, but one block of cream cheese is just so much cream cheese that I end up with lots of leftover cream cheese. So then I look up recipes with cream cheese, and for some reason, it's always just a bunch of pasta. This was good though. I'd make it again, but I probably won't put it in my "go-to recipes".
I also bought a bag of Poblano peppers from Giant Eagle because I needed one for that enchilada recipe I made a few weeks ago. What was annoying was that I only needed one pepper and I had to buy five because Giant Eagle only sells these in bags, and I did not want to take the extra ten minutes to trek to Whole Foods. So I looked up Poblano recipes and I came across hummus. I love hummus (as I love chickpeas), but store-bought hummus is usually so bad. The problem with making hummus though, is that I have to take out my food processor, which is a pain in the butt because it's annoying to wash, and it takes me forever to figure out how to put it back in the box. But hey, I have it, so I really should make use of it more often.
This hummus was delicious, but it really could have used a second Poblano pepper. I'll have to make hummus more often, as it's a great healthy snack that I can bring to work. Plus, what else am I gonna use my jar of tahini for?
Sometimes I eat so much pasta and tacos that it makes me really miss Asian food. I also feel like I need more vegetables in my system, and this is one of my favorite dishes to order at the local Chinese restaurant. We actually made this once when my sister was here! I figured I'd try this out on my own, and it turned out to be a super oil-splatter-y mess, but it did taste good! Next time I need to be better about really drying the green beans before throwing them into the pan. I also really should have used a larger pan. This is going to go into my "things I want to cook for my mom or dad when they visit" list.
More Asian food! I was just browsing recipes and I stumbled across this, and the picture looked really good, so I wanted to make it myself. Of course, when I made it, it didn't look nearly as good as the original recipe's picture. The marinade was delicious, but I still haven't quite gotten the hang of using my cast iron skillet. I was supposed to let the beef really brown, but it wasn't quite doing that. There was also so much marinade, and I probably could have cut it in half. I also should have cut the pieces of beef much much thinner. I'll have to try this again sometime.
Now this is one of my go-to recipes. Of course I still haven't taken a decent picture of it yet. What's nice about this dish is that I can pair it with whatever starch I want. Rice, pasta, or bread all work really well. And I just happened to have a whole take-and-bake baguette sitting in my freezer.
With Aldi now stocking pizza dough for less than $1, making pizza is really convenient. Especially because whenever I buy shredded cheese, it comes in these giant bags and I never know what to do with all of it, so I snack on it. I'd definitely rather be cooking with the cheese instead. Tomatoes are also one of my favorite pizza toppings (tomatoes, not tomato sauce). I should have put more green onions on this, but I totally forgot about them until the last minute so I awkwardly placed them in-between tomatoes at the end.
I should really buy a round pizza dish so I can actually make it circular next time. Oh, and maybe a pizza cutter.
