A weekend with my mom

March 6, 2025 6:43 PM

My mom visited me this past weekend, and we spent a lot of time cooking and eating. I didn't really have much prepared for her when she got here on Friday night, but I did have some leftover shumai and broccoli so we ate that with rice. My mom thought that my shumai was okay, but the texture was off and she said she had a better recipe. To be fair, the pieces that she had were from my first batch this year where I forgot to add cornstarch.

So we decided to make more shumai. My mom said that in order to get the right texture, you need to "cheep" the filling, and she made a folding motion with her hands. (I know she was saying something in Chinese, but as of right now, I have no idea what the Chinese character is for "cheep", but I think it basically means "to knead". If I ever figure it out later, I'll update this post) Mixing the filling with my hands is much easier than using chopsticks. She also mentioned that we needed to add the oil last, after we already mixed everything else.

I'll admit, the batch we made together was a lot better than the one I made on my own.

Because I wanted to have some vegetables to go with this, I also made some brussels sprouts and bacon, which I know doesn't really make sense with Asian food, but I already had all the ingredients for it.

We didn't have all the ingredients for the shumai, so we needed to go to the store for that. I wanted to check out one of the newest Asian stores. The last time I went there, it was really empty and it seemed like they were still stocking the shelves, but this time it was actually really nice!

My mom noticed that shelled peanuts were being sold for a good price, so we bought a bag of those, and my mom roasted them later. And then we saw some peanuts in the shell, and my mom said that that was also a good price, so we boiled those!

But the best deal that we saw at the store was some sad looking grapefruits that were being sold for 99 cents each! My mom told me that these grapefruit were perfectly fine, even better than the nice looking ones because it has more time to ripen and get sweeter. So we bought all of the discounted grapefruit.

And I agree, that sad looking grapefruit was delicious.

But you know what was the most delicious thing I had this weekend? It was my mom's ginger chicken stir fry. I had specifically asked her if she could make it and also teach me how to make it. So I'm gonna try this on my own at some point!

I've looked up ginger chicken stir fry recipes on google, but none of them are what I'm looking for. Most people cook with very small amounts of ginger, just to infuse its flavor in the dish, but not here. Ginger is a first class vegetable. And that means that we need just as much ginger as chicken in this recipe. Honestly, I wish we could have added more ginger.

But I'll go on more about ginger in a future post. Since my mom was helping me a lot with making food, I wanted to make sure I made her some fresh food of my own. My mom really likes carrot cake, so I made her some carrot cake muffins. She thought they were a little too sweet for her taste, but she still liked them!

And finally, I made her some scallion noodles. I wasn't sure if she was going to like this, but after she took a bite she said "Not bad! Can I add sriracha to this?"

So all in all, it was a successful weekend with lots of yummy food.

My go-to meal

March 27, 2023 8:45 PM

Salmon. Brussels sprouts. Two things that I make so often, that I almost wasn't going to write another post about them. But I want to share more of my meals (and more photos of me prepping the meals!) so here I am.

I decided to make some brussels sprouts because I had some bacon left over from that pork sticky rice dish I made. And when I have a few strips of bacon, my mind always turns to brussels sprouts.

And then when I went to Aldi to pick up a bag of brussels sprouts, I saw that there was a bunch of salmon for 50% off, and I had to get one. That meant it was less than $5/lb! You don't see prices like that any more! Somehow I ended up buying like twice as many things from the grocery store as I intended to.

Of course that also meant that I had to cook it that day, because it was getting close to its sell-by date. That's okay. I can always come up with a way to prepare fish.

I decided to make a brown sugar rub for the salmon, similar to how I prepared it way back in this entry. Except I didn't include any of the citrus. And if you're wondering why I only zested half a lemon, it's because we didn't plan well, and we threw out the first half of it before I started zesting. But that's okay! Half a lemon is better than none.

We also had some white rice on the side. Very good meal.

Sea salt

January 21, 2022 9:40 PM

Last summer I visited my sister, and as I was browsing her bookshelf, I saw the book Salt Fat Acid Heat. I had heard good things about this book, so I read a little of it. The first thing this book talks about in detail are the different types of salt: table salt, sea salt, kosher salt. The author also insists that you should use sea salt or kosher salt. Table salt has iodine and other ingredients that aren't salt and I guess it's better to have "pure" salt. So I told myself that when I ran out of salt, I'd get something other than table salt.

Anyway, I was at the grocery store last week and as I was replacing some of my other spices, I decided it was time to get salt. I bought a small container of "sea salt". I read the ingredients. There was only one: sea salt. Okay, seems legit.

The author recommends tasting the individual salt crystals to really get to know the salt. So I tasted it. Then I tasted the table salt. Then I tasted the sea salt again. 🤔 I could certainly tell the difference in texture, but I don't think my palate is refined enough to tell the difference in taste.

I had to try another taste test! I had some brussels sprouts that I wanted to roast, and I decided to sprinkle half of them with sea salt and half of them with table salt. And all with pepper because that makes them taste even better.

I cooked these at 425°F for about 15 minutes, and then I popped them under the broiler for about a minute and a half more. I thought I cooked them pretty well! But what about the salts? Honestly, I don't think I salted either side enough. They still tasted good, but I think I'll have to try again.

My aunt cooked those ribs and potatoes. I'm finally getting close to finishing all the food she gave me!

Mashed potatoes, chicken bites, and brussels sprouts

March 2, 2021 11:03 PM

It's later than I should be up for a worknight, but I'm excited to show off what I've been working on for the past two days: Tags! This is just the first iteration of it. More to come.

Last week I made a meal of mashed potatoes, garlic chicken bites, and brussels sprouts, except I spread out cooking the different components on different days so it didn't all come together until I made the brussels sprouts.

For the mashed potatoes, I used this slow cooker mashed potatoes recipe from Budget Bytes. I had that huge bag of potatoes, and I rarely make mashed potatoes so I figured I'd give this a try. It was alright. Needed some herbs. And more butter. And salt. And garlic. And maybe some cheese. I don't have a picture of the mashed potatoes because that's kind of boring on its own.

The garlic mushroom and chicken bites was a recipe I had saved for a while. I unfortunately didn't have chicken thigh, so I had to settle for chicken breast. Would this have tasted better with chicken thigh? Absolutely. But it was still good. I followed the recipe pretty closely except I also added half a cup of chicken broth because I thought it needed to be a little more sauce-y.

I didn't use a recipe for the brussels sprouts. I just cut them in half, tossed them in salt, lemon pepper, and olive oil, threw them in the oven at 425°F for about 10 minutes, and then finished them off in the broiler for another minute. Delicious. I could eat the whole pound of brussels sprouts all in one sitting, but I made sure to save some for two more future meals.

Oh! I also made gravy. The recipe told me to keep whisking until all the lumps were gone. I didn't do a very good job of that. Just don't look too closely at the photo.

Social Distancing: Days 52 - 56

May 17, 2020 11:32 AM

Day 52 (Saturday): It's the weekend! Which means no work! Which means I actually had time to cook!

Yeah, that's right. I did the cooking. I really wanted to make some shrimp bowls. Of course, it ended up taking me forever, and it really felt like I made four different things: shrimp, rice, pineapple salsa, and black beans.

But whatever. It was worth it. Absolutely delicious.

Day 53 (Sunday): My sister was feeling lazy (and I've been feeling lazy for the past three weeks), so we just ate leftovers. We had too many leftovers sitting in the fridge anyway.

Day 54 (Monday): We bought this big thing of pork butt in our last grocery shopping trip and I think it may have been sitting in the fridge for just a little too long. So we decided to cook it.

I really wanted to try another pork loin recipe (but using a pork butt), and this honey garlic pork loin sounded really good. Using pork butt for this was definitely a good idea. We also needed a veg and some starch, so we roasted some brussels sprouts and potatoes as well. Overall, it was a good meal.

Day 55 (Tuesday): My sister made 韭菜粿 and I think it's worthy of its own post. So you'll see it in the next one.

Day 56 (Wednesday): When we went grocery shopping earlier this week, we stopped in the Italian grocery store, and decided to look all the different fancy pastas they had. Both my sister and I really like wide noodles, and I normally find fettuccine not wide enough.

But the Italian grocery store had some really nice fettuccine. The one we bought was completely in Italian! It was also a whole $2! I think paying that extra dollar was worth it though. The recipe we used was a bit weird, but it still tasted good.