Mostly Mexican Food

October 19, 2019 5:16 PM

I've been so busy at work that it's consumed my brain, and I haven't had a lot of mental capacity left over for really giving my cooking as much thought as I'd like. Which means I end up forgetting to take pictures of things. But, I looked at my phone, and it turns out I have enough pictures to write a post on some random things that I made over the past two weeks.

Chicken Fajitas - Budget Bytes

I had gone home to visit family for a week, in which I accompanied my mom in grocery shopping. She bought a ridiculous amount of vegetables that she wasn't going to be able to finish, so she gave me a whole bunch of stuff to take back to my place. Part of that was a lot of onions and bell peppers, so naturally, I had to make some fajitas. I've made these fajitas so many times, and they're always delicious.

Chili Rubbed Pulled Pork - Budget Bytes

Speaking of things wrapped in tortillas, I also made these pulled pork tacos. I don't have a picture of the initial batch of pulled pork, but I actually made it in non-taco form for my mom and her friend when they visited me. I also made cilantro lime rice (which you can kind of see in the tacos) and brussels sprouts and broccoli. Yes, there was a lot of flailing that day as I kept going back and forth between working and cooking.

Cilantro Lime Chicken Thighs - Damn Delicious

I see cilantro and lime together, and I'm like "YES. I WANT THAT." So what happens is I buy those things for tacos, and then I just end up making more Mexican food because Mexican food uses a lot of cilantro and lime. (At least the kind I like does) These chicken thighs were really good, though I think using the cast iron pan was more trouble than it was worth for this. Next time, I'll just stick to one of my normal pans.

Oh, and obviously, I need to have some sides too, so I cooked some sweet potatoes and veggies. I didn't really use a recipe for them. I just cut them up, drizzled olive oil, and sprinkled various spices on them.

Chorizo and Sweet Potato Enchiladas - Budget Bytes

Yeah! Even more stuff that I wrapped in a tortilla! I just really like tortillas, okay? But, the heading for this is totally a lie, because when I went to the store they were completely out of chorizo, so I had to settle for just "sausage" instead. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of enchiladas, but I had sweet potatoes, and I had been just roasting them so I wanted to do something different. This was good, but I think I just need to take a break from the Mexican food now.

Three Cheese Pizza

Yeah I know, this is totally random and why this post is only mostly Mexican. Hey, I had some pizza dough and pizza sauce in the freezer, so why not. I had cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan, so that's why it's three-cheese. This wasn't bad, but I'm going to have to improve on my pizza-making game. I definitely put too much sauce compared to cheese.

Pasta, Pizza, and Dumplings

September 15, 2019 12:27 PM

I don't have anything exciting to say in my opening sentence of this post, but hey, look at my fancy breakfast I made last Sunday! My arugula salad was really good.

I went to a diner for lunch that day, and I ate pancakes, so I really had breakfast twice in one day, which is way too much breakfast for one day.

One Pot Roasted Red Pepper Pasta - Budget Bytes

So I had some cream cheese that was sitting in the fridge for who knows how long, and when I went to use it, I saw a piece of mold! But there was still a lot of cream cheese in that block, and I really didn't want to throw it all away (plus I was going to eat a bagel), so I did some googling to see if I could salvage the cream cheese, and I got...mostly bad news. But this one random person said it would be fine if I just cut off the chunk around the mold, so that's what I did! And that was two weeks ago, so I think it was fine.

Anyway, I bring that up because I felt like I really needed to use up all my cream cheese quickly after that. And this pasta optionally takes cream cheese. Turns out I used almost all the cream cheese on my bagels, so I barely had any left for this pasta. But that's okay, it still turned out really well. I cut the recipe in half (except for the diced tomatoes, because half a can of diced tomatoes is kind of useless), and it made enough for five meals. I usually hate leftover pasta, but this time the leftovers actually tasted decent.

Bacon and Caramelized Pineapple Pizza - Budget Bytes

I had the most random things in my fridge: canned pineapple, bacon, arugula, jarred red peppers, shredded cheese, green onions. After thinking about what else I can do with my much too large supply of arugula, I figured pizza would be good. All I needed to buy was pizza dough!

But wait, that pizza doesn't have arugula. Yeah, so I was looking up pizza recipes mostly because I wanted some inspiration, and I saw this recipe for bacon and pineapple pizza. And I had bacon and pineapple, so I thought this was perfect. It tasted really good, but I need to get better at dealing with pizza dough. I don't think I quite understand how to form it in that nice circle shape.

Oh, don't worry, I used the arugula in my own Tomato, Red Pepper, and Arugula White Pizza.

Sweet Chili Charred Brussels Sprouts - Love & Lemons Cookbook

I don't have a link to this recipe since I got it from a cookbook. The recipe was actually for broccolini, but brussels sprouts were on sale at Aldi. I really like the taste of the sauce that was used, which consisted of some tamari, rice vinegar, srirachi, garlic, and sugar. I accidentally overcooked it a bit though, by leaving it in the oven for 20 minutes. I might use the sauce in a stir-fry later.

Pan Fried Dumplings - Damn Delicious

I was down to my last two bags of emergency dumplings, so I wanted to make some more. I normally just throw whatever I feel like in my dumplings, but I figured I'd try a recipe this time. This was a pretty typical dumpling recipe, but I really didn't want to buy zucchini or carrot, so I only used cabbage and green onion. Tasted decent enough, but I don't think I'll use it again. I thought the texture was a little weird.

But hey, I have ten freezer dumpling meals now!

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.

Meatloaf and Brussels Sprouts

February 7, 2019 4:30 PM

I bought a loaf pan last month, so I've been meaning to make meatloaf for a while. I found this Thai Turkey Meatloaf recipe from Budget Bytes. And I know we just had ground turkey last week, but for some crazy reason all the recipe sites I look at exclusively make meatloaf with turkey.

She put rice inside of the meatloaf! Maybe that's what makes it Asian. We cut the recipe in half because 2 whole pounds of turkey seemed like a bit much.

For the most part we followed the recipe, but I probably used five times as much ginger as the recipe called for, and I used red onions instead of green. Can you believe Aldi was out of green onions?! This is the fourth time this has happened this year!

To go with the Asian meatloaf, we also made these Sweet and Spicy Brussels Sprouts from How Sweet Eats. I liked the flavor, but I think the sauce needs some adjustments. Next time I'll only use 1 tablespoon of chili garlic, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and I'll cut every other sauce ingredient in half.

Overall, it was very Asian American. I found the meatloaf to be very sweet and the brussels sprouts to be very soy sauce-y, but the flavors worked well together.

Pierogies and Brussels Sprouts

January 19, 2019 1:11 PM

I'm exhausted. My company had their semi-annual company meetings this past week, and even though I'm pretty sure I had about 8 hours of sleep each night, I feel incredibly sleep deprived. I ate nothing but hotel and restaurant food all week, which makes my body feel really weird. I don't know how I went most of college only eating out.

Anyway, I needed to do some real cooking on Friday night. I had bacon that had been sitting in the fridge for a week, so naturally I decided to cook brussels sprouts. I actually had brussels sprouts the day before at Altius, but they were so crispy and salty I was practically eating potato chips. I decided to cook Jessica Gavin's Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with Bacon.

I skipped the breadcrumb step out of laziness. I also doubled the amount of bacon because that's just how much I had on hand. And I replaced shallots with red onions. Can you believe one red onion at Giant Eagle costs more than a whole bag of red onions at Aldi? I don't even want to think about how much a shallot costs. Also onions are delicious and you can never have too many onions in your dish.

Brussels sprouts aren't exactly a meal in itself, but I didn't want to do that much cooking, so I decided to be half lazy and buy pierogies from Whole Foods. My absolute favorite pierogies are Gosia's Pierogies, and I used to frequently buy their frozen packs at a local farmer's market. Every single year they've increased their prices, so much so that now they're the same price as the pierogies in Whole Foods.

The pierogies were just OK. My sister isn't a fan of starch inside starch, so next time we'll go with a less traditional filling. I cut up and sauteed a whole onion to go with them, but it wasn't enough. Two onions next time.