flailing in my kitchen v3.1
How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
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!
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.
I just had a small amount of Worcestershire left, and because Worcestershire apparently goes well on ground meat things, I decided that burgers would be a good way to use the rest of it.
But I had one problem. I was all out of ketchup, and because I'm trying to get rid of my sauces, I wasn't going to buy a bottle of ketchup. What I did have was half a lime. I've seen recipes with guacamole on burgers before, and guac is at least kinda sauce-y.
I didn't use a recipe for any of this. Because most burger recipes I've seen just involve ground beef, salt, and pepper, I figured I could wing it. I used a pound of ground beef, and poured the rest of my Worcestershire sauce on it. I also mixed in some panko breadcrumbs and salt and pepper. And maybe some garlic powder and ground mustard? I don't know.
I also just threw things together for the guac. I mashed up an avocado with the lime, and added some onions, cilantro, and garlic. And salt and pepper of course. It was very lime-y and very tasty.
But I nearly wasted my avocado when I was scooping it out! The avocado just slipped out of my hand, and it almost fell to the ground, but I caught it with my white tank top that I was wearing, which now has a giant green stain on it. That might be the end of that tank top.
Overall, the burger was fine, but nothing amazing. I enjoyed the guac, but I was still missing ketchup. It was all pretty easy for me to make though! In the past, burgers seemed like so much work, but maybe I'm just getting better at this whole making food thing.
Hello friends. I'm still here. Still cooking. My sabbatical ended about a week ago, and I've been trying to get used to working again and figuring out what work life balance means.
I was pretty exhausted from my sabbatical. Even though I wasn't working, I had so many things that I wanted to do, and I didn't even have time for my food blog! And now that I'm working again, well, that would seem to mean even less time for the food blog. But like I said, I'm figuring it out, and I'm taking it easy right now.
One thing that I am really trying to do now is save money and not eat out. I don't really need to save money, but I kind of find it a little exciting and fun to see myself spend way less on food. I know I've done "$30 a week" challenges in the past, and I'm not going to do that now, but I'm going to keep track of my spending and see how it turns out without eating out.
So, today I made burgers.
Why burgers? Well, my sister was here last week and she made me some pretzels with cheese sauce, and we ate all the pretzels, but we still have some cheese sauce remaining, and I thought "maybe I can dip some fries in this", and then "burgers go well with fries".
I know, my thought process is weird.
I did bookmark a cheeseburger recipe a few weeks months ago, and this seemed like a good time to try it. Except it really isn't much of a recipe. The burger patty is literally just ground beef, salt, and pepper. The recipe also includes a burger sauce, but I didn't even bother making that.
The burger tasted good though! I mean homemade burgers always taste good. I cooked the patties in a cast iron skillet that I haven't touched in many months. The process was pretty simple, but my whole kitchen got super smoky, which meant my living room got super smoky and I had to turn on the vent and open the windows for a while. It was also kind of a pain to clean and re-season.
I also bought some frozen fries and made a salad to use up some leftover carrot ginger salad dressing I made a couple of weeks ago. Honestly it's not that great with green leaf lettuce. Iceberg would have been better.
While I was eating, I read a little bit of James and the Giant Peach. It was a very filling meal, so filling that I couldn't even finish it all.
Will I be able to stick with only having homemade meals? Will I make another post soon? Will I have any time to write about the endless amounts of food thoughts in my head? I don't know. We'll see how I'm feeling in a week.
Some of my co-workers mentioned a food blog called Half Baked Harvest and when I hear good things about a food blog, I have to check it out. I've been scrolling through all her recipes deciding on one to make, and I settled on these quinoa burgers, which is kind of a complicated first recipe to try, but I still had quinoa from who-knows-when and I really wanted to use that up.
The recipe also called for making some caramelized onions and sweet potato fries. I love caramelized onions so I was all for that, and I also love sweet potato fries, but this was already getting too involved, so I just bought frozen fries. Plus I also decided to fry up some bacon.
Bacon?! Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a veggie burger?
Hey, my goal wasn't to make a veggie burger. It was to use up the rest of the quinoa. And I want my burger to taste good. The bacon added some nice texture to this.
Not that the burger tasted bad without the bacon. This came out surprisingly well and had plenty of flavor. The shredded cheese that melted into a gooey blob with crispy edges was a really nice touch. I always thought that getting sliced cheese is better for a burger, but no, definitely go for shredded and sprinkle the cheese all over, making sure some of it spills off the patty to create extra crispy cheese pieces.
I even took the time to sauté more onions and fry an over easy egg during lunch on a workday just so I could fully enjoy my last burger.
No hectic or busy workday is going to stop me from putting together a delicious gourmet lunch.
