Social Distancing: Days 10 - 11
April 5, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 10 (Saturday): It's the weekend! My sister is losing track of the days as every day feels the same. But since I don't have work, I decide that it would be a good time to make dumplings since it takes me a while to make dumplings.
Of course I didn't think about the fact that my sister is an amazing and super fast dumpling wrapper. She probably wraps four dumplings in the time it takes me to wrap one.
She actually wasn't as happy with this batch as she usually is. I think we need a larger meat to veggies ratio. But I still thought it was delicious. So delicious, that we forgot to take a picture immediately and didn't remember to do so until we ate half of them.
Day 11 (Sunday): In keeping with the theme of making more elaborate meals on the weekend, we decided to make pizza. From scratch. That's right: homemade pizza dough and homemade pizza sauce. I used half a can of crushed tomatoes in our soupy pasta on Friday, so I turned the other half into pizza sauce. It was really easy!
My favorite pizza is BBQ chicken, but if I want a more traditional cheese and tomato sauce pizza, my favorite topping is tomato. I love tomatoes on pizza.
Not only that, we also made cheesy bread! I used to eat cheesy bread all the time when my work would order pizza from a place called Giovanni's which made the most amazing cheesy bread. Unfortunately, one time they were super late with their delivery so the admin team decided to never order from there again ):
But, who cares! I can make my own cheesy bread! Well. My sister can. Dough still kind of scares me.
It was kind of awkward making both since the pizza needed to cook at 425 and the cheesy bread needed to cook at 375 but we made it work. We actually have a decent amount of pizza sauce left! Maybe we'll make more cheesy bread later?
Before the Quarantine
March 28, 2020 7:28 AM
Okay, I know we're not really quarantined, but I didn't know what else to call this blog post. I had some pictures of things I made before my sister visited. And I know I can't tie these all together nicely, but whatever. Enjoy the pictures!
I've been on a hummus kick for the past few months. Back when I could still go into the office, I would snack all the time. I don't think I went a single hour without eating something. And the cafe in the office doesn't exactly offer the most healthy options.
So, I'm trying to make sure I have healthier snack options. And since I love chickpeas, that also means I love hummus. And homemade hummus is way way better than anything you can buy at the store.
Remember those fish tacos I made a while back? I actually bought the family pack of tilapia, so I needed to do something with the rest of the filets. I saw a chimichurri fish recipe on Budget Bytes, and you know I love chimichurri.
I was going to buy a head of cabbage for this, but I saw a pack of coleslaw mix on clearance for $1 so I grabbed that instead.
You know a post about lots of food I make wouldn't be complete without tacos. Sweet potatoes were on sale at Aldi, and I also saw these tiny little tortillas at Trader Joes that I impulse bought!
Since the potatoes at Aldi come in 3 lb packs, I still had to so something with the rest of them. So why not continue making more Mexican-inspired dishes?
The chipotle chili powder in the lime crema was a great addition. I think I'm going to always add the chipotle powder in the future.
And to finish off the sweet potato recipes, I also made some beef stew. The sweet potatoes made the whole dish sweeter, which was nice.
For something completely different, here are some pierogies! That I bought from the store, because sometimes I need an easy meal.
Dumplings! The best freezer meal and completely worth the hour of prep time that goes into making a large batch.
And tacos again! Because I love tacos! All recipes on this page get a 5/5 star rating from me. Hopefully I'll remember to post more often in the future.
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!
$30 a week: Part 2
July 21, 2019 2:44 PM
This week I spent $17.12 on groceries, which was pretty amazing. I also spent $15 on a meal out, which brings my total to above $30, but if this were an allowance that could roll over week to week, then I'm totally still within my budget!
I often will plan for making slightly more food than I need each week (better to have too much food than not enough), so I still had some stuff left over to make one more shrimp burrito bowl. I don't actually think I like lettuce in my burrito bowls, but it makes me think I'm eating healthier when I add it.
A few weeks ago I visited my family, and my dad gave a whole box of Champagne mangoes. Mangoes are my favorite fruit, but I still had way too many mangoes to eat in one week. I had save this Cashew Shrimp and Mango Stir Fry recipe from How Sweet Eats a while ago, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to make it, especially because I also had a bag of cashews that I didn't know what to do with.
I'll admit that this dish seemed a bit strange while I was making it, but it turned out to be delicious. I'm not a huge fan of nuts in my stir fry, but the cashews really worked. (It also helps that I really like cashews) The recipe only called for one mango, but I used two since Champagne mangoes are a bit small.
The other main dish I had for this week was Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta from Budget Bytes. This is my #1 go-to recipe for something quick to make when I'm completely unprepared to make anything. I had leftover cream cheese, since I bought it to eat with bagels a few weeks ago, and the only thing I know to use cream cheese in are bagels and this pasta.
And finally, I really wanted to have some dumplings on hand, so I made a batch of those. I love chives, and I've been wanting to make pork and chive dumplings for a while. But less pork and more chive. I went to two different Asian grocery stores and waited in line at the meat place forever just so I could get the best prices on these ingredients.
I like having dumplings in my freezer because I think they make a really good breakfast. You know what else is a great breakfast? Eggs.
Spoiler alert for next week, but I've already gone over budget. I don't actually need to buy too many things for my meals, but seafood is on sale, and you know how I am about seafood...
We really like dumplings
February 25, 2019 11:30 AM
We just keep making them and eating them!
Dumplings are just such a good lazy meal. I'll usually make a batch of about 100 and then have about 8 meals of dumplings in the freezer that I can just take out and cook. Since I try to also consume a decent amount of veggies, I made Budget Byte's Thai Cucumber Salad.
We also had dumplings twice when my mom was here! My sister even made the wrappers from scratch. I don't think that's something I'd ever do if she weren't here.
And speaking of dumpling-like things, we also took the rest of that huge batch of mashed potatoes and turned them into pierogies. We threw mozzarella cheese in it just because we had some. Yeah, it tasted weird. It wasn't too bad though.