Shrimp fajitas

August 11, 2022 8:51 PM

I made shrimp fajitas today! I made this recipe close to two years ago, and it was awesome. And I made it again today, and it was...not so awesome. And here I am, writing this entry, right after I cleaned up because I need to make sure that if I make this a third time, I don't screw this up.

Just yesterday I was talking about how much I love shrimp and how I cooked my shrimp perfectly, but you know what I did today? I overcooked it. 😭 And overcooked shrimp is really bad. The recipe said to cook it for 6-8 minutes. 6 minutes is way too long. I can't imagine I liked overcooked shrimp in the past. Somehow past me must have known that and present me forgot. So, here are some things for future me to remember:

• Cook the shrimp for only 5 minutes
• Only use two limes total. Just put half a lime in the lime crema, and a lime and a half in the marinade.
• Use sour cream instead of yogurt
• Maybe use one green and one red bell pepper for color

Okay, honestly, not the worst shrimp tacos/fajitas I've made in the past few months. But I know I can do better!

My life has been busy

November 20, 2020 10:04 PM

Really my work has been busy. It's been so exhausting that I haven't been able to prepare good meals for myself. And when I have I've been too lazy to take photos of it. But it's getting better, so the food pics are coming back. These pics are all kind of terrible, but hey, in the end it's about how the food tastes.

Yeah, I really wish I threw something green on that. But fajitas are delicious, and I think I really like cooking shrimp in the oven. It cooks evenly, and I rarely overcook shrimp when it's in the oven. It was delicious.

So one of my friends was telling me about this chipotle cream sauce thing that she had at a restaurant and that she was trying to recreate it. We actually ended up getting takeout from this restaurant and there was no such chipotle sauce, so I have no idea what she was talking about. But I decided, hey let's make these loaded sweet potatoes so I can actually have some chipotle lime crema. Also delicious.

And finally, I made some bibimbap because I had 1/2 a pound of ground beef and I didn't know what to do with it. Pretty good. Don't know if I'd put it at the delicious level. I think it was missing a sauce-y element to it.

Social Distancing: Days 46 - 48

May 10, 2020 8:11 AM

Day 46 (Sunday): It's a grocery shopping day. We end up buying way too much food it seems (like always), but this might be the first time in a while that I wasn't as stressed out.

We ended up going to the Mexican grocery store, and I impulse bought some mini tortillas. My sister loves them! She just eats them as a snack! But we also used them for some chicken fajitas. Delicious.

Day 47 (Monday): I don't realize it yet, but it's the start of a very busy workweek. So busy I that I'm too pooped to cook. It's a good thing my sister is willing to cook.

Our fridge was getting crowded with all the groceries we got the day before, so we figured we should cook something that takes up too much space. Along with those tortillas, we also ended up impulse buying some collard greens. We actually had some collard greens on Friday when we got takeout, but it wasn't very good. My sister makes much better collard greens. We ate this with some leftover shepherd's pie.

Day 48 (Tuesday): I was probably at peak stress level on Tuesday. I ran into a problem at work that I couldn't solve, and I had no idea what to do next. Well, I didn't know what to do for work, but obviously I needed a break. Somehow we ended up with so many leftovers in the fridge, so we did another pairing of something freshly cooked with something leftover.

I had half a box of orzo sitting in my pantry, as well as a zucchini in the fridge that I needed to use up, so this was a good recipe to try. I'm usually not a huge fan of pasta salad, but this went well nicely with our leftover chicken piccata.

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.

It's been a while

May 11, 2019 12:40 PM

Yup, life got busy. Too busy to be worrying about a blog that not very many people read. But the blog has always been in the back of my mind, and my brain is still constantly thinking about food. I'm going to be taking this blog in a different direction. Instead of having posts that feature recipes that I've tried out, I'm going to be doing weekly food recaps of my life.

Last year I had a goal to only spend $30 a week on food. I wanted to bring back this goal now that I'm cooking for just myself again, and week one was already a failure. I spent close to $40 on groceries AND I ate tacos at Taco Town!

So, what else did I actually cook this week?

• Caesar Salad w/ Chicken
• Creamy Tomato and Spinach Pasta - Budget Bytes
• Easy Oven Fajitas - Budget Bytes
• Instant Noodles (I use the stove. It still counts as cooking.)
• Ramen Eggs - Just One Cookbook

Spinach Tomato Pasta was the first meal I intended to make this week, but when I got home from the grocery store, I looked in my fridge and realized I was missing cream cheese. I don't know why I thought I already had cream cheese, and even if I did it definitely would have gone bad in the weeks I was away from my apartment.

Then later in the week, I wanted to make fajitas, but when I got home, I realized I didn't have any onions! And then later that day, I decided to make some Ramen Eggs, but as my water was boiling I realized I didn't have any Mirin! My meal planning was not off to a good start. But, I guess I could always make salads.

My mom eats salad all the time. And as silly as I think her salad habits are, I have to say she makes a really beautiful Caesar salad. So that inspired me to make my own Caesar salad! I don't know how she makes hers so aesthetic because mine did not turn out that nice.

Also, washing and drying lettuce leaves is such a pain. I really don't understand how I'm supposed to dry my leafy greens. I basically just wash them hours in advance and let them sit out, but they're still too wet, and then I use some paper towels to pat them dry, but that's not terribly effective either. I know I could invest in a salad spinner, but I think that seems like a waste of money to buy a tool just for drying lettuce.

Even though I delayed making my pasta and fajitas a day later, I still went ahead and made the ramen eggs since I figured I had to have something that would work. I replaced the mirin with some rice wine vinegar and sugar. I also used seasoning sauce instead of soy sauce, and the eggs still tasted great.

Finally, I ate instant noodles twice this week which is WAY more instant noodle than I should even be eating in a month. But that's what happens when you scramble and keep forgetting a single ingredient in your meals. At least I got to throw my ramen egg in it!

At this point, I've got a ton of veggies to use up, so hopefully that means I won't need to buy too much from the store for next week.