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!
Prior to this entry, I had six posts tagged with "pancakes", and every single one of them has been a savory pancake. But that all changes today! Twice this week I have made your typical breakfast pancakes. In the oven. Can't be too traditional.
I remember when I first saw the recipe for cinnamon swirl oven pancakes close to a year ago, I decided I had to make it. That day. I've actually made this a lot of times in the past, but this is the first time I've taken any pictures.
When I made this pancake earlier in the week, I'll admit I didn't do a very good job. For some reason the batter was super lumpy (I know they say you're supposed to have lumps in it, but this had A LOT of lumps of dry flour). The batter itself was also really thin. I noticed that when I mixed the melted butter with the rest of the wet ingredients, it just solidified again.
And at first, I was just going to leave it at that. I had used up the last of my bag of all purpose flour, and I didn't want to buy another huge bag. But as I was organizing one of my kitchen cabinets, I noticed an expired bag of self rising flour that I got from one of my coworkers at the start of the pandemic.
BEST IF USED BY 1/22/19
Totally fine!
The second time, it went a lot better! I actually heated the milk up to room temperature before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients, and I must have done a better job measuring because the batter was more viscous and less lumpy.
I like to double the amount of cinnamon mixture and use white sugar instead of brown for it. When I make the cinnamon swirl, it reminds me of childhood, when I often made box marble cake with my 细姑. The last step before putting the cake in the oven was to pour a chocolate mixture over the batter and run a chopstick through it to make a cool pattern.
These pancakes were much fluffier than my first batch! The only thing that didn't work out so well was that I ran out of vanilla, and I could only use a quarter of what the recipe called for. But that's okay. I had some expired maple syrup that I could pour on my pancakes to give it some extra sweetness.
BEST BY 1/19/19
I mean, maple syrup can't go bad that quickly, right?
Despite the questionable expiration dates, it was a very tasty breakfast.
As part of my newly established Lunar New Year tradition, I made fish tacos! I have no idea how long I've been keeping these tilapia fillets in the freezer, but I'm really trying to actually clear out the food in my kitchen. I've made these spiced catfish tacos so many times, and it's become one of my go-to recipes.
In the past, I've sliced up the sweet potatoes in thin quarter circle shapes, but this time I went with dicing, and I think that makes their flavor stand out more in the taco. And in my continued effort to not accumulate more food in my kitchen, I bought a bag of "RAINBOW VEGGIE SLAW" instead of buying a head of cabbage. Plus it's easier since I don't have to cut up any cabbage.
I cooked five tilapia fillets and we just about finished all of it. That mayonnaise + lime + sugar dressing makes it so good. We just had a single half of a fillet left, which I ate the next day (as well as a pork taco using leftover pulled pork from another meal).
When I was in college, well before I knew how to cook, I went on a spring break trip to Chicago with my two best friends. This was sponsored by the school and we stayed at a hostel. For some crazy reason my one friend really wanted to cook during this trip. I definitely did not, seeing as I didn't know the first thing about cooking, and even with the amount of cooking experience I have now, I still wouldn't want to cook during a vacation.
But that's what we did. We went to the grocery store, and my friend asked me "What do you want to make?" I didn't know, and she probably made several suggestions, and I probably seemed less than interested in every single one of them, which was just the first of many times one of us got annoyed at the others during this trip.
Anyway, we settled on pasta. A really simple spaghetti + pasta sauce + ground beef pasta. Of course at the time, I could barely boil water, so it still seemed really intimidating to me. But we managed. It tasted fine. And we did not cook again during that trip (thankfully). And that was the only time I had ever cooked pasta with my friend(s).
...until last week! I invited one of my friends over for an "easy" pasta meal, and since my initial pasta-with-friends session, I guess my idea of an easy meal has changed a lot. It ended up being more than he expected, heh.
But it was delicious and it is so worth it to make your own pasta sauce.
I'll definitely make more pasta meals with friends in the future (:
Summer is fast approaching. Summer has my favorite kind of weather, yet it's my least favorite season. Summer means that my family plans all these vacations, and I get really overwhelmed and stressed out. Summer is when so much of my mental energy is taken up by other things, that my side projects take a back seat.
All that to say, things are slowing way down for the food blog. I won't say I'm taking a break, but I'm tending towards making easier meals and spending less effort on creating aesthetically pleasing photos.
I really really like making this chicken and rice dish, but most of the time when I make it, I use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. It's just easier. But this time, when I went to the store for chicken, the family pack of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs were 50% off, so I had to get that instead.
And really, the dish is so much better this way. What's nice about having the skin is that it gets nice and crispy when you intially cook it. But the problem with this dish is that you later nestle the chicken in while the rest of the rice is cooking, and the skin gets all soggy again. And I think the skin still tastes good that way, but it's just not the same.
So what did I do? I ate a whole bunch of crispy chicken skin right after cooking the chicken. So no, I don't have a full picture of the finished skillet because it's a bunch of naked chicken pieces and it's weird looking.
This dish actually makes a lot of rice, much more than what's needed for four chicken thighs, so I later cooked some more asparagus and salmon to also eat with it.
I know, I have a salmon and asparagus meal just three posts below this one! And I took a picture at exactly the same angle! Well, asparagus is in season, and I still have a ton of impulsively bought salmon, and this is just all my brain can handle right now.
(Okay...that salmon above? That's not even from the same shopping trip where I bought 2.5 lbs of salmon. This post's salmon was bought two weeks ago, and it was also an impulse buy. I had to! It was also 50% off!)
This was all already delicious right after I cooked it, but reheating the leftover rice in a skillet is 👌.
