Happy new year

January 2, 2025 7:51 PM

It's finally 2025! I've been waiting for this since like...January 2024!

Yeah, 2024 was a lot. I did a lot. I cooked a lot! But I did not food blog a lot. I only made four posts. (I'm not counting the one my cousin wrote) And I ended 2024 the same way it started, by being sick. It's a little unfortunate, but it's not so bad that I can't start off the year right.

So on January 1, 2025 I wanted to cook something. My first thought was to make some curry, but the curry blocks that I thought I had in the fridge weren't actually there. Then I was thinking I would make some peanut stew because our friend gave us a piece of ginger, and I figured I should try to use it. I made this whole grocery list, and I even planned out a second meal, but then I realized that Aldi was closed because of course they're closed on New Years. And I had intended on buying almost everything on my list from Aldi because there are certain things I just do not want to buy from Giant Eagle.

Okay, so I scrapped that idea and decided on...hummus. Yeah, I know that's more like a snack and not a meal, but I've really been wanting to make some caramelized onion and balsamic hummus.

I already had two onions in the fridge, and you know what else goes well with caramelized onions? Pierogies. I had some frozen pierogies sitting in the freezer, and I figured that if I pair pierogie with some veggies, that's basically a meal. The holidays were pretty heavy so it was good to eat something light.

I ended up buying some green beans because they're pretty easy to cook and because the green beans at Giant Eagle are not that much more expensive than the ones at Aldi. But at Giant Eagle they just have green beans in bulk, and I'm the kind of person that will pick up each green bean individually and inspect it before putting it in my bag. So I was hunched over picking out beans one by one until I got a headache and decided that 0.91 lbs of green beans is good enough.

My boyfriend cooked the pierogie. He likes to first boil them and then toast them in the toaster oven with some spices and shredded cheese. It's pretty good! If I ever write a cookbook, I'd feature them.

Eating more veggies

December 17, 2023 7:43 PM

I tried to eat a little bit healthier during my second week of meal prepping. That meant less meat and more veggies. First, I decided to make Mediterranean hummus bowls. I already had feta and olives from a meal last week. I also had a bunch of cilantro, and I thought that would go well in the hummus. Cilantro jalapeno hummus is one of my favorites (: And I also made pickled onions! I didn't realize how easy it was to make pickled onions. I should have been doing this years ago. I heard celery seed goes well in pickled things, so it was a good way to use up more of that.

We really like how healthy and fresh it is, and it's become one of my go-to meals to make.

I only used a small amount of ground beef in the hummus bowls, and I used the rest of it to make a couple of stir fry dishes. I bought a pound of green beans and I added just a little bit of the ground beef to make some stir fry.

I really like ordering green beans from Szechuan restaurants, but it costs like $15, and I can easily make this myself. Pretty sure it's healthier this way too.

With the last half-ish pound of ground beef, I did another stir fry. One of my co-workers said she likes to stir fry beef with coriander and some other spices, and I have a really old container of coriander, so I tried it out. It was alright. I'm really not good at just throwing things together without a recipe.

The next meal I made was loaded chipotle sweet potatoes. I had a little bit of sour cream leftover from last week, and also a little bit of chipotle powder that I wanted to use up. It didn't look very pretty, but it still tasted pretty good!

Finally, I'm ending on these udon noodles again. I made a little bit more sauce this time, and it was even better than the last time.

Hummus pasta again

June 11, 2023 5:46 PM

The past two months have been really busy with either me traveling to visit someone, or someone else visiting the area. I haven't really cooked as much, which means I haven't done anything for the food blog.

But I did try making hummus pasta again, and it turned out really well!

This is what I did differently this time:

• I only cooked half a pound of pasta. I actually used higher quality shell pasta this time! It was from Aldi, but it's so fancy that they label it Conchiglie instead of Shells
• I only used half a can of the coconut milk (now what to do with the rest...)
• I used the Taste of Thai brand of coconut milk, which is better than the grocery store brand, but they only had light coconut milk and organic coconut milk! I just wanted regular coconut milk. Maybe next time.

If I had more time in my day, I'd cook a lot more and I'd make the same dish three days in a row, just so I could keep making tweaks to make it better each time.

Hummus pasta

April 5, 2023 9:14 PM

I'm trying to eat healthier. I know that means something a little different for everyone, but for me that mostly means more fruits and vegetables and less processed foods.

One of my coworkers mentioned that they like the site Pick up Limes, which has lots of vegan recipes, and that's gotta be healthy, right? I saw a recipe for hummus pasta, and people had such good things to say about it, so I had to try it out.

This was really easy to make. It had very few ingredients, and even though I always make hummus from scratch, I decided I didn't want to make hummus and pasta, so I just bought some from Aldi. The recipe also includes vegan "parmesan" and I just bought real parmesan from the store.

When I was mixing up the hummus and the coconut milk, I was worried it would be a little bland, so I added some salt and pepper which I think was a good decision. In fact, I think I should have added even more salt and pepper.

It wasn't bad though! I think I'd want to try making this again. I didn't want to halve the recipe because I didn't want to have half a can of coconut milk left, but I think I could just make the same amount of sauce and halve the pasta. Also, I gotta stop buying penne from Aldi. I haven't had my pasta fall apart quite as bad as that one time, but it always ends up falling apart a little bit. And I should probably get better quality coconut milk too.

Oh, I also had to see how the leftovers would taste, and they weren't terrible, but they weren't good either. Very few pasta dishes make good leftovers though, so it's alright. I'll just make a smaller batch next time.

I actually bought pita bread to eat with my store bought hummus, and I'm not sure why I did, because I basically used all of the hummus for the pasta. I needed to eat something with the pita, so I went and made my own hummus later! A while back I had tried this caramelized onion and balsamic hummus, and I thought it was really good, so I wanted to try making some of my own. And what do you know, Pick up Limes, has a recipe for this too.

It took a bit of time, and my eyes were dying from the onions, but it was very tasty! I'll definitely make it again.

Smoother hummus

August 12, 2022 5:07 PM

Hummus has been one of my go-to recipes, and in the past I've always preferred a chunkier hummus. But I wanted to try something different. I had been meaning to try the Woks of Life hummus recipe for a while. I really like their food blog, but I've mostly ignored their non-Asian recipes. Their hummus just looks so aesthetic though!

It wasn't bad. This was certainly more work than the hummus I'm used to making. I usually just throw all the ingredients in a food processor and let it run for a minute, and I'm done. This recipe has you blending in stages. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it.

I must have blended this for at least 5 minutes, but it was still kind of grainy. I think that I would have needed to peel the chickpeas in order to get that super smooth texture, but that's definitely not worth it.

I mostly made hummus just so I could use up the rest of my cut fresh veggies. I had already run out of tomato, so I used mini sweet peppers instead. I think a red sweet pepper would have looked nicer but the bag I bought had way more orange and yellow peppers, and I needed to save some red ones for those fajitas I made.

I used a meatball recipe for the cooked ground beef (except I didn't turn it into a meatball), and that was very good.

Next time I make hummus, I think I'll be more creative with what I mix in.