Social Distancing: Days 24 - 26

April 25, 2020 5:57 AM

So I've been verybusy at work lately, which is why I haven't posted an update in a while. When I start working on a project at work my mind is just in this "I NEED TO FINISH THIS" mode and I can't work on other things. Anyway, I've found a stopping point, so it's time to catch up on blog posts.

Day 24 (Saturday): I have decided to take inventory of all my food. That's right. Everything in my kitchen.

I had already been doing this, but I finally took inventory of my herbs, spices, sauces, etc. Yes, this is what I stare at every day when I decide what to cook and what leftover to eat for breakfast or lunch.

Before I get to the dinner portion of this, check out this super aesthetic coffee my sister made.

So tonight's dinner was Nam Sod (Thai pork salad). I had about a pound of ground pork sitting in the freezer, but what I really needed to use up were some super sad looking limes.

We ate it both with rice and in lettuce wraps. I thought it was great, though my sister prefers something sweeter. Adding some Thai basil would have made this even better though!

Day 25 (Sunday): We decide to go grocery shopping. On a Sunday. But we didn't think about what Sunday it is. EASTER. That's right, all the stores are closed except Whole Foods. And Whole Foods has a line that wraps around the building. We decide to head back home. We'll survive.

Since we have about half a head of cabbage in the fridge, we decide to make Okonomiyaki. It was delicious. We also had some green beans that seemed like they were going to go bad soon, so we fried those up as well. Of course at this point we're starting to struggle a little with what ingredients we had left. We used up the rest of our eggs for this meal!

Day 26 (Monday): We also wanted to go grocery shopping this day, but for some reason my stomach wasn't feeling so great, so we stayed home again. It's okay. We had some salmon in the freezer and some broccoli in the fridge so we made a quick meal out of that.

Unfortunately I didn't let the salmon thaw all the way before putting it under the broiler so that was a bit of a struggle to get it cooked completely. I'm still learning how to use that broiler properly. But the rub we added to the salmon was great, and the meal overall was delicious.

At this point, we were out of garlic, soy sauce, milk, fruit...we absolutely needed a grocery trip.

Social Distancing: Days 15 - 17

April 8, 2020 8:26 AM

Day 15 (Thursday): Beef and broccoli. I'm using a recipe from The Omnivore's Cookbook which I've never really used before. This beef and broccoli was good, and reminded me of my family's cooking. Though it didn't really taste like takeout. It probably needed more sugar and I wanted the sauce to be thicker. Next time I'll try a different recipe.

Day 16 (Friday): Thursday night, I'm staring at the whiteboard for a good 15 minutes trying to think of what would make the most sense to make. I have lots of lettuce. Romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce. I can use the romaine and iceberg for salad. But what about the green leaf? I know what would work: lettuce wraps!

So I'm scrolling through lots of lettuce wrap recipes, and I settle on a peanut sauce one since I have peanut butter and no other use for it. I had to modify the recipe a lot though since I didn't have all the ingredients it called for. But I will not go to the grocery store if I don't have to! I used chicken breast instead of ground chicken and just cut it into small pieces before stir frying. The recipe called for 1/4 cup hoisin sauce and I think I used a single tablespoon. (It was a good call) I also added some sliced bell pepper and nuts that I picked out of a bag of trail mix.

Day 17 (Saturday): It's the weekend again! But who can really tell when we're inside all the time? My sister decided to use up the rest of the apples for some apple coffee cake. And it's like The Woks of Life just knew that's what she wanted to make because they just recently posted a recipe for this.

This was pretty good, but the apples were way too sweet. Not like we had a choice in what apples we could use though. This would probably work better with something like a Granny Smith apple.

As for dinner, I still had more stir-fry dishes I wanted make. One of my favorite stir-fries is ginger chicken, which my mom makes really well. I'm not very good at cooking like my mom does, so I looked up a recipe.

Obviously, this isn't like my mom's ginger chicken, but it was still pretty tasty.