Ricotta pancakes

December 19, 2025 12:21 AM

Hello, friends.

I know I haven't blogged much. I've been so focused on my WhatTeochewSay work because one of my big goals for the year is to finish making a particularly large feature for the site. It's not going to be done by the end of the year, but after a few really busy weeks with family, I had a bunch of free time and I just wanted to LOCK IN.

Of course another one of my big goals for the year is to clear out almost all the ingredients in my kitchen. (Yes I know I've tried to do this in the past. BUT I'M REALLY COMMITTED NOW. But also, not going to get done by the end of the year) And I could be blogging about this journey! But I'm too lazy to take any decent photos. So here I am, giving you a food blog post with some really hastily taken photos.

Earlier this week, I made some ricotta pancakes. I didn't expect much from them, but I gotta say, they were pretty freaking good.

And I say that I didn't expect much because I definitely tried to make them before and they were less than mediocre and so much work. But honestly, I probably didn't even follow the recipe correctly.

But this time? This time I was calm and collected and followed all the incredibly involved instructions. In one step, I even had to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks formed. The recipe said to use a hand mixer for this.

If you don’t have a hand mixer, use a whisk and a whole lot of elbow grease.

I do have a hand mixer, but I also had a whisk already sitting out and I was like "I don't want to wash extra dishes". So I really tried to beat those egg whites by hand, but my elbow absolutely was not greased up enough because nothing was happening to these eggs. So I took out the hand mixer and turned it on, and it still took like five or ten minutes for the eggs to actually reach the consistency that it needed! Is that normal?

Anyway, by the time I had my batter done, I still needed to actually cook the pancakes. You know how they say that the first pancake is always a dud? Well my first pancake was beautiful. But I don't have a picture of it--sorry, I was way too hungry at that point.

My last pancake? That was a dud. I also didn't take a picture of that one.

But overall, this was a success. The only thing I was missing was maple syrup. But I REFUSE to buy it because I'm still on my incredibly long quest to get rid of ALL THE THINGS and not buy more things. I ended up sprinkling cinnamon and sugar on top. (Ha! Just like the last time I made this!)

Cucumber guac shrimp bites

June 8, 2024 6:07 PM

Continuing with my blast from the past, I decided to make avocado cucumber shrimp appetizers, which is something I made way back in 2019 when I first started the blog. I had half a cucumber left over from another meal, and I thought that it was time to revisit this and actually make it better this time.

First I had to buy my ingredients, one of which was an avocado. Now I could have gone to Giant Eagle and spent $2.50 on a single probably-already-ripe avocado, but that seemed ridiculous when Aldi sells them for 99 cents. The only problem is that Aldi's avocados are pretty much never already-ripe, so I had to wait three days before I could make it. I even tried putting it in a paper bag, but that did not seem to really do much. I also bought shrimp the same day and immediately put it in the fridge to thaw, and that was a little dicey because I was worried my shrimp might go bad before my avocado was ready to eat.

But today my avocado was finally ready! And I mashed it into a nice guac-without-the-onions. I sliced up my cucumber, and I cooked my shrimp (which was totally fine). I've learned that the key to cooking shrimp on the stove is to just watch over it and not multitask and take each shrimp out right when it's opaque.

These turned out really well! I bought "jumbo" shrimp, which in my opinion is really just "large", but it also seemed just a tad too big for one bite for me. I ended up cutting up the shrimp into smaller pieces to get it to be bite-sized. But it was delicious, even if it was a bit cumbersome to eat.

Along with my cucumber avocado shrimp bites, I also made myself a single quesadilla. I had some leftover slices of velveeta cheese, and while I hate how pre-packaged, individually-wrapped sliced cheese tastes on a sandwich, maybe it would be okay in between some corn tortillas.

It was terrible. Never ever ever use sliced cheese in a quesadilla.