Social Distancing: Days 21 - 23
April 10, 2020 6:39 PM
Day 21 (Wednesday): Sometimes when my sister and I take a walk around the neighborhood we pass by this Indian restaurant. It always makes me want Indian food. I figured we could make chicken tikka masala since I bought this family pack of chicken breast.
What I didn't realize was the fact that we've been eating so much that we're really cutting it close on having enough for this recipe. But we just make it work. I also didn't realize how low we were on tomato paste. Whatever, we'll just omit that. And the chicken stock.
We also made creamed spinach, and my sister made some naan. We were a little worried since we didn't have any more yogurt and we barely had enough yeast. But it didn't matter! It was all delicious.
Day 22 (Thursday): I haven't had a noodle dish during the quarantine yet, and I have some vermicelli noodles left over from the spring rolls, so I decide to make Singapore noodles.
This recipe called for tofu, but I didn't have any, since I didn't plan to make this meal in advance. But I did have some shrimp so I threw that in instead. I actually think having the crispy tofu would have been nice. It wasn't bad, but I think it could have used a little more flavor.
Also, we're officially out of garlic now. We almost went grocery shopping today. But we stopped ourselves! We can last a whole week! I know it!
Day 23 (Friday): Our supply is seriously dwindling. But we have enough for my sister to make some Nikujaga (Japanese beef stew).
This is one of the dishes she made when she studied Japanese cuisine in school. It seemed easy enough for me to make it, though! And it was delicious.
At this point we're also out of soy sauce. Though I guess we still have some soy sauce alternatives. We're determined to last at least another day without shopping. Can we do it? Tune in to find out...
Social Distancing: Days 10 - 11
April 5, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 10 (Saturday): It's the weekend! My sister is losing track of the days as every day feels the same. But since I don't have work, I decide that it would be a good time to make dumplings since it takes me a while to make dumplings.
Of course I didn't think about the fact that my sister is an amazing and super fast dumpling wrapper. She probably wraps four dumplings in the time it takes me to wrap one.
She actually wasn't as happy with this batch as she usually is. I think we need a larger meat to veggies ratio. But I still thought it was delicious. So delicious, that we forgot to take a picture immediately and didn't remember to do so until we ate half of them.
Day 11 (Sunday): In keeping with the theme of making more elaborate meals on the weekend, we decided to make pizza. From scratch. That's right: homemade pizza dough and homemade pizza sauce. I used half a can of crushed tomatoes in our soupy pasta on Friday, so I turned the other half into pizza sauce. It was really easy!
My favorite pizza is BBQ chicken, but if I want a more traditional cheese and tomato sauce pizza, my favorite topping is tomato. I love tomatoes on pizza.
Not only that, we also made cheesy bread! I used to eat cheesy bread all the time when my work would order pizza from a place called Giovanni's which made the most amazing cheesy bread. Unfortunately, one time they were super late with their delivery so the admin team decided to never order from there again ):
But, who cares! I can make my own cheesy bread! Well. My sister can. Dough still kind of scares me.
It was kind of awkward making both since the pizza needed to cook at 425 and the cheesy bread needed to cook at 375 but we made it work. We actually have a decent amount of pizza sauce left! Maybe we'll make more cheesy bread later?
Social Distancing: Days 7 - 9
March 30, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 7 (Wednesday): So during my multi-grocery store excursion, I impulse bought some Ahi Tuna, because of course I did. And because I was out for three hours, that gave plenty of time for that slab of tuna to already start thawing, so I figured we might as well keep it in the fridge and have Poke the next day.
One of our lessons learned from past poke parties is that we usually buy way too much fish. So we picked out the smallest piece (about 1/2 lb), and we decided to NOT add any extra items to our grocery list because the best way to do poke parties is to just use what you already have.
Another lesson learned is that we should just marinate the fish, and not any of the other ingredients because otherwise it gets too salty. My sister makes the most delicious marinade with soy sauce and other Asian sauces and ginger and garlic and onions and she even included some lime this time!
If you're wondering, yes, we ate everything on that table. There were no leftovers, and there shouldn't be, since this is raw fish we're talking about.
Day 8 (Thursday): We had a planned game night with our cousins this day, so I wanted to make something easy. I still had a lot of pulled pork leftover from a few days ago, so it's taco time again!
I was expecting to do another taco night, so I made sure to buy lots of cilantro and sweet onions. I also happened to buy Mexican cheese, which I wasn't even planning on using for this. (I like putting Mexican cheese in my green bean casserole...which will be for another blog post!) But it adds some nice color to the tacos!
Also, we're sitting here at my dinky table, when I realize how nice the lighting is at one particular spot. And I realize that I have a spotlight in my kitchen that is pointing RIGHT at that spot on the table, and I have two other spotlights and I'm like WHY HAVEN'T I NOTICED THIS BEFORE. I need to buy a ladder now so I can re-angle these lights and give my pictures better lighting for the future.
My sister also made some shaobing. She's so talented.
Day 9 (Friday): So one of my friends is really into those Bon Appetit videos, and I figured I'd watch one to see what all the fuss is about. I'm not really into watching videos about food, but watching this video of this guy making pasta with chickpeas really made me want to make pasta with chickpeas.
Except this is more like soup. Pasta soup? They call it "brothy pasta" which my sister thought was weird, but that's what it is! You eat it with a spoon! We also threw in some kale and celery that we just happened to have. I thought it was great. I'd make it again.
Oh remember how I was struggling to find flour at the grocery store? Well, that's not the only thing we struggled with. We also couldn't find butter. We did find butter substitutes though, so we bought two packs of margarine. My sister used it to make these croissant-like things that don't really resemble croissants at this point, but whatever. It was still tasty.
Scallops and Broccoli
March 10, 2019 12:30 PM
I've had scallops sitting in my freezer for way too long (since you know, I impulse buy seafood) and I finally cooked them.
Of course I'm still too cheap to buy the whole scallops, and instead go for the bag that has the smaller pieces. I saw Baked Scallops on Skinnytaste, which was super easy to make.
And like every other meal, I need to have vegetables. I looked for a quick broccoli recipe and I saw Sheet Pan Roasted Broccoli on Damn Delicious. I was paying very close attention to my broccoli this time, so I wouldn't overcook it! I cut my broccoli into pretty small pieces, and 12 minutes was plenty of time in the oven. In fact, I might need to cook it for even less next time.
We cooked one pound of scallops and about 3/4 of a pound of broccoli, and there definitely was not enough food to have leftovers.
Stuff My Sister Made
March 8, 2019 5:15 PM
Hey! My sister is a way better cook than I am. Here's a post with a few things that I had no part in making, starting with some noodle soup.
We actually intended to make Pho, and while this was very good, I don't think I could call it Pho. We used bone marrow and had the broth soak for about 6 hours.
After eating the noodles, we still had that bone marrow, and we didn't want it to go to waste. So my sister baked some bread so we could have toast to spread the bone marrow on.
And so we could have avocado toast! This was actually the first time in my life that I ever had avocado toast. I used to hate avocados, but my sister told me they're just like egg yolks and I finally saw the appeal.
