Social Distancing: Days 4 - 6

March 29, 2020 8:00 AM

Day 4 (Sunday): We are running low on groceries. Especially vegetables. We are completely out of garnish at this point, and I am looking at our list of foods wondering what I can scrape together. I did impulse-buy some fish. And I have some oranges. Hey, maybe I can make that same Winter Citrus salmon my sister and I made last year.

Hmm, but I only have Cara Cara oranges. And I don't have limes. But I do have a lemon! So this is just going to be really...orange. But what can I do for veggies? I still had two bell peppers, and I always have onions on stock. I remembered that I have some fajita seasoning that mixed up a while back. Fajita veggies. BAM. I just need some starch. Since I already did chicken broth rice with the tacos, I figured I'd do something different and make yellow rice this time. Which is making this dish REAL yellow, but whatever. It is delicious.

Day 5 (Monday): I actually have one more planned meal! I saw this sausage and broccoli recipe on Budget Bytes that I wanted to try.

And now I remember why I had extra bell peppers. I was totally saving one for this recipe. Well, we're just omitting that part and using extra onions. And I'm pretty sure that used up our whole onion supply as well.

And so that's it. That's all the meals I could possibly make from what we initially bought on Thursday. Could we have made it two extra days? Honestly, we totally could have. We have leftovers from all the dishes we cooked. Plus we could grab takeout! But we are dangerously low on butter and flour. And my sister is a baker and I will not stop her from baking!

Day 6 (Tuesday): Yeah, turns out the grocery stores have even less butter and flour than I do. I know, I said I'd be flexible and creative, but how the heck are we supposed to bake things without flour?! You can't replace flour! I mean you can use flour substitutes, but those are all gone too! I went to way too many grocery stores. I was out so much longer than I should have been. BUT I WAS DETERMINED TO FIND FLOUR. I actually found some at Target. Thank goodness, because I did not want to have to hit up Rite Aid and the dollar store.

Also, we bought way too many things, and I am never trying to buy two weeks worth of food at once ever again.

Oh you know what else we had trouble finding? Frozen mangoes. We found frozen strawberries, frozen pineapples, frozen peaches, but no frozen mangoes. Well, sorta. We did grab a bag of frozen mixed fruit that just happened to have some mangoes in it. My sister really wanted to make mango lassi, so we went and picked out all of the mangoes in this bag of fruit.

Anyway, we needed something easy for dinner after that whole experience, so we made spring rolls!

Happy end-of-summer!

August 31, 2019 2:29 PM

Summer is exhausting. Kids are out of school and everyone's on vacation, and sometimes you just need a vacation after your vacation. I'm slowly getting back to having a normal routine though.

You might be wondering, "Hey! What happened to your $30 a week thing? You only lasted two weeks!" Yeah, it might be a while until I try that challenge again. I'm trying to focus on just eating and exercising well, and I don't want to have to think about saving every penny I can.

But I told myself I'd get back to the blog, so here are three things I made this week:

Yellow Jasmine Rice (and an egg!) - Budget Bytes

I've made this yellow rice so many times, but it was always with chicken. The chicken was always my least favorite part of the dish, so it just made sense to only make the rice part. And then I can pair it with other things, like a fried egg! This rice tastes even better if you stir-fry it the day after.

Roasted Lemon Basil Butter Salmon with Burst Tomatoes - How Sweet Eats

Man, they really make dishes sound fancier when they put so many ingredients in the name of the dish. This was really easy to make, and the flavor was really good, but I don't know how to get my salmon to have that nice color on it. Maybe mine was so pale because I only cooked it for 15 minutes. But it's salmon! I can't have overcooked salmon! I might try roasting it for say, 8 minutes, and then broiling for 5 more minutes next time.

Lemon Dill Salmon and Kale Salad - Budget Bytes

That salmon recipe called for the zest of two whole lemons. You know what that left me? Two naked lemons. And I totally forgot about them when making this salad, so I still have two naked lemons. Anyway, I don't really love kale or salmon in my salads, so I'm not sure why I decided to make this. I did like the dressing though. I used whatever kale came in the bag I got from Aldi, but I think this would have been better with lacinato kale.

Stuff I cooked a while ago

June 16, 2019 12:27 PM

I meant to write this blog post over two weeks ago. Then I got really busy, and I went on vacation, and now I don't really remember what I wanted to write about. But I have all these pictures so I should at least show them to you, and maybe looking through them will help jog my memory.

Remember how I subscribed to Misfits Market to get veggies delivered regularly? Well, I canceled it a while ago, but they did send me an email asking me to use their service again AND they gave me a complimentary box. I kind of feel bad because half of this box went to waste. It wasn't my fault though. The produce was sitting in transit for way too long and by the time it was delivered, the ice packs were completely melted, and the spring mix looked really sad. So, yeah, this free box didn't convince me to sign up again.

But, I did get an eggplant that I could use. I really like stir fried eggplant so I made Chinese Eggplant with Garlic Sauce. I know I didn't have any spicy bean paste or ground pork at the time, but it still tasted good without those ingredients.

And to go along with the Asian theme, I made some Sesame Chicken. This is a pretty old Budget Bytes recipe, and it was recently updated to double the sauce. I don't think it needs nearly that much sauce, so I would actually cut it in half now. So easy to make though, and very delicious.

It's really hard to tell from the picture of produce, but I did get some zucchini in a bag (why some things get put in bags, and others don't, I have no idea). Zucchini is not my favorite vegetable, as it reminds me too much of college cafeteria food, but turning it into Zucchini Fritters makes them a little better.

While I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, I really don't like butternut squash. It just tastes like a cross between a sweet potato and a pumpkin, but somehow much worse than either of those. I also don't know what I'm supposed to do with it except roast it or turn it into soup. They also take forever to cut up, which makes them not worth it to cook at all. But hey, this was free and I didn't want to waste it.

I do love salmon, though! This recipe came from a book, so I can't exactly provide a link. I still haven't quite mastered the art of baking salmon. I think I may have put it in the oven at 350 or 400 degrees for 10 minutes, and then broiled it for 5. This was waaay overcooked, but at least the rub was really tasty.

Also mango salsa to go on top of the fish! Because I had mangoes in the box!

For some reason I thought the mango salsa would go with the sesame chicken. I don't think I'd pair the two again.

Oh yeah, I also made collard greens (because it was in the box!), but I neglected to take a picture of the collard greens by itself.

Not box related at all, but I also cooked Shrimp Scampi Florentine, with some pasta added. This dish is always delicious.

I had a dinner with friends where we all made pizza. Anytime I get to choose my own pizza toppings, I will always choose BBQ chicken. For some reason every time my family orders pizza, they ask me what pizza topping I want, I tell them barbecue chicken, and they give me a look and proceed to not get any barbecue chicken. It's okay. I can just make my own.

And finally, here's one last picture of that chicken rice skillet. Because I must have had leftovers from the week before and this picture looks nice.

And that concludes this long, not-very-cohesive post. Honestly, it'll probably be a while until my next post because my schedule is crazy and I'm not going to have too much time to cook. Maybe once the summer is over!

Salmon and Green Beans

March 18, 2019 12:30 PM

So Aldi sells frozen salmon at less than $4 a pound, which may seem questionable, and that's why I've never bought it before. Until now. I needed to do something with that other $1 bag of green beans, and I really like this Sesame Glazed Salmon and Green Beans recipe from Budget Bytes.

The recipe is described as "faster-than-takeout", but I don't know about that. I always buy salmon with the skin on, and for some reason my local grocery store doesn't de-scale the salmon. So I usually end up trying to de-scale the fish myself which turns into a flailing mess. But Aldi's bags of frozen salmon are completely de-scaled! And cut into individual sized portions! So much easier.

However, this attempt was still kind of slow, since we cut the green beans diagonally. My mom always cut them this way, and it really helps the flavor soak in. It is a lot more work though.

It is a little odd that the recipe calls for 2/3 lb of salmon and 2/3 lb of green beans. We just used 1lb each. We also made more sauce, and I think we should have stuck to the amount in the recipe, since that has way more sauced than needed. I'd also put less sugar in next time.

Aldi frozen salmon definitely isn't as good as the ones I buy not-frozen, but I think it's totally worth it for the price.

Dinner for 4

February 18, 2019 5:33 PM

I did some serious flailing around in the kitchen the other day. My mom and her friend are visiting me, and she last minute (okay technically I had more than a minute) asked me to make lunch for her. My sister was still at work, and unfortunately I didn't take any good pictures.

But hey, we have some pictures of dinner!

We made three different things: sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, and salmon. The potatoes were deep fried, but we didn't really follow a recipe.

I used the same brussels sprouts recipe as I did earlier this year. I think I'm going to completely change it up next time though and bake the brussels sprouts.

For the salmon, I did try a new recipe though: Hot Honey Salmon from How Sweet Eats. It was good, but not my favorite way to prepare salmon. I think I prefer the Citrus Salmon.

You know what happens when you cook for 4? You don't have as many leftovers.