I made the pasta a little too salty
December 14, 2024 2:18 PM
A guest post from my cousin Leng
Getting here was quite the ordeal; It was a story of intrigue and betrayal. Plot twists! O' Mennonites! A story too long and drawn out to regale in a single blog post, but the short of it was I arrived three hours later than expected. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my final destination-- homeland of Gian'Iggle, a city with at least one river and probably at least one bridge: Pittsburgh (the 'Burgh).
During my time on that train, I had plenty of time to decide what I would cook. I told Jeje that if I stayed at her place this weekend, I would cook a meal so she wouldn't be cooking all the time. The problem is, I'm a "throw things together and hope for the best" kinda guy. I don't really cook foods with names. I started thinking of meals I knew the names of. "Does pasta count?" I thought to myself. My work caters lunch, and one of the foods I remembered trying was the Winter Cajun Pasta from Fireworks Pizza in Arlington. I gave it a quick Google search, and lo and behold, a recipe from Budget Bytes appeared. Long time fans of this blog already know-- it seemed like it was meant to be. I had decided that's what I would make, and I instantly started to get hungry. So, I ate the small bag of roasted chestnuts I brought with me as emergency provisions.
At last, I arrived at the Amtrak station. I want to say thanks to my Jeje for picking me up at the station at the incredibly late/early hour of 3am (with yummy Kent mangoes), and to Dan for setting up such a wonderful comfy mattress for me to sleep on during my stay.
When I got to Jeje's apartment, I knew I needed to sleep because tomorrow was the Big DDR Holiday Party, but for some reason I couldn't. In a vain attempt to lull myself to sleep I tried listening to a two hour video on Spongebob lore, but it was so bad I couldn't bear it. Instead, I opted to rest in silence, to drift off to the sound of the rumbling heater. I hope I have the energy to dance hard today!
Oh, here's the link to the recipe! I opted to substitute the chicken with kielbasa.
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!
Slowing Down
February 22, 2020 11:07 AM
You might be thinking, "Slowing down?! Aren't you already making new posts at a ridiculously slow rate?!" and yeah, I am. But that's because my life has been busy busy busy, and I need to slow down what I'm doing in my life. I had a realization while driving home last week that I've been doing way too much. drinking too much coffee, and not getting enough sleep. So, I've officially started a no-coffee diet that I'm going to try and keep up for the next couple of months.
No coffee obviously means I need to get more sleep, and because I'm trying to prioritize sleep, I might actually be cooking less. But we'll see!
One Pot Creamy Cajun Chicken Pasta - Budget Bytes
I want to say I made this because I had cream cheese that I needed to use up, and whenever I need to use up cream cheese, I look for a creamy pasta to make. All of the cream cheese filled pastas I've made have been great, even if the leftovers aren't my favorite. I think this pasta could have used more of the cajun-y taste though. I also think it might have been better if I added more cheese, as it still tasted very tomato-y. Still, this tasted good and I'll probably make it again at some point.
Sushi - Just One Cookbook
Okay, I know I didn't really need a recipe for sushi, but the recipe I linked is what I referred to for making the sushi rice. Of course I just cooked rice like normal and then stirred in the extra ingredients when it was done.
I wanted to make sushi because I had a bunch of those seaweed wrappers and I also had imitation crab in the freezer, and I'm really trying to use what I have instead of buying extra ingredients all the time.
I considered buying one of those bamboo rolling things that make it easier to make sushi but I just tried rolling one on my own and while it wasn't super pretty, it seemed to work well enough so I'll be sticking to my own hand rolling for now. Anyway, I didn't realize how easy it was to make sushi like this. I'll be doing this some more in the future.
One Pan Roasted Kielbasa and Cabbage Dinner - Budget Bytes
For some reason I really wanted some sausage the other day, and I also had cabbage I needed to use up. Kielbasa is basically sausage, right? I think I ended up having extra meat and not as much cabbage as the recipe called for, which isn't really the direction I like to take these recipes, but whatever. This was a nice, easy dish to make.
Posole - Budget Bytes
I considered not posting this because of how ugly I think this picture is, but this did serve me well for four meals. I had a bag of leftover pulled pork in my fridge, and while I did use some of it for tacos, I also used it to make this soup. It was delicious.
Spiced Fish Tacos - Blue Apron
Because I love tacos so much, I also made fish tacos. The recipe calls for catfish, but I use tilapia because I'm cheap. It's been a while since I've made this, but this is one of my go-to recipes. I've made this so many times, and yet, I still haven't tried anything else from Blue Apron's cookbook. Maybe one day.
I actually deviated from the recipe this time, and I used avocado in place of sweet potato. I do think sweet potato would have been better, but I'm really trying hard to use ingredients I already have, and I just happened to have a lot of avocados on hand.
Tomato Basil Pasta with Ricotta - Budget Bytes
Yeah, more pasta! Pasta is easy so I make it a lot. I was actually looking up recipes that use ricotta since I bought some to make ravioli out of dumpling wrappers (that was gross, I'm never doing that again), and I had half the thing of ricotta left. This was good, but I cut the amount of tomatoes in half since I was too lazy to cut up a whole 2 pints. I definitely should have use all of them though.
Odds 'n Ends
March 4, 2019 11:30 AM
Egg Drop Soup from Souped Up Recipes
My sister actually made this to eat with the bánh xèo, which was nice because the pancakes took a while to cook. It was delicious.
One Pan Roasted Kielbasa and Cabbage Dinner from Budget Bytes
This recipe claims to serve 4, but I doubled it and I don't even think that amount served 4 because I got one meal out of it and my sister got two meals out of it. Maybe that just means it was that good.
Cheesy Scallion Stuffed Jalapeños from Budget Bytes
We had jalapeños that had been sitting in the fridge for too long, so I needed to make something that would use up all of them. Aldi was out of scallions though! Why does this keep happening? I also completely forgot to buy sour cream. It still tasted good though, especially because we added breadcrumbs. And we paired this with other foods that didn't really make any sense, but whatever.
