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.

A closeup shot of three cucumber avocado shrimp bites on a cutting board with some sliced cucumbers and cilantro in the background — *And it really was 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.

A closeup shot of a single cucumber avocado shrimp bite topped with cilantro — *I forgot to put cilantro on the first few bites 😱*

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.

A spread of sliced cucumbers, a lime, cilantro, shrimp avocado cucumber bites, extra shrimp, cut up quesadilla and my crocheted chick in the background — *Look at the little egg shell hat on my chick!*

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

Filed under: avocado shrimp

Meal prepping

December 11, 2023 10:12 PM

About a month ago, I thought to myself, "Man, I'm spending way too much money eating out. I need to cook more of my meals." And then I went on a little vacation, and I ate out for every single meal of the day because I'm not cooking on vacation.

But vacation is over. Time to cook. I'm know I'm really slow at making things, so I decided that I was going to try meal prepping. I'm not making three different dishes in one day--that's too much--but I wanted to see if I could do more prep in advance: cutting up vegetables, mixing together sauces and spice mixtures. So I came up with a bunch of different meals for the week, and I wrote down all the groceries I would need for those meals, and I spent over two hours on prep work ~~last~~ last last Saturday.

I was exhausted. But, it really did make the cooking for the rest of the week a lot easier.

So the first thing I decided to make after all that prep work was leftovers. I was way too tired to cook a whole meal. But after I ate that meal, I guess I felt like I had enough energy to make some real dessert. That's right, I didn't just microwave something in a mug, I made a whole batch of snickerdoodles.

Snickerdoodles in a tupperware container — *This was actually from a batch I made like...a month ago*

I have this little container of cream of tartar sitting in my pantry, and apparently that's what you use to make snickerdoodles. For most of my life, I thought snickerdoodles were just sugar cookies with extra cinnamon on them. Turns out they're sugar cookies with cinnamon and cream of tartar.

When I made my first batch a month ago, it was way more work than I expected. Mostly because I don't own a stand mixer. And it also took me forever. This time it was juuust a little bit easier and went juuust a little bit more quickly. I still somehow seem to mess up at least one batch in the oven, but I'm getting the hang of this.

Greek turkey rice in a skillet — *So bright! Gotta take advantage of that natural light in the morning*

On Sunday morning, I made some Greek Turkey Rice. (Actually I used chicken, because for some reason turkey is sold in 19.2 oz packages rather than 1 lb, and I already think 1 lb is way more meat that I need for this.)

I've had a bunch of pasta dishes lately, so I wanted to switch it up with some rice. I had some leftover spinach from last week, and I didn't mind buying feta, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes since I can just snack on those.

Very good, very easy meal. Also very easy to pack and heat up leftovers, which is what I needed after getting nothing but take out at work for the past few months.

An overhead shot of cajun shrimp toast arranged on a plate — *Yes, I also took this in front of the window*

Later on Sunday, I made some Cajun shrimp toast. I've already made up my mind that I want to make these as a Christmas appetizer when I visit family, but I wanted to try it a couple of times before then.

A close-up shot of Cajun shrimp toast on a plate

This stuff is so good. I went over to a friend's house on Sunday night to watch a movie, and I brought the shrimp toast. It was a big hit.

Some chicken patties and some chicken nuggets, freshly fried — *I may have overcooked one of the patties*

So the week before this, I ordered a HelloFresh box, and one of the meals was Cajun chicken sandwich. It was pretty tasty. I wasn't originally planning on making more chicken sandwiches, but then I thought about my container of celery seed that expired in 2017 that I'm trying to use up. I can make coleslaw with that. Coleslaw goes well enough with chicken sandwiches, right?

Cajun chicken sandwich with some coleslaw, chicken nuggets, and barbecue sauce — *Back to the night time photos*

Right. I thought the coleslaw was great. I had only intended on making four sandwiches, but I had a little bit of chicken left over, so I fried up some nuggets and ate them with a pack of McDonald's BBQ sauce. That was also great.

Baked mac n cheese in a casserole dish — *I already took a little bite out of the corner*

I also really wanted to make some mac n cheese because I had some breadcrumbs, and because my boyfriend has mentioned that he likes baked mac n cheese, with the crispy breadcrumbs on top. The last time I made mac n cheese, it was just okay and it was way way way too much food.

Okay, so this time I tried a different recipe. And I only cooked half a pound of pasta, which is a much more reasonable amoumnt of pasta for one or two pasta. This was pretty easy to make since I could use pre-shredded cheese. I ended up using the rest of all the random bags of cheese that I had: pepperjack, mozzarella, and Mexican blend (four different cheeses!). And then I topped it with some parmesan! It's six cheese macaroni!

Scooping out some mac n cheese from a casserole dish — *I'm very thankful when I don't have to take the photos*

Honestly, after I put it in the oven, I was a little worried about all the different cheeses that I added. Maybe it was too much. But it ended up tasting pretty good! I think I made it a tad too salty, but we had no trouble eating all of it within a few days.

Udon noodles with mushrooms and edamame — *It's always so steamy when I take photos in front of the stove like this*

Finally, the last meal I cooked was some almost vegetarian shoyu butter udon noodles. Why is it almost vegetarian? Because I used butter. And oyster sauce. But I wasn't going to buy vegan products when I had perfectly good non-vegan substitutes.

Anyway, this was really easy and the mushrooms were delicious. I'm gonna make it again this week (I still have more noodles and edamame!)

Three carrot cake square muffins, one with some cream cheese frosting on top — *Not very pretty. Doesn't matter. Very tasty*

And finally finally, I decided to make some carrot cake to use up the rest of a block of cream cheese I had sitting in the fridge. I followed this carrot cake for two recipe, but I doubled it, and then I also used my square muffin tins which are very large, so it ended up making three very large muffins. And it was kind of a struggle to get these cakes out of the muffin tin.

I also only ended up icing a single muffin so I have lots of cream cheese frosting left over. More muffins this week! I'll be sure to make them smaller and use cupcake liners so it's easier.

Okay, done writing for now. I know it's been a while, but thanks for reading my rambly food thoughts!

Filed under: skillet rice cookies shrimp chicken sandwich mac n cheese noodles carrot cake

Garlic shrimp in coconut milk

June 18, 2023 12:42 PM

When I was buying groceries for that hummus pasta, for some reason I bought two pints of grape tomatoes, even though I only needed one for the pasta. And since I only used up half of my can of coconut milk, and I also had two green onions sitting in my fridge, I figured this was a good opportunity to make garlic shrimp in coconut milk and tomatoes.

I've actually made this recipe several times in the past, and I've always really liked it, but I guess I haven't written a single blog post about it. Until now.

Garlic shrimp in coconut milk, served with rice and topped with lime, cilantro, and green onion for garnish — *I moved my table all across the room just to take advantage of the natural lighting*

So, this recipe calls for a can of diced tomatoes, not a pint of grape tomatoes, but I figured this was an okay enough substitution. It also calls for a whole can of coconut milk, not a half one, but the whole point of this is for me to just use up what I have. I really just needed to buy a single bell pepper and some shrimp. Oh and cilantro. I always need cilantro.

I was able to get the bell pepper from Giant Eagle, but when I walked over to the seafood section, I looked at the shrimp, and it was $13.99 a pound! That's insane! And the recipe calls for a pound and a half. I wasn't going to pay $21 for shrimp. Aldi sells shrimp. I'll just get it from there.

Unfortunately, Aldi ended up being out of raw shrimp, and they only had bags of cooked shrimp left. I'm pretty sure I have an old blog post about why I should never buy already cooked shrimp. But I didn't want to walk back to Giant Eagle just for the shrimp, and this bag was only like $7. So I bought it.

Terrible decision. Never never never buy already cooked shrimp. It was way too tough and didn't have enough flavor.

A different angle of the bowl of rice and shrimp. You can see the window in the background — *It was actually kind of a cloudy day, but natural cloudy light is still way better than artificial living room light*

So, I made way too many deviations from the original recipe, and this turned out...not as good as it normally does, but it wasn't terrible! I still ate all the leftovers.

Filed under: shrimp when the light hits just right

Shrimp fajitas

August 11, 2022 8:51 PM

I made shrimp fajitas today! I made this recipe close to two years ago, and it was awesome. And I made it again today, and it was...not so awesome. And here I am, writing this entry, right after I cleaned up because I need to make sure that if I make this a third time, I don't screw this up.

Shrimp fajitas, right out of the oven — *I mean, it looks okay*

Just yesterday I was talking about how much I love shrimp and how I cooked my shrimp perfectly, but you know what I did today? I overcooked it. 😭 And overcooked shrimp is really bad. The recipe said to cook it for 6-8 minutes. 6 minutes is way too long. I can't imagine I liked overcooked shrimp in the past. Somehow past me must have known that and present me forgot. So, here are some things for future me to remember:

Cook the shrimp for only 5 minutes
Only use two limes total. Just put half a lime in the lime crema, and a lime and a half in the marinade.
Use sour cream instead of yogurt
Maybe use one green and one red bell pepper for color

Shrimp fajitas on a plate with cheese, cilantro, and homemade lime crema on the side — *Yes, I put mozzarella cheese on this*

Okay, honestly, not the worst shrimp tacos/fajitas I've made in the past few months. But I know I can do better!

Filed under: shrimp fajitas failing in my kitchen

Salads, burgers, and shrimp toast

September 6, 2019 6:19 PM

This past weekend was Labor Day which meant three day weekend, which meant four day workweek, and you'd think that it would be easy to get through, but I feel like I need to catch up on sleep again. I was so busy during the week that I didn't wash dishes for a whole three days, and you can imagine how gross that got.

I also somehow ended up with so much food in my fridge, so I've really been trying to eat all my leftovers. But, on to what I cooked this week.

Sun Dried Tomato, Kale, and White Bean Skillet - Budget Bytes

*I just find the whole mise en place thing to be so aesthetic.*

Remember how I made kale salad last week? Well I still had half that bag of kale left. So, I needed to do something with it, and I wanted to actually cook the kale this time. I don't know what it is, but I still haven't quite mastered the art of making salad. I think salads that I've gotten from restaurants are delicious, but my homemade salads are never quite fulfilling enough.

So, I made this kale skillet. It was alright, certainly better than the salad. The recipe said to saute the kale for 3-5 minutes which I think is way too long. Just a minute should be good enough. I really am sick of eating kale at this point though. I added some shrimp to this for one of my meals, which made it a lot more satisfying.

*I took this with the fork laying straight up and down, but it seems so much nicer on an angle.*

Drunken Aussie Beef Burgers - Cafe Delites

*Natural lighting is so much nicer than using the lightbox.*

I might be bad at making salad, but I think I've got burgers down pretty well. I love burgers, but I'm almost always disappointed when I order one from a restaurant. They never have enough flavor. It's just cooked ground beef, and I'd like that beef to be transformed more.

*This burger was surprisingly easy to eat for how tall it was.*

I've had burgers on my to-make list for a while, and I figured it was appropriate to make them on Labor Day. This Drunken Aussie burger recipe had a lot of great reviews, so I figured I'd try it. And like every burger I've ever made, it was delicious. But I actually think that was mainly because of all the other toppings, and not the burger patty itself, which was a little on the bland side. Adding the beer helped, but it still felt like it was missing something. I think adding an egg in the ground beef mixture would have made it easier for the patty to stick together.

The recipe also said to use two different pans, which seemed excessive to me. I cooked all of it in the same pan in this order: bacon, onion, (wipe pan), egg, burgers. I'm happy with how it all turned out, but I don't think I'll be using this recipe again.

*The salad is a lot prettier than the burger.*

But hey, check out this salad that I added on the side! Since the burger called for arugula, I bought a (way too large) box of it, and I used it in a side salad as well. And I know I said I'm bad at making salads, but my "Arugula Strawberry Sun-Dried Tomato Salad with Balsamic Dressing" was decent.

*I picked up the burger, and all the yolk spilled out!*

Cajun Shrimp Toast - Damn Delicious

*Yes, I still replace parsley with cilantro in every recipe.*

Finally, I'm gonna end with this Cajun Shrimp Toast, which is another recipe that was on my to-make list for a while. This was also delicious, and I'm definitely making this again. I think it would be great as an appetizer during Christmas or some sports watching party. I don't remember exactly how many pieces of toast this yielded, but I ate more than half of them in one sitting.

Filed under: salad burgers shrimp topped with an egg kale

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