Comfort food

January 10, 2025 9:10 PM

Well, I still haven't gotten over this sickness that started over the holidays. I haven't felt terrible, but my throat has been sore and there's some extra nasal congestion. I'm pretty okay during the day most days, but night time is the worst. I'm going to have a lot more free time now, so I'm hoping I can sleep in a little more and finally get better.

Anyway, since I've been sick, I've been wanting to eat more comfort food, and in my mind, comfort food is not only comforting to eat, but it's also comforting to make. It might not be a quick meal, but it's an easy one where I can relax and you know, not flail in my kitchen.

One of my go-to easy and satisfying breakfasts is to make some dumpling soup. And while I do like wrapping my own dumplings, I always go with some store bought mini dumplings for my dumpling soup. I like mini dumplings because I can't eat a regular sized dumpling in one bite. And it's awkward to have to cut your dumplings even smaller when you're eating them in a soup. (Okay, I'll admit, I still cut up the mini dumplings in my soup)

All I do is boil 10 or so dumplings, and then I throw in some sauces to give it some flavor. I usually end up adding:

• Black vinegar
• Light and dark soy sauces
• "Granulated Chicken Flavor Soup Base Mix" (It's basically chicken flavored MSG. This gigantic container is enough to last a life time)
• and a dash of something spicy (right now that's this "Sichuan Gold" sauce that I got from a Hot Ones box)

I taste it and maybe add a little more of something. Then I top it with some scallions and/or cilantro.

It's so good, and such a nice way to start my day.

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So in the past when I've made Japanese style curry, I've always included chicken and I made it with curry powder (not Japanese curry powder so who knows how Japanese this really was). But I had seen other people just buy those curry blocks and I figured I would give it a try because it sounds so much easier! And at a local meetup last year, someone had brought some curry and they used tofu, and ever since then I had been wanting to try tofu in this instead.

I'm sure I could have just tried to make a similar recipe as the chicken one, but I'm really bad at throwing things together, so I googled "golden curry with tofu" and the first thing that comes up is a reddit post which linked to this Vegan Japanese Tofu Curry recipe, and it sounded so good and I had to try it. (Also I seriously appreciate that this recipe webpage is simple and has no ads and doesn't totally drain my phone battery while I'm viewing it)

I actually first tried it a few months ago, but I keep going back to it because it really is so good. I mostly follow the recipe as-is, but I actually halve the amount of curry blocks, and I think it's plenty flavorful. I also use chicken bouillon instead of veggie just because that's what I have. But I'm definitely going to keep this in mind as a potential vegan dish to make if I need one.

It required a little extra attention to fry up the tofu because I'm flipping every single one of these tofu cubes one by one just to make sure I brown as many sides as possible, but there's something nice and relaxing about standing at the stove and seeing the tofu slowly get nice and golden.

I always pop one of the tofu cubes in my mouth before I throw the rest into the curry. The final result is so comforting and so delicious.

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Finally, I wanted to share some mac n cheese that I made. I love making mac n cheese. One of my go-to mac n cheese recipes is from Budget Bytes. The recipe actually has pretty mixed reviews, but I think it's great every time I make it. And I like that I can use up a little bit of hot sauce in it.

Making mac n cheese definitely takes patience. You have to make a roux in the beginning and you need to keep stirring the milk+flour+butter mixture until it thickens. When you start stirring it, it seems like it's going nowhere, but slowly and surely it thickens up and then you can start mixing in the cheese. I don't know, maybe I just like to keep mixing things.

I decided to actually throw this one in the oven after I was done putting it all together on the stove. Sometimes baked mac n cheese can get a little too dry, but this one had so much cheesy sauce. Adding the extra shredded cheese and letting it broil (and watching it broil the whole time so it doesn't burn!) was definitely a nice touch. But next time I'll try to remember breadcrumbs!

Meal Plan: 12/12 - 12/18

December 18, 2020 7:54 PM

It's almost the end of 2020! And I'm going to be visiting family soon, so this week's meal planning was a little different. I had originally intended on making noodle soup, but when I looked at my whiteboard, I realized there were some foods that I really needed to use up before my vacation started.

Look! I finally threw out my half and half! I was about to pour some more in my coffee and I smelled it, and I decided that it was time to get rid of it. Since I did that, I smelled my milk as well, and while it wasn't quite bad yet, I could tell it would get there soon, so I marked that as something that I needed to use up. I also had a random assortment of vegetables that I didn't quite use up in the previous week's dishes. I checked Budget Bytes for recipes that use milk, and I saw Broccoli Cheddar Soup. I had pretty much everything it needed (broccoli, carrots, and onion) except cheddar.

I also had some Thai basil that was starting to look a little sad, and as you know, I made Pad kra pao with it. I went with that dish since I had ground pork in the freezer already. And I figured this was a good place to throw my last bell pepper.

Oh! And the cabbage! The cabbage that seems impossible for me to use up. I didn't have quite enough to make it the star of another dish, so where did my mind go? TACOS. I checked Pinch of Yum for some taco recipes and I saw a recipe for some Spicy Shrimp Tacos. Perfect. I actually have cooked shrimp in the freezer, which isn't really ideal, but I'm gonna use what I have. It'll also let me make use of the cilantro, scallions, limes, and even the peach yogurt since this calls for yogurt or sour cream. If I go and buy a new container of sour cream or plan greek yogurt, it'll be way too large of a container. The snack size is actually perfect.

And that's everything that I marked, and then some. I'll have to hold off on the noodle soup til next year. Everything I need for that is frozen or dried so it works out.

Really quick grocery trip this time. I had to restock on salt of course. Apparently I also had to restock on flour. Somehow I have spelt flour, whole wheat flour, self rising flour, but no all purpose. I don't want to waste this extra flour, but I have no idea how to use it, and I wish my sister were here to be able to do something fun with it.

Also I bought an avocado because they were on sale. Plus I used it in my tacos.

Wow, I just realized I didn't eat breakfast today. That means I was stressed out. But I have a lot of food left over still. I went and threw my curry in the freezer. I might throw all my other leftovers in the freezer as well.

I'll talk a little about the broccoli cheddar soup I made. It was actually pretty good, and it tasted just like mac n cheese, except instead of mac, it's vegetables. It actually reminded me of Nacho Cheese Easy Mac which was amazing, but is unfortunately discontinued. Maybe I can recreate it now.

Cooking for myself again

September 22, 2020 8:41 PM

I'm going to end up having three weeks on my own before I head back home to visit family again. And you know what I've realized? I don't actually need to cook all that much. I've also started timing myself to see how fast I can cook. Spoiler: I don't cook that fast, but I actually can cook faster than I thought.

I made this pasta since it's one of my go-to meals when I don't know what to cook. I've made it so many times that I'm actually able to beat the estimated time on Budget Bytes! It took me 24 minutes and the recipe says 25 minutes! Look at me shaving off one minute.

I used some of a tub of chive and onion cream cheese in this, which turned out fine, but this is way better when you just have a block of plain cream cheese. The spreadable tubs just don't give that nice creamy consistency that you want.

Shortly after that, I made this Shrimp Scampi Florentine which is another go-to. When I was visiting family, we noticed that shrimp was on sale for $5/lb. What a steal! They're never that cheap in the grocery stores I live near! Not even at Aldi!

I made it with rice since I didn't want to go overboard and eat pasta twice in one day (even though I have no problem eating rice three times a day), but I had some later meals with pasta, and I think this works much better with pasta than rice.

This also took me about 40 minutes to make, which is exactly how long the recipe said it would take. I don't know. I was going kind of slow and listening to a podcast at the same time. Feels like it should actually only take 30 minutes.

And finally, I made some Posole today. Back when my sister was still here, we tried a stove top carnitas recipe which was...lackluster. Anyway, I threw it in the freezer, and I figured this was a good use for some of it.

I don't know what it was, but I had a super potent onion, and I was crying just from chopping it up. My eyes were hurting so badly that they kept hurting for over an hour after I was done cooking. It took me just over 30 minutes to prep and cook, so I guess the name of the recipe was right.

What I'd really like to do is buy some more bowls. These Corelle bowls are just not suitable for picture taking.

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.

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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.

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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.