A weekend with my mom

March 6, 2025 6:43 PM

My mom visited me this past weekend, and we spent a lot of time cooking and eating. I didn't really have much prepared for her when she got here on Friday night, but I did have some leftover shumai and broccoli so we ate that with rice. My mom thought that my shumai was okay, but the texture was off and she said she had a better recipe. To be fair, the pieces that she had were from my first batch this year where I forgot to add cornstarch.

So we decided to make more shumai. My mom said that in order to get the right texture, you need to "cheep" the filling, and she made a folding motion with her hands. (I know she was saying something in Chinese, but as of right now, I have no idea what the Chinese character is for "cheep", but I think it basically means "to knead". If I ever figure it out later, I'll update this post) Mixing the filling with my hands is much easier than using chopsticks. She also mentioned that we needed to add the oil last, after we already mixed everything else.

I'll admit, the batch we made together was a lot better than the one I made on my own.

Because I wanted to have some vegetables to go with this, I also made some brussels sprouts and bacon, which I know doesn't really make sense with Asian food, but I already had all the ingredients for it.

We didn't have all the ingredients for the shumai, so we needed to go to the store for that. I wanted to check out one of the newest Asian stores. The last time I went there, it was really empty and it seemed like they were still stocking the shelves, but this time it was actually really nice!

My mom noticed that shelled peanuts were being sold for a good price, so we bought a bag of those, and my mom roasted them later. And then we saw some peanuts in the shell, and my mom said that that was also a good price, so we boiled those!

But the best deal that we saw at the store was some sad looking grapefruits that were being sold for 99 cents each! My mom told me that these grapefruit were perfectly fine, even better than the nice looking ones because it has more time to ripen and get sweeter. So we bought all of the discounted grapefruit.

And I agree, that sad looking grapefruit was delicious.

But you know what was the most delicious thing I had this weekend? It was my mom's ginger chicken stir fry. I had specifically asked her if she could make it and also teach me how to make it. So I'm gonna try this on my own at some point!

I've looked up ginger chicken stir fry recipes on google, but none of them are what I'm looking for. Most people cook with very small amounts of ginger, just to infuse its flavor in the dish, but not here. Ginger is a first class vegetable. And that means that we need just as much ginger as chicken in this recipe. Honestly, I wish we could have added more ginger.

But I'll go on more about ginger in a future post. Since my mom was helping me a lot with making food, I wanted to make sure I made her some fresh food of my own. My mom really likes carrot cake, so I made her some carrot cake muffins. She thought they were a little too sweet for her taste, but she still liked them!

And finally, I made her some scallion noodles. I wasn't sure if she was going to like this, but after she took a bite she said "Not bad! Can I add sriracha to this?"

So all in all, it was a successful weekend with lots of yummy food.

Eating more veggies

December 17, 2023 7:43 PM

I tried to eat a little bit healthier during my second week of meal prepping. That meant less meat and more veggies. First, I decided to make Mediterranean hummus bowls. I already had feta and olives from a meal last week. I also had a bunch of cilantro, and I thought that would go well in the hummus. Cilantro jalapeno hummus is one of my favorites (: And I also made pickled onions! I didn't realize how easy it was to make pickled onions. I should have been doing this years ago. I heard celery seed goes well in pickled things, so it was a good way to use up more of that.

We really like how healthy and fresh it is, and it's become one of my go-to meals to make.

I only used a small amount of ground beef in the hummus bowls, and I used the rest of it to make a couple of stir fry dishes. I bought a pound of green beans and I added just a little bit of the ground beef to make some stir fry.

I really like ordering green beans from Szechuan restaurants, but it costs like $15, and I can easily make this myself. Pretty sure it's healthier this way too.

With the last half-ish pound of ground beef, I did another stir fry. One of my co-workers said she likes to stir fry beef with coriander and some other spices, and I have a really old container of coriander, so I tried it out. It was alright. I'm really not good at just throwing things together without a recipe.

The next meal I made was loaded chipotle sweet potatoes. I had a little bit of sour cream leftover from last week, and also a little bit of chipotle powder that I wanted to use up. It didn't look very pretty, but it still tasted pretty good!

Finally, I'm ending on these udon noodles again. I made a little bit more sauce this time, and it was even better than the last time.

Scallion noodles again

June 17, 2023 5:00 PM

...and again and again and again. I think I made these noodles at least 7 times.

So the first time I made this, I referenced recipes from Binging with Babish and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, but as I was scrolling through food things (like I always do), I stumbled across another scallion oil noodle recipe, this time from i am a food blog. And it made me realize something. I can just make one serving of this at a time. And then if I wanted to tweak the recipe, I could just make it again the next day! (and the next day, and the next day, and the next day...)

This is what I've settled as my preferred way of preparing these noodles:

• Start boiling a pot of water, and when that's ready, cook about 3 oz of dry noodles. (I was able to find packs in the store with individual sized portions!)
• Meanwhile, cut four scallions into strips, about 2 inches long. Slice the white parts a few more times length-wise.
• Pour enough veggie oil into a pan in order to cover it, and cook the scallions in the oil, until they start to brown and crisp up a little. I just use enough oil to cook them, not to have the scallions swimming in the oil.
• Take the crispy scallions out of the pan and set aside.
• Transfer the cooked noodles directly from the pot into the pan with oil. (No need to drain! I just use chopsticks or tongs for this)
• Pour some sugar, a dash of light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and Chinese black vinegar into the noodles, and stir it all around. Taste and add more of whatever I feel like adding.
• Serve the noodles with the crispy scallions on top.

Am I even making scallion oil noodles at this point? Or am I just making some noodles with crispy scallions on top? I don't know, but whatever it is, it's delicious. I thoroughly enjoyed every one of these meals I made. But I think now it's time to take a break from this, so I can make other foods.

Asian sauces

April 2, 2023 4:19 PM

Guys, I'm making such good progress on my quest to get rid of everything in my pantry, and I think I'll actually be able to get through everything by July! I've gotten through various ingredients with long shelf lives, and now I pretty much only have sauces and vinegars left.

And I have a lot of Asian sauces, so it's time to make some Asian food.

Last entry I mentioned that I have a bottle of Chinese black vinegar that's been expired for a while. I've been looking up recipes to use up that vinegar, and I came across these glass noodles with cabbage. I love glass noodles. I've made a different cabbage and glass noodle recipe from Woks of Life before, and that was delicious, so I figured this one would be too.

And it was! But it was also a little too spicy, and I really should have known better than to put four dried chiles in this because this is exactly what happened last time I made glass noodles.

I also figured that this Chinese black vinegar would go well with some dumplings, so I bought some frozen dumplings (I know I usually make them myself, but I was lazy). I mixed it into a dipping sauce along with golden mountain seasoning sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and some water, which tasted great with dumplings.

I had saved this hot and sour dumpling soup recipe from Woks of Life because it looked really good, and this was the perfect opportunity to make it.

My first attempt wasn't that great, and the soup looked really dark. I guess I didn't have the chili oil that I needed to give the soup a red color like in the recipe. But it was also too oily, too salty, and too sesame seed-y. The fact that I only have black sesame seeds didn't help the color balance either.

But I tried it again a few days later, and I adjusted the amounts of each sauce. I also fried the garlic for a little to bring out the flavor more. It was definitely better, but I think it could still use more tweaking. I'm all out of dumplings for now, though I might buy more because those dumplings were really good.

And just yesterday, I made some fried rice! I had leftover Chinese sausage from another meal, and this was a good way to use that up. Because I basically just use Woks of Life for finding Asian recipes, I also used their Chinese sausage fried rice recipe.

I realized this isn't shown in the picture, but I have a bottle of rice cooking wine that's been sitting in my pantry for who knows how long, so I used that instead of Shaoxing wine. I only used a dash of it, so I have no idea if it really made a difference in flavor. I also added waaay more soy sauce than the recipe called for. (The recipe calls for 1 teaspoon! That's nothing!) (Wait, I said this last time I made it)

This was really good! I still have two links of the sausage so I think I'll make some more this week. I need to get better at just pouring soy sauce and salt and sugar by feel instead of always measuring.

Finally, I made some beef and cabbage stir fry! I don't quite remember why I decided to make this, but I think it's because I knew my boyfriend was coming over, and he really likes this dish.

Look at those carrot slices! My sister bought a mandoline, and kept it at my place, and it's been sitting in a drawer for years, and I finally used it to slice up my carrot. Thanks sister!

Scallion oil noodles

April 1, 2023 3:54 PM

This past week has been a busy week, but today is a lazy Saturday, so I was able to cook and take my time. Plus it was a very nice and sunny morning (as opposed to the wind and rain that's happening right now) and I had to take advantage of that natural lighting. I saw some youtube videos on scallion oil noodles, and they looked really good so I wanted to make some for myself.

I used both Binging with Babish and J. Kenji Lopez Alt for inspiration. I only had 5 scallions, so I cut most of them into these little strips, and also diced some little circles for garnish at the end. Cutting them like this takes way more time, but it's a lazy Saturday, so I don't care.

I wish I had more scallions though. I think this could have used three times as much.

See that last photo? That was perfect. I should have taken the pan off the heat before it got to that point, so the residual heat would actually cook it to that point, which is exactly what the youtube videos told me to do, but I didn't listen. So I may have overcooked my scallions a little, but that's okay. They were still tasty.

I tossed my noodles in the scallion oil as well as some sugar, light and dark soy sauce, and some Chinese black vinegar (which has been sitting in my pantry for waaay too long--that's gonna take a while to use up). The flavor was good!

The noodles themselves were a bit sticky, and that might have been because I bought the noodles from an American grocery store instead of an Asian one. I also used a little too much of the oil. But I've got more scallion oil and more noodles and waaay more sauce, so I'll be making this a few more times this week, and I'll keep tweaking it to my tastes.