More salmon
November 21, 2020 3:15 PM
You guys know I love salmon. One of my friends has been raving about this Garlic Butter Baked Salmon so I figured it was time for me to try and make it myself.
The recipe calls for asparagus, but I just happened to have broccoli on me so I used that instead. And lemon-y broccoli? Not quite the same as lemon-y asparagus. I do think this would have been better if I used asparagus instead. I also don't know how I feel about one-pan baking meals. Something about the meat juices seeping into the veggies weirds me out. I also didn't even have enough room in my pan to make this all fit in a single pan, so I put the broccoli in its own pan.
I know, that would have made a lot more sense if I put the salmon in its own pan instead. Hey, at least I cooked it right side up this time!
The salmon tasted good, but I definitely overcooked it. I think salmon cooks better at 350 instead of 400. But the potatoes? They were delicious. I know, it's just salt, pepper, and olive oil, but it was so good I bought and roasted more potatoes the next day.
I also cooked a lot of salmon (maybe that's why it didn't all fit in one pan), and I happened to have some leftover sushi rice, so I turned some of it into sushi.
Clearly not as good (or as pretty) as raw salmon sushi, but still a pretty decent breakfast.
Social Distancing: Days 18 - 20
April 9, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 18 (Sunday): We decide to go on a trek to the Asian store. And it was stressful. The line for checking out was very, very long. I don't think I should ever come back on a Sunday. Because of how exhausting that was, we grab takeout for lunch.
And for dinner, we rolled some sushi!
Day 19 (Monday): I need to do something with the green beans since they're starting to look kind of sad. I bought a huge slab of salmon in a previous grocery trip, so I figured we'd do this simple salmon and green beans dish. My sister even de-scaled the salmon.
Slightly fancy and very delicious.
Day 20 (Tuesday): Somehow we're already at the point where we need to get creative again with our meals. We really do have a lot of ingredients, but I'm not quite sure how to put them all together. I look at the top of my white board. Corn Tortillas. I have no idea how long that pack of tortillas has been sitting in my fridge. At least several months. I must use them.
The first thing that comes to mind is enchiladas. (I know, you would think it's tacos, but I like to mix things up!) Looking through enchilada recipes, I can't quite find one that contains only ingredients I have. But this Skinnytaste recipe comes decently close. Except that I don't have the right ingredients for the sauce, so I consult Budget Bytes for that.
We make it work with what we have. Half a can of diced tomatoes with chiles, shredded chicken, some onions, and a bunch of spices. It tastes great.
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.