flailing in my kitchen v3

How can I be sad when I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Showing posts filed under: tacos

Cookin' and wooblin'

I picked up a new hobby: crocheting! But this is my food blog, so here are five meals that I made this past week, featuring some things that I crocheted. My sister had been staying for me for a few months, and she just went back to the west coast. So now I'm using up some of the leftover ingredients from her stay.

First, I had a little bit of heavy cream sitting in my fridge, and my go-to use for heavy cream is chicken tikka masala. Is that weird?

A crocheted chick wearing a bunny headband, standing behind a plate of chicken tikka masala
This headband did not fit very well on this chick


We also had some sweetened condensed milk because my sister used it to make her iced coffees. I honestly had only ever used it to make iced coffee in the past, but I remembered that she also used it to make a tasty sauce to put on some tacos. So I also made some tacos! (Shrimp tacos. I know it's hard to tell from the photos)

A crocheted chick with a finished bunny headband, standing next to a tinier crocheted chick. They are both standing behind a plate of shrimp tacos
The headband now has a little pink nose on it!


My sister is probably not the reason we had shredded mozzarella cheese and a tiny nub of parmesan. I pretty much always have some sort of cheese stocked. But I wanted to use up the rest of the can of tomato paste that I bought for the tikka masala, and I thought these cheeses would be a great addition to it.

The tiny crocheted chick standing next to a plate of salad and chicken nuggets, with tomato pull-apart bread in front
At this point I got too lazy to take photos in the day time in front of the window


And just to pile on with even more dairy, I had about half a quart of milk that was getting very close to its expiration date. I think I may have made mac n cheese just a couple of weeks ago, but that was stovetop mac n cheese, so I went with a baked mac n cheese this week. And I also had some breadcrumbs, which was perfect for topping. This was the first time I had ever made a white cheese sauce, and I think it turned out pretty well!

Some baked mac n cheese with a little white crocheted ball next to it
It's a little egg!


Finally, I made some dessert! I had a few carrots in a bag, which my sister had bought an excess of because she told me "you wanted to make some carrot cake!". Yeah, I did tell her that I wanted to make some. Unfortunately I didn't get the time to do so until she had already left :/

An unfinished crocheted bunny next to four carrot cake muffins
Whoa, the egg grew some ears!

What will happen next? Is v4 of the blog going to be crochet+food?!


Carnitas tacos

It's been a series of cooking fail after cooking flail, so I had to take a break from trying to clear out everything in my pantry to make something that I knew would turn out well: CARNITAS.

Four carnitas tacos on a plate, with some onions, cilantro, and lime on the side
I get excited just looking at tacos

And oh my god, was it delicious and exactly what I needed. This recipe from Cafe Delites is my absolute favorite carnitas recipe. The only thing I do differently is that I omit the jalapeno and poblano peppers.

Slow cooked pork in a bowl, cut up into large chunks

The same pork, but it's been shredded

And a small portion of that pork, right after it's been taken out of the broiler
It's too bad I can't show you the pork as it's sizzling

I usually just throw everything in the slow cooker, let it cook on Low for 8 hours, then I transfer the meat into a bowl, and I shred it all up. The recipe states that you should broil or pan fry it for better texture, but the meat is already so good as-is. This time I did broil it though, and it was absolutely worth the extra five minutes of cooking. The crisp edges were 👌

I served this on some mini corn tortillas that I lightly fried on the pan with a little bit of water and oil. I topped the tacos with some cilantro lime rice, sweet onions, cilantro, and freshly squeezed lime.

Close-up of a carnitas taco
Can you tell that I double wrapped one of these?

SO GOOD. And SO BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful, that I had to take a whole bunch of pictures and post them here.

My hand holding a carnitas taco

Close-up of three tacos wedged next to each other

I even went back for a fifth taco!

A taco on a plate, with two already squeezed lime wedges in the background
This one was extra lime-y

Filed under: tacos

Chipotle beef tacos

I'm going to take a brief pause from my Teochew work to show you these tacos that I made last night.

Two tacos on a plate, with some guac on the side and cilantro sprinkled on top
You know I had to sprinkle extra cilantro on top

They were so good. Also so much work. So so much work. I used this crispy braised chipotle beef taco recipe that I found on Half Baked Harvest (my co-workers rave about this site). I opted for the slow cooker version of this, which I think is less work than using the stove and oven, but it was still a lot.

I had planned to go play DDR that morning, but I wanted to get the beef cooking first, so I got up early and bought ingredients, prepped the sauce, and cut up the meat. The recipe says to use a blender to blend up the ingredients, but my only blender is a single serving size Nutribullet, which definitely was not big enough for this. I used my food processor instead, and it made me wonder why this recipe specifically called for using a blender.

Well, I hit the "LOW" button and suddenly a bunch of sauce spilled out of the container and went flying everywhere! 😱 And then when I went to pour the sauce into the slow cooker, it was splashing all over the place!

Okay, I guess that's why they say to blend liquids in a blender.

It all turned out well though. If I ever make this again, I'll want to use a fattier cut of meat, and I would probably forgo the blending altogether. Just dump everything in the slow cooker, and I'm sure it would taste just as good.

Filed under: flailing tacos

Enchiladas, twice

I had COVID a little over a month ago, and I was mostly confined to my aunt's guest room for five days. I ended up staying at my aunt's house for a week longer than I anticipated, so once I got back to Pittsburgh I was itching to cook again. I actually only had a week before having to go back to my aunt's house again, but now, NOW, I'm back in my apartment, and I am doing lots of cooking.

Pork enchiladas
Always serving my meals with a side of cilantro

I'm trying to remember why I decided to make enchiladas, because I'm not the biggest fan of them. I think I had tortillas in the fridge from a while ago. I also had some of that dry pulled pork that came from a pork loin. Yup, that's why. I wanted to use the rest of that.

I decided to try this vegan black bean and avocado enchilada recipe from Budget Bytes, but of course I substituted the corn for pork in it which made it very much not vegan anymore.

But who cares! I wasn't looking for a vegan recipe. I was looking for an enchilada recipe. And I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by how this turned out. After I had prepared the filling, I took a bite and I thought "Wow, this is pretty good". The fact that I could munch on the filling before I baked it in the oven was great, because man, this recipe took a really long time to make and I was getting hungry.

I ended up having a lot of leftover enchilada sauce, so once I got back to my apartment the second time, I decided to make more enchiladas. But I didn't really want to make pulled pork again (and I guess I could have actually gone the vegan route, but uh...I didn't) so I tried a different type of Mexican meat and I made chicken tinga.

Chicken tinga with tacos
I like to throw so much cilantro on my tacos that you can barely see any other filling

Yeah, this was...okay. The recipe listed several methods of cooking the chicken, and I opted for just throwing some raw chicken into the tinga sauce and letting it cook on the pan and then shredding it. I think I should have slow cooked it for a few hours instead. I probably cooked the chicken for too long and it was kind of tough, so shredding it was a pain.

I also had to buy another can of chipotles in adobo sauce, and now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of the can again.

But I was still able to make tasty tacos! Even if the meat is not the best, I can just throw it on a corn tortilla with some onions and lime and cilantro and it's a beautiful meal.

Chicken enchiladas
I was all out of cilantro once I made this

Enchiladas ended up being easier the second time around since I didn't have to make the sauce from scratch. I mixed some of the chicken tinga sauce into my remaining enchilada sauce from before and I think I like that it made it a little lighter.

Overall, I'm happy with it! I actually still have leftover enchilada sauce, but I think I'm all enchilada'd out for a while now.


Chipotles in adobo sauce

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a recipe for spicy chipotle honey salmon bowls and it looked really good. It claims to be a good "weeknight dinner", but I found it to be way too much work, and it had too many components, so I don't think I'll ever make it again. I didn't even take a picture.

One of the ingredients that the recipe calls for is chipotles in adobo sauce, so I bought a little can of it. I tried a little, and it was so much spicier than I expected, so I didn't use nearly as much as the recipe said to. This meant that I had almost a full can of these chipotles left and no idea what to do with them.

But I thought, "I can improvise! I'll make some fajitas!" So I bought a pack of shrimp and some bell peppers and tortillas, and I tried to throw something together.

Shrimp fajitas

It was not good. Honestly. I know they look good in the photo, but tacos always look good. The shrimp just tasted weird. Maybe I marinated it and cooked it for too long. And the marinade I made was also bad.

Okay, so I had to try something simpler. I figured since these were so spicy that I could throw a couple of peppers into hummus and blend it up.

Hummus with a piece of naan bread

Well, it wasn't really hummus. I only had half a lemon and I didn't have as much tahini as I needed for a single can of chickpeas. And then when I was at Aldi, I couldn't find any pita bread, so I bought naan instead. But it tasted great when I dipped a warm piece of naan in it, and now I think I'll always get naan for hummus.

Finally, I threw some of the chipotles into a large batch of pulled pork for some tacos. This time I actually used a recipe that I know works well, and I just added the chipotles to it. (And sugar! I always add sugar)

Pulled pork tacos for lunch

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a small piece of pork butt, so I bought a pork loin instead, and man was it dry. But that's okay, it wasn't terrible, so I just decided to buy lots of toppings to put on top.

Pulled pork breakfast bowl with an egg and cilantro on top

It also made for some good breakfast bowls.


Showing posts filed under: tacos