Pancakes by design, part II

So another lazy Sunday = another chance to make pretty pancakes! To be fair, I didn't design any of these - they're all the creative genius of my roommate. I was attempting to make french toast, which went sort of okay (variations attempted include cinnamon, cheese inside, and burned....). And while we were waiting for everything to cook, we quizzed each other on blood and watched the snow fall, so it was kind of productive! Oh yeah, special pancake ingredient - red and green smarties, just to get the Christmasy feel =)

Panda bear! 

Smartie Tic Tac Toe 

Pretty swirls! (I think she said she was trying to make it like dosa?)

Mmm pancake stack 

 Pancakes + French toast + blood notes + snowy day = yummy productive brunch?

Bringin home the bacon... to my stomach (Day 2)

So I should really be studying instead of thinking of fattening ways to feed myself, but I tried another new recipe today. Because guess what I still have in my fridge... more bacon! I'm pretty sure I'm not going to buy another package for a year or something. I think I've figured out my cooking philosophy - eat what's around with whatever else is around. It kinda sucks cooking for one person, because you eat so little that whatever you make, you have to eat it forever (ie, I bought one bunch of brocolli this week... and ate it for FOUR days!) So either you have to preplan your meals for a week and buy only those ingredients (which I highly doubt I will end up doing) or you buy semi-generic stuff and take a shot in the dark that you'll end up eating it (like brocolli and salad for me this week).Thank goodness you can divide up and freeze meat! 

Anyway the point of that was to say, I chose what I ate today based on those principles.

What do I have to finish? Bacon 

What else is around? Steak (but I ate that Tuesday), salmon (also ate recently) and chicken breast (winner!)

What else? Broccoli 

Rice or pasta? Had pasta on Tuesday, so rice. 

Google search: chicken breast + bacon (yeah I had no ideas on what to do with those two, so I thought I'd seek the internet's advice)

Hit: chicken breast wrapped in bacon with cream cheese and green onions inside. I have cream cheese, but no green onions... so I subbed those with fresh dill and yellow onions. And what a good call that was. So here is my meal! Definitely not as gluttonous as the steak, but still delicious. 

How to be efficient and gluttonous in one meal

At the beginning of every week, I take a peek into my fridge and make a mental note of all the "must eat soon" foods, and try to plan my meals accordingly. This week on the list is a pack of bacon we bought this weekend and didn't finish. Unfortunately I don't know a lot of bacon dinner meals, so I had to figure something out. Yesterday I defrosted a steak, but I didn't wind up eating it, so I figured that should probably work. You can put steak with bacon right? (Like a cheap knock off of a filet mignon?) So I fried up the bacon (my vegetarian roommate was amazed at how much fat comes out of bacon considering no oil was added), and threw in the steak and some Montreal steak spice. Yup, I fried the steak in bacon fat. =D I also made some pasta which I decided to fry as well (my mom used to fry pasta in butter to make it crunchy) .... so the pasta went in with the remaining bacon fat and steak juice. I know, it's pretty gross, but LOOK how many uses I got out of the bacon!! I also used the same water for pasta cooking and broccoli boiling... so all this came from 1 pot and 1 pan. I know frying with bacon fat and steak juice may sound disgusting, but I totally have no regrets. This tastes awesome. Also, check out how pretty pictures are on my new camera!!

So to summarize,

Efficiency = reusable bacon fat and boiling water

Gluttony= having all your food covered in bacon fat 

Pure satisfaction = eating this meal

Hopefully the elliptical will take care of the rest...

Squash anyone?

So 4 weeks ago when I was grocery shopping at Thanksgiving, I realized that I had never really eaten many of the autumn vegetables. I got the ambitious idea to try making some, even though I'd never really eaten them before. So here's my attempt to make acorn squash (though I'm not even sure if it counts as a vegetable...?). I kiind of let it sit around for a few weeks, so I was debatin whether it would still even be good to eat, but turns out it was!

It was a super easy recipe - ingredients = brown sugar, maple syrup (roommate's), margarine. The most interesting thing, I think, is trying to cut the damn thing open. I have this huge knife that I looooove because it cuts through carrots like cotton candy, but it took me FOREVER to cut the squash open! I think there must be a better (and probably safer) technique that I missed somehwere. Anyway, after cutting it, I made cuts on the inside so that the ingredients could seep in. And they also all sink to the bottom, so apparently you're supposed to drizzle the most on top (though it'll sink in anyway). 

So here it is, sitting next to a leg of chicken I made (but not very excitingly... with bbq sauce). I'm proud to say the meal was decent, and my hopes for making autumn food weren't squashed =)

Salmon to the rescue!

Thanks to some rather fun activities this weekend, I proudly woke up at 1 this afternoon when my mom called me (and I tried my best to fake having been awake for hours). So I went to defrost a chicken around 3 (thinking there's no way its gonna defrost in time for dinner), then realized that we're cooking together tomorrow night (stay tuned for INDIAN night!!). So there wasn't a point in making an entire chicke...back up plan? Salmon!! I have to say, sometimes my parents can get to me, but when I remember they do things like buy 2 for 1 salmon and then cut up and individually package it so it's easy for me to cook, I remember how much love they have. So I defrosted a piece and made salmon with a mayonnaise/mustard/spice mix on top, some brocolli and the remainder of the cheesy bread sticks from Friday, and voila! A decievingly balanced meal... to contrast the 4 pizza meals I've had in the last 2 days. Anyway, I don't think the picture does it justice, but it was delicioiusssss. 

October recap

Ahhhh it's been so long since I posted! Okay I'm gonna use busy-ness as an excuse, but I also know that deep down (maybe not that deep down), I'm lazy. So here goes... a 2 week summary of everything I've cooked! Unfortuantely I've also kind of been lazy with cooking, but there are some epic feasts in here. 

1. SUSHI NIGHT! 

(Thursday October 7) 

What happens when 10 hungry Asians get together? Sushi!! Not just sushi, but 3 kinds of sushi - California rolls (I think... crab meat, cucumber, avocado right?), salmon cream cheese rolls (with on-sale-"pseudo" smoked salmon...) and candy sushi (best idea ever)! All I can say is... make sure the rice cools! And it's a lot stickier than you think it is, so it's hard to make it really thin. Otherwise, this was friggin delicious =)

 2. Thanksgiving!

(Sunday, October 10)

I loove Thanksgiving because it means apple picking, turkey, latkes, and lots of family!! So we went to get apples this year like every year, and I made apple pie/crumble, just like every year. It's a super easy recipe that I found in a grocery store flyer when I was like 8, and probably the only recipe I have memorized by heart. On top of that is my mom's turkey, my yummy but smelly to fry latkes, and this year I tried making yams au gratin and the stuffing too. After this meal was over, I ate pretty much the same 4 items for every meal for a week in an effort to finish it. But it was still yummy!

3. Tonight's junk food fest

(Friday October 22) 

Coupons make me do things like order the following just for myself: 1 extra large pizza, 1 cheesy bread, 1 large bottle of coke. Yup, I know, the cure for the cold is gluttony.

The test of patience

Ahh okay I'm getting lazy with posting and cooking. Last night I just gave up all together and went to a free-food event for dinner. Tonight we're getting together to make sushi.... so excited! 

I think the reason I got lazy is because of the meal I made two nights ago - the ribs that took FOREVER. To be fair though, I woke up at 7 (pm) and still decided it was a good idea to make ribs, and decided to skip the boiling step (which my mom does, but people say makes the ribs less tasty?). I decided to broil them instead, as recommended by some rib site, which took... a little longer than I expected. I added potatoes, and a bunch of other stuff, and did half of them in a premade bbq sauce and half in one that I tried to make from ketchup, honey and mustard (kind of the only ingredients I had...). I don't think it mattered though, because everything kind of mixed together in the water/sauce. 

Anyway, they were pretty good/edible (that's really all I ask for), but unfortunately I didn't eat them til 11 when I was bordering on hunger insanity. But I loooooooove ribs so it was still worth it =). So here's my final product...check out how much the wheatgrass thing has grown!! And as usual, here's what I put on the ribs. 

Ribs (duh) 

Water/chicken broth (to broil)

Garlic (still stolen)

Onion 

Potatoes (red and white, 4 weeks old and still good somehow...)

Salt, pepper, spices

Legitimately made prepackaged BBQ sauce

My shot-in-the-dark BBQ sauce of ketchup, mustard and honey

Pancakes by design and last minute salmon pasta

This actually happened yesterday, but there was too much to post in one. So yesterday my roommate and I decided to make pancakes for breakfast! We had no chocolate chips, so we separated some of the batter, added cocoa powder, and made designs! We're not cakemasters (name of TLC show anyone?) or anything, but we tried. We'll perfect it!

Banana swirl! 

                                          

 

Bullseye/concentric circles 

Square checkered pancake 

(we'll work on this one...)

and.. 

Smiley!

When dinnertime rolled around, I frustratingly had to throw out Thursday's congee because it had a weird smell, possibly from the bok choy sitting in it too long. I also threw out fried tofu and this vegetable whose English name I don't know that I bought in August. Quick solution when there are no vegetables left? Pasta! 

So here's my attempt at salmon pasta. 

Penne (the box tells me it's smart) 

Salmon defrosted and baked 

Alfredo sauce (also stolen from roommate) 

Dill chip dip (really need to get some dill)

Milk (should have added more, sauce was kind of thick)

Frozen vegetables

This was somehow even better when I reheated it for lunch today =)

Homecoming weekend splurge

Somehow almost as soon as Friday afternoon rolls around, I feel the need for junk food. So a few of us head out to Boston Pizza. (Try the spicy potato/fry appetizer thing! The name escapes me.) I didn't take any pictures of food, so here's a glimpse of the drink my roommate had, vanilla something (I'm really bad with the names today..) but I know it was also good! 

Saturday was all homecoming celebrations. First chocolate chip pancakes and porch climbers (beer, vodka, lemonade I think?? = gets you drunk way faster than you think it does). Then the best chicken fingers and sweet potato fries ever. And at the end of the night, the loaded perogies and fries here. So... goodbye progress from exercise =( But man was it a good weekend.

Congee for the soul with a cold

Sickness makes me productive again! I ate the rest of the chicken noodle soup for lunch today so I was dinner-less again, and decided to go Asian style. I don't know if I matched up to my mom's, or even Congee Queen's standards, but I gave it a try. Again, online search gave me a few ideas, and this is pretty straight forward except for how I tried frying the garlic and drumsticks before adding the broth. Otherwise I pretty much just threw in the following and waited: 

Garlic (borrowed, from roommate again)

Drumsticks (leftover from last night) 

Water (9 ish cups, but I kept having to add more)

Rice (3/4 of a cup)

Chicken broth (mmm)

Fish sauce (cuz I'm Viet like that)

Bok choy (finally finished it!!)

Coriander (garnish)

Oh, I also took the drumsticks out maybe 30 mins in when they were cooked, cut the meat off and shredded it and threw the bones back into the pot. I don't actually know how to shred it so I just cut it into little pieces, and then I put them back in the congee after it was all done. And voila! My final creation...

Also I should mention the googly eyed thing is a plant my roommate and I got for free at a recruitment tour yesterday. Apparently it's wheatgrass and grows in this squishy silicone (might not be silicone) thing with fluorescent light! I always wanted to grow stuff so I'm really excited to see how it turns out!!

Chicken soup for the soul with a cold

Okay so this is my first post on my first blog, so forgive me for being wordy/taking more than my share of your internet reading time. So why am I writing a blog now? Well I've just recently started living "on my own" as much as I ever have before and basically I need to learn to cook/fend for myself. I should probably take the opportunity to do other healthy things too (sleep regularly, exercise regularly, etc) and general good things (read the news, reinvent old clothes instead of shopping, finish books I read, etc). And hopefully this blog will help me keep track of all these things! (Or lack thereof, depends on how you see the glass).

Right now, it looks like I'm not doing too well with the healthy thing... considering that I've gotten two colds in the last week ish. But then again, my illness inspired me to make my own chicken noodle soup (after I got tired of eating the canned ones) and I also decided to make them with the drumsticks I defrosted and didn't cook yet (planning meals is not my forte). 

Quick online search of "chicken drumstick soup" gave me an article where you fry the drumsticks with onions first, so that's what I did (and it worked ok!). I also threw in bok choy that's going to go bad soon (will be a recurring theme in my cooking), a carrot I stole from my roommate, chicken broth, water, salt (cuz I had too much water), pepper and garlic spices. I'm happy to say that it was edible and my throat was soothed! Looks like the bowl of soup is half full today.