Salad ingredients: washed lettuce, onion, mini bell peppers and salad dressing ingredients: yogurt, mayonnaise, and salsa
First I washed and spun the lettuce and pulled some ingredients together
A skillet of ground beef, onions and peppers is on the stove. Salad dressing is started in a bowl. And a few more salad components are on the cutting board: tomatoes, cucumber, and red jalapeño pepper
The salad dressing was about a Tablespoon of mayonnaise, half a cup of plain yogurt, and then I went in with the salsa but it wasn’t giving me either the texture or intensity of flavor that I wanted – so I switched to three packets of Taco Bell’s fire sauce. I don’t often eat from Taco Bell, but I have to every now and then because I haven’t found a better set of for sauces than their sauce packets for giving my lunches a variety of easy flavor boats that are each a bit different. Anyway – I also added some Penzey’s southwest seasoning, and that was it.
Also in the picture you can see that I’ve got some (1/4 lb) ground beef going in a skillet with sliced onions and orange bell pepper. The ground beef was marinated in Southwest seasoning, corn starch, a little baking soda, soy sauce, shaoxing wine, and some water.
The skillet with the beef mixture is mostly done. There’s a big chunky bowl where I’m assembling the salad. There’s a smaller bowl with the salad dressing. And a partial package of sharp cheddar cheese
I added some dressing to the lettuce and then added a sliced jalapeño and two sliced tomatoes #frommygarden . Also some sliced cucumber and cheddar cheese. Then I added most of the rest of the dressing and stirred everything together.
Finished salad is on the table by my laptop. There’s a bag of tortilla chips in the background
When I added the hot toppings (beef, onions, and peppers), the cheese got a little soft and the flavors came together. A drizzle more of the dressing, and it’s time to eat.
A plate with a rice based casserole topped with a melted slice of american cheese
My mother had a dish she would make when we were very hungry and very low on energy or interest in cooking – it was like a casserole you make in the microwave
Take 1 can of condensed cream of chicken soup, 1 drained can of tuna, and a random amount of leftover rice. Mix them together, microwave for 2 minutes, mix again, microwave for two minutes again, mix again, and then top with sliced american cheese and dust with paprika (cause that makes it fancy!), and then finish with another 2 minutes in the microwave.
Well, I didn’t make that tonight because at the moment I don’t have soup in my pantry or canned tuna, but I do have a pint of cooked rice, half a jar of leftover alfredo sauce, and canned sardines!
So I started off with a random bit of onion on my fridge waiting for a purpose, and I diced and sauteed that until soft (mostly just to give myself something to do so I would Wait until the pan was properly hot before adding the rice). Then I added the rice! I cooked the rice until it was properly hot, but I wasn’t patient enough to wait for toasty bits.
I added some minced garlic and then all the alfredo sauce I had. Drained and added the sardines, mixing them to get them broken up and evenly distributed. I added half a teaspoon of ground chilies for fun.
Then when everything was ready, I put it on a plate, topped it with a slice of american cheese, dusted with paprika, and put it in the microwave for 40 seconds so that I could preserve the traditional presentation!
Open hamburger. The left ciabatta bun has mayonnaise, parsley, and grilled onions. The right bun has hot pepper slices hidden by slices of sharp cheddar cheese slightly melted by the hot hamburger patty on top with a few slices of tomato on top
A pretty amazing hamburger
Stir fry of beef, mushrooms, and mini red bell peppers
Dried (reconstituted) wood ear mushrooms and scallions sliced and put together with some broad rice noodles. I pulled out a chili oil packet from a previous meal like this and made a small amount of salty/sour sauce to balance it out
Not the most attractive bowl of ramen
Ramen made with water I’d boiled hot dogs in (and I also dipped to hot dogs in the broth a bit) with scallions and radish in the soup, plus an egg added and a slice of cheese on top
Hot dogs. So I hate buying hot dog buns. I don’t eat hot dogs often enough to get through a package, and honestly it’s a lot of tasteless bread. So I’m making hot dogs with a lightly toasted (just because I keep them in the freezer, fresh if you’ve got it) whole wheat bread. And then I put the dijon mustard on the bread, a line a fresh parsley – and then I let the freshly boiled and steaming hot dog warm up and soften the parsley and wrap the bread around. It’s much more suited to how my pantry works.
So there i was with a freshly picked cauliflower and some thawed ground beef looking for inspiration, and I found myself drawn more to the tex-mex casseroles, but diet culture has completely messed up recipe searching because it was very difficult to give recipes that included cauliflower and rice, but not ‘rice’ made out of cauliflower (which is great sometimes, but not what I was looking for.
Preview of the finished casserole with melted cheese some tomatoes, and parsley on the top!
So I ended up winging it and adding extra carbs out of spite (and deliciousness) and then ended up not having room to add the cauliflower.
Open donburi with a can of refried beans and a can of diced tomatoes. Balanced on top of the can of beans is a jar with Penzey’s southwest seasoning
I started with a personal size ceramic pot and opened up a can of diced tomatoes and mixed some with #penzeys Southwest seasoning. I put some on the bottom of the dish, added a small flour tortilla, and added more tomato to thoroughly wet the tortilla
Ceramic pot now has layers of tomato, tortilla, beans and cheese. I’m the prep area we are mixing leftover rice with diced tomatoes and hot sauce
Then I added a layer of refried beans (from a can) and some cheese. I mixed together some leftover rice, hot sauce, and more of the tomatoes
Ceramic pot has a thick layer of saucy rice and the prep side has a plastic container for mixing tomatoes and seasoning to coat the next tortilla
Over a layer of the rice mixture, I added another tomato-ed tortilla
Now the pot has just a saucy tortilla later visible, but the prep area has thawed ground beef, a purple onion, part of a head of garlic, a bag of mini bell pepper s – and in front of opened cans of refried beans and diced tomatoes, the for sauce, and the jar of Southwest seasoning
I cooked together a quarter pound of ground beef, fixed onion, a diced poblano pepper, some diced bell pepper, and some mixed garlic.
Cooking the beef, onions and peppers
I added a generous amount of Southwest seasoning and a little (1/4 cup?) alfredo sauce from a jar.
Beef mixture is now layered into the pot. Ready for the next layer!
On top of the layer of the beef mixture, I added a little more refried beans.
Capped with a saucy tortilla and cheese!
And then I added a top layer of a tomato-ed tortilla and covered it with cheese. And baked it in a 350F oven for 20 minutes. I did not bother with broiler time to brown the cheese, but one could.
Finished product with a section cut out so you can see the layers
when it came out I topped it with a little parsley. It was warm through but would have be enough even better if I’d left it to heat longer. But it was delicious enough that, again, I didn’t bother. And you can see the pretty layers as I cut into it.
I spent all summer growing 1 cauliflower, and I didn’t even take a fashion picture of the final product.
It’s a pity because I don’t think I ever want to devote garden space (at least not while I have limited space with a porch garden) to they again. I tried eating the leaves like collard greens as it was growing, and my body did not like that. I’ve successfully done that in the past with broccoli, so it could just be that I’m getting more sensitive to large quantities of green leafy vegetables over the years. But it wasn’t a plant – for me – that provided any food through the summer while it grew and took up space.
Also it was very hard to keep pest free. I washed the leaves every night, but toward the end of August on I kept seeing white butterflies near there so I knew they were laying eggs, and I kept searching the leaves and not finding eggs or caterpillars. So I just washed the leaves as well as I could and was puzzled. All summer I managed to find and pick off maybe three caterpillars.
But when I harvested, I found that it was just that the leaf spacing was perfect for them to hide out by the stem between the leaves where it was really hard to get to. So points off for being hard to manage pests without insecticide.
But I did get one lovely head of cauliflower. And I put it in a big pot of water and pulled tiny caterpillars off of it as they came out. After about three hours of (intermittent!) cleaning, I nibbled on a floret and it was significantly more flavorful fresh than store bought! But I still put it in plastic and let it sit in my refrigerator for a day before more cleaning before actually using it in a recipe.
So I started with (purple) onions and (orange) peppers and then added the cauliflower florets. And then I pondered whether I wanted to make it vegetarian or add a protein.
Cooking the vegetables
I grew up in a household that didn’t cook seafood because my father didn’t like the smell, but I’ve been trying to experiment and learn how to cook it, so I’d bought some salmon portions at Aldi’s with some fairly unimpressive results. I think that’s because starting with thinner steaks was increasing the level of difficulty. So this was the last of that package, and it being thinner meant I could quickly get it just thawed enough that I could cut it with a cleaver into pasta appropriate chunks!
Mostly frozen chunks of salmon in a hot skillet with oil
I don’t remember if I set aside all of the vegetables on a plate while I cooked the salmon or if I started a second skillet, but I did cook the salmon separately too make sure I could see that so the frozen pieces behaved properly and got a little sear on all sides.
I also boiled some penne.
Then I put the salmon and the cauliflower together and added alfredo sauce from a jar. And some of the pasta cooking water to loosen it up. And then I decided I also wanted the taste of a bit of tomato pasta sauce, so I also added about a quarter cup from an already open jar in the fridge.
Finished dish with penne and salmon and cauliflower and a rich peach-colored sauce. Toasted bagels are also hiding in the background.
