Category: Uncategorized

These are going in reverse chronological order

First meal I made after my oven died was shakshuka – so I was toasting the bread on a skillet while I was poaching/braising the eggs, but you need toast to dip into the yummy!

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There’s a lot of regional rivals over which local convenience store or gas station has the best food. I don’t think there has to be a best, but if you’re looking for some of the menu standouts at Wawa, I recommend this pierogi quesadilla. It’s mashed potatoes inside a tortilla with two kinds of cheese (I picked cheddar and pepper jack). I like adding pickled jalapeños and getting a side of sour cream.

If I ever end up with leftover mashed potatoes (highly unlikely) I would make this at home.

One of the other things I recommend from Wawa is that they make their hot chocolate by melting mini chocolate chips in steamed milk!

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I am still – as much as possible – eating outside. Partly because of covid, but also because even before that I significantly preferred outdoor service. This is New Deck, an Irish pub that’s loud and crowded inside and probably has sports that everyone is shouting over. But outside I can eat my meal in peace. And there’s even a heater for their outdoor tables!

(By the time I left, there were two other tables of people eating outside as well)

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This was an exceptionally mild and tasty grapefruit! I got a bag of five of them from Weee!

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Okay, I ate indoors for this one. But Amma’s is so good and it was very late at night with no one sitting near me. It was my treat for getting the laundry to the laundromat before they closed.

I ordered the prix fix South Indian dinner (with meat) and got this stunning thali.

I don’t actually know what’s in the pretty little dishes surrounding the bowl with rice, but it’s two soups, 3 veg dishes, 2 meat, 1 biryani, a pickle, raita, and dessert.

Just as much work as a fully cooked meal.

First I washed and spun the lettuce and pulled some ingredients together

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.

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.

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.

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!

Throwing together a few dinners I’ve eaten lately

A pretty amazing hamburger

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Stir fry of beef, mushrooms, and mini red bell peppers

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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

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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.

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.

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

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

Over a layer of the rice mixture, I added another tomato-ed tortilla

I cooked together a quarter pound of ground beef, fixed onion, a diced poblano pepper, some diced bell pepper, and some mixed garlic.

I added a generous amount of Southwest seasoning and a little (1/4 cup?) alfredo sauce from a jar.

On top of the layer of the beef mixture, I added a little more refried beans.

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.

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.

Overall – very pleasing!