More Chicken

Continuing from last week's blog, I made another dish with my remaining shredded chicken. I was poking around online for some eggroll recipes and I actually came across this recipe. They call it "eggroll in a bowl" because it was like an eggroll filling without having to wrap it up and fry.

When I went to the grocery store, I was hoping to find some bags of coleslaw on sale to use in the recipe and just throw it all in. Fortunately, they had some on sale. Unfortunately, the cost of buying it pre-cut was too much for me to stomach even on a whim. Instead, I ended up buying green cabbage from the grocery store and using my own carrots and onions from home. There was no purple cabbage in my final colors, but it actually turned out okay.

When you add garlic, soy sauce, and sesame oil to anything, it's hard to go wrong from there. 

 

The actual recipe called for ground meat to be used. I used my shredded chicken because my goal was to use up the rest of what I already had. I think because my protein was pre-cooked, the whole dish ended up being slightly drier than perhaps the recipe intended. Also, there wasn't any added fat from needing to cook my protein. My chicken had also been kept in the refrigerator for many days since it's initial cooking date. From a texture and mouth-feel perspective, it wasn't my favorite. However, the flavor was very good. 

In the future, if I were to actually use ground pork (my favorite) in addition to following this recipe, it could be quite delicious. It's a great recipe to have on hand to use up leftovers and make a balanced dish. Personally, I think any of the following vegetables could be added to this recipe and it would still turn out very well:

- mushrooms
- cabbage
- carrots
- onions
- celery
- spinach
- bell peppers

I would just make sure to cut all my vegetables to about the same size - julienned or shredded.   

I don't think this is a recipe I would purposely add to my rotation as there are many other dishes I enjoy more. However, I think this is a great recipe to make on a whim with some leftover ingredients you may already have at home in your refrigerator.  

Samosas

I made samosas this past week! The idea was birthed out of having an excess of shredded chicken and wanting something different that wasn't a creamy sauce-based dish. I'd done clam chowder and chicken pot pie in the same week. I wanted something different with the rest of my chicken.

I had potatoes and onions at home so I decided to make samosas on a whim. I cooked the filling the night before and made the wrapper the day after. I actually made two batches of wrappers with two different recipes, but this recipe is the one I enjoyed more. Yes, I deep fried them. 

They turned out quite well! I think I could have added more salt to season the filling more. I had slow cooked the chicken by itself and already added salt so I didn't want to add more salt for fear of being overly salty. I tasted the filling to make sure the potatoes were done but didn't think to taste the chicken. Also, I overlooked the fact that the dough wasn't overly salty so the filling needed some extra flavor to compensate.

I guess this is what happens when I cook on a whim. I wouldn't do anything differently because it's the short-notice which results in creativity. It just also comes with a side of imperfection. 

The filling recipe I followed (which I can't find anymore...oops) had said to add water if the mixture got too dry in the pan. I think I took this direction too seriously and added too much water because when I went to fill my samosas, the filling kept leaking and popping the seams on my dough wrapper. I had to get creative on how to stretch portions of the dough over each other to fix the holes.  This is not the batch pictured above. 😄 Halfway through I did drain some of the extra liquid out of the filling mixture so that is why the second batch closed much nicer. 

The deep frying wasn't too bad since I knew the inside filling was already cooked. I just had to watch the color on the outside and remove when done. My dough skills are not great so my wrappers were on the thicker side and resulted in a more doughy outside rather than the traditional flaky. Personally, I don't really care because I knew it was my first time and I'm not going to risk the samosa falling apart during cooking just to roll the dough thinner.  

I still have some extra chicken leftover so I'm trying to find a creative way to use it up. I'll probably be heading to the grocery store after this just to see what ingredients I can find on sale and try something new. I might blog about it next week. Stay tuned!

Dehydrating #5 and #6

Life has been busy. I'm finally getting around to writing the next part of my dehydrating series! 

Apple Chips

I made apple chips! Typically, I'm not a fan of apples. I think I've been scarred growing up eating fruit. My dad didn't cut the core out of the apple. He would just cut the apple and hand me and my brother each a half. I ate around the core but did so pretty sloppily so a lot of the apple went to the trash. I'd also get in trouble for eating it sloppily so I hid my apple trash in various places around the house so they wouldn't be found. Needless to say, I don't have good memories eating apples.

Lesson to parents: just cut the core out of apples for your kids. Do it forever if you can. One day they will notice.

I bought apples specifically to dehydrate for this "experiment." They turned out well! It made me actually want to eat apples.

 

It's been so long I honestly can't remember what temperature I dehydrated them at anymore. I would think I did about 135 degrees for 8-10 hours as that is pretty standard for dehydrating. I did both regular apples and cinnamon apples. My preference was for the cinnamon apples because they had a sweetening effect on the apples. 

As you can see from the photo, I had to cut my apple in half and then slice into semi-circle shaped slices. Ideally, I would have loved to be able to slice them in a donut shape with the center cored out. However, my mandolin would not fit my apple all the way across in diameter so I had to slice. They are more aesthetically pleasing as cored out rounds, but that would also affect the dehydrating time because the pieces would be larger. 

Kani Crab

I was inspired to try dehydrating Kani Crab because I saw someone do an air fryer recipe. I actually tried the air fryer recipe in our toaster oven as well and it didn't turn out like the video...so I adapted it for myself.

The consistency of these was not there because I bought kani in strips and pulled them apart by hand. The pieces were not evenly sized so they cooked at different rates. Some pieces were perfect, some were still on the chewy side, and some were overcooked and too brown. 

I attempted to make this two times. The first time, my temperature was too high and the pieces were uneven so we had a gamut of overcooked, perfect, and not cooked enough.  The second time, I think my temperature was too low but the pieces were more uniform. As a result, they ended up hard and tough, not light and airy as I'd hoped. I think I'd aim for a temperature of around 380 degrees for 15 minutes and tweak from there if I were to try again. 

The video I originally saw was great inspiration to make these, but the results just didn't turn out as I'd expected. There was a lot of flavor within each piece, but because I didn't perfect the cooking instructions, it wasn't completely enjoyable for the work it entailed. If I were to commit unlimited time and resources, I would further develop this recipe. However, I don't think I will.

Dehydrating #4: Green Onions

During the winter, green onions become more expensive and Costco stops carrying them for a while because they're more expensive to source. We were at Costco last week and found them again! I don't think I'll actually be buying my green onions from Costco anymore as I found a new grocery store nearby with better pricing, but this batch was from Costco.

We got so excited we bought 3 bags: 6 pounds of green onion. Normally, I don't buy this much at one time. However, I had come across the idea of dehydrating my own green onions at home a few months ago. To my dismay, that's when green onion prices were going up so I had to wait a while to get them again in bulk.

Green onions took a long time to dry. I didn't cut them into especially small pieces because I didn't want them falling through my grates. Most of mine were cut into 1-1.5 inch pieces. I didn't end up separating the greens and whites because it was experimental so I was just going to see what would happen. 

 

 

I ended up filling five trays of green onion into my toaster oven. I used the dehydrate setting and put it at 135 degrees F. The original time was set for 10 hours and I ran it overnight. The next morning, I went to check and the vast majority of them were not dry enough to store. I maybe removed one tray of the smaller greens which had finished dehydrating, but the rest of the pieces were left in the oven again to continue.

 

At the end of the day, the thickest pieces needed about 26-30 hours of dehydrating before they were dry enough to store. I put them into glass jars and added a silica gel packet to each jar. I have a ton of these from the probiotics I take so I'm glad to have another use for them besides simply throwing them away.  

They're really just a healthier version of the "vegetable" packet you receive when you make instant noodles. But I like that they're healthier and I know it's a pure green onion. Because I cut my pieces larger, they're still on the larger side even dehydrated. It's so convenient to be able to store them in my pantry and just toss some into a dish as I'm cooking.

I do think these work best for soups and stews because if they don't re-hydrate with enough moisture, the texture is a little strange to eat. I have an idea to grind some up into smaller pieces and adding to food that doesn't require a lot of moisture as a garnish. 

Personally, I do still enjoy having diced pieces of green onion in my freezer. It mimics the fresh green onion feel without having to keep it fresh in the refrigerator all the time. My freezer space is very valuable so being able to store it in a cabinet or pantry is a plus as well. I think I will try to keep some of both in the house so depending on the various dishes I'm making, I can choose to use the freezer stash or the pantry stash.

If I were to dehydrate these again, which I probably will, I would definitely separate the whites from the greens. If not completely, I would at least put them on separate trays when dehydrating so I can just remove the trays of greens first and keep the trays of whites in longer.  

Another change I would make is the shape of the green onion. I wouldn't necessarily cut them smaller, but I would cut them on a bias instead of cutting them straight into cylinders.  This exposes more surface area and would shorten the drying time very slightly because all the moisture is held between the layers of the green onion. Cutting it on a bias opens up the layers more.

Another thought I had would be to keep the root of the green onion intact and slice it lengthwise into skinny strips and dehydrating the whole green onion that way. I don't know that I could use the green onion in that shape directly, but it would also be a way to speed up the dehydrating process because there is so much moisture inside the layers, especially at the bottom.  

I'm about to chop up the remainder of my green onions to add to my freezer stash! 

Dehydrating #2: Squash

We were at the grocery store one day leisurely pushing the cart around the store. I think we only had one item on our list which was already in our cart. Everything else was bonus. We passed the produce section, and I asked my husband, do you want to try zucchini chips? He okayed the idea so I went to get some.

Now I was a little confused for a bit because the signage in the store said zucchini but the label on the bag said squash. I never really looked into the difference between the two, but the vegetable looked correct for what I wanted, so I bought it and just thought, "I guess I'm making squash chips instead." Turns out that zucchini is a type of squash, but not all squash are zucchini. This makes sense to me as I'm used to seeing squash as a large gourd with tough skin.

I used our mandolin to thinly slice the squash into rounds. I seasoned with a few spritzes of oil and the slightest bit of salt. I placed them into our toaster oven and had to jerry-rig a two-tray system. This was before I bought the extra air fryer baskets for dehydrating. I ended up using the wire rack as my second tray. The slices did begin to curl around the wires as they cooked, but the overall flavor and texture were not affected. They just ended up looking a bit wavy. 

 

 

I found that 135F at 10 hours was a good amount of time to cook squash when sliced into round discs. I made these another time with oblong slices and didn't increase the cooking time - that was a mistake. The second batch with oblong slices was not as crispy as the first batch.  

These chips were so delicious. A lot of them were consumed while sitting in bed watching television in the evening after the kids went to sleep. For me, these were tasty enough to crave and serve as a substitute for potato chips. Now that I have extra dehydrating trays, I can dehydrate 6 squash at one time - it came out to about one squash per tray. 

I told my kids to try these and they did but weren't as impressed as I was. They would still prefer regular chips over these any day. Their palette is still young and immature. 

I really enjoyed making these squash chips and they will definitely be on my list to make again.  

Dehydrating #1 : Kiwi

We've had the same toaster oven since we got married which meant it was just over 11 years old. There was nothing wrong with it - still fully functioning - but our family has changed in the last decade and our needs are different. I found myself wishing I could heat more food in it at a time - if we had chicken and french fries, I couldn't heat enough for our whole family at one time. I could barely heat enough for both my kids at one time. 

This led to some searching online and buying a new toaster oven that was much larger and had more features than our old toaster oven did. The main reason we bought this one was for the size. It's advertised to hold a 20 lb turkey! I don't think I will ever roast a 20 lb turkey in my toaster oven, but it's nice to know the size is there if I ever truly need to. In addition to the size, I was intrigued by the features, primarily, the dehydrating feature. This oven has digital temperature settings as well as a digital timer, neither of which our old toaster oven had. 

We use our new toaster oven a lot to reheat food and toast bread. That's a given. Four years ago, I did an experiment by counting the number of times I used each of our small appliances.  Three specific ones were excluded from the count because I knew we were going to use them all the time and therefore, it wasn't necessary to tally each use. The toaster oven was one of them. 

The first item I wanted to dehydrate was kiwi. I don't even buy kiwi on a regular basis, but it was the first food I immediately thought of when I ventured down this dehydrating path. When I lived overseas for a year, I was exploring a market one evening and came across a booth selling dried fruits and nuts. I saw the dried kiwi and knew I had to try it. It looked so beautifully green and round. I bought a pack (I want to say it was around $5-7USD per pound...?) and just as they appeared, they were delicious. It was a burst of sweet kiwi in my mouth with every bite.

13 years later, I dehydrated my own kiwi. A grocery store had them on sale after we bought the new toaster oven so it seemed like the perfect signal. I was going to dehydrate my own kiwi! I sliced them about a quarter inch thick and laid them out on my rack. The toaster oven automatically set the temperature to 135 degrees F and 8 hours on the dehydrate function. I let it run overnight and the next morning, I had my very own dehydrated kiwi.

It wasn't as beautiful as the bag I bought. The green wasn't as vibrant - they definitely colored theirs. And my kiwi wasn't as sweet as the ones I bought - they added sugar. But it was delicious in a naturally unaltered tart kiwi kind of way. An online blog described it rather well: like a homemade sour gummy candy. 

I really enjoyed them. It was a fun first try with dehydrating! 

Takeout with the Tos #27 : Gluten-Free

This may be my last Takeout post of the year. I have still been cooking but a lot of the dishes have been repeats of ones I've already made. When I cooked this gluten-free dish for a friend, it inspired another dish, both which I will talk about in this post. 

One of my friends is gluten-free and I was at her house. I can't remember how it started exactly,  but our conversation went from food to fried chicken to gluten-free to gluten-free flour. I told her I could make her a gluten-free fried chicken if she had the gluten-free flour. Indeed she did! 

I took her flour home and made fried chicken with it! 

You would never believe this was gluten-free if I didn't tell you. 

My breading of preference with fried chicken is actually panko. When I use panko, the crumb is larger so it sticks better to the chicken. When I used the gluten-free flour this time to fry, a lot of the coating went into the frying oil. Not a problem at all, but it doesn't leave a clear oil when you're done frying. In the past, I've just dumped the oil and the flour in it in the trash. However, this time, there seemed to be a lot of extra flour in the oil. 

Then it hit me. I had just fried chicken and inadvertently made a roux! Roux is pronounced "roo" like kanga"roo" if you don't know. Typically, it's made by cooking flour in oil in a pan for a long time before making gumbo. People have created other shortcuts to roux by baking the flour in the oven first before cooking it in the oil to cut down on the stirring time - you must stir your roux or it will burn and burned roux is bitter.  I think I just found the greatest double-duty hack of all time: fry something with a flour batter, and then use the extra cooked flour and oil to make something that requires a roux!

I poured off the excess oil from the top and then I was left 
with this beautiful dark brown, flavorful roux.

Now you might be looking at this in the bottom of my wok and think this is way too much roux to use for any dish. That's exactly what I thought. It was a lot of roux. I pulled out my silicone ice cube molds (which I've never used for ice) and spooned a portion of the roux in. These molds went into my freezer and now I have pre-made roux cubes for next time!

I only spooned out four cubes worth. In retrospect, I probably 
could have spooned out...at least another two. Wisdom for the future.

It was unfortunate I could not share this gumbo with my friend as well as I had fried non-gluten-free food in the same oil after I fried her gluten-free chicken first. I don't know all the contamination rules with gluten and frying, but I wasn't going to risk it. 

My gumbo was not traditional as the Cajun trinity involves onion, bell pepper, and celery. I used neither bell pepper or celery in my "trinity." My gumbo started simply with onion and carrot. Then I added leftover ham, lentils, and shrimp. Not traditional at all, but absolutely delicious. I would definitely make it again and use the same ingredients or even try mixing up other ingredients. I actually enjoy okra in my gumbo but I didn't have any in my freezer so it wasn't included. If this isn't a real gumbo to you, then I guess you can call it a very rich stew. 

Yum.

I flipped the order this time, but this is my cost breakdown:

4 large servings of gumbo at $12.99 per serving: $51.96

15 gluten-free fried chicken tenderloins at $2.50 each: $$37.50

Total: $89.46

Tax: $7.38

Grand Total:  $96.84

It's been a fun year blogging and sharing about my food and stories. I hope you've enjoyed reading about what I cook, how I cook, and occasional tips and tricks with freezing and saving food. I have a couple ideas for themes next year that still revolve around food. When I finalize which one I want to do, you will be reading about it on the blog. If you cooked anything I shared or received inspiration from a recipe, I'd love to hear about it! 

Takeout with the Tos # 26: Long-term Storage

It's been a little bit hectic with the holidays coming and the end of semester drawing nearer. My cooking still happens but I've been doing a lot of repeats and there's not a lot to expound upon when I've made the same dish 3-5x already this year.  

We ran out of food halfway through this week so I had to figure out some dishes to cook. It's also been cold and rainy and I didn't feel like going to the store to buy anything so I had to use what we already had. I also wanted dishes with some vegetables in them.

How do I get vegetable dishes cooked Asian style without buying anything fresh? Let me tell you how!

My three dishes which meet the above quota are:

- Peas and Shrimp: $13.99

- Turnip Greens with Dace : $13.99

- Stir Fry Bamboo, Water Chestnuts, and Bell Peppers: $11.99

Total: $39.97

Tax: $3.30

Grand Total:  $43.27

 

Peas and Shrimp

Both of these are in my freezer. I have a bag of frozen peas in my freezer almost at all times. There was a phase when my kids wouldn't eat peas because they influenced each other to not like peas. Now I'm trying to reverse the habit. I finally got the younger one to eat some and I'm trying to get him to influence the older now. 

Shrimp is always in my freezer. This dish comes together super quickly. My dad used to make this dish as part of our food rotation when I was in high school. I enjoyed the way he made it. It wasn't super saucy and I actually don't know what he put in it - probably soy sauce or some combination of an Asian sauce - but it was good. 

I start by heating up some oil in my wok and then adding the shrimp (1/2lb?). When the shrimp is about 85% cooked, I add in thawed peas (1.5 cups?).  I mix it around for a bit, added oyster sauce (approx 1TB?) and a light sprinkle of sugar and salt. Make sure the shrimp is cooked all the way through and no longer translucent. That's about it.

If you're not into Asian food or it's not easily accessible, I bet adding some garlic and butter would make a great sauce for the shrimp and peas! Think shrimp scampi with peas. 

 

Turnip Greens with Dace 

I never thought about freezing bags of vegetables until my friend told me she did it all the time. This one is great because bags of pre-washed and cut turnip greens can be found at many grocery stores and aren't specifically "Asian." If you're super chill and want convenience, throw the whole bag into the freezer and save it for when you need it. This is what I do. If you want to go for a little more work before the convenience kicks in, you can open the bag, sort out some of the larger stem pieces, rewash if you'd like, spin dry, and then save in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. This is what I wish I would do sometimes but am realistically too lazy to ever do it. Laziness is a form of efficiency, remember? 😜

Canned dace has become a new staple in our house. I ate it in dishes as a kid and then forgot about it for a while until Woks of Life jumpstarted my memory with this recipe. This was the initial inspiration for my dish. I hardly ever make this with fresh greens because if I'm making this dish, it usually means I don't have any fresh vegetables for one reason or another. I also like to make my dace super small instead of the larger chunks because it is pretty salty and I want it evenly distributed with my greens.

For this dish, I first empty the contents of the fried dace can onto a plate. Then I pick out the bones and cut the fish smaller. Next, I heat up a pan and then throw in my dace, beans, and the oil. Once the fish and oil get hot, I throw in my turnip greens. If you're using a frozen bag of turnip greens, do not thaw first. Throw them in frozen. Let them cook down and give it a good stir. Once the greens are cooked, the dish is done. I don't add any extra seasoning into this dish because the canned dace has a lot of salt in it already.  

 

Stir Fry Bamboo, Water Chestnuts, and Bell Pepper

I made this dish up on the spot because it was vegetables I had on hand which I could combine together for a cohesive dish. The recipe inspiration came from this recipe. I just sub whatever vegetables I have on hand. I keep canned bamboo and canned water chestnuts in my pantry at all times. There are other dishes I use these canned vegetables for, but they came in handy for this stir fry as well. The bell peppers were some of the last ones to come out of my garden. They were smaller and thinner but still usable. I realize not everyone is going to have a garden of bell peppers. That's not a problem because bell peppers can be frozen! 

Now you can't freeze them whole. The best way to freeze a bell pepper is to wash, remove the seeds and middle, and cut the bell peppers into the size you want to use them. Then, lay them out on flat on a tray and freeze. Once frozen, transfer them to a freezer bag to use when you want them. This is probably true of most vegetables, but you don't want to thaw them before you use them. They'll turn into a soggy mess. These are best for stir frys because you throw them in frozen and the high heat fast cooking method will help to preserve the texture of the vegetable. 

The actual recipe uses much more seasoning than I did for this batch. I just used chicken bouillon in water this time and made a starch slurry to thicken the sauce. 

I hope these dishes inspire you to be able to cook with more vegetables even when you're in a bind or can't make it to the grocery store!

Takeout with the Tos #25

Hello again! Since coming back from Chicago, the cooking has been on and off at home because we've been doing some special activities like hosting a friend and going to the State Fair of Texas! This isn't back to sharing a week's worth of food, but I'm sharing a portion of what we grilled this past weekend.

We had a friend over who grilled with my husband and we all ate dinner together. It was fun and delicious. 

Six Pork Kabobs:  $24.00

2 pounds of BBQ wings (approx 14-15 pcs): $18.00

2 pounds of honey soy wings (approx 14-15 pcs): $18.00

5-6 lbs Beef Galbi (not pictured): $100.00

Home Fries (not pictured): $8.00

Total: $168.00

Tax: $13.86

Grand Total: $181.86

 

Kabobs

Chicken Wings

More Chicken Wings

This grilling extravaganza was definitely a splurge for our friend and us. However, we had a lot of fun cooking and eating together. 

For the honey soy wings, I followed this recipe.  We ended up grilling the wings instead of baking in the oven so it may have added to the varying result. The comments on the recipe raved about it and how great the flavor was. Honestly, I didn't think it was that amazing. Tasty, sure, but definitely not the best wings I've ever had. The BBQ wings were an improvised recipe my husband did on the spot with barbecue sauce and honey. I actually liked the flavor in his wings better. 

The skewers were made up of bell peppers, onion, and pork tenderloin. I was pleased with how they turned out, but surprisingly enough, I actually wished I had more grilled onions and bell peppers. That's the power of smoke and charcoal...

 This was a very delicious meal. It made me want to grill marinated meats more often. I don't know how much my body can handle it as we went on a semi-vegetable detox after this meal. But I'm learning more and more how to enjoy good food. 

As promised from the last post, I totaled the cost of all our "takeout" food from the first three quarters of 2025. The grand total came out to $2,619.24! 

Takeout with the Tos #24

I cooked a mixture of individual meals as well as some Asian dishes. I've blogged a lot about the Asian dishes I make so this week I'm going to focus on the other meals we had this week. It doesn't encompass all the food we ate this week, but it provides some variety in showing you what we cook and eat in our household.

Mediterranean Stew with Naan (6+ servings) : $50.99 

Burgers and Fries (10 burgers + fries) : $89.99

Flatbread Pizza (4 flatbreads) : $39.96

Total: $180.94

Tax: $14.93

Grand Total:  $195.87

 

Burgers and Fries

I discovered this recipe for homemade burgers before 2020. It's the only recipe I ever follow when I make burgers because it's so good. When I was pregnant, I would still make this recipe because we could fully cook the burgers and it was still delicious. Last weekend I was having a random burger craving. We had McDonald's for a meal and it wasn't quite satisfying. We ended up making our own burgers for this week and it was really delicious. I made an improvised coleslaw for the burger and we fried some french fries at home with really old potatoes. 🙈 Nobody got sick. They were delicious. 

 

Flatbread Pizza 

I went grocery shopping one day and found flatbreads on clearance at the grocery store for 50% off. Flatbread is not usually on my grocery shopping list, but this price was pretty good. I also thought quickly on my feet and told myself I'd save it in the freezer for us to make homemade pizza with one day. Well, the day to make homemade pizza came this week! I pulled together this pizza in about a half hour. The flatbread was thawed from my freezer. The cheese was thawed from my freezer. The sausage I tore apart as a topping was from my freezer. The tomato sauce was two cans of tomato paste mixed with some water to thin and Italian seasonings. 

This was a really delicious pizza. It was gone in two meals. I love how I could pull out almost every ingredient from my freezer and those I didn't were shelf stable! I also really enjoyed eating sausage on my pizza instead of the usual pepperoni we would do. Pepperoni is just too greasy after it bakes, and honestly, the sausage adds a nice flavor as well. I'll have to do this again sometime if I can find more flatbread on sale. 

 

Mediterranean Stew with Naan 

I started putting together this post only to realize I didn't have a photo of the actual stew! Oops. I did get a nice photo of all my spices lined up in a row on the stove ready to be added in.

...and then I got a photo of what the spices looked like dumped on top of the stew. I didn't measure for amounts but it's about 1 tsp - 1 TB of each. 

I've never followed a recipe to make this stew. This recipe was born one day of trying to use chickpeas in a high fiber stew. I include chickpeas, beans, carrots, potato, canned corn, and this time, cabbage. There's a variety of vegetable combinations that could be used for this.

This specific batch has some bacon in it, both for the fat and the flavor since everything else is a vegetarian component.  

Yes, my children eat this. My daughter took it to school for lunch for two days. Yes, they need the naan to bribe them. But I'm thankful to expand their palette and have them eating their fiber at a young age! I will probably never go vegetarian in my lifetime, but I love being able to cook vegetarian options that are tasty to add variety to what we eat.  

The takeout total this week is on the high side, but realistically, this is what we would pay if we ordered all this food as takeout. These burgers are not In-N-Out sized...they are closer to what the Big Mac used to be back in the 90s. McDonald's is selling a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Meal for over $9.50. 😱

I decided to go back and add up the takeout costs from the first 3 quarters of this year. Guess what it came out to? Will reveal in the next Takeout post! 

 

Takeout with the Tos #23

It finally happened. I forgot to take pictures of all of my food this week. Oh well. I guess this is what happens when I don't cook everything on the same day. There are no photos of ketchup shrimp or my snow pea tofu stir fry, but I made them on week 12 of this year and it's pretty much the exact same dish. 

Pork Belly Tacos (2lb pork belly): $25.99

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls (4 servings): $35.99

Ketchup Shrimp:  $16.99

Snow Pea Tofu Stir Fry: $14.99

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb): $20.99 

Total: $114.95

Tax: $9.48

Grand Total:  $124.43

 

Pork Belly Tacos

 

One of the chefs I enjoy watching on television (and is still airing new episodes) is Pati Jinich. There's many recipes in my collection which are from her cooking shows. We were watching an episode of her show one evening and it was all making us hungry. When meal-planning for this week, we thought about using pork belly as a protein since I had some in the freezer. We also had leftover tortillas which needed to be eaten. I picked up some vegetables from the grocery store and we were able to use our Kewpie dressing.

 

We found this dressing on clearance at the store. I'd never used it before but I do enjoy other flavors of Kewpie dressings. We decided to buy one to try. I used a little in a recipe last week but decided it would make a great taco condiment. 

 

I winged the pork belly marinade. It's a combination of soy sauce, sugar, cooking wine, sesame oil, honey, and a little salt. I wish I had actual amounts to tell you....I don't. I literally just grabbed ingredients and poured some in. For two pounds of pork belly, each ingredient was probably between 1-4TB. I bet you could mix and match between the ingredients I listed above and it would still taste good albeit a different "stronger" flavor. That's one thing I love about Asian cooking. When you have the main staples, any combination of them is going to give you a nice flavor. You just have to know how to control the amounts based on the flavor you actually want.  

I had some pickled banana peppers in my fridge which made a great sour addition to the savory taco.

 

 

Homemade "Ramen" Bowls

We have lots of instant ramen at our house....despite all my cooking with fresh meats and vegetables, we still love a good late night instant noodle when the time calls for it. 

This meal came about on my lightest day of work. We were starting to run low on food - middle of the week - and I thought of something quick and easy with some ingredients I already had on hand. 

The protein for these noodles came from an egg and some spam. Yup, I cook spam. I had frozen broccoli in my freezer so I pulled some out for a quick blanch to reheat and added them in. I cooked the instant noodles and used the seasoning packets from our Mi Goreng. I didn't season any of the add-ins because there would be enough flavor from the instant noodle seasoning and spam. 

My kids ate this so quickly all by themselves with no need for coaxing. I realize it's not the most healthy meal I've ever made, but as a mom, a self-fed meal with no fuss about finishing is a huge win.  

Everyone got their own bowl of this.

 

The ketchup shrimp and snow pea tofu stir fry I made were delicious. Unfortunately I didn't get photos of them. I did use my stainless steel wok  which I had written about earlier this year. I spent a few months away from the stainless steel and back to my nonstick because I got scared after a few bad tries with the wok. The unfortunate part of learning is that you have to keep cooking in stainless steel, even if it means messing up dishes. 

I got brave this week and tried again. The last three dishes - ketchup shrimp, snow pea tofu stir fry, and my chicken tenders were all made using stainless steel. These attempts were much more successful. I think I need to remind myself not to use too high of heat. 

Asian Marinade Chicken Tenders (1.5lb)

This is all that was left when I remembered to take a photo.

Originally, I pulled this chicken out of the freezer to thaw in order to make curry. By the time the chicken thawed, I wasn't in a place to make curry and if I let it stay in the refrigerator for another 15-20 hours, it would begin to go bad. I realize not everyone enjoys freezer meat because they can taste the difference from fresh meat. I don't notice it. However, I do use my thawed meat immediately because the longer it sits in the refrigerator after thawing, the more likely it is to go bad. 

So instead of making curry, I took my chicken and marinaded it - and then put it back into the refrigerator for 36 hours. Once you add something with salt and sugar, the marinade serves as a mini "cure" for the meat which is why it will not spoil so quickly after that. Simply leaving raw unseasoned meat in the refrigerator will go bad after an extended amount of time. 

The seasoning for this chicken was very similar to the pork belly. I think I used the exact same ingredients for the marinade, probably in slightly different proportions because I just dumped everything into the bowl. I like making this because it's a quick, easy protein with lots of flavor that goes well with rice and a vegetable for a balanced meal. 

That's all for this week!

Takeout with the Tos #22

We had a conglomerate of food this week. It was a little bit of hodgepodge.  

Green Beans and Pork: $14.99

Steak (2 8oz ribeyes) : $39.99

Mashed Potatoes: $8.99

Green Onion Pancake with Shrimp: $24.99

Tortilla Kebabs: $12.99

Total: $101.95

Tax: $8.41

Grand Total:  $110.36

 

 Green Beans and Pork

I make this dish a lot. It's easy, we have ground pork in the freezer on hand, and it's tasty. These beans were from a friend's garden. I seasoned with salt, sugar, cooking wine, soy sauce, and oyster sauce. I blanch the beans first in salt water to get a softer texture without being fibrous. The salt helps to keep the vibrant green color and actually cooks the beans faster than in unsalted water. 

 

Steak 

These steaks have been in our freezer for almost a year. I got them on sale last year when I spotted them and vacuum sealed for the freezer. It wasn't our intention to save them for a year, but when I vacuum seal my meats, I'm more at ease about "forgetting" them for long periods of time. My husband cooked these and seasoned with salt, pepper, and garlic. I'm typically not a fan of steak, but when he does it, I'll eat it. This makes me wonder if all the steaks I've ever ordered at restaurants have not been cooked properly. 

Mashed Potatoes 

 

Mashed potatoes go with steak and we had a lot of potatoes leftover to use. Nothing fancy here - no box mashed potatoes though. An important thing to note is when boiling potatoes, use low heat. Boiling too high will overcook the outside faster, resulting in crumbling outsides. To keep the potato intact, add the potatoes into cold water and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to continue cooking the potato evenly to prevent it from falling apart. Once the potatoes are cooked, we drain the water, add milk, butter, and seasoning. 

Green Onion Pancakes with Shrimp

I bought a giant pack of green onions from Costco a few days prior to making this. I can use up a lot of green onions if I want to, but boy does Costco sell a lot at once in their bag. I ended up using about half the bag of green onions to make these pancakes alone. I've made these many times so I no longer reference a recipe, but the one I started out with was by Maangchi. I've done it many times so I just wing the batter now and look for consistency. I still mess it up every now and then, but that's the errors of being human. These are so good fresh off the pan when they're nice and crispy. 

Tortilla Kebabs 

This recipe popped up on my social media one day. It seemed interesting and was mesmerizing to watch him make. I filed it away in the back of my head. One weekday morning when I was home, we started running low on food options. I had leftover tortillas in the refrigerator from before and decided I was going to make this recipe. 

*Note: I followed the recipe very loosely. I don't have half these ingredients on a whim and I wasn't going out to buy them. So my kebabs are not Lao style. They're simply...Lao inspired.*

My meat filling consisted of: one pound of ground pork, Kewpie onion dressing, lemon pepper seasoning (to replace the lemongrass), salt, sugar, oyster sauce, garlic, cilantro, and green onion. Then I followed the recipe to layer the tortillas and the meat. 

I didn't end up with perfectly flat tortilla squares. Once I filled my meat layers, it did start to sag on the ends. Maybe this goes away with more experience, but I clearly don't have the experience. This came out really delicious for a first try. It definitely took some time to assemble and cook the skewers and they were consumed in a fraction of the time. These types of recipes make me sad, but good food is good food....

Takeout with the Tos #21

I'm excited to get back to more consistent takeout blogs, but as I mentioned before, it's going to look a little different. Instead of cooking on Sundays and eating for the week, the cooking will be done....on random days throughout the week. This week's post will actually include cooking from last Friday as well as some in the beginning of this week. 

Collard Greens and Dace: $14.99

Egg Hugging Tofu: $15.99

Ground Pork with Basil: $13.99

Eggrolls (x29 @ $0.75 ea): $21.75

Fried Chicken (2.5 pounds): $20.99

Chinese Broccoli: $12.99

Asian Vegetable Soup (5 Qt @ $5/qt): $25.00

Total: $125.70

Tax: $10.37

Grand Total:  $136.07

 

 

 

 

Collard Greens and Dace

 

We needed some vegetables and I hadn't gone grocery shopping in a bit due to being out of town. So I pulled out a frozen bag of collard greens. I buy these from the store when they're marked down and the grocery store is speed-selling them. They go into my freezer and I use them at a later date for stir frys. This worked perfectly for us this one. Collard green is definitely not my favorite though. I still prefer turnip greens or even kale when it comes to the American vegetables. Collard greens have thicker leaves which aren't my preference, but with the right cooking technique and seasoning, it's not bad. 

 

Egg Hugging Tofu  

 

I've made this recipe a few times since I added it to our rotation a few months back. It's so easy and is a great change from the old teriyaki tofu I made for years and years. I love how the egg adds extra protein to the dish. This was again a quick meal pulled together so no green onions or anything green to make this dish look a little better aesthetically. 

 

Ground Pork with Basil 

 

I was actually excited when I saw Woks of Life post this recipe recently. I had seen their recipe with pork belly and thai basil  before which was a delicious recipe. My problem was that I could never get the texture of the pork belly right because of a combination of heat + cooking time issues. This happens a lot with nonstick because to preserve the integrity of the cookware, you can't use very high heat. As a result, things cook slower, and when this specifically applies to meat, this means you get texture issues. 

 

So when I saw a very similar recipe with ground pork, I was intrigued because I love the flavor of this dish, but I wanted an easier way to do it. Using ground pork means no texture issues with the meat and you still get the flavor of the dish. I compared the recipes side by side and the seasoning proportions are actually identical. There's slight modifications between the two recipes with the other ingredients, but the key seasonings are the same.  

 

Seeing this recipe made me sad I didn't grow basil this summer. I had so much of it in the past and could only use/freeze so much before I was overwhelmed. I planted some seeds last week in hopes of making this dish a few more times the rest of this year, but we'll see how much the weather can cooperate with me as basil grows in hot weather. 

 

 Egg Rolls

 

 

 

Now these aren't the tiny egg rolls. These are the egg rolls that are 5-6 inches long each. I didn't follow a recipe to make eggrolls. This was a very improvised recipe which turned out great. My frying skills and wrapping skills need some work though. I forgot to fill and fold on the diagonal. They turn out a lot neater and prettier that way. Oooooops. I'll have to remember that for next time. Mine have awakward straight seams to the side, some of which wildly popped open during frying and created some wacky waves. 

 

My filling includes half a carrot, 1 pound ground pork, 1 pound shrimp, half a small cabbage, 3-5 cloves garlic, soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, corn starch, and sugar.  I can't tell you the proportions of everything else because I don't know. I was just dumping things into the mixing bowl. 

 

My first fry turned out super dark. Two are pictured above and I ate the other two. This is when I realized that frying egg rolls at 350+ degree oil is not good. The outside burns and the inside is questionable. That's the reason I tried the dark ones first because I was worried the inside was raw. It wasn't, but it was definitely too fried. 

 

Would I make this again? For sure. We put a good number of them in the freezer and they'll make great quick food for the future. 

 

 

 Fried Chicken

I had originally marinated this chicken to be browned in a pan like a grilled chicken, but since I already pulled out the oil and pot for frying, I decided to fry them. I marinated them in soy sauce, oyster sauce, honey, cooking wine, sesame oil, and corn starch. Again, I can't tell you exact proportions because I just dump everything in, put on some food gloves, and mix it before popping the bowl in the refrigerator for 24 hours. A beginner recipe would be equal parts (1tsp or 1TB depending on amount of food) of all. I was telling my husband I love these seasonings because you can mix them together in random amounts and it will still taste good. I'm sure if you tweak the proportions, you can get a fine-tuned flavor profile depending on what you like, but equal portions of everything is a good place to start. 

I did two different coatings because I ran out of panko halfway through frying. The rest of the chicken is battered in potato starch. 

 

Chinese Broccoli  

This is a basic parboiled vegetable. I used salted water and dropped in the leaves for maybe 30 seconds. The stems I leave for about 1 minute. Nothing fancy, but parboiled gives it a good texture. The leaves stay bright green and the stems are soft with a little bite to them. 

Asian Vegetable Soup

Earlier this year, I started randomly throwing ingredients together to make soup. This still continues now! This soup includes: tofu puffs, tofu skin rolls, mushrooms, cabbage, carrot, daikon, celery, garlic, soy sauce, dried shrimp, and chicken bouillon for seasoning. It was a little bit of a "stone soup" because the carrot and celery was thrown in to clean out my fridge. I didn't mean for this to be anything fancy, but a warm soup is nice as the weather is cooling down. 

 

I was telling my husband that an Asian soup with fried egg rolls was reminiscent of the quintessential "cheap Chinese restaurant food." I'm not even sure you can get cheap soup and egg rolls anymore at any restaurant due to inflation and tariffs. I'll take my homemade version any day.  

Takeout With the Tos #20: Lazy Food

It's been over a month since I last wrote a Takeout post. Summer ended and the new school year started. We have new routines now. I knew this was going to change and that's partly why it was hard to continue this series. I used to have to cook completely on Sundays because I was out of the house between 9:30am-2:00pm most weekdays and that only left me 1-2 hours before I had to start teaching. My schedule now is actually quite the opposite. That same block of time is when I am actually free, and most days, at home. 

This shift has brought about some changes to our household - some good, some bad. Good: I no longer have to mass cook a week's worth of food on Sunday afternoon for 3 hours. Bad: I'm getting lazier about meal planning and sometimes, the day's food plan comes on a whim. 

This week's food was definitely on a whim. We got home on Monday after being out of town for the weekend. We thankfully had some leftovers courtesy of a friend which turned out to be a meal life saver. For ease of this blog that will not be counted since I didn't buy/make it. On Tuesday, I went grocery shopping for some last minute ingredients to finish a recipe I was making. Along the way, I found some bargain finds which turned into more meals for the week. 

This is probably the epitome of my "lazy food" from this entire year. Honestly, it kind of feels like a treat for us because we don't eat like this very often. So while I do enjoy nice homemade cooked meals, sometimes the lazy food is fun 😛.

Here's our food for the week:

Clam Chowder (7 servings @$7.00/ea): $49

Sandwiches (4 sandwiches @$5.00/ea): $20

Pizza: $8

Total: $77.00

Tax: $6.35

Grand Total:  $83.35

 

PIZZA 

Take and Bake Pizza

The pizza was a bargain find from the grocery store. I bought two and put one into the freezer. The other one was in the fridge for us to eat sometime this week. Sometime this week turned into 5 hours later. This pizza is a 12 inch pizza. The kids ate about half of it by themselves and then I ate a few small slices as a second dinner after working. We ended up with 2 slices leftover in the refrigerator which will probably end up being a meal for one child. I paid less than $8 for it but we're assuming this was a takeout price which is why it's priced accordingly. 

  

CLAM CHOWDER

Clam Chowder

This is the only truly homemade item on the menu for this week. I decided to make clam chowder because we had a surplus of potatoes I needed to use before it became expensive compost. The recipe I use is one I wrote down a long time ago when we first got married. I can't find the exact one on the internet anymore but this one comes pretty close in terms of ingredients and proportions. We don't have fancy bread bowls at our house but some toasted bread goes along way with this chowder. 

 

SANDWICH

My daughter's sandwich for lunch. 

I don't know about you but sandwiches are kind of a treat for us. We don't eat them often, and when we do, it's usually when we go out of town. I ate them all the time during the summer as a kid and got super tired of deli meat between bread, but now as an adult, it's a nice change from hot meals. 

I found deli meat at the grocery store marked down when I went this week. I guess I've never gone at the right time or wandered the section to find it, but this time, I found it and decided to get some. Sandwiches aren't a go-to food for us because it's not budget-friendly when done well. Yes, I could buy the cheap meat and cheese and put something together for a few dollars, but that's really not worth it in my opinion. If I'm going to buy deli meat for a sandwich, I'm going to be paying around $7+ per pound for my deli meat. Finding this as a markdown item meant I was able to get my meat for closer to $4 per pound. That's almost half! 

About a month ago I actually came across some marked down packaged deli meat which I threw in the freezer to save for later. It ended up coming in handy for our trip this past weekend. It was a partial experiment because I had never frozen deli meat before. I was curious how it would turn out. With proper thawing (must be all the way - not a single ice crystal), it still made a decent sandwich. The added mayo and mustard helped to maintain the moisture within the sandwich. If you eat the deli meat by itself (which I did eat a small bite,) it would have been slightly drier than fresh deli meat due to the change in moisture content due to freezing and thawing. I asked my husband if he would go for frozen deli meat again and he said he would. In the future, I'll keep an eye out for deli meat markdowns and then freeze them. There might be a post in the future specifically on freezing deli meat and how to keep it manageable. Someone may have to remind me. 

I love good homemade dishes, but sometimes, we could all use some lazy food. 😄

Rice Krippy Treats

Months ago, I found Bluey cereal at the grocery store. It was on sale, and it looked almost identical to Kix cereal which my kids really enjoyed. I read the ingredients and saw that the color they added was a natural dye. I asked my kids if they would eat it, they said yes, and I bought a box.  

  

Well, friends, my children struggled through that first bag. I even ate multiple servings myself and it tasted identical to Kix. But my kids just didn't ask for it nor did they want it when I offered. So somehow, the first bag was eaten, and the second bag was left unopened in our pantry for months. I had actually forgotten we still had it because when I reorganize our pantry, I put whatever I can in whatever packaging I have to maximize storage space. For most people, this is a nightmare because they forget what they have. For me, it works and nothing expires for the most part - I think. This bag of Bluey cereal was hiding inside a Cinnamon Toast Crunch box.

Recently, the idea hit to me to turn this cereal into a marshmallow treat - basically a rice krispie with subbed Bluey cereal.  I went to the grocery store, got a bag of marshmallows, and made this with my kids. 

Three ingredients! 10 oz bag of marshmallows. 6 cups of cereal (I added more but you need to watch as you stir it in). 2 TB butter (I might add slightly more next time).

 

I remember making this treat as a child with my mother exactly once. To my memory, that was the one and only time I've ever made it by myself. For some reason I was under the impression I needed to use a nonstick pot to make this with to help the marshmallow stick less. When I shared this with a friend, she told me she makes hers in stainless steel pots. I will concur the nonstick did not make a difference and will use a stainless steel pot next time. It just gives me the flexibility to grab any cooking utensil instead of having to limit my utensils in order to improve longevity of the surface of the pot. 

I don't know if anyone doesn't know this trick, but saving butter wrappers to use as pan greasers in baking is genius. My friend taught me this trick in my early 20s because she baked immensely more than I had ever. Baking is still not something I enjoy to this day, but I have used this trick multiple times when I do bake. 

My kids gladly ate my homemade "rice krippy" treats. That's what we call them in our house because our kids couldn't pronounce the "-sp" cluster properly when younger. We've kept this silly pronunciation because it makes it more fun. Yes, my husband and I are two grown adults who will still say rice krippy treats to each other because it's cute and funny. Our kids can pronounce it correctly now, but it's still fun to keep this pronunciation alive in our house.