What Did We Eat Today?

[biakbiak]

5 hours ago, Gramto6 said:

I have a question re these meal kits. Are the items frozen, fresh, shelf stable packaging? I live alone and have limited refrigerator/freezer storage space. Apparently most supply meals for a minimum of 2 so I would have lots of leftovers. Add to that I am in the boonies in MT and many/most don't even deliver here. Is this something I should explore more? Is it worth it? It would be nice to not have to go out to shop so much, but I don't want to waste a lot of food either.

So I am not an expert because I only use the free trials! But yes they nearly all arrive fresh and packed with ice packs with even the self stable Ingredients not packed in a convenient way to store and you probably can’t get them where you live! 

It’s not a meal kit. And I don’t know what you like in food but something several of my friends and my parents who live in more rural areas have got into Omsom. They are shelf stable, Asian-American owned meal “starter-kits” and lovely for people who can’t get a ton of different spices but still might want to try things. 

Edited April 1, 2021 by biakbiak

[chessiegal]

10 hours ago, Gramto6 said:

I have a question re these meal kits. Are the items frozen, fresh, shelf stable packaging? I live alone and have limited refrigerator/freezer storage space. Apparently most supply meals for a minimum of 2 so I would have lots of leftovers. Add to that I am in the boonies in MT and many/most don't even deliver here. Is this something I should explore more? Is it worth it? It would be nice to not have to go out to shop so much, but I don't want to waste a lot of food either.

I've been using Blue Apron since last April because it was hard to find protein in the grocery stores. I get 3 meals per week for 2. At first, I didn't know you could choose your 3 meals from 12 options. I believe you can skip weeks, but I've never tried. All the meals would be good as leftovers, so 3 meals per week for 1 person would get you 6 meals per week. It comes packed in ice packs. I've thought about stopping it, but it's so convenient to have 3 meals I don't have to plan or shop for. I've found their customer service to be excellent. On rare occasions they'll be a missing ingredient, and they refund for it. One week they missed a zucchini, and refunded $9.99 for it. I've yet to spend that amount of money for a zucchini. The box arrives on Fridays by 9 pm. I've had 3 times in the past year they missed the 9 pm deadline, and they refund the entire cost. All 3 arrived a few hors late. Usually, at least 1 recipe calls for a few cloves of garlic, so I get a head of garlic every week. I've learned how to freeze crushed garlic.

If they can't deliver to your address, they'll let you know. If you can get FedEx or UPS, they can get it to you.

[chessiegal]

Beef and udon noodle stir fry.

[chessiegal]

Picked up shrimp and mango salads that are back on the menu for spring from a favorite place near us.

[MargeGunderson]

Pad Thai and fried wontons. 

[annzeepark914]

Grilled pork chops (grilled inside due to the mega winds), Spanish Potato Salad, and baked tomatoes.

[AimingforYoko]

Aldi's had boneless, skinless chicken thighs on sale, so I made Salt & Pepper Chicken with fried rice.

[isalicat]

Last night was a Niman Ranch no nitrate, uncured boneless ham with potatoes au gratin (thank you Mark Bittman in the NY Times for the perfect recipe), tossed green salad and then chocolate pudding cake topped with sliced fresh strawberries and real whipped cream. I now feel like a parade float 🙂

Ah well...Easter comes but once a year. Alleluia!

[annzeepark914]

Grilled burgers & sausages, along with potato salad and an adapted version of Ina's watermelon, arugula & feta cheese salad (used mixed French salad greens & gorgonzola with the watermelon).

Edited April 6, 2021 by annzeepark914

[biakbiak]

Hot soppressata, roasted red peppers, and  provolone Stromboli and an arugula salad.

[annzeepark914]

I made a spinach fritatta for supper tonight, plus a tossed salad.  

[biakbiak]

Slow roasted salmon with a lemon dill sauce, couscous and asparagus. 

[isalicat]

Actually went into the office (I have a new job! My office is entirely my own and although I won't go into details, the only people I encounter are entirely vaccinated and also socially distance). So brought the last of my Easter Virginia ham, now in slices on a sandwich of pure sourdough with some mayo, lots of fresh cucumber slices and a huge heap of spring greens. I don't usually do sandwiches (due to the need for bread = flour = carbs/salt) but this was a great coda to the Easter season of eating 🙂

[biakbiak]

Butter chicken and aloo paratha to use up some leftover mashed potatoes, and rice.

[Bastet]

I have just enough leftover ribeye steak (that was seasoned with Montreal steak seasoning and a little extra granulated garlic and grilled) to make two tacos, so dinner will be soft corn tacos with ribeye, cilantro, red onion, and guacamole.  The salad will be romaine, red peppers, cotija, pepitas, and cilantro pepita dressing.

I just made the guacamole, and I'm currently having a Cadillac margarita as an appetizer.  🙂

 

[annzeepark914]

WITW is a Cadillac Margarita?  Well, tonight I'm on my own, & feeling too lazy, so I made a favorite from my childhood: Campbell's tomato soup (but with some seasonings) & home-made croutons (from a baguette). I love when the hot croutons sizzle when they hit the soup. 

Edited April 19, 2021 by annzeepark914

[AimingforYoko]

6 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:

WITW is a Cadillac Margarita?

A margarita with a high-end tequila. (Sometimes Grand Marnier is involved)

Edited April 15, 2021 by AimingforYoko

[Bastet]

16 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:

WITW is a Cadillac Margarita? 

A margarita with a shot of Grand Marnier added.

[biakbiak]

Cleaning out the freezer and discovered some homemade meatballs and Dutch crunch rolls so made some tomato sauce and did meatball sandwiches with provolone and a salad with a pesto vinaigrette. 

[annzeepark914]

We had baked French toast with syrup, chicken sausages, bacon (for me), and blueberries. The French toast is made with fresh orange juice + zest--it's delicious and light.

Edited April 19, 2021 by annzeepark914

[MargeGunderson]

17 hours ago, biakbiak said:

Cleaning out the freezer and discovered some homemade meatballs and Dutch crunch rolls so made some tomato sauce and did meatball sandwiches with provolone and a salad with a pesto vinaigrette. 

I wish my freezer excavation resulted in something so delicious! I usually just find frozen broccoli.

[chessiegal]

Cheesy pork chorizo enchiladas with rice and red bell pepper.

[biakbiak]

In freezer clean-out day two: a ham and white bean soup that was so tasty I am going to probably make it again in the next week or so and freeze the leftovers! Luckily where I live 85% of the year is heavy soup weather. To add something not from the freezer  homemade sourdough.

Edited April 20, 2021 by biakbiak

[chessiegal]

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. We're both fully vaccinated, but I'm still not comfortable eating out.

I picked up blackened shrimp taco platters with black beans and rice.

[biakbiak]

Happy anniversary! 
Pan bagnet with some yummy smoked tuna I got.

[Bastet]

Venezuelan take-out tonight, as I didn't feel like cooking - two mini arepas (one cochino frito and one reina) and a salsa carioca salad.

[isalicat]

13 hours ago, Bastet said:

Venezuelan take-out tonight, as I didn't feel like cooking - two mini arepas (one cochino frito and one reina) and a salsa carioca salad.

As I am entirely unfamiliar with Venezuelan food, would you describe these dishes in a little more detail? And where does one get Venezuelan food? Is this a west coast or east coast thing or somewhere in between :)

[Bastet]

1 minute ago, isalicat said:

As I am entirely unfamiliar with Venezuelan food, would you describe these dishes in a little more detail? And where does one get Venezuelan food? Is this a west coast or east coast thing or somewhere in between :)

It's certainly not coast specific, but I'm sure Venezuelan restaurants and food trucks are more common in major cities.  (But, then, I've also had it in cities like Oxnard, Dayton, and somewhere south of Nashville I can't remember the name of, so I don't think you'd have terrible difficulty finding it in many areas.)

Arepas look like something in between a tortilla and a pancake; they're corn cakes.  In this case, they're split open and stuffed - a Venezuelan sandwich.  Cochino frito is a fried pork dish, so the cochino frito arepa is filled with fried pork bites, tomatoes, and avocado, with some sort of garlic-y sauce.  Reina is a type of chicken salad, with a mayo and avocado mixture, plus cilantro and scallions, so that's what the other one was filled with.

The salsa carioca salad consists of avocado, tomato, onion, and peppers, with a chile pepper vinaigrette using the same flavors of the salsa.

[biakbiak]

Had a craving for fish and chips but it doesn’t travel well so made some myself with coleslaw and homemade tarter sauce and lots of malt vinegar and an Anchor Steam.

[annzeepark914]

Korean Ground Beef & Noodles.

[annzeepark914]

Ina's Parmesan Chicken with the greens (salad) on top.

[Bastet]

Another night I didn't feel like cooking, so Thai delivery is on its way this time - spicy papaya salad, chicken satay, and pad thai.  Lots of food in one haul, which - along with supporting struggling restaurants during a pandemic - makes me feel better about ordering out twice in a week.

[MargeGunderson]

Pasta with roasted vegetables and ricotta. I mixed it all together, spread it on a sheet pan, topped it with some Parmesan cheese, and baked it for 20 minutes. Not bad!

[chessiegal]

Lemon-caper shrimp with orzo, zucchini, and tomatoes.

[Bastet]

Mussels were on sale this week at the fish market, so I picked some up yesterday and will make Lidia Bastianich's mussels triestina tonight.  (I was going to make them with saffron as I often do, but realized I'm out, and Trieste style is another favorite.)

I have some sourdough that a neighbor makes (she knows I don't eat much bread, so it's perfect to be able to just get two or four slices from her when I want some rather than buying a loaf I'll never get through [I don't like bread that has been frozen]), so that will be used to sop up the delicious sauce.

The salad will be arugula, radicchio, and endive with shaved parm, pine nuts, and a red wine vinaigrette.

I decided to fully embrace the Italian theme and am having cardinale (gin, Campari, and dry vermouth) as tonight's cocktail.  (I don't always pair my drink, other than requiring a margarita with Mexican food, but when I was in a gin mood tonight I thought of making negroni, and then this sprang to mind as something I like even more.)

[biakbiak]

Yogurt rice and curried shrimp.

[annzeepark914]

On 4/20/2021 at 7:07 PM, chessiegal said:

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. We're both fully vaccinated, but I'm still not comfortable eating out.

I picked up blackened shrimp taco platters with black beans and rice.

Happy anniversary!! Until you feel comfy, it's not worth dining out. We went to an Italian restaurant a couple weeks ago (first time in a year!)...at 1:30 PM. Few people were there but they seated us all far away from each other. We're vaccinated but we're not back to normal life yet.

[Kromm]

I am now a sous vide convert. 

This week I bought an immersion circulator. They originally cost $300 or $400. A few years ago, models started appearing around $150.  Now you can get one for $50, and a really good one for maybe $70-$80.

In my case: https://www.amazon.com/Inkbird-Precision-Circulator-Components-Temperature/dp/B08GKQFT6B

I know it seems like Fancy Boiling.  It's not.  I've only made two things in it so far, but both were... amazing.  The first, yesterday, was a test dish of carrots in a wasabi marinade.  Sure two hours seems like a lot to devote to cooking carrots, but 5 minutes of that was prep (just quick cutting, bagging and vacuum sealing), and the rest was unattended. The result?  It's hard to describe, because I bet very few of us have ever had utterly perfectly cooked carrots in their life. It's somehow crisp and yet easy to bite through at the same time, and the taste of the marinade undeniably penetrates all the way through the carrot.

The second was an Adobo-marinated pork Shoulder, for pulled pork. Right off the shelf from my local ALDI.  Prep was a slight hassle because I don't trust that ALDI packaging to survive being heated, so I had to rebag and vacuum seal it. Then 21 hours unattended. I mean that's even longer than in a smoker, but that's because the temp is even lower (165, literally the same temp you eventually want to get the interior to). 

Like I said, I'm a convert now.  It was literally the best cooked pork I've ever had, and I've had plenty of expertly slow smoked pork. It probably degrades in quality a bit after being refrigerated (I don't know yet), but right out of the immersion bath, it's got this buttery flawless texture that I've never really had before. 

The small downside (besides needing to be VERY patient) is I don't think these devices are very power efficient.  So it's not really a daily use thing, unless you want huge electric bills. 

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Kromm

[chessiegal]

Caesar salad, lime chili shrimp, beignets for me, bread budding for my husband - take out. My club's Community Outreach group is doing a dining for dollars for our hospital's Abuse and Domestic Violence Program. Meals were $25 with $10 going to the program.

[annzeepark914]

A glass of Chardonnay and Caesar Salad w/ grilled chicken at our little golf club restaurant (on the breezy porch, thank goodness) with my mystery book club. Haven't seen these people since the shutdown. We toasted our getting through such a challenging year.

[Bastet]

Tonight I made what a friend and I call an example of "toddler food", which probably more accurately refers to food loved by older kids, but we're child-free and we use it in describing dishes we love with basic, unhealthy, yet oh-so-satisfying flavors.

I don't have a name for it, other than cheesy chicken - a whole chicken cut up, seasoned, and browned in butter, then placed in a baking pan over a thin layer of grated Parm, and covered with a very generous pour of a simple Swiss cheese sauce (a roux made with the pan drippings, to which milk and cheese are added), then topped with another thin layer of Parm, a sprinkling of bread crumbs, and a sprinkling of paprika.

The side was steamed asparagus (for balance, heh) and the salad was mixed greens with avocado, walnuts, and balsamic vinaigrette.

[Lovecat]

On 4/19/2021 at 2:44 PM, MargeGunderson said:

I wish my freezer excavation resulted in something so delicious! I usually just find frozen broccoli.

I usually just find FREEZER BURNED broccoli ;)

We are in the middle of using up The Sauce That Would Not Die...last week I made a big crock pot full of chicken breasts and sausage in a balsamic-tomato sauce with onions and peppers.  We had it with noodles on Days 1 and 2, and then had sausage sandwiches Day 3.  We took a break from The Sauce to have some beef kebabs with rice, then I made stuffed peppers using ground turkey, rice, and more of The Sauce (plus cheese, of course).  We had that for Days 4 and 5, and there is STILL sauce left, along with 1/2 a chicken breast (as well as a goodly helping of leftover pepper stuffing).  We are definitely getting a lot of milage out of one meal!

[DearEvette]

On 4/25/2021 at 9:33 AM, Kromm said:

am now a sous vide convert. 

I love my sous vide.  I was so skeptical the first time.  But I gave it my first try on salmon and it was juicy and buttery and silky.  Just lovely.  Also did asparagus because I can NEVER get asparagus right.  And it was perfect.  Not stringy, not too soggy jut the right amount of bite and snap.

[Kromm]

1 hour ago, DearEvette said:

I love my sous vide.  I was so skeptical the first time.  But I gave it my first try on salmon and it was juicy and buttery and silky.  Just lovely.  Also did asparagus because I can NEVER get asparagus right.  And it was perfect.  Not stringy, not too soggy jut the right amount of bite and snap.

Any tips on power efficiency?  I can't help but be sure I'm burning enormous amounts of power, especially for stuff like beef and pork that go a good part of a whole day.  It's clearly worth it, but I'm just starting to wonder what people are doing. 

The tip I've read is to use an insulated water bath, an insulated ice chest or something similar.  My issues with that approach is it means what's probably too large a bath for most things (ergo more volume to heat), plus no practical way to have the top sealed. 

That's the one thing I've aced. I have two simple BPA free plastic tubs, of two different sizes (I've only used the smaller one so far), where I managed to get duplicate lids (so I could experiment on one set of lids).  I was able to trace the circumference of my immersion circulator, and cut holes in the lids the exact right size. The lids don't just still fit on, they still snap secure, with the circulator attached. 

Even though the stupid plastic probably bleeds heat like crazy, I feel that an actual secure lid is balancing that out a lot. 

I know some people just use stock pots and foil.  No clue if that's actually better. 

I'm still eating the pork shoulder now many days later, but getting to the end. It got me through a really nasty couple of days of second vaccine shot recovery that's finally done with. 

I may try chicken breast next. Maybe potatoes too.  I'm skeptical how much the later can be improved, but very hopeful with the first. My big decision is whether to sear the chicken, and if so, if I do it before or after (these ARE skinless and boneless breasts). The traditional wisdom (to sear most proteins) may not apply here. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by Kromm

[DearEvette]

They actually sell insulated sous vide kits for long cooks.  I got one because my sous vide was an extravagant christmas gift from my husband because I am a kitchen gadget ho, but I haven't yet done anything big that required a really long cook. 

[annzeepark914]

Sweet Chili Chicken w/ fresh mint, scallions, & cilantro leaves. And pilaf.

[AimingforYoko]

Cajun Shrimp Pasta w/ Garlic Cream Sauce and green beans. Costco Tuxedo cake for dessert. 

Yeah, I'm not moving for a while.

[annzeepark914]

Ina's Sicilian grilled swordfish with arugula, grilled pineapple slices, and baked potato cheese "puffs"? (can't recall the name but Wegmans makes them).

[isalicat]

I cannot take credit for this, as I was taken out to eat, but I had the most delicious seared jumbo scallops that were served with some kind of broccoli/cauliflower hybrid vegetable (anyone know what that was?) and the sauce (I asked because it was so good) was a pureed parsnip/garlic/butter/white wine mix. Best scallops ever!

[Bastet]

51 minutes ago, isalicat said:

some kind of broccoli/cauliflower hybrid vegetable (anyone know what that was?)

Probably Romanesco, as some people call that broccoflower.