14
votes
What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
What food and drinks have you been enjoying (or not enjoying) recently? Have you cooked or created anything interesting? Tell us about it!
Something that's been my go-to since early in the pandemic, when I needed to have no decisions involved in making breakfast: a cup of frozen fruit, especially a mix like raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries has a ton of fiber for the calories. A single fried egg on toast with a slice of American cheese. Protein, carbs, fat, fiber. No thinking necessary, and nothing that goes bad quickly or requires much attention to prepare.
I've been smoking meats and bbqing a bunch. I've tried all kinds of things at this point and am slowly growing my outdoor cooking setup. The most recent thing I've smoked is a spatchcocked chicken. Brined it, patted dry, liberally applied a dry rub, used some apple wood pellets and got the temp to about 155F and put some BBQ sauce. Finished up till the breast achieved 165F internal. Total cook time was about 1h15m.
The next thing I might do is setup a new Santa Maria style grill and maybe do some carne asada of some kind. Not sure cut I'll use though. Maybe some street corn? Make some fresh tortillas and pico de gallo to go with it too.
Made a pretty tasty chicken stew in my slow cooker, had white beans, Italian sausage, and spinach in it too.
Got the recipe from america's test kitchen, the base for the soup part is made with chicken broth, white wine, onions, garlic, fennel bulbs, tomato paste, flour, and red pepper flakes. Might add more red pepper flakes to give it a little more of a kick, but overall it's like a really cozy chicken soup, and not as dense as the stews I usually make.
Looking forward to eating it during the week! :D I made way too much
Salmon. Salmon all summer. On the grill! It’s so simple and quick, the whole meal is done in 20 minutes without any preparations at all.
I love that I can keep what I need in the freezer and storage and it doesn’t go bad so I’ll always have some ready. And I really love that I don’t have to remember to prepare anything up front - didn’t have to remember to take the fish out of the freezer in the morning before work etc.
First, put on boiling water for rice.
Second, take Salmon and Edamame straight from the freezer. Salmon comes in packets of four pieces, so cut away one or two and put rest back.
Put edamame in a colander under the sink with running cold water to unfreeze it (yeah I guess I don’t know the proper cooking terms in English).
Turn on the heat for a pan for the edamame.
Third, go outside and turn on the grill.
Fourth, back inside, I salt the rice water and put the rice in. Start a timer for 10 minutes.
The edamame is also ready for the pan on fairly high heat. I use a little butter. You don’t need to do much with the edamame, I just light to get the heat up properly and see a little sear on a few pieces. I’ll add some salt and a small dash of some good Teryiaki sauce. If it’s whole edamame beans I’ll add some extra salt and also sesame seeds.
I’ll basically see the edamame done now and just put the heat on lowest.
I have a small carrying tray where I’ll put all I need: Salt, pepper, garlic powder and oil for the fish. Platter and utensils. Something to drink. A scissor. And the salmon packets. Some paper towels. From putting edamame on to now it’s been 5 minutes.
Fifth, bring everything outside. Cut open the salmon packets and season the fish. If the salmon has skin on one side, I’ll add a little oil (and use a little lower temperature since I’ll barbecue on one side only, so may add 5 minutes to the total).
Put the fish on the grill and prepare the table.
From I put on the rice, it’s been 10 minutes now. Start a new timer for 10 minutes.
Sixth, go inside and turn off oven. I’ll take the rice and the edamame into some tupperware-like containers that retains the heat fairly well. Clean up pans and kitchen. Bring the containers outside, and the bottle with something nice outside if it’s the weekend.
Relax. Read. Drink something good. If the edamame was whole beans then that’s a great starter.
Check the salmon when it’s a couple of minutes left on the , and use judgement from there on out. I like to keep it as juicy as possible.
And seventh, take the salmon off the grill and onto your platter, add the rice and some edamame, and enjoy and healthy meal.
Food: Tons of salad, I sowed too much "cut and come again" lettuce earlier this year and it's a constant battle to keep up with the supply! Had it with roasted beetroot, butternut squash, goat's cheese and a walnut vinaigrette tonight which is a really nice vegetarian one that I'll keep in rotation.
Drink: Iced Thai tea and mango lassi. We've pretty much come to the end of peak mango season now but I've been enjoying it while it lasts, they're perfect summer drinks.
Made some bomb chicken parmesan last night. I keep it extremely simple and quick. Thin cut chicken breasts, coat in olive oil, dunk them through italian seasoned breadcrumbs and grated parmesan mixture, bake them on a baking sheet, put some marinara (my fam likes light on the sauce) and mozzarella on top for the last 5-10 minutes, serve with thin spaghetti and veggies.
Been grilling a lot of BBQ chicken recently. I'm new to grilling so it's been a learning experience for me but I'm really happy with the results.
I've been using chicken breasts (because we always have some around) sliced into equally thick pieces, brining in salt water, hitting it with some oil and pepper, then going to the grill. After about 4 minutes I flip them and brush on a layer of BBQ sauce. Another 4 minutes and I flip and apply again. Then one more flip and cook until done (I still use a thermometer because I don't trust my senses).
The sauce gets nice and caramelized and the chicken is juicy but with a nice crusty exterior. Delicious!
We get a veggie box that has had eggplant in it for the past 3 weeks straight, and it had a whole pumpkin. I’ve made a big veggie lentil stew, an eggplant and pumpkin curry, and I’m planning a veggie moussaka.
I still will have half an eggplant and quarter of a pumpkin left. If anyone has any vegetarian dish ideas I’m all ears! Bloody sick of eggplant at this point but I don’t want to be wasteful
My girlfriend and I made some midwestern style tacos.
Got a pound of 80/20 ground beef, cooked it up in a pan with a packet of taco seasoning. We dressed them with some shredded cheese, pickled onions, salsa, sour cream, and some Meijer taco sauce and then had some refried beans, Mexican rice, and some Caesar salad as sides. Always been a favorite comfort food of mine and my family used to make ‘em every month when I was kid.
Indian inspired pizza and cheesy bread. You get to choose your spice level and I went one step below the top and been sweating. It is so good, though! Lamb and jalapenos is amazing.
Indian spiced lamb and jalapenos on a pizza sounds fantastic, I'll have to give this a try!
Up until pretty recently I was kinda tight on time, so I had fashioned a sort of budget-french-onion soup.
Using one of those containers you get from a chinese place (the quart-sized, round cups for soup), you can actually cook some rice in a microwave (follow the bag), by heating it to boiling and then covering it for a time.
Then, add three cups of water and some french onion soup mix (whichever tastes nicest to you), mix that in, and add one cap of cider vinegar. Do a pinch of basil too, the fresher the better. Heat that for about 3 more minutes, and then add a handful of fried onions (you could do it yourself, but part of it being budget is these come from a container lol).
The size of it means it's a lot, the stuff you use is filling, and it's all in all about a 15 minute thing to do.
Normally I do a better job of properly cooking stuff but I've actually liked this a lot so I've been tweaking it. I found cider vinegar that's flavored with different berries, so I'm trying to see if a particular flavor really adds a lot to it.
I've been eating a lot of bologna sandwiches lately. Which sounds boring, and probably is, but it's been interesting for me because they used to be one of the only meals I could afford, so I ate them constantly and got so sick of them. I got to a place in my life where I could afford to not have to eat them anymore, and never had another one again for about 12 years. Here recently though, I was at the store and noticed the bologna in the aisle and kind of mused to myself, "wouldn't it be funny if I had one of those sandwiches I was so tired of back then?" so I bought some, and whaddya know, I actually really enjoy them when I don't have to eat 5 or 6 a week.
This is the time of year I break out the ice cream maker. So far this summer I've been trying g to perfect French vanilla, but I did do a black cherry ice cream a few weeks ago. In years past I've done everything from mint chip to a watermelon sorbet.