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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!
I just had a baby, so I've been waking up extra early every morning to take care of the house chores, the dogs, etc. so my wife can focus on feeding the boy.
This has afforded me more time to cook breakfast, so I've been making eggs and hash browns for me and my wife, like, literally everyday. Today I made omelets with cheese, onion, tomato, and salami.
Breakfast is great. Such simple meals with a great effort to deliciousness ratio.
Congrats! Enjoy your time with your new son!
Breakfast food is some of the best food. Many of these "what are you eating threads" have a comment from me saying "I am here once again to talk to you about eggs". I love a good breakfast burrito, or eggs and hashbrowns, or eggs on toast, or eggs and sausage... even though I almost never eat anything at breakfast time.
what a blessed time! congratulations : )
what's your favourite way of making hash brown?
Thank you :)
I have a stovetop griddle, so I like to make it the same way we did it at the diner I worked at when I was growing up:
Big puddle of oil.
Slap on a thick pile of shredded potato. Salt/pepper.
Wait patiently. Enjoy the sizzles.
Once browned, flip it over.
If ordered extra crispy, let the other side cook for the same time as the first side.
Else, cook for one more minute and serve.
That sounds super delicious. Any specific prep for the potato shreds? Rinse off starch? Sugar water or salt water soak?
@chocobean
I finally got upstate to use my mom's freeze dryer. I did a load of candy, and then a load of ramen mix ins, like I had planned. I actually was able to get to an Asian grocer (all glory to my sister, who drove 3 hours to make that happen).
For the candy, I did skittles, nerds gummies, peach rings, and some lifesavers at 150 degrees without pre freezing. The skittles and nerds gummies were done really fast, but the peach gummies needed more time to puff up, so I left them overnight (the rest needed to pre-freeze anyway)
I ended up freeze drying cooked salmon, corn, peas, onions, enoki, beech, shitake, and oyster mushrooms, baby corn, Napa cabbage, bean sprouts, scallions, pickled daikon, a little dried squid, and some thin sliced Narutomaki. There were a few other things I had intended to try (like roasted garlic, seaweed, lemongrass) , but I was prepping until 3 am, so I was a bit forgetful getting things into the freezer and then onto trays. Everything that came in large pieces was cut down small, excluding the beech mushrooms (which were just separated)
All that took around 24 hours to dry. For eating out of hand, I liked the corn, peas, onion, scallions. The salmon and squid was awesome, but the naruto flavor was a bit odd without the moisture. The daikon was too salty, but it was too salty when wet too, so I think I'll try a different brand next time. The mushrooms had a bit of a weird aftertaste to me. I think they might have been better pre-sautéed.
I tried the first mix today rehydrated (salmon, corn, peas, onion, narutomaki ) and it was pretty good! The salmon and naruto took a little longer to rehydrate than the cook time of the ramen, so after the first piece, I pushed them down past the noodles to wait a bit. The texture for naruto was a bit odd, but I haven't had it fresh in a long time, so I'm not positive if that was normal or not.
For the candy, I loved the nerds gummies (like solid cotton candy with the nerds adding extra crunch). The skittles were good, the peach rings didn't inflate as much as the nerds gummies but were still good. Some of the lifesavers gummies inflated and others did nothing.
I also tried some of my mom's other projects. She had freeze dried cheddar, which was like a cheez-it turned up to 11. It would probably be fun to do sliced parm or something. Or powdering a flavorful cheese and folding it into bread dough? She also had some roasted golden beet chips, which were fun, but they were pretty thick sliced... That was a bit drying and I think they may have been better thinner, and maybe with some vinegar as seasoning. A little oil also might have improved the flavor.
Oooooh!! *vibrates with glee after reading your opening line
I'd say that was a rousing success!? Did you feel like the prepping was too much work? That's so awesome your sister grove 3 hours to get a bunch of stuff!
There are some brands of pickled daikon which are extremely salty, and the primary use is "one piece --> entire bowl of plain congee", used like salted duck eggs. Nauroto being kinda weird on both fronts is a suprise but I supposed it shouldn't have been. So happy to hear you found dried squid awesome :D
Your research results have been added to my bookmarked link collection that I hope one day to have a Harvest Right to put to use. Thank you so much for sharing!
The prep was a lot of work, but that was in part because I was juggling using the machine for the first time, running the candy cycle (and then packing it into mylar bags), and unpacking all the groceries at the same time. We had only gotten back to the house around 10 pm as well. We also made the choice to do very small pieces to make sure that they would finish in time while still being able to do a large volume. Another factor was that my mom was out of the plastic bags that we had planned to freeze in, so we spent a bunch of time improvising containers for that. It also didn't help that we did /so many/ different things in one batch.
We did realize that zipper quart bags were the exact width of the tray, so if I were to do this again, I'll probably pick up a box of quart storage bags and just spread the food flat to freeze it. If I were to be doing this super frequently, I'd probably find a container roughly half as long with the same width to make fitting stuff in the freezer easier. That, and maybe silicone mats cut to size.
Overall, I don't think it was much more work than say, dehydrating similar foods would be, and definitely less work than canning such a large array of different foods. The frozen peas, corn and onions I dumped directly on the tray were very easy.
What was a bit of a nuisance was packing -- I was doing it with mylar bags, which was a bit of a nuisance. I see there are scoops meant for packing into mylar bags, and if this were my regular hobby, I would probably buy one. Or at least something like a canning funnel.
Make almond milk at home. The usual method of soaking - blending takes too much work to squeeze liquids out at the end. Much easier method: use my burr grinder to grind dry blanched almonds into powder / paste, put it in tea strainer, fill cup with hot water, stir, flavour, drink. Very very little solids are left over, fewer things to rinse, and much faster. Works for cashews, peanuts, sesame too, I'd imagine.
Rice milk....rice milk I might have to gently toast the powder first since the others are pre-cooked.
Sheet pan shawarma!
I had been assigned a social worker for unrelated reasons and she just so happened to have been a professional chef in the past. So I kinda of have a personal chef!? It's pure luck and I still can't quite believe it lol
First dish we made was bulgur with pesto and feta cheese, and marinated chicken
I would like to take this opportunity to honor the humble walnut, which I am cracking and eating as I watch the local sports team before bed.
I never understood why my grandfather would spend so much time shelling walnuts each night. Such a calm, methodical process. Now in my 50s, I find that my digestion can’t handle large amounts of raw nuts in a short amount of time. Instead, I wrestle with stubbornly-strong shells and get to liberate and consume a single nut each minute.
Much better for me.