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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!
To unironically embody the conversation in this thread, I've been making a ton of congee.
I started going through the DuoLingo Chinese lessons, and one of the first words it taught was zhou, or porridge, and I thought "well, that's weird; how often are they eating porridge that it's the third word I'm learning?"
Then I noticed a porridge button on my Zojirushi rice cooker (super entry level, NS-WXC10, use it daily, love it more than my dog), and I decided it was time to do some research.
I've been making rice porridge every morning. I'm a big fan of gruel to begin with, and expanding my options is exciting. For about a week, I've been making half a cup of white rice (5 cents!) into porridge and mixing it with random stuff in my kitchen. I cook a lot of Asian food anyway, so I've already got a number of standard congee ingredients: fermented garlic, chili crisp, fermented bean paste, and a wide variety of soy sauces, vinegars, and bouillons. Just like with oatmeal, though, my favorite so far is soy sauce and curry. I love how the savory saltiness of soy sauce sets off the curry. Honestly, I think it might be the greatest flavor combination in the world.
ETA: Just had the best yet: Totole Granulated Mushroom Bouillon, sesame seed oil, Nori Komi Furikake Multi-Purpose Rice Seasoning. Just stellar.
What do you mean by "curry" in this context? Are you talking about curry leaf, a spice blend, or some kind of prepared substance (bricks, flakes, premade curry, etc). I'm guessing it's one of the first two given that you're adding more salty ingredients.
A spice blend, yeah, usually, but sometimes a Thai or Japanese style paste. I tend to go for low sodium varieties because I prefer to manage my salt levels separately.
I go through kind of a ridiculous amount of curry. Incidentally, I'm using ranch dressing mixed with curry powder as a dipping sauce for pizza right this very minute.
Been pretty good and consistent in packing my lunch for the office instead of buying junk food at the food court. My go-to has been: pita, hummus, and fresh veggies. Two of the smaller pita breads (wholewheat) seem enough for me. I buy the thin ones, not the fluffy ones. A small container of hummus from the store goes straight into my lunch bag, and I'll eat maybe half of it for lunch. The box of veggies includes: 1-2 cucumbers (the small ones, not the giant one), a handful of cherry tomatoes or 1 regular tomato, carrots (a handful of "baby" carrots - or equivalent regular carrot, cut), some olives, and if I have it, a 2-4 slices of smoked tofu (this is a new discovery, but limited availability at the regular stores; may need to check some of the Asian supermarkets for better options). This has proven to be a decent enough lunch that does not even need heating up, and since it is free of meat and dairy, it feels light and doesn't make me sleepy or too full.
I've also been quite consistent with my breakfast for a while. It's overnight oats, using oat milk with zero sugar (preferably). I add a couple of spoons of a seed mix I make myself: chia, hemp, flax, and pollen granules (if I can find them - I can only find this at the farmers market usually, and frankly it's VERY expensive, so I do not have this all the time). Maybe I should look online to see if I can find any sellers that sell this for a more reasonable price. I don't mind supporting the local businesses of course, but this item in particular seems very very expensive given the quantity you get. In the morning, I add some fresh fruit to it and some walnuts. My favorite fruit to add: apple, blueberries, or banana.
Oatmeal with oatmilk feels really ironic! But I can't fault you for it because there was a long time when I was doing the exact same thing.
Actually, just the other day I made hot oatmilk with my homemade soymilk the other day and I was surprised at how amazingly creamy it came out. I don't think it would work quite as well with overnight oats, but it might be worth trying.
I haven't ever had bee pollen, but I find that Azure Standard has a good price for most things, assuming you are in the US and are OK with supporting an extremely Christian organization
I’m in Canada, but thank for sharing.
Yeah it sounds ironic. I tried with almond milk, water, soy milk. I find this brand of oat milk and it’s 0% sugar and I kept getting that. Works with anything really. Tastes a little bland with water tho. My wife sometimes adds maple syrup but that feels like dessert to me. The fruit I add seem to do the trick for something sweet.
I've been making soymilk. It's something I've generally avoided even though it's right up my alley because I hated the heating process, in which I always managed to scorch and ruin it. But this Christmas I got a $50 Amazon gift card, so I bought an extremely cheap soymilk maker that included a heating element and a microcontroller to orchestrate the grinding and heating process. I didn't have much confidence that it would be able to grind the beans well enough, but I have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the okara thus far.
The only problem with it is that the instructions that came with it are sorely lacking. There is a "function" button that doesn't have any real explaination of what it's supposed to actually do; it just cycles through a bunch of different numbers. I would like to have it heat longer to get rid of the "green" herbal bean scent to make it more neutral like commercial soymilks. I did some research and this cheap thing still seems to hit pretty far above it's price category, because most of these machines are both more expensive and don't offer any heating elements. But I'm still dreaming of owning that $450 Joyoung machine that not only grinds and heats, but filters out the pulp. My machine saves quite a few steps, but I long for the "does it all" solution.
I really aught to try making almond and oat milks too, but I'm really enjoying the richness of homemade soy so far. If anyone has a recommendation of where to get good quality beans I'd be interested.
Gonna share my recipe for Texas Fried Rice, which I've gotten back into eating a lot lately. The backstory is senior year of college I lived with 3 Korean friends, and as a white boy who didn't really experience asian foods very much I was pretty uninformed. One time I walked through the kitchen while one of them was cooking fried rice, and later attempted to make fried rice using only that knowledge for some reason. Later I discovered this is nothing even close to actual fried rice ha, but it's one of my favorite dishes that my inexperienced self makes, especially since it's my creation.
Ingredients per serving:
1-1.5 links good sausage (should be meaty. My personal fave is Opa's Jalapeno Cheddar, but this may be very regional. Sorry to California but you don't have any good sausage everyone, moving back to Texas and finally being able to make this again is how the dish got its new name ha).
1 cup fresh white rice
Thick pad of butter
Some frozen mixed veggies (the peas/corn/carrot mix) ~1/2 cup
Shredded cheese, big handful (I prefer Mexican)
Instructions:
Melt butter in pan. Chop sausage into semi-circles, fry in butter until crispy. Meanwhile, microwave frozen veggies 2 mins to mostly thaw them. Add veggies to pan and cook for a little while. Add rice, and use two wooden spoons to thoroughly mix other ingredients in. Sprinkle large handful of cheese on top, mix again to mix cheese into rice, and serve.
Simple, easy, has rice and vegetables. You can also season, but the sausage and cheese usually adds enough for me.