a lot of home cooking, at least for me and my sister was going on...
We did have one mini dinner with our neighbors for Saint Patrick's Day. I cooked two corned beef roasts in my two crockpots. One used a red ale for the braising liquid and the other did not. At this point, I don't remember which was which but both corned beef dishes had onions, celery, carrots and cabbage. Side dish was salad (it's in the back of the photo below) and roasted mini Yukon Golds.
Also in March, my sis and I made Vietnamese inspired marinated pork chops with corn. Hella corn. Ha ha.
We threw together some ingredients like soy sauce, mirin, lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar, garlic powder, pepper, and some other stuff we thought would taste good. The thick cut pork chops were marinated overnight and then fried on the stove the next day. My sister cut them up with kitchen food scissors to make it easier to eat. OMG, my mouth is watering just seeing this photo again. Just look at the caramelization on those things! Plus the fat layer...
Butter leaf lettuce salad was in plastic ware for this shot because I'm classy like that. Sometimes, not everything needs to look good for the photo, ha ha.
Afritada made with drummettes and wings. Frozen peas were put in last. This is one of my favorite comfort foods.
Tomatoes were fresh too. No packets used. My afritada has sauteed onions, garlic, chunked potatoes and peas. No carrots like what some folks might do. I never grew up eating mine with carrots
April: Lemon noodles - Haven't made this in awhile. Here is one of it's first appearances in the blog here. Lemons were from my parents' tree. Simple recipe using only a few ingredients.
Leftovers later that week included a bag of dumplings + those noodles, crusted tilapia filets, roasted potatoes and afritada.
My sis wanted to make chili with macaroni (she used shells). We enjoyed it with chips!
Another time, she made spaghetti and meatballs in the Instant Pot. She is much more adept at cooking with that than I am. Although this was really good, I did not like how soft the noodles were. Like they were cafeteria school food soft. I know some folks like that texture, but I like al dente. The Italian meatballs were from a frozen bag from Smart and Final. This lasted several days between four of us.
Another dish my sister threw together were Chicken tenders with assorted vegetables (broccoli, red and green bell peppers, onions, zucchini and green onions).
Because the pork chops were a hit, we made them again. This time, the pork chop pieces were smaller so we didn't feel the need to cut them up. They were served with the vegetables below plus bibingka that I made and some ube cream cheese pan de sal that we were gifted from a friend.
This was clams, corn and kale made by my sis:
One of my friends made a fruit salad involving these ingredients. Mint was from our backyard by the way.
The fruits used were fresh sliced pineapple, fresh orange and diced jicama which isn't a fruit, but a root vegetable.
This was a refreshing salad that had a tiny bit of a kick due to the Tajin powder. The jicama gave it a nice crunch too!
Also in May, I made pancit bihon several times (once with glass noodles instead of the regular bihon). This was one of those times bihon noodles were used.
Vegetables were: sauteed onions with garlic, sliced carrots, celery and zucchini (that was a first). Because I had no cabbage, I used bok choy. Meats were shrimp and Chinese sausage.
TC woke up early one of the weekend and made us breakfast tacos - this was nice! She used eggs and thick cut bacon. This was pretty hearty.
Roasted sweet potatoes with pink salad and smoked paprika powder. I liked how these turned out...Crisp in some parts (nice caramelization) with that smoky taste.
Bored, I also made homemade hummus using canned garbanzos. Served with pita chips from Trader Joe's and sliced celery and carrots. Healthy'ish.
Wanting to use up what we had in the fridge, I cobbled together a dish using eggplant, red and yellow bells, carrots, and peas in a tikka masala sauce. That sauce was something I had bought months before and forgot about until I was rummaging through the pantry trying to find something else.
I have to say that with having to stay home and trying to limit our exposure outside at the stores, we really did our best to make do with what we had. When one of us shopped, we made sure to buy provisions that would last several weeks. We rarely threw away food and made sure to eat the oldest stuff first before we made anything new. This is what should have been happening all along. It took a pandemic for some, including us, to be more cognizant of our consumption and food waste. We were and are still fortunate to be able to have access to fresh food. It also helps having a sister that can cook well.
June - With the weather still cool in the morning but getting sunny in the afternoon, I often did not feel like cooking that much. This is when spring roll wraps become handy.
The only cooked items were the proteins - shrimp and Spam, if you could call Spam a 'protein' (heh heh). Everything else is fresh. Yes, I expended some energy in peeling, slicing, shredding and washing the vegetables and herbs but for the most part, this is a pretty easy to make meal. It just looks like a lot of work because of the components.
Apple slaw salad (here is my old post with the recipe; wow, that was in 2013!) - I made enough for us, my sister and our neighbor across the street.
My sis, by May, had moved out to her own place. She made her specialty, pancit palabok (noodles are different than bihon for you non Filipinos). Bihon are very thin rice noodles while palabok are rice and cornstarch based and much thicker in appearance. This is the takeout container she gave us with palabok topped with the usual suspects - boiled eggs, shrimp and green onions. Missing is the minced fried garlic and the crushed pork rinds. She kept that separate so it wouldn't get soggy.
Lemongrass chicken was on the agenda sometime in late May. I marinated the skin on chicken thighs overnight before baking it in the oven. The meat was so tender and fragrant from the marinade. I think I will grow lemongrass again in the backyard but in a container so it won't be out of control. Lemongrass can get that way, as we found out.
From my parents - a container full of marinated and fried bangus which we enjoyed later with my cilantro lime fried rice and tomatoes from our garden.
We hadn't had fish fried this way in a long time. This was a hit, thanks to my parents.
Seafood two ways - garlic shrimp with smoked paprika and pan fried soy/citrus marinated salmon with pan roasted Shisito peppers. This dish went pretty quickly here...
A more recent meal when we did wraps again with Spam and garlic shrimp. The herbs included purple perilla, Thai basil and mint. Instead of leaf lettuce, we improvised with cut up Romaine. Not traditional I know but we had what we had.
This was my attempt at a nicely rolled wrap. Not as tight or neatly closed but it works!
My sister made us red rice, and chicken kelaguen with her homemade finadene sauce.
I will need to learn how to make that chicken kelaguen for myself!
There were more meals of course, but not nice enough looking for me to consider putting in here. We are continuing to be more prudent with our food waste. I'm composting the scraps (Bert calls it "gopher snacks"/we did have a gopher problem a few years ago) and putting them out in the garden to decompose under the soil. We are not really doing a lot of take out but more just cooking at home.
How have you all been doing? Has this pandemic changed your food habits and your routine?
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