Takeout with the Tos #11 and #12

It's been a busy few weeks so I haven't been able to write about the food I've cooked. Cooking has also been a little strange because I've cooked in little pockets of time throughout the week which don't fall on Sundays. For the most part, I still cooking on Sunday, but sometimes, I end up cooking on Saturday for a few hours too if it's more convenient.

Week #11

Pre-Seasoned Beef Tips $14.99

Chicken Karage (2 lbs) $25.99

Beef and Broccoli Stir-Fry $18.99

Green Bean Stir-Fry $14.99

Take-Out Total: $74.96

Tax: $6.18

Grand Total: $81.14

Chicken Karage

I've made this karage before, but the last time, we fried it using our deep fryer. This time, I fried it in the wok. I have to say, frying in the wok was much easier than I expected. Yes, it makes a mess of the kitchen but this is why our backsplash is covered in paper. When the day comes that we or our children or extended family sell this house, the stove and backsplash are going to look pristine and it's not from lack of use. It's from diligent cleaning and covering to protect from things like oil splatters. A gross kitchen is a gross kitchen....and I've seen my fair share at open houses and when we were house hunting. We're always going to have our house secrets from disasters which only we know about, but if it looks clean as far as you can tell, it's clean enough. 

This entire batch from last week went into the freezer, but I have a feeling it'll be pulled out (maybe today!) as a supplement to this week's food.

Green Bean Stir-Fry

I've done stir-frys with green beans before but never in this way. I've gotten into the habit of blanching my green beans before stir frying so they wouldn't be hard and fibrous at the end of cooking.  One day when scrolling, I came across this recipe and took a screenshot of it. 

In her video that accompanied this recipe, she said cutting the green beans on the bias would take extra time but it would be worth it. She wasn't wrong. It took a lot more extra effort to cut, but they were very tasty! I would do this again. Thanks Mama Tea!

Pre-Seasoned Beef Tips

I hardly ever buy pre-seasoned meat from the grocery store because it's more expensive and usually not worth it. However, H-E-B really got me last week for groceries because they sent me so many coupons. I saved 31% in coupons on that shopping trip and it included almost 13 pounds of meat. Win for them for getting my business and win for me for saving money. Did I mention they did it all with free curbside pickup and I didn't have to push a cart or walk around a store? And here I am giving them free advertising...😆

Beef and Broccoli

This is the first time beef and broccoli has made it onto my cooking rotation (and blogged.) I have a feeling I may have cooked it one week and not written the blog. But here it is! This is a favorite for me to make because the meat texture and the flavor of the sauce is good. My kids will also eat it and don't complain about the greens.

I don't follow a recipe for this so it is a rustic version of what they serve at the restaurant. I parboil my broccoli in salted water first so it becomes soft.  Then I marinate my beef in corn starch and cooking wine. The actual sauce I use for my beef and broccoli is a combiantion of LKK black pepper sauce and LKK sweet bean sauce. I used to make it with just the black pepper sauce and I found it was missing the sweetness I craved. I could probably use sugar instead of mixing sweet bean sauce into it, but I haven't experimented. And since I found these two sauces work well together, I've not departed from this mix. Maybe next time, if I remember. 

Then I saute the beef in my wok about 80% of the way cooked, add in the broccoli, and then add in my sauce. I do add some water to the sauce to make it more pourable to begin and then thicken the sauce during the last few minutes of cooking.

Week #12

Egg and Tomato $15.99

Mushroom, Snow Pea, Tofu Stir-Fry $17.99

Snow Pea Leaves $16.99

Pork Cutlet (not pictured) $10.99

Ketchup Shrimp $16.99

Soup (5 qts): $20.99

Take-Out Total: $99.94

Tax: $8.25

Grand Total:  $108.19

 

I forgot to take a picture of every single dish this week until Tuesday so that's why everything looks partially eaten. Pretty sure half the shrimp and half the soup was already gone by the time I remembered.

Egg and Tomato (top left)

I hadn't made egg and tomato in a while so I decided to buy tomatoes and make this dish this week. I am growing my own tomato plants this year, but they're not close to being ready, so I had to buy them from the grocery store. With the rise in egg prices, eggs have been more valuable and don't get used as quickly anymore either. But it was a nice change to add this dish back to the menu since for a lot of us it's the common "go to" dish to make since it's so easy.

Mushroom, Snow Pea, Tofu Stir-Fry (top center)

This was an impromptu dish I decided to make. The snow peas were on sale, mushrooms were on sale, and I picked up a pack of pressed tofu. I've always loved the flavor with the thick sauce you get from a corn starch slurry. I season with some soy sauce and chicken bouillon and then add cornstarch and water. It turned out well.

Snow Pea Leaves (bottom left)

Snow pea leaves randomly went on sale again so I bought a bag. I always remove 80% of the stems now. They're just so much more pleasant to eat without the stems. I used to think it was so wasteful to just pluck the leaves off, but since I compost all of my fruits and vegetables, I can justify removing any non-pleasant edible parts. It just helps me save money on my soil amendments!

Sidenote. I did this experiment weeks ago with snow pea leaves and I'm just now getting around to share it. At the grocery store, sometimes I'll see wilty leaves on the vegetables. This used to be a turn off for me, but then I realized, as long as the stems are intact and the leaves aren't bruised, there's a way to bring the leaves back to life - just soak them in water. I weighed the snow pea leaves I bought before and they weighed in at 518 grams. Then, I soaked them in water to let them revitalize. After, I weighed them again: 565 grams. That's almost a 10% increase post soaking. So don't be afraid of the wilty leaves at the grocery store!

Pork Cutlet (not pictured)

I had bought a 9 pound bone in pork shoulder last week which I cut and saved into multiple packs in our freezer. There were some pieces leftover that weren't large enough to make into a portion by itself so they ended up in a bag I labeled "cutlets." I think my original intention was actually to pound them into pork chops but I forgot to pound them when I actually cooked. So they ended up like pork...pieces.   

I browned them in a pan and they turned out nicely. There was no official crust on it, but they were still flavorful because I marinated with corn starch, cooking wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Ketchup Shrimp (bottom center)

My daughter loves ketchup shrimp, as do I. It came up in the rotation again because I was looking for a protein to make as a stand-alone dish. This was my first time making it without measuring each ingredient (I've gotten pretty good at eyeballing...) and also my first time making it in the wok. It turned out well. Our wok has really proven itself in the last five weeks ago since we debuted it.  Really happy with this recipe and I should try and make it more often.

A note on the shrimp: I always use head-on shrimp for this recipe because I love the extra juices I get. I do make sure to use scissors to cut open the side of the shell which helps the sauce seep into the shrimp as well as make peeling the shrimp much easier. And yes, I remove the intestinal tract. 

Soup - 5 qts (right)

This was a random throw-together soup. I had extra broth leftover from cooking my pork shoulder bone so I figured I'd make a soup with it. I had leftover napa cabbage to throw in, some chopped up carrots, tofu puffs I keep on hand frozen in my freezer, and some frozen meatballs. I season the soup with soy sauce and chicken bouillon. That's really it. We eat it with rice because we're lazy, but you could definitely cook some noodles to go with it. 

I hate to say this because it's a little embarassing, but putting together this blog of two weeks back to back was more tiring than when I cook a week's worth of food. On the flip side, it means I use less brainpower to cook than I do to write now...which means I must be pretty good at cooking. 😅

 

The Power of Failing

My youngest turned 5 recently. Part of me is dying inside because age five just seems too old for it to be the age of my youngest child. At the same time, I'm loving this new stage of life we're in. I don't have to carry around a diaper bag, there are no baby food pouches, my kids can get in and out of the car by themselves 90% of the time (certain car seats are harder than others), and I can feel like an adult again instead of someone's mother. Don't get me wrong - I love being a mother and I wouldn't have had two children if I didn't and serve them in all the ways I have - but it's really nice to have adult conversation, be able to read books, and not be called on for miscellaneous help every 5 minutes.

But, there are still hard moments. Even though he's 5, he doesn't verbalize as much as he should when he needs help due to his shy personality. When he plays, he's super verbal. Otherwise, for the big things, he needs to be prompted in order to elicit a response. I'm trying to get him out of the habit because I need to know he can survive if he's not next to me. Could I just send him off to day care/school and force him to interact with others? I could and I can, but that's my choice not to. So these lessons need to be learned in other ways.

He asked for a snack last week and I gave him a cheese stick. Everything was going fine, but he couldn't open it, so he shoved the cheese stick in my face. Of course, I knew what he wanted me to do. I could have easily opened it for him, given it back, and life would have gone on. However, that's not what I did. I told him to tell me what he needed. He didn't. So then began a half hour ordeal of crying, pouting, and me putting the cheese stick back into the refrigerator.

I went over to him and told him: we, he and his mommy, had a special bond, and mommy could read his mind and figure things out without him needing to say anything. But not everyone had this special ability. And I needed to know, if it was required, he could verbalize what he needed to get the assistance or help he needed. He proceeded to cry on his bed and I left him alone and started to write this blog. 

Just under ten years ago, I remember having a conversation with my aunt. My husband and I had driven the few states over to visit her and it was the first time I truly sat down and had conversations with her as an adult. We didn't have children yet at the time, but we were talking about kids, how to raise them, and some memories my aunt had when her children, my cousins, were younger. At one point, we were talking about one of my cousins and a difficult period for him. I had commented that sometimes you have to let them learn the hard way. 

She responded to me and said, "It's really hard to watch your own kids fail. You will know when you have your own children."

Fast forward many years, and indeed, I had my own children. I love them dearly and they are so special to me. The other day I just sat in the car and stared into my daughter's face for what felt like a minute as she stared back at me thinking to myself, how is my daugther so beautiful? And I've also had many hard times with my children which have made me yell, scream, and smack some tables. It's an imperfect journey that will never be mastered. 

But I've watched my children fail. In our latest cheese stick scenario, I watched him fail, grab his penguin for comfort, and go lay on his bed and cry. As a parent, this is hard. I sat on the couch listening to him cry while I opened the mail. And as much as I hated to hear his whimpering, I knew this had to be one step in the long journey of life he has ahead of him. Even if he doesn't learn from this situation, it's going to be part of the building blocks which make up his experiences, his personality, and ultimately, what his life will be like. *He never ate the cheese stick, didn't respond to anything I had said, and it felt like this situation resolved without being resolved.*

A few days after this incident, he chose a packet of crackers as dessert for finishing his dinner.  He and his dad went to get it from the pantry and then he came over to me as I was still sitting at the kitchen table. He handed it to me and asked me to open it with a complete sentence, and very nicely at that. I wish I could remember his exact words as I remember being in awe he had come up to me and said that. Many instances after, I've heard him ask me to help him open individually wrapped food (including multiple cheese sticks).

My son failing with regards to this cheese stick incident has small repercussions in the grand scheme of things. But less than a week later, he got it. Was my aunt right when she said watching my own children fail is really hard? Absolutely. And this may be a very small representation of what is to come in our future experiences. But the cost may be ultimately greater if we don't let them fail in healthy ways.

Takeout with the Tos #10

I never thought I could be someone to get excited about food, but the menu I cooked this week really excited me. If you're joining me at this blog for the first time, this is part 10 in a cooking series I'm doing this year, documenting the food I cook (almost) every week for my family.

This week's menu includes:

Pork Tonkatsu: $18.99

Cauliflower: $8.99

Bok Choy: $13.99

Tempura Shrimp: $12.99

Teriyaki Tofu: $12.99

Lion's Head Meatballs: $39.99

Take out Total: $107.94

Tax: $8.91

Grand Total: $116.85

The menu this week was going to include lion's head meatballs. Because I was going to cook them the traditional way and fry them, I figured I'd find other things I could fry as well to maximize my oil. This is where tempura shrimp and tonkatsu were added to the recipe. I had a pack of frozen pork cut into tonkatsu pieces from September 2024 so it was about time to use it. No, it wasn't bad by any means. I vacuum seal all my meats in the freezer for long-term keeping and for these instances where they get stored longer than six months and I don't run the risk of the meat getting freezer burn. 

 

Tonkatsu (top left):

I'm sure there are great recipes out there on the internet for awesome tonkatsu. I don't follow any because I just wing it. I love recipes I can "wing" because reading recipes and measuring ingredients slows me down. The more I can make by feel, the more efficient my cooking process can be. And as you all know, I spend hours cooking on my Sundays. For this tonkatsu, I had about 13 oz of pork cut into thin slices. I seasoned them with soy sauce, sugar, corn starch, cooking wine, and some salt. I added an egg to it for the coating and then dipped in panko before frying for about 2 minutes. These were very thin pieces of meat. 

Cauliflower (bottom left):

We needed some vegetables and cauliflower were on sale this week. I hadn't cooked them in a while so bought one to make for the week. I'm pretty boring when it comes to cauliflower. My favorite way to eat them is to roast in the oven with some seasoning. However, if I don't use the oven for anything else, I probably won't turn it on just to roast cauliflower. So we are eating boiled cauliflower in salt water. I don't mind. It's actually a great simple taste compared to the strong flavors of other dishes I make. So although it's nothing special, it's a healthy vegetable. My daughter has no problem eating this. My son...has developed a certain amount of finickiness lately. 

Boy Choy (top right):

This was a leftover green vegetable from last week's grocery run. Again, I've mentioned before how vegetables keep in the refrigerator for a week when kept away from excessive moisture. If they wilt slightly, that's not a problem as they can be submerged in water and rehydrated.  Stir-fried with my usual garlic, salt, and sugar. 

Tempura Shrimp (bottom right):

This may be my last batch of freezer tempura shrimp for a while.  They came out darker than usual because I had already fried other things in the oil before frying the shrimp. I don't mind. They still taste great. 

Teriyaki Tofu (top middle):

My current nonstick pan is a small one so I had to cook these in two batches. That was slightly annoying, but they cooked fine because nothing stuck. I'll take it for now. Eventually, I will need to pull out my pan with the larger diameter but that one is still brand new at the moment. Officially, I didn't add teriyaki sauce to this batch of tofu, just salt and sugar. 

 

Lion's Head Meatballs:

I follow the recipe from Woks of Life.  I've made this recipe many times and it's delicious every time. I've even baked them in the oven instead of deep frying in oil. The color and texture of the outside of the meatball is very slightly different, but the overall flavor isn't. I deep fried them this week as mentioned earlier so they are more true-to-the-recipe this week. I also figured out I don't really ever have to buy breadcrumbs. I didn't actually have breadcrumbs as the recipe called for. I ended up toasting two pieces of bread on low heat for an extended (15+ minutes) and then crumbling them between my hands into the mixing bowl. You could probably also smash them in a plastic bag before dumping them in as well. I was just trying to save on waste/dishes. I had fresh bread this time, but bread keeps in the freezer for a long time, and the only way to use frozen bread is to toast it. So I really never need to buy pre-made breadcrumbs ever again.

 

Approx Cooking Times: 3 hours

Takeout with the Tos #9

So this was totally unintentional, but I didn't go grocery shopping this week and ended up cooking a decent amount of food for us. Here's our take out for the week:

- Cucumber Salad: $9.99

- Seafood pancakes: $19.99

- Tofu Chicken Casserole: $29.99

- Instant Pot (Dry Rub) Pork Ribs: $22.99 

- Chinese Vegetable Stir Fry: $13.99

Take Out Total: $96.95

Tax: $8.00

Grand Total: $104.95

 

Cucumber Salad

 

I forgot to take a photo of this dish because I made it ahead and put it in the refrigerator to chill. By the time I cooked everything else, took my photos, and went on with the rest of my Sunday, the photo of the cucumbers was long forgotten. My kids ate quite a bit of it so what you see left in this dish is probably 1/3 of what I made to begin with. I had a recipe I followed a long time ago, but it's evolved to eyeballing the ingredients: soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper. I think sometimes I add a splash of vinegar but this time I forgot. This was about 1TB of everything except the white pepper for 1 large cucumber. 

Seafood Pancakes (right)

 

These came out more egg-y than pancake-y this time around. They're almost like a scrambled omlette in my opinion. I still like it. Easy to make, I practically make it by memory, and fast to cook. I've started cooking a lot more with my stainless steel wok, but this is the kind of recipe which still requires a good nonstick pan. It's just so much easier not having to think about the heating requirements and just putting food in and out as it cooks. 

Tofu Chicken Casserole

 

This is a first for this recipe in 2025! I was thinking to myself recently that I had started to repeat a lot of my recipes. Mentally, there are still some I'd like to share with you as dishes I've made which I love, but whether due to time constraints, ingredient prices, or simply lack of intentionality, I haven't made them. This is a recipe I learned from Woks of Life a while back. I saw them post it and immediately thought this would be a great recipe for me to make. One pot, easy ingredients, most that I have on hand all the time, and delicious. 

I made this recipe in the wok for the first time and it's great! Even if the chicken sticks when I'm browning it, I'm able to scrape it up later once the rest of the sauce components get put together and there's more sauce in the wok. The original recipe calls for shiitake mushrooms and peas. These are two ingredients my children complain about. Sometimes, I add them anyway and force them to eat it. Sometimes, I split the dish into two batches and add peas to one batch only. Other times, I add neither, like this week. Honestly, it tastes good however I choose to do it. So although the nutrition may change slightly, the overall integrity of the dish is kept. 

Instant Pot Dry Rub Ribs

 

We needed a protein dish this week and I couldn't think of anything else to do. We pulled out a pack of ribs from the freezer and my husband made the dry rub, stuck it in the Instant Pot, and let it cook. Super easy, super delicious. 

Chinese Vegetable Stir Fry (left)

 

I've only ever known the name of this vegetable in Chinese. If I literally translated the characters, it would be "oil vegetable." Not very enticing...I decided to look up what the actual English for this vegetable is. It's rape, also where rapeseed oil comes from. So while I won't be using the English terminology to name this vegetable...perhaps ever...I have now learned one new fact for this week. 

 Total Time Elapsed: ~2.5 hours

A Great Vacation

It's been a minute since I've sat down and typed up a blog at my computer. The last couple of weeks were a bit different from our normal routine because we had two spring breaks! No, unfortunately, this doesn't mean we had two weeks off of school or work. Instead, it meant my kid's spring break was one week and my students' spring break was the following week. Because of this, we couldn't really go out of town or do anything big. I didn't mind, but it meant finding other creative ways to have fun without going on an official vacation.

During the first week when my kids didn't have school, I took them out in the mornings for excursions. We visited IKEA, hung out with a neighbor, ate lunch with friends, and even had a sleepover one night! The following week when I didn't have to teach, we scheduled dinners at restaurants during the week we normally wouldn't be eating at because I hardly get to eat dinner with my family during the week. Honestly, not cooking is one of the best vacations I can give myself! It doesn't quite hit me as hard when we're away from home on a trip because we almost have to eat out every meal, but when I can relax at home and not have to cook, that's a real treat!

There were a few dinners during my week off where I made more extravagant meals instead of eating out because it was still tasty and slightly more cost effective than eating out.  

Sunday -  8z New York Strip Steak with broccoli 

broccoli not pictured.  this was very tasty. My husband had fun cooking steaks in his cast iron pans for the first time - he even used my fresh rosemary while basting with butter!

Monday - smoked salmon, cream cheese, bagel, side of kale salad 

Tuesday - Sausage Calzone and Chicken Parmesean

Wednesday - Chicken Curry with Rice

Thursday - Sushi

Friday - Pho 

Although a mixture of home cooking + eating out at restaurants, if I estimated the cost of all meals counted as restaurant cost, it would have cost us $250+ for six dinners.

I enjoy cooking for my family because it's a huge way I show my love for them. At the same time, cooking is work. A lot of work. Although I cringe at how much eating out can cost, it is really nice to sit down, be served food, and not have to do the dishes after. Or pick up the food my kids have slowly scattered all over the floor. So all in all, I had a great vacation, both from my salaried and non-salaried duties 😁.

Takeout with the Tos #8

I didn't cook too many things on Sunday because we did some cooking on Saturday as well. To keep consistency, those dishes will not be included in my take out total. 

Cabbage Cilantro Stir-Fry: $12.99

Tofu Noodle Stir-Fry: $20.99 

Snow Pea Leaves: $18.99

Beef and Green Bean Stir-Fry: $22.99

Take Out Total: $75.96

Tax: $6.27

Grand Total:  $82.23

 

Cabbage Cilantro Stir-Fry (top right)

I enjoyed this dish so much last week I wanted to make it again this week. I normally don't repeat identical dishes two consecutive weeks, but I really wanted to eat this dish again. I love cilantro but I realize some people don't share in this sentiment. 

Tofu Noodle Stir-Fry (bottom right)

This past week, I pulled out my scrapbook from my year living overseas. We flipped through it and I was able to share my experiences with them as well as reminiscing on them myself. In the back of the scrapbook, I did a few pages with photos of food I had cooked myself.  One included a dish made with strips of tofu. 

I had forgotten the use of tofu strips over the years, so this week when we went grocery shopping, I put it on the list and made this dish. It's similar to the vermicelli dish I've made in the past, but I just added the tofu strips in with the noodles. My sauce was a mixture of Chinese barbeque sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil.

Snow Pea Leaves (top left)

These were on sale at the grocery store for the cheapest I've seen them this season - $2.99/lb. As always, we love these. Simple stir-fry with garlic, salt, and sugar. 

Beef and Green Bean Stir-Fry (bottom middle and left) 

This dish ended up being two containers because I ran out of my large containers. It's a bigger portion than I normally make. I didn't intend on using this many green beans but there was the tiniest bit left in the bag that was only 1-2 servings worth and I didn't feel I could do much with it on its own. I agree there's a lot of green beans, but I think the meat to vegetable ratio is still acceptable.

I can't remember which cut of beef I bought but I'm guessing it was a top round. My preference is for flank steak but prices have almost doubled since I first started buying them 6-7 years ago so I've found other alternatives. The key is to marinate in just a bit of corn starch to tenderize the meat. I've also learned the velveting technique with baking soda but it's not my preference because you need to rinse the meat to remove the baking soda before cooking. I find corn starch works well in small amounts because then you don't get goopy meat in your pan.

Honestly, the real star of this week's cooking adventure was the pan:

Our new wok.

 

We purchased a new stainless steel wok a few months ago and finally pulled it out to use. Stainless steel has always scared me for stir-frys because of the fear of food sticking. I think it scares a lot of people for the same reason. However, as convenient as nonstick pans are, the coatings wear down and eventually they lose their nonstick quality and need to be replaced. In the past five years, I've worn down over 3 nonstick pans. I agree: the better you take care of your cookware, the longer it will last.

When we switched to an induction cooktop 3 years ago, there was a new learning curve finding the right heat settings to cook what I needed in the pans I was using. High heat kills nonstick pans. This is a universal truth and even the instructions on the packaging say to use medium/medium high heat only. The feeling of cooking on a brand new nonstick pan is incomparable. It really makes me feel like I know my way around as a chef. The difference from cooking on an old nonstick that is on its way out vs switching to a brand new one is night and day. 

But the feeling doesn't last. Eventually, the nonstick pan will start to stick and need replacing. 

I've cooked minimally on stainless steel over the years. The majority of my stainless steel is for pots - soups, stews, and braises. Sometimes there's an occasional deep fry. But I've shied away from stir-frying in nonstick. I've watched cooking shows and looked up videos on how to cook in stainless steel to make it nonstick. There are various methods out there.

After cooking all 4 of these dishes in our new wok, I've come to the following conclusions:

1. Heating up the pan properly helps to keep food from sticking to the pan. This includes heating up the pan to where water "dances" on the pan instead of evaporating into steam. 

2. Add enough oil. Stainless steel cooking is not meant for the health-conscious. No, we're not trying to drench food in oil, but you need oil for food not to stick. Dry heat = sticking.

3. Our stove is flat. We don't have gas and we most definitely don't have a wok insert for a gas stove.  The wok is rounded. Even a flat-bottomed wok like what we have is still rounded on the sides. Therefore, the heat is strongest on the bottom and will taper as the sides go up. This means we will have cooking limitations even with the most skilled of chefs. 

After cooking our four dishes in the same wok one after the other, this is what it looked like on the inside:

 

I cooked the tofu noodle stir-fry last because I knew there was going to be a starchiness in my noodles which makes sticking more likely. With a delicate balance of changing the heat as I was cooking as well as monitoring my ingredients during the cooking, I was able to prevent a lot of sticking from occurring. As you can see, there is some food stick to the bottom of the wok, but it is not much at all. I didn't scrape the bottom at all to remove the food. This is what was naturally left. There was minimal scrubbing needed to clean this pan. Some hot water and dish soap did the trick easily. 

My conclusion for now is that this stainless steel wok is our best frugal option. It does a decent job cooking food without needing to purchase a $70+ pan every 2 years or so. I'm hoping to be able to improve my cooking skills in this wok so I don't need to rely on nonstick as much. If it doesn't happen....then at least I tried. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Takeout with the Tos #7

This week was another non-grocery week. I didn't blog last week's food but we did grocery shop a week ago. Similar to last week's ingredient breakdown, everything I used this week was either surplus, freezer, or shelf stable:

Dried tofu sticks. Dried mushrooms. Frozen edamame. Leftover cabbage. Leftover green onion. Cilantro from my garden. Frozen shrimp. Leftover eggs. Frozen green beans. Frozen ground pork. Frozen pork shoulder. Potatoes.

Here's what I made with these ingredients:

 - Tofu, Mushroom, Edamame Stir Fry: $16.99

- Cabbage and Cilantro: $12.99

- Shrimp and Egg: $12.99

- Green Bean with Pork: $16.99

- Dry Rub Pork (2.25lb cooked) : $22.99

- Mashed Potatoes: $9.99 

Take Out Total: $92.94

Tax: $7.67

Grand Total:  $100.61

 

Tofu Mushroom Edamame Stir Fry (top left)

I really enjoy the dried tofu sticks, always have since I was a kid. So as an adult, I'm glad it is a pantry item I can use to cook with at any time. Cooking them by itself gets boring - I have done it before - so I try to do a mix with something else in a stir fry. This week's lucky ingredients were shiitake mushroom and edamame. My kids don't eat the edamame so I don't overload it. But I like when my food has a mixture of color. Things like baby corn and canned bamboo are great choices, but they're all in the same color palette and it makes for a boring dish aesthetically. 

Cabbage and Cilantro (bottom left)

This was a dish I made up spontaneously. The leftover cabbage was sitting in my fridge for a while and I knew I had to use it. There's a version of salad we've done before with cilantro, scallions, and a vinaigrette dressing. We have a bottle of Kewpie dressing that's expiring in approximately 10 days so we did a version of the salad and used Kewpie. It was quite good. In planning vegetables for this week, I thought, why not stir fry the same cabbage and cilantro as the salad and then season like a stir-fry? So I tried it. It's not bad. I wouldn't say it's anything spectacular. But considering I got a vegetable dish without special grocery shopping and my kids will eat it, that's a win for me. 

Shrimp and Egg (bottom right)

I literally cooked shrimp, added scrambled eggs in, and threw in some scallion at the end. It's a very straightforward dish. While menu planning, we were trying to find another dish with some protein and this is what we came up with considering the ingredients we had on hand.  

Green Bean with Pork (top right)

I've made this before, but I tried a different sauce combination this time. I've always loved my hot pot dipping sauce I make. It's a combination of Chinese barbecue sauce which I mentioned in my first post, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I thinned it down with water for this dish to mix with the pork and green beans. 

Dry Rub Pork

 

 

This is the second time we've made this recipe this year.  It's really easy because after you put the seasoning in, the whole cooking process is done in the Instant Pot. My husband really loves this recipe. I enjoy it but I think he likes it more than I do. It goes great with mashed potatoes in my opinion which is why we made some mashed potatoes!

 

I'm not about the froufrou food styling. These are what my mashed potatoes look like. They taste great.

 

The sauce from the pork mixed with a good from-scratch mashed potato makes a great pairing. I did reduce the sauce from the pork in a sauce pan, refrigerate overnight, and discard the congealed fat the next morning. 

 

Approx cooking time: 2.5 hours

Everything was so delicious from the menu this week, and it wasn't protein heavy. As a result, we were running out of a protein a little sooner than expected. My husband was telling me that our bread was about to expire soon so we needed to use it quicker. I told him I could make shrimp toast with it.

As you read this blog, there's a strong possibility I'm in my kitchen making it. There might be a mini blog on shrimp toast by itself later...