Takeout With the Tos #3

It's another week of food here on the blog! This week's food was a little different because we had leftovers shared with us so we didn't really need to cook a lot. However, I like to maximize my time so I ended up making two main dishes where I freeze extras for quick meals later. The costs are going to include the entire batch of food I made including what goes into the freezer. So although all of it is not being consumed this week, it's as if I ordered extra food from a restaurant to freeze and save for later.

- Snow pea leaves: $15.99

- Chinese broccoli: $12.99

- Chinese spaghetti: 12 servings @ $8.99/serving: $107.88

- Shao Mai: 55 pcs @ $1/pc: $55

- Homemade chips: on the house

Take Out Total: $191.86

Tax: $15.83

Grand Total: $207.69

Shao Mai

There's 55 total but this picture was taken before they were all made. I'm a really bad shao mai wrapper...so they're not aesthetically pleasing.

These are made from the recipe found in the Woks of Life cookbook. I've made this recipe 2-3x total and my kids absolutely love it. It's definitely a labor of love and I double the recipe to make enough to save a freezer batch or two. They're almost as good as the ones at the restaurant. This time when I made them, I subbed chicken bouillon for the salt. Although they tasted fine, it didn't add the "oomph" I had hoped for. Next time, I may try half salt half chicken bouillon because it was still missing some umami this time. 

I use both my food processor and my stand mixer for this recipe. If I had to chop and mix by hand, I wouldn't make it...ever. The right tools for the job make a HUGE difference. Just be extra kind to the person who washes the dishes. 😁

I don't use yellow wrappers so they're not pretty like the ones
at the restaurant, but they sure are delicious. 

Chinese Spaghetti 

My friend shared this recipe with me a while back and it's definitely a hit at our house. I just call it Chinese spaghetti because that's basically what it is. This sauce recipe is completely made in the Instant Pot and I double it to save batches in the freezer for later. There's quite a bit of prep work for cutting the vegetables, but the actual cooking is all done in the Instant Pot. You can definitely use frozen vegetables for this if you'd like to make it even easier. That's not something I stock so I do cut my carrots, onions, and celery by hand. Be warned if you're going to double the recipe you need at least the 8 qt IP. I maxed mine out the last time I made it because I beefed up the vegetable portions and added mushrooms. The sauce is what goes into the freezer and I just cook pasta to complete the meal for next time. 

Chinese Broccoli (Top right)

This is the first repeat dish I've done in four weeks. I'd say that's not bad! We used the steaming method this week since we already pulled out our steamer for the shao mai. Personally, I actually prefer the boiling method because I can boil in salt water and it flavors the vegetables nicely. Steaming isn't bad but I would definitely choose to eat it with some dipping sauce.

Snow Pea Leaves (Bottom right)

We love snow pea leaves. It's the special vegetable treat during the winter months when it goes on sale. Picking away the thicker stems is key to a pleasant mouth-feel when eating this vegetable. It elevates the dish significantly when it's all tender leaves and thin stems. One of my children was willing to try it! Stir fry in garlic with salt and sugar seasoning. Absolutely perfect. 

Homemade Chips (Bottom left)

These were a last minute decision to make. After wrapping the shao mai, I had two leftover wrappers. What was I going to do with two wrappers? I thought about just trashing them, but then I decided to cut it into strips, spray with oil, and stick them in my pan for a light fry. I seasoned them with Trader Joe's mushroom umami seasoning and they were a hit. I think I actually ate the least only having had one chip...

Food is always good when I look forward to it. It makes meals more exciting and honestly increases my overall appetite. There have been weeks before where I haven't been excited about anything in my refrigerator. This can be due to illness and mood as well so it's not always contingent on the food. I have to say this week's food is pretty enticing. 

Total time elapsed: 3.5-4 hours. 

The Blue Paste

I wanted to take a break from posting food this week to talk about something else just as important: cleaning! With the amount of cooking that happens, even if just 1-2 days a week, the kitchen sure gets pretty grimy. 

This is probably worse than normal from a batch cooking last December, but on any given week, our stove resembles this grease-splattered mess at least once. Stove messes are a catalyst for other messes because anything left on the stove will transfer to the bottom of my pans the next time I cook without wiping it down. 

I recently saw a cleaning paste made with three ingredients which I already had at home: hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and baking soda. The recipe is written in a 2:1:1 ratio so I used:

1/2 cup hydrogen peroxide

1/4 cup dish soap

1/4 cup baking soda

Our dish soap is the blue Dawn dish soap, but if you wanted an all-natural alternative, I'm sure it could work just as well. 

This paste is my go-to for everything non-porous now. I use it on our stove top. I use it to clean our kitchen sink. I've even cleaned bathroom sinks with it. I should try cleaning the shower with it, too, but I haven't gotten that far. I love baking soda as a natural no-scratch abrasive. Our stove looks brand new after I use this cleaner on it.

There was a house for sale on our street a few years ago, and we went to the open house. Her stove was pristine. I want our stove to look like that whenever the time comes for us to move (or die). 

Our kitchen sink is another super gross spot which needs a deep clean about once every 1-2 months. I try my best to always rinse the food into the strainer so it doesn't sit in parts of the sink, but alas, the sink always manages to get dirty. This cleaning solution has made it much faster and easier than ever to clean my sink and the wire grate.

Would you believe me if I said it took less than 10 minutes to clean my sink?

Do you know what tool I like best to clean the sink with? A bottle brush! It's the only tool that's both flexible and strong enough to clean between all those little grates in my wire stand. I love having one of these so my dishes don't have to sit on the bottom of the sink with all the food gunk, but cleaning it sure can be a hassle. You'll still find me in the baby aisle at Walmart to buy the occasional bottle brush replacement....to clean my kitchen sink! 

If you're ever at our house and you see a jar of blue stuff sitting on the ledge above our sink with a pair of disposable chopsticks lying across the lid, that's the magical jar of paste that cleans all my non-porous surfaces and restores them to like-new. 😄

Takeout with the Tos #2

Half of us got sick this week so the cooking was not as elaborate as it can be. But we have some food to get us through this week as well as some leftovers from last week. I know for sure I'll need to cook more vegetables this week to supplement. I also cook filler foods throughout the week. Sometime in the future I will make a post just on filler foods. For now, here's our food haul this week.

- Bok Choy: $15.99

- Pork Ribs: $25.99

- Seafood Pancake (Fritters): $24.99

- Tempura Shrimp: $13.99

Take out total: $80.96

Tax: $6.68

Grand Total:  $87.64

Pork Ribs

I discovered this pork rib recipe a few years ago. My husband really likes it and it's very easy to make. It uses country style ribs but you can probably use spareribs if you wanted to. It's a great bulk portion of protein to eat with some rice and vegetables. 

Shrimp Tempura (Top left)

These are definitely freezer tempura I bought and fried. Now, let's be real, even some restaurants buy premade items and heat/serve at their restaurant. So I don't think this is cheating by any means. I still had to fry them up myself from raw. So it's food I cooked. Costco sells a giant pack, but I prefer the ones from the Asian grocery store. The crust on the Costco tempura shrimp is just too thick for my liking. 

Bok Choy (Top Middle)

We did a simple stir fry vegetable with garlic. I discovered the use of both salt and sugar in the seasoning to bring out the flavor of the vegetable even more. This goes for any stir fry leafy vegetable. I actually have a shaker with 50% salt and 50% sugar premixed just to cook my vegetables with. 

Seafood Pancake *Fritters* (Top Right)

I call these seafood pancakes at my house, but really they're fritters. Once upon a time I actually made seafood pancakes kind of like the Korean style pancakes. These were delicious and I got some to actually look really nice.

This was circa May 2021

Since then, I've gotten more efficient in my cooking. As a result, these pancakes now resemble fritters. Maangchi actually also has a recipe which resembles fritters. I find these so much faster and easier to make. These have a wonderful seafood flavor. My favorite add-ins are clams, mussels, and shrimp. Sometimes I'll add in crab, octopus, or squid depending what is in my freezer. I've made this dish so many times now I don't actually follow her recipe anymore. But it's a great start if you're making it for the first time! 

A simple steamed broccoli was supposed to make it into the rotation, but I didn't get it made in the same batch as everything else so it is not reflected in this take-out order. 

Total time elapsed: About 2 hours. There were two of us working in the kitchen so some parts went faster than when I do it alone. 

Takeout with the Tos #1

It's officially the first full week of the new year, and as is true of every other first week of a year, we need food! 

Please note for all these posts:

- I don't glamorize my food. Most of our serving dishes are the same containers I save leftovers in. I'm not trying to make things pretty. We also don't have space to store beautiful serving dishes or platters. I keep it real. 

- I batch cook one day a week. This doesn't mean I only cook one day a week, but it does mean 80% of my cooking happens on one day. I will supplement throughout the week as needed if there's not enough food, but those items will not be included in these posts for simplicity. 

- The prices you'll see are meant to jokingly reflect a restaurant-selling price. It might be much higher than you expect. No, I'm not actually selling my food. Please don't ask to order as flattered as I might be. 

- This blog series is not meant to share recipes. If I followed a recipe or used one as inspiration, I will link it. If there's no link, that means I made it up in my head or was inspired by a dish I'd eaten but never received instructions to explicitly make. You're always welcome to connect with me personally if you'd like more information on anything you see here which I've made!

This week's menu:

- Teriyaki Tofu: $11.99

- Beef and Turkey Pockets (并): 2 for $5. I made 18 so that's $45

- Scallop Mushroom: $9.99

- Chinese Broccoli Dim Sum Style: $12.99

- Pork and Green Bean Stir Fry: $13.99

- Vegetarian Soup: $5/qt. I made 8 qts total so that's $40

Take out total: $133.96

Tax: $11.05

Grand total: $145.01

Teriyaki Tofu (Above left)

I made up this dish a while back. Tofu is a healthy and affordable vegetarian option for protein. I now purchase firm tofu in bulk from Costco. I came up with this recipe after buying a giant bottle of teriyaki sauce from their business warehouse a few years ago. I would pan fry the tofu and then pour the sauce in at the end to coat each piece. It has become a staple in our house. I've also made my own teriyaki sauce before for this recipe. As delicious as it was, I haven't made it from scratch in a long time. So usually some sugar and soy sauce get tossed in at the end and that is what becomes my "teriyaki" sauce.

Scallop Mushroom (Above right)

This is a relatively new dish I started making in the last few years. It doesn't end up on our rotation as often, but it's another easy vegetarian option for protein. I remember watching an episode of a cooking show when they were talking about mushrooms. They likened king oyster mushrooms to that of a scallop texture. That's where I created this recipe. I cut them in rounds to mimic a scallop and cook them in the pan. For today's dish, I added a combination of oyster sauce and Asian barbecue sauce. 

Chinese Broccoli Dim Sum Style (Above Left)

I've always loved the Chinese broccoli at dim sum. It's simple. Usually just boiled, seasoned, and maybe with some sauce on the side. For home cooking, I just boil in salt water. Quick, easy vegetable. 

Pork and Green Bean Stir Fry (Above Right)

I started making this recipe because it was one of those easy-to-stock ones. I almost always have frozen ground pork in my freezer because I buy in bulk and freeze. Some stores also sell frozen vacuum sealed packs of ground pork. Wild Fork is a great store for this. I am considering getting all my ground pork from them in the future. The green beans I used for today's recipe were Costco frozen skinny green beans. I didn't know they would be so skinny when I bought them, but they're nice. Supposedly, Costco is discontinuing the item. I am never too sure. You can definitely try it with frozen green beans if not fresh. I'd probably stay away from canned as they are too mushy of a texture usually. I season them with sugar, salt, cooking wine, and oyster sauce. This is another dish I've been making for years at our house.

I gave roughly 3 QTs to my dad so the rest of the pot was left for us. 

Vegetarian Soup

I love making soup with Asian ingredients. I liken it to the equivalent of a "stone soup." You can essentially add whatever you want, some seasoning, and it's good to go. This particular soup has the following: carrots, shiitake mushroom, oyster mushroom, sweet potato, Napa cabbage, and fried tofu puffs. I've definitely added meat or seafood balls into a rendition of this soup. I just didn't this week. The base is beef stock as well as some soy sauce. 

Beef and Turkey Pockets (并)

These are definitely the star of the meal this week. Ever since I found out about Costco's uncooked flour tortillas, these are a part of our rotation at least every 2-3 weeks. They're definitely on the time-consuming side to make as I can only pan fry 4 at a time, and I made 18. Each batch takes about 8-10 minutes to cook including flipping. So that was nearly an hour just to make all of these 并. I actually portioned out my meat this time because I dislike having extra filling or extra tortillas leftover. So today's batch turned out perfectly. I used 2 pounds of meat, some cabbage, and seasoning. I don't follow a recipe for this either (sorry guys, I cook pretty spontaneously), but you can definitely look up a dumpling filling recipe to start with and then improvise from there as you're comfortable! This recipe is a good one to start with! I do add an egg and corn starch into my filling mixture to keep the liquids from getting too watery, especially with the addition of vegetables. 

Not pictured: rice

And there you have it. Our grand spread which will last our family of four roughly...8-10 meals. 

Total time elapsed: 5.5 hours. I made the soup on a separate day and that took about 1.5-2 hours by itself. Please note this is not non-stop cooking. Some of the time was spent waiting. I also normally only cook one dish at a time, hence using one burner on the stove at a time. It's not the most efficient when it comes to time but it definitely saves on the dishes. 

Introduction: Takeout With the Tos

I never thought I would be someone who loved cooking. As a child, I loved watching cooking shows. America's Text Kitchen, Julia Child, Yan Can Cook, Ming Tsai, and of course my all-time favorite, Jacques Pepin. I loved watching them put together both simple and extravagant dishes. 

In college, I cooked out of necessity as a third-year senior. I don't remember exactly what I cooked because it wasn't extremely delicious, but I kept myself alive and fed for the year. This was a chicken pot pie dish I made for myself as a 21-year-old.

I'm not sure how I would feel today if I served myself (or anyone!) this.

When I went to China, I didn't think I would be cooking a lot at all. After all, delicious food was just downstairs a short walk away. It was the cheapest food I would ever pay for made by someone else in my entire life. Why would I cook, right? 

Well, sometimes, or more than sometimes, the thought of bundling up to go downstairs and walk through brutal (-30F) cold to get something to eat was too much to bear. So I did actually cook a decent amount. To this day, I think the most delicious ribs I've ever made were in China. 

The first time I attempted this recipe was really successful.

When I got married, I thought I was a decent cook. It was mostly tasty, cost-efficient, and I could get by with a variety of cuisine and dishes. However, it wasn't until Covid when I realized the food I missed the most was Chinese food. We stopped going to restaurants completely so we were eating only whatever I could cook. This left much to be desired in the Asian department. My Asian/Chinese cooking skills before Covid were limited to American Chinese flavors. Although it can be enjoyed sparingly, it wasn't the food I desired after being at home with a newborn for so long. 

So I learned. I watched videos online. I looked up recipes. And I even have a few cookbooks now in my collection. Because of my work schedule, I do all my cooking on Sunday afternoon. We do still rotate different cuisines, but Chinese food is probably what I cook the most. It's rare (but has happened!) when my husband tells me he's craving something American. 😂

When I cooked Lion's Head Meatballs （狮子头）for the first time, it was a huge accomplishment. This dish is very involved and time consuming.

In 2025, I want to bring a fun blog series to you and share what we eat on a weekly basis. I've turned in into a joke that we are buying our own "take-out" food. I'll be assigning my own prices to my dishes as if we were purchasing them from a restaurant. And along the way, I'll share stories about what inspired me to cook them and flavors or ingredients I enjoy. I hope this blog series can inspire you to cook something fun and delicious. I hope cooking can be seen less as a chore and more as a delicious, creative outlet.

Join me in 2025!