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...