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
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