Vicky Learns to Cook

First, the dinner. Because this was fun to make.  What I've learned so far about Shrimp Stir Fry:  1. Don't buy cooked shrimp and warm it up. You will have shrimp flavored rubber.  2. Make sure there are at least 3 colors. Eating a stir fry should be visually exciting. Well eating anything should, to be honest.  3. Add different textures 4. Try new things! So this time, I purchased frozen raw shrimp and let it thaw in water over the stove.  Then after the shrimp turned pink, I added snow peas, carrot shavings (I did this with a peeler), water chestnuts for crunch, and some really cool Bunapi mushrooms. See the cute little white mushrooms in the bag in the center? They are so tiny and cute! They have an almost fermented flavor to them once I cooked them.  This goes well with the other stuff I added: garlic, honey (just a touch), soy sauce, ginger, and salt and pepper (because too much soy sauce is just... too much).  Rice is fairly easy, put in twice as...

I haven't had much to say lately.  I'm diving deep into why I eat more than I should. I'm taking this online course through Daily OM to learn how to communicate better. You know, once I have something to say.  I bought a shirt that says "Warning Starving Dieter May Bite If Provoked".  I'm taking my martial arts classes, getting into the groove of that.  This week I made tacos.  This is how I do it.  From the top: Paprika, garlic powder, chili powder, onion powder, cumin, and salt on a pound of hamburger.  Chop and cook. Serve with tortillas, tortilla chips, tomatoes, sour cream, cheddar cheese, and lettuce. Sometimes guacamole.  But you gotta get the restaurant style white tortilla chips. Heaven! Today I made chicken and dumplings by request.  First you par cook the chicken.  Which just means cook it til brown on the outside in butter in a pot.  Then I took these out and added chopped onion, celery (out of my garden!) and carrot....

I have a really comprehensive recipe list now after working on this for about a week.  I'll preface this, however, with this statement. I have more recipes to look at. I haven't yet gone back and fit in ALL the recipes I actually have for each category below. And I havent incorporated the cookbooks on the shelves yet.  But it's really cool. Now I have recipes for meals with:  Chicken, Beef, Pork, Fish, Seafood, as well as Vegetarian and Vegan.  And I have the cuisines for each of these meal types including;  American, Chinese, Ethiopian, French, Hungarian, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Lebanese, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Russian and Mexican. (I'm open to other cuisines but will need recipes please and thank you.) And I have recipes for Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall.  So that ends up as one recipe for each day of the year, give or take, with no repeats.  I didnt mean to start out that way, honestly.  I meant to track the meals I made at home f...

Lemon Thyme risotto sounds good doesnt it? I thought so.  So I dug up the recipe and realized it had an egg yolk in it. Ohh, so it's really like a risotto carbonara.  I've stayed away from carbonaras, since it's so easy to  scramble the egg. I'm kind of a chicken that way! But I was in it tonight, whether I liked it or not, so I kept  going.  And it worked! I didnt have fresh thyme like the recipe called for, so  I used dried and then for the color I added some chopped  parsley. YUM! So you mix the yolk with parmesan and lemon juice and  zest and after the rice is off the heat and cooked you add the egg mixture really fast and keep going for  about a minute until the yolk is cooked and the  rice is thickened.  I checked for salt and voila! I made a carbonara!  And then I realized, heck I wasn't too bad at  Hollandaise sauce, so you know, what was I afraid of? Meanwhile I got my box of veggies and ended up with a huge ...

This past weekend I finally chose the recipe from the first cookbook on my shelf, "Weight watchers desserts". It was an Apple-Cranberry Coffee Cake.  After discussing with the family , they didn't want cranberries, nor a substitute like cherries or raisins.  So just apple it was. The batter is almost a dough its so thick! You sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on top so you get that crunch.  Looks good right? I baked it and boy did it smell good. You know that cinnamon sugar smell when you eat cinnamon rolls or when you make an apple pie? Yeah that smell.  Oh and it looked good too! Beautiful when I cut into it with chunks of apple.  Couldn't wait to dive in. And then...  something was wrong.  I looked at the recipe again.  You see when I created the topping for the coffee cake, it said to use 2 tsp of sugar.  Having used that sugar, I moved on to the next ingredient. And I never looked back.  There was 3/4 of a cup of sugar I just didn't put i...

Quick updates that were on facebook so this is really for Jason. :) The Fam and I watched them pour the cement for the road in front of our house this morning, including the cat and the dog. Took only a few mins, they are really quick. Now we wait while it cures.  # COVIDentertainment ----- Eye doc today. My far away vision is the same but my reading vision is worse, so they had to change my bifocal contacts outer ring from a low to a medium. Whats cool is they gave me 3 pair of the new Rx so I have a couple weeks to buy contacts. oh can now I can read the computer / phone / books again without my readers yay! ----- So I went to kroger. I actually went inside to get that last order that I couldn't cancel.  Background - Total fiasco using their Kroger Pickup  - waited 3 1/2 hours only to get the wrong order on Saturday, had to donate the food since they cant take it back, which took a couple days to locate a recipient. Order #2 to get what I couldnt get on Saturday - ...

Today and the next couple of days I dont have a lot of time around dinner time.  The zoom meetings and out door martial arts classes are right around when we eat, so I'm having to cook speedy quick.  Some things you can do to speed up dinner are as follows;  1. Cut food into smaller chunks. Having chicken breasts for dinner? Cut them into strips or nuggets before dipping them in egg wash (egg + water mixed) and bread crumbs. Bake at 375 F until it temps at 165F internal temp.  Having whole chicken? Use heavy shears to cut into pieces or spatchcock it (cut the back bone and lay flat) so it will cook faster.  (It looks like it has to pee, doesn't it?)                                               Having mashed potatoes? Cut the potatoes into small chunks, put in boiling water and cover. Don't add salt right away, it raises the boiling point and takes ...

So I bet you're wondering how the diet is going? Well even if you weren't I'm going to tell you! I lost 7/10ths of a pound, through 4th of july weekend and shut down week when all I had to do was eat, I still lost weight. Yay me! I'm hoping to do much better in the coming weeks, but down is the direction so I'm happy.  I figure you probably don't want to hear the ins and outs every day, and I frankly dont want to write them haha.  But once a week or so I can give an update.  On a totally different topic, I was looking at the "Read 100 books in the summer and get a pizza party" contest that we used to have as kids... someone mentioned that ina meme, but it got me thinking, what the heck would I read to get to 100? Even if most kids books are say 100 pages or less, so you could cut it down to say 33 books for an adult,  I don't actually have any unread actual books, and I have to keep getting them on my kindle app to read.  I really want books to hol...

Tonight's dinner is something called Unstuffed Peppers.  I personally enjoy this one more than actual stuffed  peppers because you dont get that big bite of pepper on the outside that is invariably not done enough to really eat. Yuck. The stuffed pepper seems to have been invented around the 1890s and the idea has been used happily by several cuisines:  Spain: Pimientos Rellenos de Arroz con Salsa de Tomates — Bell pepper stuffed with Valencia or arborio rice and saffron, then cooked in a tomato sauce India: Bharawn Shimla Mirch — Bell pepper stuffed with spiced mashed potatoes Tunisia: Fil Fil Mashsi — Bell pepper stuffed with lamb and rice and sprinkled with nutmeg, saffron and cardamom Mexico: Chile Rellenos — Poblano pepper stuffed with carnitas meat, kielbasa and topped with cheddar cheese Denmark: Fyldte Peberfrugter — Bell pepper stuffed with bulgur, mushrooms and kale Hungary: Toltott Paprika — Bell pepper stuffed with ground meat, rice and paprika. Served with so...

It's not really a shut down anymore now that most things have reopened, so I changed the title.  I'm what I would classify as can't stand politics. I'm non-confrontational, in fact it raises my anxiety level to a near catatonic state if I'm asked who I'm going to vote for. I answered once and lost my best friend. So if you see me discussing anything even partly political, you know i feel very comfortable around you . You're a safe person, congratulations. My opinion about the pandemic is that without a vaccine in my bloodstream, I need to wear a mask and so does everyone else to keep us from getting sick. I am not going to shout at you to do the same. I am only going to be as safe as I can. I worry that the sheer number of people going back to normal and gathering in groups, maskless, is going to raise the numbers again so that we can't get people in hospitals again.  On top of that the riots and the angry climate and prejudice scares me. I didn't re...