Ground beef with vegetable medley, banana cupcakes with chocolate peanut butter cream cheese frosting

After getting back from work around 10:20 Wednesday night, I set out to create my dad's corn & ground beef dish. However, seeing that this would be the sole dish of a dinner, I decided to add more vegetables to it. My ingredients:

• Ground beef (90% lean)
• Celery
• Carrots
• Onions 
• Cilantro
• Garlic
• Corn (fresh)
• Soy sauce
• Honey

Looking back, the fresh corn component was unnecessarily difficult, and it wouldn't have been much different than using frozen corn. I'll probably use frozen corn in the future. I also added too much cilantro, too little garlic, and not enough onions (I only used 1/2 an onion). But better to go conservative with the onions. :)
The honey was added only b/c the dish didn't achieve the sweetness that my family's dish has... I needed more corn, I suppose. Overall, dish was very simple, forgiving of my mistakes, and tasty in the end. Pretty healthy too! 90% lean is a good percentage for meat.

Then, tonight I set out to make banana cupcakes because we had 3 overly ripe bananas, and a cupcake tin. I used a chocolate peanut butter cream cheese frosting... which probably wasn't the best idea (I combined the choc pb frosting with a pb cream cheese frosting idea). Three extremely rich flavors makes one deadly frosting. I think it's overwhelming when combined with the banana cupcake.
Luckily, the cupcake recipe I used is a more conservative recipe; it only uses 1 stick of butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 bananas, salt, 2 eggs, cinnamon and vanilla extract. Looking back, I should have used 1 more egg, but that's life. hahaha :)

Then, I made vanilla cupcakes because I had way too much leftover frosting. My vanilla cupcakes imitated my banana cupcake recipe, without the bananas of course. I should have used at least 1 more egg (maybe 2), more vanilla, and some lemon in my cupcake. Now I'm more aware of cupcake ratios for next time! (Magnolia's vanilla cupcake recipe is gross; way too much sugar and butter, imo).

I love baking! Even when it means consuming hot cupcakes at 2am... mmMMmm.

Butternut squash spaghetti, corn

On 4th of July weekend, Wesley and Eric Teng came to visit the Lincoln Park apartment where we cooked dinner. We made a butternut squash with whole wheat spaghetti. Ingredients used:

• Barilla whole wheat spaghetti
• Butternut squash (entire squash)
• Parmesan cheese
• Lime juice
• Bacon
• Thyme

It actually took a lot longer to make this than expected... mostly b/c roasting the butternut squash took so long. It's practically impossible to peel (the skin is very thick), so roasting with the skin on takes a lot longer (around 40 min-1 hour). I would say save yourself the potential to cut yourself, and just cut up into pieces (with the skin) and roast it. It's much easier to remove the skin after it's cooked.
The bacon was supposed to be chorizo, but we couldn't find any at Trader Joe's. I don't really like dealing with bacon... all that fat just sizzles everywhere.
The lime juice and parmesan was actually enough seasoning with the squash and bacon. We just added the squash and bacon, some lime juice, parmesan cheese, and thyme on top. Very tasty, but probably better if it took shorter and was served all warm... I think this recipe would work much better with individual noodles, like penne, than spaghetti. Anyway, this was all enjoyed with a baguette + s&p + evoo, corn, and white peaches. :) Yay 4th of July dinner!

Still have yet to cook Korean bibimbap, curry chicken, burritos, corn & beef, pork broth, udon, and banana cupcakes with chocolate/peanut butter frosting. Huzzah!

Modified pasta sauce + ma po tofu

Yesterday, I made ma po tofu. My ingredients:

• Grind pork (80% lean; NEED to get a leaner pork next time)
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Soft tofu (cut in cubes)
• Chili garlic sauce (pre-made)

Most of the time for this dish was waiting for the grind pork to cook and dry out. I had to soak so many paper towels' worth of oil in order for this to happen. I also put lots of ginger to balance out the strong pork stench... meat is so gross sometimes.
After all the pork dried out, I added my garlic, then sauce, then tofu. The sauce was too salty for me to add any more.
Overall, super easy dish that came out tasting the same way that mom makes it back home. My only complaint is that there's no "ma la," or spiciness that ma po tofu is supposed to have. I need to get chili oil, or ma la seasoning, or something to make this in the future. However, considering that it's summertime, maybe it's not so bad that it's not spicy.

Today, I made linguini with modified sauce b/c I was craving pasta post-running. Ingredients:

• Barilla linguini (Parrotta's recommendation)
• Prego chunky garden - mushroom supreme & baby portobello (already bought by suitemate John)
• Grind pork (maybe 1/4 lb?)
• Garlic (5 cloves)
• Onions
• Jalapeno pepper (1/5)
• American white mushrooms (5)
• Sugar (tablespoon)
• Already cooked spinach & golden mushrooms (leftover)

I cooked the grind pork (same 80% lean one), then drained juices. Added garlic to the pork to help the flavor. Then added onions (which immediately sweetened up the pork stench).
Chopped up and added the rest of the ingredients in the order listed above. Spinach & golden mushrooms weren't chopped.
The sugar was an afterthought, after sampling the sauce. There were so many heavy, savory ingredients that I needed something to lighten up the sauce. I didn't have carrots left, so I just figured a bit of sugar would be fine. It didn't ruin the sauce, but looking back, I wish I didn't add it.

Sauce came out tasting okay; the fact that I used Prego sauce instead of standard tomato sauce meant that I was going to have lots of different flavors. Also, I wish I had fresh tomatoes, which would've helped lighten up the sauce and add more juice. My last complaint is that I couldn't taste the spice from the jalapeno. I guess I just need to be more bold with it, and add more. (considering doing that right now...)

Got lots more recipes from the mother by talking on the phone last night. Looking forward to making them! :D

Food beginnings + Sha Cha fried rice

Here's a place for me to keep track of all my cooking this summer, so that I can build upon what I've already done, and reuse some ideas.

Some things I've made so far:

• Added chopped vegetables (celery, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, and more) to a Chinese take-out chicken with garlic sauce. Sauteed vegetables, then stirred in Chinese takeout in order to increase quantity (and balance out meat to vegetable ratio.)
• Beef broth (cooked for 3 hours) using...
• Beef (boil water, cook beef, remove yucky stuff, then add to big pot)
• Cabbage, carrots, radish, celery (roughly chopped; used for soup flavoring, not for eating)
• Ginger
• Hot pot sauce (using sha cha sauce, peanut butter, hot chili oil from Chinese takeout, soy sauce, sesame oil, minced garlic)
• Steamed/boiled spinach and golden mushrooms (to go with hot pot sauce)
• Fried firm tofu (corn starch for outside; to go with hot pot sauce)
• Bean sprouts (boiled shortly, then with sesame oil and salt)
• Brown rice

Today, I used the leftover brown rice to make a Sha Cha fried rice. My ingredients were:

• Leftover brown rice (~1 cup)
• Leftover fried tofu (chopped)
• Cabbage
• Garlic (minced)
• Onions (chopped)
• 1 beat egg (poured over, then mixed in the rice)
• Hot pot sauce
• Chinese pork sausage (2)
• Sesame oil, salt, sugar for seasoning

Overall, not too bad. I didn't like that there wasn't much color to the dish, because there were no carrots, green onions, corn, parsley, or cilantro. Also, because I added the pork sausage later (the fried rice seemed incomplete without it), the rice is now more cooked/burnt than I'd like it to be. Next time, I'll use more sausage, add more colors, add more sweet vegetables (this time, the only sweet veggie was cabbage), and not rely on the hot pot sauce for flavor. I plan to make another batch of Chinese fried rice using the rest of the sausage, and attempt Kimchi fried rice in the future.