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!