Journal

2024 - Week 5 Cooking Results

Sausage

Beef franks I got from another place. They were ok before, they were ok now.

Hamburger

Pork burgers. Good things.

Triple Garlic Chicken Ramen

My brain was a bit foggy after a short nap. So I just sort of skipped over this and chopped up the chicken. Started to cook it in a pan, brought the water up to boil the noodles. Added some gochujang, the sauce packets and a bit of chicken stock. Took the boiled noodles and tossed them with chicken, sauce packets, chicken stock and gochujang. I probably should’ve added a bit more gochujang or a bit less chicken stock, but I was dealing with leftover stock.

Creamy Shrimp and Andouille Pasta

I’m am not sure what is in the original creole seasoning, but part of it made my mouth water and another part tickled my nose and kind of perhaps caused me to sneeze. This dish went well and was quite tasty. I used some Crooked Gap Andouille sausage. We both ate the leftovers the next day.

Tuna Melt (based on)

It was shocking that none of the cats came upstairs, I even had lesser quality tuna to feed to them if they happened to show up. Mixed together well, fried up in a pan with some bread that Shannon brought home and some cheese from the cheese shop. it hit that craving spot that I was feeling.

Buffalo Chicken Chili

Simple to do, I may have bought too much rotisserie chicken, so I upped some of the other ingredients to balance it out a bit. I ended up using Lola’s hot sauce, standard, and it seems like it was a lot of salt from the hot sauce but it ended up bing ok. Good as a meal, good for leftovers.

2024 - Week 4 Cooking Results

Sausage

Tuesday would’ve been a trip for a team meeting, but due to an ice storm, or at least a mixture, worse in where I was going then here, so I ended with a normal Tuesday, mostly. So the Hot dogs came in handy as a quick dinner hater hanging out at the Cheese Shop for a bit. Good things.

French Bread Pizza

With the leftover jared sauce and some frozen pepperoni from La Quercia and some smoked mozzarella. Good dinner, vaguely following the cooking directions from ATK.

Hamburger

Double Delayed!

We ended up going to Basic Bird which is new to the Beaverdale neighborhood, but not new to Des Moines (was a Sunday thing at Harbinger). It was busy, but quick paced. After waiting in line for a bit, mostly cause this older couple in front of us had trouble deciding what to do and ordering things that they hadn’t already run out of. Shannon decided then went to claim a place to site. Shannon had the Cheese Rice Dumplings bowl. We shared the honey butter french fries. and I had the boneless chicken with Spicy Gochujang and the Potato Salad, Shishito Peppers and Cucumber Kimchi. I also had a flavored soju. I hope I can get original at some point. Good Time, good food, much better then having to drive it home (not that it’s bad, but, not as crunch). With a challenging Friday, the leftover chicken and kimchi made for a delightful highlight to the day.

Friday work things went a bit off the rail, and after a lot of worrying and etc, hopefully everything got resolved, but by the end of the day I was exhausted, so given the offer, Shannon went and picked up food at B-Bops. Thus a second delay.

Shrimp Fried Rice

While I had leftover rice from before, this assumed I’d be making the rice, so that shortened the time frame a bit. Quickly came together after I took a not quite as short as I intended nap. When I was getting up to make the dish, the power blipped a bit, and a bit then out. After trying to figure out what was going on then reporting it to the power company, I pulled out some kitchen flashlights (one from my mother in law, one from one of my brothers) and started preparing dinner in the dark. I made sure to get everything other of the fridge at the same time, use a lighter to get the stove going. It came together pretty well, with the lights coming back on shortly before I finished. Unlike the last power outage, where I swore I was going to get more of these solar rechargeable flash lights, I actually found them and put them in a cart. The flashlight has been sitting on the window above the sink with other nicknacks, to make it handy to grab there.

Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Easy to put together, good food. Used the last sweet potato I had in the house.

2024 - Week 3 Cooking Results

Sausage

All pork hot dogs! Crooked Gap! good things.

Green Onion Sausage Pasta

I use green onions sausage on pizza and I used it in the thanksgiving main for this past year. It also works well in pasta. I had run myself out of most of my normal crooked gap selection, but had some of this left cause I way over estimated what I needed for thanksgiving. The pasta worked well in my normal configuration of sauce.

Sausage and Egg English Muffins

Simple, quick and good. Those crooked gap sausage patties are quite good.

Southern Ham and Bean Soup

Pretty good, and quick for a nice meal.

Kimchi and Ham Steak Fried Rice

I’ve made this before and I’ll surely make it again. I added some leftover spam to the ham. On this past Sunday, due to the very cold temperatures, the grocery store’s fresh produce selection was a bit underwhelming, and did not have any scallions. This was understandable, and I suppose I could’ve gone out between then and now to get some, but oh well.

Good things all around, added a bit more kimchi.

Skillet Macaroni and Beef

A fancy hamburger helper, without all the “ingredients” of hamburger helper. Good relatively quick meal that made for a nice meal on a cold night

I got some Focaccia from a local baker and while we had been talking about getting some pizza, we used this heated up some pasta sauce (Rao’s) and I baked it a bit and cut it up to effectively have breadsticks and pasta sauce as a dinner.

2024 - Week 2 Cooking Results

This week has been a bit snowy. The first storm, Monday to Tuesday, dumped a heavy near a foot (above or below +/-2”). The second, (Thursday to Friday) also dumped around a foot (+/- 2”). So far I have had 11 snow removal sessions for a total of 7 hours and 24 minutes and 4808 calories burned.

I say so far, because I have to do touch up for the extra inch that showed up yesterday, and still have to clean off my car and my half of the driveway. So far the worst parts has been the snow thrown on the street sidewalk, and the pile left at the end of the driveway.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Good things.

Sausage

Brats! Crooked Gap!

Taco Salad

Good as always.

Hot Honey Peanut Noodles

So I turned off into another thing. I used the peanut butter and sauce packets with rice vinegar, but fried up eggs and cooked up some diced spam. It was good and warming after the first couple of rounds of snow removal.

Bourbon Chicken

Not my first time making it, not the last. I did buy my normal bourbon (Cedar Ridge) and did make it through quite a bit of the bottle before I actually used it for this recipe. I think I had more then 2 pounds of chicken so I probably should’ve upped the sauce amount, but didn’t, even so, tasted good and good over rice.

As a note I also used some chili garlic sauce as it had returned to the store for the first time in a bit and one forgets how good it actually is.

Sloppy Joes

Will gochujang be a definite add from time to time to my random sloppy joes? Yes, yes I think it might. This was quite good and combined with the Napa cabbage salad topper. I used some butter burger buns, produced locally. I was hoping to pickup beef this week, but with the rounds of snow, I actually ordered for next week, so hopefully I’ll be stocked up again with meat from Crooked Gap.