Katya4me

I was still in the mood for KFC, so last night we went to BonChon for dinner. Today's lunch was the leftover chicken and fried rice. We reheated the chicken in the oven and I'd definitely do that again and the texture stayed well.

So glad you liked it too. That peach pizza looks fantastic and definitely want to try it this summer. In the summer, I like to grill naan pizzas and one time I had leftovers from a jerked peach and chicken recipe that worked fantastically on the pizza.

Last night was sweet potato soup. My husband did all but the blending, so I'd definitely recommend making it the same way again. It was delicious and I could see really enjoying it on a much colder evening as well.

I've made it using this recipe twice now. Slivered red onions, drizzle of honey, so good....

Having a glass of sake to polish off the bottle.

Tonight was spicy squid with basil. Nice simple recipe, I added some white pepper at the end and I think it helped the flavor. I had brown basmati rice in the pantry, so that's what I served it over. Last night was apple and cheddar pizza again and definitely staying in my favorite combos column.

LOL, I wish I had known about that. "Lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool, ideally overnight in the refrigerator. Strain through a fine mesh strainer and discard the solids. You should have about 3 cups of thin syrup." The syrup is good, but it was definitely semi-solid the next morning when it was time to strain it..

Last night was Noble's The Blue Bard hard cider. So far, I've liked both Noble ciders that I've tried.

I had an extra bag of cranberries in the freezer that I had no use for, so they got blended with a couple of inches of ginger from the freezer, mixed with sugar and some fruit juice and cooked down into a syrup. After straining that, I mixed it equal amounts with gin and pineapple juice, added a dash of citrus bitters, then topped off with some seltzer water. Still have plenty of syrup, so I'll be doing a bit more experimenting.

My kombucha brewing is currently on hiatus, so I have some fruit drinks that have been sitting around in the pantry. The other night, I split an aloe juice drink mixed with a bottle of spicy (non-alcoholic) ginger beer between the 2 of us. Very tasty and I've still got another bottle of each, so probably do that again sometime soon.

Last week, I made a loaf of bread and it didn't rise. Same recipe as I always use in the bread machine, just didn't work for whatever reason. I hadn't thrown it out yet because I thought I might be able to use it for bread crumbs or similar. I was in the mood for something comforting for dinner, and saw a recipe for tuna rice casserole. It called for croutons on top, so I took my sad little loaf, chopped it up, and tossed it in the oven. I'd forgotten that we were out of onions and celery so this really was the perfect recipe for last night. We both wanted a little more flavor in the white sauce, so I tossed in some Penzey's Fox Point seasoning, roasted onion powder, oregano, and a sprinkle of cayenne powder. It came out perfectly and we both enjoyed it.

I'm a fan of Korean fried chicken and I had a head of cauliflower in the fridge, so I decided to make baked spicy cauliflower. I liked how it came out but my husband is not a fan of cauliflower, so so he liked the outside, but not the inside. Definitely will keep the technique and sauce to try with chicken breasts but in the meantime, I have leftovers to have for lunch today.

Last night's dinner was coconut braised butternut squash over parmesan couscous. We've been getting a butternut squash with each of our Misfit boxes and I decided to try this recipe on the latest squash. The broiling definitely makes the dish as you don't want the squash to turn into puree and it kept it's shape perfectly. I really liked how the harissa melded with the coconut milk and my husband did as well.

We've been ordering from Wegman's since April, using the website, and doing free curbside pick-up. We've tried Peapod/Giant twice and much prefer Wegman's. I think I've received maybe 7 item mistakes in that time and we order about every other week or so. Really like the ability to choose substitutions easily, if needed and I've only had a couple of not awesome shoppers. My only real complaint is that 98% of the time, the shopping is done way before I am ready to pick it up. But if that's my biggest complaint, I can definitely live with it.

My husband made a delicious swirl bread loaf with the apple butter my family gave us for Christmas. We're not big on eating fruit butter as a condiment so this worked well for us. We've only got 3 more jars to use up now.

Tonight was spicy cheesy scalloped potatoes with broiled chicken thighs. The potatoes were a new recipe and I enjoyed them.

Poke Mian (Woodbridge) - This place finally opened in December and we decided to try it for NYE. Easy online ordering, and was ready on time. The poke itself was very tasty with a nice selection of proteins, sauces and toppings and we tried the curry chicken dumplings as well. My husband usually doesn't like dumplings, but the wrappers for these for thicker and chewy and very enjoyable. I'd definitely go back again.

I don't have any suggestions offhand other than making infused melon balls. That's always a winner around here. For tonight's libation, I decided to make gin slings for the first time. Not sure if I did it right but I'm calling it tasty.

Back at the beginning of the year, I got about a dozen cans of Maesri's Thai curry pastes. I was familiar with the red and green pastes, which we both really like, but got some others that I was totally unfamiliar with. We used the leang curry paste for dinner last night: https://www.templeofthai.com/food/curry_paste/leang-2190031094.php. I sliced up 1/4 onion, a zucchini and the last of some Tuscan kale and sauteed them while I boiled 3 cups of water. I added some dashi powder to the water, fresh udon noodles and then the curry paste. Once the noodles were cooked, I added the veggies. We had a bit of ham left, so I chopped that up and tossed it in as well. It was so spicy. I ate all of my bowl, but did not drink the broth. Shawn liked the heat level and the fact that it masked the flavor of the kale. I'm glad I tried it, but I told him the leftovers are all his.

Wafflized hashbrowns with ham, egg easy over and sprinkled with cheddar cheese.

We ended up making it later, but it did taste very good and we'll do again in the future.

I felt like pizza yesterday, so my husband made up a batch of dough and we made 2 pizzas yesterday. The dough makes enough for 3 pizzas. Pizza #1 was topped with Italian sausage and mushrooms, while pizza #2 had ham and fresh pineapple on it. Our Misfits order is scheduled to arrive today and includes apples. If that occurs, then pizza #3 will be an apple and cheddar pie.

I'm enjoying Back Bay Brewing's Blackberry Stroopwafel cider and it is delicious.

Last night was yaki udon, but with shrimp instead of pork. I think I should have tried to get the shrimp a bit drier before sautéing them with the other ingredients, but otherwise I really liked how it turned out. I had a napa cabbage in the drawer, so used that and baby carrots instead of a medium carrot. Dessert was Ghiradelli brownies from a mix with a scoop of eggnog frozen custard.

I felt like noodles last night, so I pulled a box of elbow noodles out of the pantry. I'd made a batch of onion masala about a year ago and it was still in the freezer. I took 6 of those out of the bag and put them in a skillet with some beef broth to defrost while the noodles cooked. I added some chopped curly kale and half pound of ground beef from the freezer next and once it was cooked through, added the drained noodles. I sprinkled it with some nutritional yeast and added a dollop of harissa. I was pretty surprised when the taste of it gave me a strong hamburger helper vibe, but in a good way.