What I cooked for Christmas – 2020

Christmas is a time for joy, for presents, for family, and of course, for EATING. I have to admit, out of all of the ways to celebrate the season, eating good food was at the top of my list. I was lucky enough to host my inlaws this Christmas, and I couldn’t resist planning a set of delicious meals for them while they were here. I’m sharing everything I cooked for Christmas in this blog post.

Things to do with leftover taco meat

Over the past few years I’ve been trying harder to be conscious about my food waste. For me, creating a menu for the week is critical. I usually create my menu for the week on Sunday and add only those things to my shopping list. If I have any leftover items, like an open can of coconut milk or spinach leaves that I didn’t finish from the week before, I try to incorporate those ingredients into my meals for the upcoming week.

Another thing I do is try really hard to use up any leftover if I happen to have cooked too much of. Taco meat is often one of those things for me. If I make a pound of taco meat, since it’s just Mitcher and me, we don’t finish the entire pound in one sitting. So I’ve come up with three ways to use up that leftover taco meat: 1) Taco pizza, 2) Stuffed bell peppers, 3) Zucchini boats.

Ep. 11 – Indonesia – Dragon Fruit Coconut Cocktail + Beef Rendang

I thought it was about time that my blog series traveled to Southeast Asia. When I lived in Australia, I had a long list of places to see. Firstly, I wanted to see as much of Australia as possible, I wanted to pop over to New Zealand, and — even though there aren’t THAT many other countries in close proximity to Australia, I hoped to take advantage of being on that side of the world and check a few out. Indonesia was always on my list, and Bali in particular was high on my husband’s wish list. Despite all of this bucket list planning, we ended up moving back home to the US without ever having visited Indonesia. Heartbreaking! However, since Indonesia is relatively close to Australia, the good news is that I did get to eat a variety of Indonesian-inspired dishes during my 2 years on that side of the world.

Oddly enough, my strongest memory of eating Indonesian food was actually from my vacation in Fiji. Fijian cuisine takes inspiration from many surrounding countries, one of which was Indonesia. And one of my favorite Indonesian dishes that I had there was beef rendang.

Hawaiian Ground Beef

Sometimes I feel so uninspired by ground beef. If it’s not in a taco, in spaghetti, or mashed into a burger patty, I’m not sure what to do with it. So when I stumbled across this recipe, I was intrigued.

This recipe is, quite simply, ground beef, with a Hawaiian sauce. You then serve the ground beef either over rice or pasta, or over greens. I figured it was worth a shot, and was pleased to find out that I quite enjoyed the recipe!

Ep. 3 – Cuba – Mojitos + Empanadas

For Episode 3 of Cocktails Under Quarantine, we’re traveling to Cuba!

I have some friends who traveled to Cuba recently, and when they came back they shared how to make traditional mojitos. So ever since then, I’ve loved making them. So for this week, I chose to make them and pair them with picadillo empanadas. Picadillo is a traditional ground beef and veggie mixture with Cuban spices and green olives, and it’s stuffed into an empanada and fried until crispy.

St. Patrick’s Day Corned Beef and Cabbage

St. Patrick’s Day in the year 2020 is — let’s face it — not going to go down in the books as our favorite holiday. With canceled parades, pubs with boarded-up windows, and all the scary uncertainty of COVID-19, in a way, it might feel easier to just not celebrate at all.

But I think, if we’re going to get through this pandemic, we need to think about ourselves and our happiness too. So I think we should celebrate holidays when we can.

Today is St. Patrick’s Day so I have a great go-to St. Patty’s Day meal for you: Corned Beef and Cabbage.

Mozzarella-stuffed Italian meatballs

Homemade meatballs are such a treat. There’s something about them that makes them special. For me, I think it’s because the act of rolling and frying them individually makes them a bit of a labor of love, and it’s not something I’ll do on an average week.

I was talking to my mom on the phone a few weeks ago and asked her what she was going to make for dinner and she mentioned making Asian-flavored meatballs. I thought about my fridge ingredients and determined that I had the perfect ingredients to make meatballs myself! So I got to work that night, but I decided to go Italian instead.

Braised red wine short ribs over parmesan polenta

I have been loving my tradition of “slow-cooked Sundays”. I love the complex flavor of slowly-cooked foods, but given the time commitment of slow-cooking, it’s something I generally reserve for Sundays.

One of my favorite things to slow-cook is beef short ribs. I’ve found that they turn out delicious every time, and they actually cook faster than other cuts of meat – this recipe cooks in only 2.5-3 hours.

So follow along to see how I make this recipe!