Chicken Thighs with Clementines, Limes & Onions

This weekend I tried this recipe from this Buzzfeed post:

I made some alterations, adding lime and reducing the amount of onions and clementines in favor of more chicken

Since I had to use white wine in the recipe, I fixed myself a glass while waiting for the chicken

Have a great weekend!

HelloFresh Review

Hello! A friend of mine sent me a free week of HelloFresh and the package arrived yesterday. Since I had previously used Blue Apron as well, I naturally compared the two and thought it might be worth posting about. I have not been sponsored by either company and these are my own opinions.


Pros of Blue Apron

I think the ingredients are more interesting, and are not ones that I might normally think to get myself while grocery shopping

Refrigeration of the meat products is better with Blue Apron - the insulated bag inside the box is actually sealed - the HelloFresh insulated bag was not sealed and as a result, the meat had started to leak juices while waiting for me outside my door

Below is the gyros recipe that was one of the three meals I received. I forgot to take pictures of the others (oops).

Pros of HelloFresh

Recipes come as a booklet, which I preferred to three loose sheets (but this may be a con for others, depending on preferences)

With Blue Apron, I had to run an entire dishwasher load of just the dishes/utensils, but with HelloFresh, I found myself only washing probably 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of kitchen supplies

 

 

 

I think I completely missed the mark on this cooking - my salmon skin wasn't at all crispy and my sauce was too runny - but it still ended up tasting pretty good

Also there was supposed to be bok choi in this recipe but I do not like the taste of bok choi so I chose to exclude it

Cooking with a Cast Iron Skillet

Hello! I recently moved and bought a cast iron skillet because I heard those things are all-around great, so today was my first time cooking with it. I had a bunch of chicken breasts and some tomatoes I had to finish, so I just threw in some garlic and made this quick, simple recipe:

Step 1: Cut up tomatoes and garlic

Step 2: Heat up oil and garlic

Step 3: Cook chicken breasts (add salt and pepper)

Step 4: Add in the tomatoes

Step 5: Enjoy!

Shiitake Mushrooms

Hello! It's been a while... I saw a good deal on shiitake mushrooms at my local grocery store and so I decided to make some mushroom miso soup and mushroom risotto.

I've never cooked mushrooms before, so I learned a lot. For example, you want to separate the cap from the stem:

 I froze the stems so that I could use them in a soup base later

I boiled the mushrooms with my rice cooker

Used half of the mushrooms + water for a miso soup base

Used the other half of the mushrooms + water for a risotto
 

Milk Chicken

A good recipe if you can never finish your milk (like me)

A nice bed for the chicken

Sitting in his milk bath

The finished product - pretty yummy and the house smells so good

Quiche Florentine!

I had a lot of leftover spinach, so I made my first spinach quiche, inspired by the delicious quiche florentines at La Madeleine

Simple Foods

My boyfriend and I now live across the country from one another, so I've had to fend (cook) for myself these days. 

I am not a great cook, so the food I make has been pretty simple:

Clam Chowder - My Dad's Recipe

Scrambled Eggs / Omelette

Leftover Clam Chowder, Cucumber Mango Salad with Lime, Riesling

MZ Feeds Herself!

It isn't as pretty as when my boyfriend cooks, but I made garlic chicken with lime today

 

mmmm

Valentine's Weekend

Happy Belated Valentine's Day!

My boyfriend and I stayed in for dinner on the 14th. We had oysters & prosecco, ribeye and pasta, and a white chocolate mousse with raspberry and peach sauces (dessert not pictured).

He both shucked the oysters and made the mignonette, both for the first time. Then we made a marinade for the meat together and he made a creamy sauce for the pasta, though I think the pictures don't show the sauce that well.

Sunday morning, we made blueberry and chocolate pancakes while listening to Maroon 5 and Jack Johnson :)

Here's me eating leftovers of the pasta we made

So yummy!

Scallion pancake croissants

It's almost time for Chinese New Year / Lunar New Year!

In honor of that, my boyfriend has made scallion pancake croissants, a French twist on a Chinese classic

He should post his recipe here soon, but until then, you can check out this post on scallion pancake waffles

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Edit: He has posted about the making of these scallion croissants here