Week 88:
OK, so let me get something straight, I'm not a writer, I'm a cook. Blogging is definitely not my forte, but I have been cooking every week since my last post. I really need to be more consistent. Alright week 88 of 104... Today I made a Spicy shrimp noodle bowl with a cucumber salad. The noodle bowl consisted of rice stick noodles, shrimp, sauteed vegetables, all severed in a fish broth that I made. The fish broth wasn't completely "from scratch" but I didn't just buy a fish stock. I started of with chicken broth, added water and clam juice then topped it all off with the shells from the shrimp and some slices of ginger. I boiled it down and it made a really yummy broth. Then I sauteed some garlic, onion, and bell pepper, added the broth, snap peas, some chili flakes, the shrimp and the noodles, cooked it all down to deliciousness and TAH-DAH!!!! A really yummy soup type dish. I served it with some lime wedges as well as some salad consisting of cucumber, radishes, green onion, and a light dressing. My family really enjoyed it (9/10) and it only to me about 30 minutes to make.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 66:
I haven't blogged in a while but I've been cooking. I made casserole, quesadillas, and etc... So today I made soup. It was corn chowder with some squash, celery, and green onions. They didn't have the type of squash I wanted to use at the store so I used spaghetti squash. Because of the squash texture the soup was a little chunky and stringy. Other than that, it was a little bland, however, it was tasty.
I loved the bruschetta, I just kept eating it. It was ok, but it was really addictive. My family gave the dishes an 8/10.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 55:
Today I made 2 kinds of salad. Firstly, I made a shrimp salad and then to top it off, I made a fruit salad (well, made with fruit). The shrimp salad was the main component though and it tasted pretty good. The only problem was that my local grocery store doesn't sell canned chiles, so I just used chile powder instead of an actual chipotle chile. The problem was mainly with the complementary salad. I think I've mentioned this before, but I genuinely believe I have a talent for picking the greenest fruit possible and then convincing myself that it's super ripe. The mango was soooooooo sour, I was actually kind of tough to eat. Despite my fruit issues my parents gave the dish a 7.5/10.
Secondly, I made a cobbler. Blackberries aren't exactly in season so they were a little on the expensive side. However, when blackberries start coming in by the truckload, this will be a very common dessert at home. This dish gave me the opportunity to test out my new mini food possessor, which was recently given to me as a gift. I ground up some almonds for the dough and it turned out pretty well. The dessert was great. I hadn't done a lattice top in a while so I kind of cheaped out. Instead on doing the traditional, over, under, over, under, I just did the vertical strips first and then placed the horizontal ones on top. It was very good and the only thing lacking was some ice cream. My parents gave it a 9/10 and I have to say, I agree. 
See you nest time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 46:
So according to the recipe calendar, I should've made Golden peach soup with shrimp and crab seviche. There were a couple issues. #1: Peaches aren't really in season #2: Where I live, seafood is kind of expensive so buying a bunch of shrimp and crab would be overboard. So as much as I would've loved to try my hand at a seviche, I didn't get the chance.
Instead, I made one of my family favorites, the barley salad from week 5. Yeah, that's really simple and really good so I just repeated that. Yup....
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 21:
Okay the lamb dish, once again, like the brown soda bread, I had to buy a giant container of sambal oelek ( a ground chile paste)because I only needed a tablespoon. I made a mistake while cooking my lamb because I didn't let the oven preheat completely before I put the lamb in the oven so the cooking time got all messed up and I had to pull out my thermometer to see the internal temperature. The sauce was great! You could pair it with pretty much anything and it would be delicious. The overall dish was one of the best so far and my family gave it a 9/10.
The salad was fine but the dressing that went with it was really good and really easy to remember. 1/2 cup of orange juice, 1/4 cup of honey, 1/4 cup canola oil, 2 tbsp champagne vinegar (I used white wine vinegar), 1 tsp poppy seeds. Just throw everything in a blender. The salad was okay. I just cracked open a bunch of canned fruit. My family gave it a 8/10.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 18:
My croquettes went well but once again I bought and un-pin boned fish but to add to that it had the skin on the filet as well. I combined all the ingredients for the croquettes and the dough almost had the texture of ground meat. I made a big mistake though... The recipe says that one of the ingredients in 1/4 cup of mayo, divided. I didn't notice the "divided" part and I put 1/4 of a cup of mayo in instead of 2 tbsp. But that wasn't the mistake. I was able to take the the extra 2 tbsp of mayo out but... I was about to put it in the sauce when my great-aunt said "Hold it! That touched raw fish!!!" I was so lucky that she was there to catch that cause that might not have been the best decision... The croquettes turned out really well though and my family gave them a 9. I think... :) The salad was okay, I guess. I don't know something about the flavor was too much. Maybe the red wine vinegar. My great-aunt was a giant help today with prep. I'm pretty sure my family gave the dish an 8.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 15:
To give you guys an idea on how behind I am today is July 24th and I made this on father's day. This was my first time making my own broth completely from scratch. It had shrimp shells (fished out at the end of course), onion, 18 cloves of garlic, jalapeno peppers, white wine, and water. I think wine smells and tastes as bitter as it gets so once I added in the wine the kitchen just filled with this overwhelming bitter smell which, personally, wasn't pleasant to cook in. Maybe when I'm older I'll appreciate wine more... The seafood was snapper and the shrimp. and I was cutting up the snapper filets and I realized that there were sharp bits in some of them and I realized that I didn't pin bone the fish. So I had to go through every piece of fish to check it. The soup ended up pretty good but... improvable. My family gave it a 8. Happy extremely belated father's day!
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 12:
Okay. Week 12 was two weeks ago and I'm writing about it now... behind, much? So I made two recipes, a salad and a breakfast braid. The salad was Mediterranean inspired but I'm not sure how. There's fennel, tomatoes, olives, red onions, beans and other yummy stuff. If you guys know how this could be Mediterranean inspired, please tell me because I am very confused. The salad was okay, my family liked it but I wasn't really a fan. I think that they gave it 7/10. The braid was so good!!!!! It had sausage, scrambled eggs, cheese, and jalapenos in it. My the recipe called for pizza dough in a can so I went and got some dough and I got it out of the can and I didn't notice that it was rolled up so I decided to roll it out and it just kept springing back... I went back to the store to get more and I was riding my scooter home and I hit a curb and I splatted on the sidewalk. Sadly, when the pizza can hit the ground it burst open... luckly, I was still able to use it. The braid was much better than the salad in my opinion and I think it got 8.5/10.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 11:
This week was really off, so off in fact, that I forgot to blog about it... oops! So I made jerk salmon, the original recipe called for mackerel but the store didn't have any and the internet says that salmon is a good substitute. What the jerk in jerk salmon is, is a type of paste with a distinct flavor that you rub on the fish. I was kind of upset because the recipe called for scotch bonnet peppers but I couldn't find any... I just used serrano peppers, but twice as much as the recipe called for. The papaya salad consists of: papaya, bell pepper, jicama, lime juice, and cilantro. I was supposed to julienne the veggies but a butchered them :( They were like french fries. My papaya completely fell apart. The salmon was really good but it didn't go with the salad. On top of everything I cut myself while cutting an onion. The paste was really good. I would smear it on anything. The salad got a 7 1/2 and the fish got 8 1/2. I forgot to mention, my week was so off that I didn't notice that I had two recipes for this week, so I moved it to week 73. We're gonna have to wait a while...
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 7:
First of all, I'd like to apologize for not posting my 2 year adventures. I went away for spring break so I couldn't really be doing my blog without my recipes. I made chicken noodle soup today. My mom came home from work today and she said "would you like pizza?" I said "no. I'm making soup." she said "great! how long have you had the stock on for?" I was really confused. I was like, "what stock?" My mom was pretty surprised that I didn't know what she was talking about. I said "I'm just using chicken broth..." My mom exclaimed "What's the point!" Apparently, my mom thinks that the whole point of making soup is making the stock from scratch. I didn't have time for that. I had a bit of a disaster. I got this food chopper for my birthday and I decided to test it out. I put carrot under the blades and started pushing down on the button to chop the carrot. Firstly, the pieces were uneven and secondly, they were so small. Thank goodness I had another carrot in the fridge. The chopper would be great for jalapeno peppers or something that you need to mince, but for soup? not really. In one of my previous entries I mentioned that my goal is to use a new ingredient or learn a new technique each time. Today I learned how to roast chicken. Yummmmmm! The soup was really good and my parents gave it a 7.5. I totally forgot about a picture though. Dang it!
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
Week 5:
Today was my first drink. This morning my dad and I made my mom a chocolate cappuccino. Yummmm...? I personally am not a fan of coffee and my dad only drinks decaf so only my mom tried it. I learned how to use our coffee machine and I learned how to scald milk. The end product looked pretty good with a nice dust of cinnamon on top. My mom gave the drink a 8/10.
Once again, I was all alone... My parents went to look for some houses while I made dinner. The came home in time for my dad to help me with frying the chicken. The "Greek inspired" pretty much means there are kalamata olives and feta cheese in the salad. I think that this dish was probably the best one yet because my family gave it the highest rating yet. Personally, I love barley and I would have LOVED the dish, except that when I was making the dressing, I added in my garlic then stirred my sauce and realized... the "minced" garlic was HUGE! I couldn't really take it out of the dressing so i was trying to crush the garlic in the bowl with a fork... but I was pretty proud of my dressing because it had thyme in it. Now this might not seem like a big deal but for those of you who don't know what thyme is, here it is:
Now, if you are using this herb, you can't use the stems. All you can use are those tiny leaves. This was a problem because I needed a full teaspoon of the leaves and theses leaves are the size of a grain of rice... and you have to pick them off the stems... ANYWAY, it took forever to get that part done. So remember how I mentioned that this dish had the highest ranking so far... Well, my family gave the dish a 9/10 (I really hope that that's the highest score so far so that I don't look stupid). Overall, Greek inspired chicken and barley salad, pretty good experience.
See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
