I found a solution to my drink spilling problem. Behold!
The blowup mermaid tail was stuffed inside the cup when I bought it. It’s cute. Too bad we don’t have a pool. Oh, well. But, no more tip-overs for me. 🙂
Author Archives: stacey
My Sausage Fingers Strike Again
The other night I cooked a pizza for dinner, and as we were sitting down to enjoy a few slices with some soda, my fat sausage fingers got me into trouble again. *le sigh*
As I was reaching for another slice, my knuckle knocked the full glass of Fresca that was in front of the pizza on the cutting board, and this caused it to fall over and hit the hard wood board. It smashed and spilled my drink all over, under, and around the pizza slices, along with a bunch of big and small glass pieces.
I had to throw those slices (mine with the black olives) into the trash and work as fast as possible to mop up the drink that was now flowing all over the dining table as well as the cutting board. *le sigh*
“Would you like a some pizza with your broken glass?” asked the husband.
Threefer Breakfast
Yet another Tik-Tok I recreated before a video caught my eye. I have all of the equipment and all of the materials, and we love all of these foods, so why not, right?
This one I’m calling The Threefer Breakfast. It’s a waffle that’s been pan fried in some pancake batter on one side, and pan fried again in an omelette mixture on the other side. It sounds complicated and a lot of work, but it’s not. It went faster than I thought it would, and I used the waffle batter for the pancakes after I thinned it out a bit with milk.
- Make you waffle batter as your iron heats up. Pour it into the machine to start it.
- Make your omelette mixture. Set aside. Heat up a frying pan on a moderate heat.
- Remove the cooked waffles as they finish and rest them on a wire rack while heating some oil in the pan.
- Add 1 tbsp of milk to the waffle batter and whisk together to thin out the batter.
- Ladle one large scoop into the frying pan, tilt the pan to spread batter out, and top it with a waffle.
- After the pancake side fries up in a few mins, rest it back on the rack and add a bit more oil to the pan to heat up.
- Pour half the omelette mix into the frying pan and lay the pancake waffle down on top, waffle pocket side down (pancake side up).
That’s all that is involved. I was working on this creation and didn’t get time to take pics of the process but it’s not unlike a battering station as you bread and fry foods. Pick up, dip, drip off excess, drop over the oil. Bing-bang-boom.
Serve with syrup and whipped cream. If you remember and liked the McD’s full breakfast that came in a white Styrofoam container with baby butters and an OJ, you will like this throwback feeling as you eat your Threefer. Makes two.
If you want to make my waffle batter, you can search for the recipe on this blog, and double it.
Smash Taco Burgers
I watched a few Tik-Tok videos on these little Smash Taco hybrids since it’s all the rage this week, and they looked easy enough. Of course these videos tend to skip a lot of helpful information for the platform format that gets them the most view. Views = impressions, impressions = reach, and reach = virality. And somewhere a long that string is a spot for monetizing the content. But, fear not – I’ve got you covered.
On my journey to make some at home, I quickly discovered the content creators either use extra lean ground meat, resulting in far less grease (but also far less flavour) than my preferred medium ground beef. I don’t understand anyone eating lean and extra lean beef. Why not eat cardboard instead? It would taste about the same IMO.
Anyway, if you made these smash tacos from start to finish without stopping or resting the food, you will end up with a soggy, greasy, unpleasant final product. But, by cooking and then resting the meat on the tortilla, AND wiping out the grease of out your pan, you will notice the meat and tortilla will feel less moist/soggy as you eat it. The other side of the tortilla will them crisp up nicely in the pan better. I burned a few of these tacos in my first test run, but I nailed them in the second test run by keeping the pan clean and at a slightly lower temp in the last stage.
TIP: Season your meat well before you mix it up and divide them into the ~2 oz balls.
TIP: Use a square of parchment over top of the ball when smashing them down with whatever tamping instrument you have on hand all over one side of the tortilla. (I have the tamper that came with my slider pan.) I like to pick up the paper square and move it where I wanted to flatten the meat, and keep doing that until the meat is thin and evenly spread out.
TIP: Put the taco in the bare pan smashed out meat side down. I gave each one about three mins with me pushing them down into the pan for some lovely charred edges.
TIP: Let each taco REST on a wire rack face up for about 3-5 mins while you cook the meat side of any other smash tacos you’re making. REST that damn meat, people!
After you finish cooking the last smash taco on the meat side down, lay the first rested taco one back down into the pan, meat side up. Lay a slice or two of cheese on top at this point, drop the heat a bit, and cover it. Trust me.
It only needs about 1-2 mins to get gooey. Rest the smash tacos back on the wire rack for another 3-5 mins as you top them all with things like pickle slices, special sauce, caramelized onions, lettuce, etc. Whatever you like.
Resist the urge to fold them too early to serve them. The liquids will leak out of the corners instead of redistributing themselves in the meat, the cheese, the toppings, and tortilla. Patience will reward you when you wait to dig in.
I didn’t wait long enough, and there was grease and special sauce left on my plate, whereas the husband’s was made first and rested longer, and well, his plate was practically spotless when we finished eating.
Smash BigMac Quesadilla & Seasoned Fries
We were going to smoke some ribs on the BBQ but time got away from us today and it’s about to rain, so switch of plans for dinner tonight.
I have been thinking about these small tortilla smash burger tacos, but I only have one large tortilla left, so I’m planning to make a quesadilla version for two. I bought some medium ground beef that I’ll season with S&P, garlic powder, and mince some onion into the mix.
Here is the classic Big Mac sauce I’ll be using. I’m renaming it for this meal idea.
Smash Mac Sauce:
1 C Hellman’s Mayo (I have no idea why this makes it taste better but it does)
2 Tbsp: Vlasic’s Relish / White Wine Vinegar
1 Tbsp Yellow Mustard
1 Tea: Regular Paprika / Garlic Powder / Onion Powder
Tuna Burgers
I’m slowly weening myself, and by extension the husband, off of red meat. We tend to eat a lot of red meats all year, but in the summer, we tend to go bonkers smoking every thing we can get our hands on. I haven’t figured out what this summer will look like for us yet, but if Mother Nature has her way, she’s not into giving us many long weekend bbq/smoking sessions. 🙁
Sidebar: Doesn’t this Smoke warning look like a suggestion to smoke some bacon??
Anyway, I found this online recipe for Tuna Burgers, and having noted I have two cans of tuna collecting dust (not really) in my pantry just this morning, I instantly knew what to make for dinner tonight. I love tuna melts and tuna burgers. This recipe wasn’t far off of what I would have dreamt up had I had enough mental clarity to do so. I had a long day at work, so I needed a recipe geared towards the living dead tonight. 🙂
The burgers turned out nicely, too. I used some herbs from my garden in the patties as well as in the burger sauce, so that worked out nicely for me. I have to keep using them so they keep growing back and all that jazz.
Speaking of herbs, I am growing a small bunch of Strawberry Mint to use in simple syrups and to mottle down for faux mojitos. Fojitos?
I clipped a bunch the other day and whipped it over the fence for my neighbours who love to make summer drinks for their endless parade of visitors in their backyard. I really should have added a few rocks to the bag because it only just got over the fence, and then landed behind their bbq grill. LOL I quickly texted her and she grabbed it after they came back from walking the dog.
Like the other herbs, the more I harvest, the more it regrows. I should have a lot by this time in July. Woot.
Trying New Coffee Drinks
Stopped by the local coffee shop that took over when a Starbux closed (imagine that!). They have some new drinks so I decided to try their Rosa Mocha. It’s an interesting and complex flavoured coffee drink: espresso, heavy cream, and a blend of hazelnut/strawberry/chocolate syrups.
It’s weird combination, yet it works for me somehow.
Summer Salads & Hashes
Here is a small collection of the salads I have been enjoying this week.
This is my Cold Spicy Turkey Noodle salad. It’s a riff on the Cold Thai Salad I used to make at the college for the kids. I used one pack of Ramen (set the seasoning pack aside), a 5″ piece of cucumber that I diced up, half a red pepper diced up, a quarter of yellow onion thin sliced, and some turkey breast slices I had sitting in the fridge after cooking it in the air fryer a few days prior that I cut up. I tossed it all with S&P / Italian dressing / a dab of Sambol hot chili sauce. This salad was intended to be served cold but I kind of like it closer to room temp. This might be go-to salad of Summer.
This salad is a veggy crisper drawer cleaner if there ever was one. I started by lightly salting bite size romaine lettuce pieces, and to that I added one Roma tomato diced up, a 5″ cucumber section that was also diced, a bit of red onion I had kicking around, and I cooked up 1/4 C of bulgar to cool down before tossing it all in Italian dressing. I was out of parmesan, otherwise some small chips or some grated cheese would have set this off perfectly. I love to eat this one at room temp, but since I leave it in the fridge at work, cold worked out just fine, too.
Egg salad in delicious dill flavoured marble rye. What’s not to love?! I boiled up the last four eggs I had in boiling water with a small glub of vinegar to help the shells slide right off with ease, and set up a cold ice bath to rapid cool them. While I waited the 14 cook time, I headed out to the herb garden to cut a bunch of chives to wash and cut up fine. The dressing for this was just a few heaping tablespoons of mayo, a teaspoon of Dijon, and loads of fresh cracked pepper followed up by a pinch of salt (to taste). Delicious!
This was a dish I found on Pinterest that looked interesting to me, and hit all of the food in my fridge I wanted to get rid of this week. 🙂 It was a simple pan fry hash starting with half an onion and four garlics minced. From there, I browned and chopped up ground meat (any), added thin slices of green cabbage, small julienne cuts of peppers, and strips of carrot. When everything was cooked and softened up, I poured in two tablespoons of soy sauce along with the ramen season pack I set aside the day before. After a good mix, I added a can of sliced tomatoes near the end. I let it cook down a bit longer so all the flavoured melded into each other before serving it. I liked it but I want to improve or tweak it the next time I make this with different flavours.
My baby Weigela in bloom
This is what I get to look at when I walk out of the front door each day. I love it. The years I have put in tending to every single branch and leaf pays off in spades. I hate flowers but I really love this tree for some odd reason.
Pink Drink Season!
Fake out Starbux Pink Drink season is upon us, and I’m in my happy place. 🙂
Strawberry Base:
1C Strawberries, fresh, cut into small chunks
2 Tbsp Sugar (if they are ripe and sweet, add up to another 2 Tbsp if they aren’t)
Roll the berries around in the sugar for 20 mins to soften them. Dump them into a blender jar and add the juice from half a lime. Blitz well on high. Pour into a mason jar to store in the fridge.
Pink Drink:
1C Ice
1C White Grape Juice
1/4 Heavy Cream
2-3 Tbsp Strawberry Base
2 Tea Maple Syrup
Drizzle of Heavy Cream (topper)
Few Freeze Dried Strawberries
Blend well in a high speed blender, or shake it up in a tight fitted lid mason jar. Decant into a tall lidded glass, add toppers, and enjoy.