Weekend Warble 321

Apologies for the Radio Silence...

What a whirlwind weekend it's been here in Quarantine/Social Distancingville! Let me give you a brief rundown of what things have been like since Thursday:

• I was an exhausted, sleepless mess on Friday, spending most of the day watching silly YouTube videos and playing Breath of the Wild.
• My mom made roast chicken for dinner that night.
• Saturday, I was so tired that I'd become dizzy with exhaustion. Been a while since I've done that.
• The roast chicken was reworked into a delicious leftover-based dinner!
• Despite the sleepiness, however, I managed to write over 200 words!!! That, I credit entirely to a very productive and enjoyable digital work session with my partner. <3 li="">
• Today, I helped my mother fix one of our windows, which became weirdly angled in its tracks. It took the better part of two hours to wrestle the dang thing back into the right position. Tilt to clean windows are great, but they pose their own risks lol.

So I mentioned a leftover-based recipe above. You want it? I give it:

CHIKKY BIKKY BAKE

• Leftover cooked chicken
• Chicken Gravy mix
• herbs & spices to taste
• Frozen Corn
• Onion
• Cooking Oil
• A biscuit recipe, prepared

Do you have your grandma's drop biscuit recipe? If you don't, just find one online. They're usually pretty simple. You don't really want a firm, cut biscuit recipe, though, so don't pop open the Pillsbury or whatever - you want to splat that dough on at the end, so hold off on it until you've got everything assembled.

1. Pre-heat the oven according to your biscuit recipe
2. Shred up that cooked chicken as thick or fine as you want, then dump it into the bottom of a casserole dish in a more or less uniform layer
3. Sprinkle the gravy mix over your chicken - use as much or little as you like! Then add maybe 1/4 the water it calls for, throwing in any herbs or spices you like and think would go well (like thyme, for instance). Smooth the new chicken/gravy mixture out into a nice layer.
4. In a saute pan, drizzle some cooking oil and cook up some frozen corn and diced onion! You can use any veggies here, though you'll want to par-boil any potatoes if you use them. You want the onions to get translucent and the corn to get soft.
5. Dump your veggies on top of your chicken, spread this layer out gently so that it's still on top of the chicken
6. Remember your biscuits? You want them to be a little wetter than your recipe calls for, so add milk or water (whichever liquid your biscuit uses) until it's just a bit easier to move around. You want it to be able to easily cover your casserole dish of meat and veg.
7. Once your biscuits are plopped/spread over the casserole, you want to pop it in the oven for about the same time as you would if you were just straight-up making biscuits.
8. Watch this like a hawk! Don't let these biscuits burn!
9. Once the biscuits seem done to you (they're the only thing uncooked, after all!) take this puppy out and let cool just long enough to be edible.
10. Spoon this tastiness out and gobble it up!

I'd have a photo for you, but we ate the food so fast there wasn't a chance to photograph it!

And once you're done eating, if you're looking for a game to play, may I suggest Idle Mine Remix on Kongregate? It's a simple clicker game with a lot of random chance to it. If you like that kind of gameplay plus simple graphics, go for it!

That'll do it for me today. I'll go back to sipping my coffee and griping about the hole in my sock :P

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Survival Sunday 241: Boston Trip Taste Testing!

I went on a trip and forgot to take pictures!

It's not often that I venture far from the blanket fort, but the opportunity to go explore Boston, Massachusetts came up and I absolutely could not say "no". On this trip I tried a lot of food:

• a delicious Butter Milk roll from a bakery in Chinatown
• cold and herbal matcha rolled ice cream topped with mochi and condensed milk and black sesame and grass jelly (which is shockingly tasty) at a place called "Juicy Spot" (which Leonardo DiCaprio has visited in the past!)
• spicy kimchi miso ramen and tonkatsu curry from the food court at an H Mart (the curry was from Go Go Curry!)
• some comically large pork rolls from a place I think was called Viet Pho in another food court
• comically bad pork cookies (like, super not good and yes you read that right)
• some tasty peanut mochi
• some tasty strawberry daifuku mochi
• an obscenely large bowl of bibimbap from somewhere called "Reliable Mart" (where I also tried a friend's spicy beef bulgogi and now I'm an addict)
• some fabulous tofu teriyaki from a really nice Japanese restaurant whose name I'm forgetting...
• some Lays potato chips that I think were called "grilled beef" or "grilled steak" but I can find 0 evidence for on the internet
• some chocolate-covered cookie tubes with creme brulee pudding inside them
• more things I'm forgetting right now, I'm sure!

The point is this: I went, I ate, it was delicious.

But we also brought back some snacks to try at home, so here's my reviews of these snacks:

A comically large 13+ oz bottle of original flavored Ramune

I. Love. Ramune.

Ramune is, for those not in the know, a Japanese soda best known for being sold in glass bottles that are stopped with a glass marble. This marble is forced out with a plunger that comes attached to the bottle top. Sometimes, it takes a lot of pressure to force the marble out, since it's being held in place by a combination of tension and the pressure of the carbonation. Regardless, it's a soda that sounds like a faint gunshot every time you open one, and it comes in a plethora of flavors, some of which are so bizarre the Jones Soda Co would lose their minds. Like... pandan, lychee, or even durian (only one of which I've drank...).

The Original flavor of Ramune is somewhere between bubblegum and vaguely citrus. It's flavored with citric acid and sugar. Ounce to ounce, there is slightly less sugar in Ramune than there is in Coke. It also tastes better and is caffeine free, and (if Original flavor) has absolutely no food coloring. It's basically the perfect soda, to me.

So when I saw that there was a comically large bottle at one of the stores we went to, of course it came home with me.

It was exactly as I described - vaguely citrusy, sweet, and refreshing. Perfect for what we drank it with...

A big yakisoba!

We brought yakisoba home with us, since the Blanket Fort lacks any kind of Asian market, and interesting noodles are few and far between unless you have an Umai Crate subscription. So we each got ourselves some good dry noodles. I didn't eat the one above.

I ate this one, purchased at the H Mart.

They were pretty self-explanatory, to be honest. Open the lids halfway, remove the packets, dump in the veggie packet, boil water, fill to line with water, close lid, wait 3 minutes, open vent (there's a vent, I promise), drain water, remove lid completely, add in sauce and/or spice, then artistically add the mustard mayonnaise.

See? Pretty self-explanatory.

These noodles were incredible. The yakisoba sauce was sweet and tangy, the cabbage was reconstituted perfectly, and the noodles were firm, but the real star was that mustard mayo. You'd think it would be zippy, but not too rough. You'd be wrong. It was almost horseradish-levels of spicy, and it was the perfect foil to the dark, sweet yakisoba sauce. It really, really made me wish I could eat it every day. I'm craving it right now.

Of course, I can't just give you my impression of instant noodles. That would be boring.

Korean Crackers? Okay, I'll bite!

I'd never had these before, but they're basically little cracker puffs held together with some sort of sweet coating. They're pretty bland and inoffensive, kinda like a super-crunchy popcorn ball! I'd absolutely use these for a party treat! Very nice.

Just be aware that they're really, really hard and crunchy.

Next I tried something that I knew would be good.

I mean, how bad can roasted chicken wing flavor be?

I'm used to chicken flavoring like you get in Maruchan ramen - salty and not much else. These had a definite "roasted poultry" flavor to them, and they were perfectly crisp and tasty! I was very impressed, and I'd love to get these again.

Big cronchers!

And then I broke out the chips I'd been worried about. We bought Numb and Spicy Hot Pot Flavor, but I don't fear that heat. I don't fear them being stale like some friends warned us they might be either. These are not the Numb and Spicy Hot Pot chips.

You read that right.
Grilled Eel.

I was very nervous about these. I hate seafood flavored chips. Shrimp, clam, crab - it doesn't matter. It all tastes nasty to me. These were much the same, but... I couldn't stop eating them. These are very much in the same vein as the Crab Seasoning chips you can sometimes find up here. You know, the Utz ones with the Chesapeake Bay Seasoning? Old Bay chips? Yeah, those. They're not good. I don't like them, but they brainwash you into finishing the bag regardless.

To be honest, they tasted like a lot of nori and eel sauce.
And I love eel sauce. And nori.
But there was definitely something... seafoody about them.

So that's what I've worked through so far, as far as snacks I brought home. Hope you got some ideas of what to get the next time you're at an Asian market!

I strongly advocate for mochi, by the way, because it's squishy, sweet, and delightful. I've been fortunate enough to never have bad mochi.

That's all from me for today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC

Survival Sunday 237: Chicken Mole

Chicken Mole with Buttered Rice

Good afternoon friends! I have discovered the joys of mole (pronounce Moe-Lay) and am a full convert, but more of that in a moment. Here's what you'll need for today's recipe:

Chicken broth, leftover chicken, mole paste, water, rice, and butter (which is hiding behind the broth)

I find that having your ingredients pre-measured in this case is a very, very good idea. Thankfully, everything I've got has instructions on it, so I just followed the instructions for four servings of rice, which was written right on the bag!

In this case it was a 1 to 2 ratio - one part rice to two parts water.
One cup of uncooked rice and two cups of water make four servings.

I started with the rice and hacked of a tablespoon of butter to dump in the pan.

It's a very big pan.

Then I added the rice and turned the heat to low, melting the butter and stirring it around so that all of the rice was coated. It turned a little golden, which is absolutely fine! That just means you're developing a lot of lovely flavor in your rice. It'll whiten right back up once you've cooked it.

This was also the point where my "kitchen helper" became decidedly unhelpful and began nipping the backs of my legs because I wouldn't stop what I was doing and go sit down to be her living couch...

Eventually, she gave up and decided to go eat some of her breakfast...

Once the butter was completely melted, I poured the water in. Despite being on very low heat, the pan was hot enough to instantly boil the first couple of splashes, but the full two cups quickly overwhelmed the heat from the pan and I had to turn up the heat to get a full boil.

Once it was boiling, however, I covered the pot with its lid and quickly turned the heat back to the lowest setting.

With the rice bubbling away quietly on the back burner, I set the timer for 9 minutes (because last time I went the full 15 it said on the bag, it burned horribly) and got to work on my mole.

The jar gave a 1:3 ratio - one part paste to three parts liquid.

I carved out a tablespoon or so of the mole paste, which was gritty feeling and smelled very rich and sweet. Then I added three tablespoons or so of chicken broth. I turned the heat to the lowest setting, and began to stir.

Believe it or not, this was several minutes into stirring the mixture. It's slow going at first.

Once I realized that things were going to take a while, I relaxed and started stirring the mole more gently. As the paste and the broth mingled and combined, the smell went from sweet-but-spicy to deep-dark-rich-sweet-spicy, and I knew I was going to love it.

Pretty much the second the paste incorporates, the mole thickens.
Be ready to cut this with more broth!

Once the mole was thick and smooth and slightly bubbly, I began adding chicken. Since the chicken was cold from the fridge, I knew it would cool everything else, so I left the heat on at first. By the third handful, however, I knew it was time to turn off the heat and just let the mole heat the chicken on its own!

Picture taken as I was being assaulted by the cat again...
Trust me, though, it looked great!

Nine minutes was plenty of time for my rice, which I turned off and let finish steaming while I worked on the mole. When I felt they were both finished, I took out the portion of the rice I was taking with me and put it in a microwave safe container. I was planning on eating this a few hours later, after all. My mother was an excellent test case for it, though, because she came home as I was working on the meal and I gave her some for lunch! She ate all of it, so I guess she liked it, lol!

Our finished rice being spooned out with a mole-covered spoon.
I'm not worried about cross-contamination.

The actual chicken mole itself was spooned on top of the rice, and it looked... well... see for yourself:

Beautiful. It's simply gorgeous.

Sweet and spicy, dark and mysterious, and absolutely delicious, this was one of the best meals I think I've made since that chili last year. I could seriously eat this three times a week and be very, very happy.

If you find some mole paste at your local supermarket (and remember, I live in the middle of nowhere, so if it's at one of my stores, you've probably got some somewhere), definitely give it a try! I'd recommend adding some veggies to your mole - maybe some onions and peppers? - and trying it with yellow rice. I'd also love to experiment with putting it in tortillas, because... mole taco? Yes please!

And since you've been so good and read to the end, here's your prize:

That'll about do it for me, today.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Survival Sunday 236: Quesadilla Madness

It's crunchy, it's cheesy, it's easy, it's a quesadilla!

My mother was awesome and made a whole roasted chicken last week, which meant that I had access to leftover chicken. Since we also had leftover veggies from burger-making on Labor Day (well, the day before, but close enough), I decided to use the onions, tomato, and peppers to make up a delicious chicken quesadilla.

Everything you need for a quesadilla. Except oil. I couldn't fit the oil in the shot.

First things first, prep your veggies! I fried mine up with a little pepper (since I couldn't find any of the taco spices I thought we had but didn't).

The way you know they're done is if they smell really good and they're softer than when you started!

Next, you want to pick your chicken apart into bite-sized pieces or shred it, depending on your preference. Some folks prefer to cube their chicken before they add it to their quesadilla. That sounds like more work than I'm into.

Also, I like the control of hand-separation. It means less veins.

Next, you re-oil your pan so that nothing sticks and put down your first taco shell/burrito shell/tortilla. I like to let my tortilla toast a tiny bit before I put the veggies and cheese down. I strongly suggest using a Mexican cheese like queso fresco or a fun cheese like jack, but we only had cheddar, so that's what I did. I also suggest putting a thin layer of cheese between your veg and your shell so that it anchors the veggies and chicken to the first shell. I didn't do this.

It still looks pretty darn good, though, doesn't it?

Next you level things off with your spatula. After things are relatively flat, you want to plop your second shell/tortilla on top and prepare to flip. This is the most annoying part. I always botch something. This time, some of the filling escaped and started burning, despite my having the pan on low heat.

It still looked delicious, though.

Once you're pretty sure the second side is toasted and your cheese has melted, you can flip your quesadilla onto a plate! This part is usually much easier due to the cheese holding things together.

Lovely!

The final steps are cutting and garnishing. Obviously, you can eat whatever you like with your quesadilla, but I like to have some salsa and sour cream. If I can get some, I also like to add a layer of refried beans inside the quesadilla to help hold things together, but that's before I cook the thing, so... doesn't count. I also like to have some sort of salad with it, but like the salsa and sour cream, we didn't have any. I had to mangle the quesadilla with a pizza cutter (use one hand to hold your food still while you cut with the other and it'll come out fine!) only to consume it nude.

The quesadilla was nude. Not me.

Even naked, though, this combination was delightful!

Since it was a day where I had some free time, I was able to take a video of this adventure:

I hope today's blog was as fun for you guys to check out as it was to make :)

Go Enjoy Something!
FC