Topic: What are you eating / What did you eat.

[6pairsofshoes]

I was down to my last box of tea so I ordered more.  Took about a week to get to California from London.  That takes care of me for another year.  I'm drinking it now.  Why they can't just sell it here without a huge markup is beyond me, but it's cheaper for me to buy it like this.  There used to be stores that sold it here like that, but no longer.  Gonna go heat up scones now.

[goldshirt*9]

thats a big box of tea

[6pairsofshoes]

I got a case of 12 boxes of loose tea, 200 g each, so that will last me a year since I go through about a box a month.

Just had a toasted "English muffin" with some Trader Joe's curried chicken salad on it.  A nice easy lunch but I keep promising myself to make my own.  It's not hard, but it does take a little advance planning.  I feel like having a cup of espresso as it's a gloomy overcast cold day.  Yesterday was ridiculously beautiful, sunny, birds singing, flowers in bloom and warm.  I guess the weather gods figured we'd had enough fun for a while so it's back to wintry climes.

[8ullfrog]

Can't find taco sauce anywhere in town. Also, can't find lettuce or sour cream, but taco sauce was something I could do something about.
Took a half bottle of Texas pete (underwhelming poo) and dumped it in a pot with two cans of tomato sauce.
Still too spicy so I added half a cup of water. Still too spicy, but the yield was already too large.

So, I dumped it over a tray of already made red enchiladas, and it was fantastic. There's something to be said for tasting a sauce in a vacuum.

The sauce was complimented. In future, I'd just use less of the hot sauce. The bottle says it has something like 35 servings, and I feel like 10 servings would have made for a tasty, not over spiced enchilada sauce.

Source: I watched a ton of enchilada sauce videos on YouTube, and didn't want to deal with corn starch slurry. (gross)

Almost went with the base ingredients and flour but felt like that's just a slightly less objectionable corn starch slurry.

I really should just go boot first into flour and get to know it, but lazy.

[6pairsofshoes]

You're a creative guy, 8ully.  I suspect you could whip up your own taco sauce from scratch and it would be awesome.

I'm having the usual EG tea and scones.  Boring and repetitive but delicious just the same.

[6pairsofshoes]

I pulled a couple small servings of tomato pasta sauce from the freezer that I made last fall from my homegrown tomatoes.  It makes for an easy spaghetti dinner.  The number is dwindling, though.  I guess it's time to plant more tomatoes.

8ully, do you have a small balcony where you could plant any vegetables?

[8ullfrog]

I do not. I live at the end of a five-and-a-half-minute hallway.

The "secondary exit" required by California are the windows and would likely be an unpleasant experience.

Tonight was chopped cheese, but it was mom's turn. It was kind of funny, she made a plate of it. She does not like taking advice or critique on cooking, for years an easy way to start a fight was simply mentioning a roux.

Specifically, a chopped cheese is nothing fancy. It's chopped up meat, chopped up cheese, shredded lettuce, mayonaise and ketchup, on a roll.

Mom somehow made something of a salad of it. Not sure how. My contribution was sandwich oil, considering the vegetation.

We both enjoyed it, which is a happy thing.

We've got a new ten-inch stainless skillet, which will make dinner much easier. The frying pan she loves has a dip, which means cooking meat in it was not much fun. The new pan is a bless'ed champ.

The only downside is now I need to buy a bigger lid. I suppose that is a problem TO HAVE. Not sure how to translate that line, imagine it in a new jersey accent. "A problem TO HAVE"

So it's a nice one.

[6pairsofshoes]

That sounds like a long hallway.  Sorry about the lack of outside access.  Will probably roast vegs for dinner tonight.  Alternative is warmed up Indian food.  For some reason, I couldn't sleep last night, and when I say "couldn't sleep," I mean tried to sleep until around 7 a.m. and then gave up.  Now I'm stupid.  Oh well.  I'll try to go pull some weeds or something that doesn't require a good deal of brain power.

[6pairsofshoes]

Made fresh cream scones for breakfast.  Someone gave me a quart of heavy cream so I froze it in ziploc bags in amounts called for in the recipe.  The fat separates, so I had to add water to the bag to get the rest of the clinging fatty bits out.  The dough was a bit wet, but the scones turned out well.  Still, they'd probably have been better without frozen cream.

[8ullfrog]

Packet meat.

I was hoping for something better than canned meat, and was pleasantly surprised.

But holy poo was it spicy.

I feel like if it were seasoned less I'd buy more, but that was a scorcher. Very enjoyable tacos, but I can still feel the burn.

I thought it was going to be more like shredded beef, instead it was beef crumble.

Pleasantly surprised, but I'm not going to make it a staple. A half pound was plenty for dinner.

[6pairsofshoes]

I've never heard of it.  Does it come shrink wrapped or something?

[8ullfrog]

Foil packed. Had quite a bit more of it tonight.

I stirred two six ounce packets into sloppy joe mix hoping it would blunt the seasoning. It didn't.
Also bought a can of liquid cheese thinking I was going to do chili cheese dogs. The cheese was HORRID, and I'll never buy pace nacho cheese sauce again.

The chili dogs turned out okay, but very spicy still.

The product is referred to as "Hereford beef crumble" but is sourced from Brazil. I'd say it's about on par with stagg chili. I don't see much stagg on the shelf lately.

https://herefordfoods.com/products/seasoned-beef-crumbles-6oz/

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm curious.  Why did you buy this instead of just regular ground beef?  I suspect you'd have a greater degree of control over the seasoning with the ground beef.  It probably takes more work.

I've been mixing my own chili powder and it turns out well.  I dug around online and found some recipes for it and since I had most of the ingredients already, I threw it together so I can put it in chili or guacamole.  I like that you can control the individual elements and dial down or up flavors that you want to emphasize.

[smokester]

I'm off to Veeraswamy tonight (it's the first time for me) so whatever I'll be eating, it's bound to be very good.

[6pairsofshoes]

That place looks fabulous.  Let us know what you thought.

I just had leftover matzoh ball soup from the Seder I attended last night.  It is delicious and can't beat the fact that it's so easy to heat and eat.  Now -- two matzoh balls later -- I feel like a nap.