Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

Five Breakfasts

Monday, December 21st, 2020

It’s time for another food review! This time its breakfasts. One a day for five days, all similar but different.

Oceanfish with a Shrimp Topper

As you can see this meal is fishy and oil and includes delicious cooked shrimp. It’s mostly mackerel (I think) and Zoffy took 4 minutes and 24 seconds to finish it without ever once walking away. I think that means it was good.

Skipjack Tuna with a Sole Topper

Now this is high quality! Who else eats skipjack and sole for breakfast? Zoffy took only 3 minutes and 10 seconds to polish this meal off, and that included one brief walk away due to being startled by a noise. She loved this one!

White Meat Chicken

Zoffy is a cat that loves chicken, and since her second love is fish then this delight – which is served in a tuna broth – is right up her street! Indeed the fact she scarfed it down in only 2 minutes and 48 seconds is good evidence of the fact that this was a breakfast for kings!

Light Meat Tuna with a Scallop Topper

Lest there be anyone that doubts the quality of the breakfasts I serve my cat witness exhibit D, which includes scallop! Yes, Zoffy eats a variety of different tuna breakfasts each week and loves them all. This time it took her 4 minutes and 15 seconds (the scallop takes a lot of chewing!) with only a brief walkaway since Emi wandered too close while she was eating.

Steamed Wild Alaskan Salmon

This is an unusual breakfast for her, since I had convinced myself she preferred whitefish and had stopped buying Salmon. Then amazon made a mistake with an order and we got a bunch of these. So naturally, salmon was back on the menu. She loved it! With no walkaways she ate it all up in only 3 minutes and 7 seconds! Obviously Zoffy is a cat of refined taste, and can appreciate a delicious cut of steamed wild fish.

So if we judge in order of how fast Zoffy ate them, the ranking ends up being
1) Chicken
2) Salmon
3) Skipjack Tuna
4) Light Meat Tuna
5) Oceanfish

And yes, I am careful she never gets the same choice two days in a row. She also has a range of different soup/broth meals she gets for ‘dinner’ every day as well.

It’s almost as if Zoffy eats better than me…?

Ramen 1: Triple Chicken

Sunday, December 13th, 2020

I ate three different packet chicken ramen on three consecutive days. All were prepared the same way (boil water, add ramen then flavor when noodles cooked). Here’s my review of each.

Top Ramen (380 Calories, 14g fat, 1600 mg sodium)

I bought a pack of these months ago due to a Gudetama promotion but didn’t get around to trying any until this past week. The noodles are fatter than other ramens, but the flavor was light and didn’t taste anything like chicken soup. Not terrible for the price (about $0.25), and I’ll eat the ones I have but I won’t be buying them again.

Maruchan (370 Calories, 14g fat, 1520 mg sodium)

An old favorite of mine, this one didn’t disappoint. The noodles are thin and delicious, and the flavor is stronger and more chickeny than Top Ramen. Afterwards I felt satisfied and regretted I hadn’t been wearing my Maruchan t-shirt whilst eating. Overall a solid chicken ramen, especially for the low price ($0.16).

Sapporo Ichiban (460 Calories, 20g fat, 1810 mg sodium)

The undisputed winner of this comparison! The noodles seem identical to maruchan so the difference must be in the flavor packet. I’m guessing it’s the extra fat and sodium that makes this one better. Each mouthful is like a chicken injection into your soul, and this is a ramen you could eat over and over without ever getting tired of it. They cost more ($1 apiece) but are absolutely worth it!

This was a fun thing to do, but I wished I had more types to include. If I can get my mitts on any other types of plain chicken packet ramen I’ll do a follow up!

Toffees

Saturday, November 21st, 2020

A couple of weeks ago I remembered a home-made lolly from my youth called ‘toffees’. I recalled buying them at church and school fetes, but hadn’t had one for decades.

A quick google search later and KLS had found a recipe. It was time to try and recreate this sweet from my youth!

The ingredients are simple: sugar, water, vinegar and cream of tartar. The process of cooking isn’t too difficult either: just mix it together and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes:

The above shows our first attempt. When it’s ready we poured it into cupcake cups:

And after adding a few sprinkles we were done:

Not bad for our first attempt are they? They tasted great but there was a problem: they were incredibly sticky! As in you could barely open your mouth when you bit one. To be honest, they were scary to eat!

A second issue was that they were impossible to get out of the cupcake cups, and eating one included a good mouthful of paper as well. πŸ™‚

Kristin knew the cream of tartar was the culprit and less would result in a harder toffee. It was time for round two! This time she let the mix boil slightly longer until it turned golden, and then when we poured it we used silicon cups as well:

These were much more successful! Not as sticky with a better taste. The one in the top left was sublime since KLS topped it with salt! As a bonus they came out of the silicon mold perfectly:

Alas there was still one issue: they were too big! This made them difficult to eat since they were too hard to bite through and a bit too large in the mouth. It was time for further refinement…

A week later we had secured more sugar and a new set of smaller molds, and we tried again. Golden brown boil, smaller silicon molds, salt on top:

Finally, we had crafter perfection! These are astonishingly good and 100% the taste of my youth.

A great success! Even though they’re basically just sugar, they taste like salted caramels. Next time you visit, we’ll make you some πŸ™‚

Apple Picking!

Thursday, October 1st, 2020

We went and picked apples last weekend.

It was super popular and people were walking out with armfuls of fresh apples. The trees were laden.

We picked so many apples we could never eat them all, and ended up giving half to friends.

What to do with so many apples? Make a tart of course!

We mixed sliced apples with sugar and cinnamon and put them in a crust we bought at the store. After baking for an hour it looked like this:

It was a little bitter, but delicious with ice cream:

We’ve still got too many apples left. I wish I could give you some πŸ™‚

Send Noodles

Tuesday, September 1st, 2020

It’s time for some more lockdown cooking! This time I decided to make myself a full Japanese dinner:

Here’s the ingredients and tools all laid out in preparation:

I started with the spring rolls and gyoza, mixing the dough and carefully crafting each with a sweet crunchy filling:

The ramen was next. After mixing the cola-flavored broth I piped the noodle dough directly in:

And then topped with a naruto and slice of boiled egg! Here’s the entire meal, including a melon-pudding for dessert:

It was all great, but the noodles were sublime:

While I was working on the main course Kristin baked up a platter of waffles with berries and sauce:

Another gourmet success!