Recycling 3 Side Dishes

It is a puzzle how to reuse leftover food so as to save some money and avoid throwing food out. I rose up to the challenge this time. Reduce. Reuse. Recylce.

Yes. I like the idea of recycling and reusing that even food has no escape from me. I hate throwing out food that is still perfectly edible except that it already reached its limits when it comes to how it should taste in the first place. Did I lose you on that? Well, let’s just say that I’ve made some food, it didn’t taste as well as it should be or I’ve made more than we can consume at one go. It should last in the fridge for about three days before everyone except me will refuse to eat it again.

In order not to waste a lot of food, I make sure that what I cook is something that I won’t mind eating for days. If it doesn’t fall under that, let the boys make it themselves. I won’t be responsible if they decide to throw it later. This is how I ended up with three dishes in the fridge this week that needed to be put on priority before someone else finds and throws them out.

First Dish. Beef Bulgogi.

I seldom buy meat for health reasons plus it can be pretty heavy on the budget. I first made it for my son and he ate it at least once with a little hesitation. The second or third time, I might have had to bribe him. So this pretty pricey meat dish stayed in the fridge for a while. I tried to put it in fried rice but it wasn’t that popular either. There was still a bit that needs to be “recycled.” In the end, I added it in the pocket pizza mixed with bell peppers, onion, garlic, and cheese. Not my best pizza but it was my first decent looking pocket pizza even if my son didn't like it that much.

Second Dish. Canned Fish in Can.

I was slightly craving for fish after the bulgogi mishap so I opened this can. I discovered that I actually have 2 cans of this and I don’t remember tasting it yet. This makes me wonder what I must have picked these cans up twice with the intention of trying it out. Well, this fish in can turned out to be spicy for my taste. I was able to eat half of it but had trouble finishing it before it goes bad. It has coconut milk after all that go bad quickly once opened. I needed to google how to neutralize the spiciness.

My solution? Add some water! I do like thin liquid with my fish in coconut. But not only that, to up the chances of it tasting good, I also added a tablespoon or two of spaghetti sauce just enough to lose its white color and spiciness. Just like my accidental mix with the chickpea before, I managed to finish the whole thing even to the point of having to wait for the rice cooker to finish so that I can have more rice with it.

Third Dish. Chicken Teriyaki.

Made this as a freeze and dump for the slow cooker so it was the freezer for a while.

By now, I was already in my air fryer experiment mode so it was my first chicken to land in the air fryer. Such a waste as I skipped the thawing-well part that I almost burned the outer part while it still remained frozen inside. Off it went to the oven to no avail. It was thawed all right but the burned part just got worse. What did I expect? Nothing! I wasn’t thinking and wasn’t keeping a close eye on it while it was in the oven grilling.

Nonetheless, I tossed it with a sauce I hastily made and it was just so salty. Talk about a series of failure in one night. Well, I just cannot throw that out and thought I can make into a soup. It is well marinated and it still tastes okay save for the charred part and the saltiness level.

What did I do with it? Soup didn’t happen. I found that it’s easier to eat it with lettuce and rice. It wasn’t so bad.

With all of those meat and fish out of the fridge, I can now go back to the non-meat options. Oh! I almost forgot that I still have two leftover pocket pizza that I am saving for Sunday at least. I may try to look in the fridge again to find if there are any food that needs to be thrown out --- uh..I mean, recycle.

Science and Why I Like It #midnightmusings

Liking something and being good at it is totally different.  Let's just start at that. Why I took up a degree in sciences that came with not only life science but with Physics and Chemistry bundled in is just sheer ignorance and having no choice in the subjects that we had to get credits for.

I wasn't exactly a big fan of the those two but I've come to "embrace and appreciate" them after having to sit through hours of lectures and a few more for laboratory work. I really didn't care if I managed to solve the word problems in our class but I was more grateful for it is that it gave me answers or at least an idea on how and why things work. How would you measure the height of a flag pole without having the need to climb it up, what affects the speed of a moving vehicle and thus our safety, why I experience motion sickness with sudden lurches (inertia), how the size of a tube will affect the pressure and many more seemingly mundane things that happen around us but we just take them for granted. These things were explained and dissected in the Physics classes.

Chemistry, on the other hand, was a bit more abstract for me since it is not that visible always. It deals on the smaller and finer things which is just like physics but on a smaller picture unless one talks about nuclear bombs. My only favorite chemistry was biochemistry. It totally spoke to me even though our professor at that time wasn't really keen on her job. It validated what I had been taught all these years on the human body and health. It made me understand more of what goes on inside a living organism like our human body.

What I regret was not taking up psychology at least once in those undergraduate years. This I manage to get a bit through educational psychology in graduate school. That didn't satisfy me still and I gravitated towards buying and reading some books related to it later on when I had the chance. I would like to try to be in a class with challenging discussions about how the human mind works. I would like to learn more about it from equally curious people like me.

This curiosity about everything sometimes makes me wonder if my teenage son would also have a similar curious mind enough to push himself to get into a higher level of education. Or would the Korean educational system totally kill whatever tiny interest he had before coming here?

Life After Kids

36. 14. 

As I sit here in front of my trusty laptop, I reflect on these numbers. I am just half-way in the child-rearing journey and as I see my teen approach the bigger number of life, I just can't help but to equally look at my own numbers.

My life in numbers: 14, 20, 21, 22, 36. 5. I have a 14-year-old son, graduated from uni at 19, married at 20, had a kid at 22, and now at 36 years old, I am still at loss at what I want to do. Five. Five years at which my life was put on hold for the citizenship that I had zeroed in to acquire more than 5 years ago.

I had a job, I still do but it's a freelance job that is unstable as far as it can be. No work, no pay but I have the freedom to make my own schedule. I had not been very keen on the super stable job that my parents had groomed me from the beginning since both of them had worked in the government and they are now reaping their loyalty and dedication in their retirement years along with most people in their generation who sucked it up and went to work for an 8-5 job regardless of the pretty limited pay.

My parents are still hoping that I get my act together and join the government job but with extra citizenship, I don't think that is still possible under the law. The only possible field for me is private: freelance, employed and self-employed in a business. The best combination is being employed but at the same time running a business. That is one rule of life that I have seen worked pretty well. But of course, there's still the just do the business but that is riskier. 

So until I get that citizenship card, I will have to figure out what I can do with the remaining more-than-half of my life, one of which is to be able to get my son on a good footing better than how I had been despite my college education. I know I still got time, resources and a lot of ideas that I just have to really zero in. I got 12 days then I'm done and ready for the next life task! I know there is a higher Being who knows the proper timing for me that will yield better numbers.

Blog Overhaul

Here I go again with an idea to try polishing this blog.
It isn't just a place to dumb my brain anymore. It has become an outlet with added purpose. I noticed that I had been baking quite a bit and every adventure and misadventure somehow makes it here that I had to clear up my notes somehow.

Scrolling down to the previous entries under the baking label made me look back on what I've tried to bake and all the editing failures I made. *shameful grin. You see, I hardly edit my post before since it's not meant for other people's eyes usually or I just wanted to dump my words somewhere. (Oops! I'm using that word a bit too often.) I might do a quick once over after I've written it but it's different if you left it for a while and return to it with a fresher eye.

Now, there's some parallelism between writing and baking, especially yeast bread. You have to leave for a while and come back to get better results. Of course, there are specific durations on when you should revisit your written output and rework your dough but the idea is there.

Another one is, of course, they both needs my fingers. Even with the latest voice-to-text technological advancement, I still get more satisfaction in typing or handwriting. It can be more of a personal or psychological thing but I've tried the google text feature and it didn't match my needs just yet. I tried dictation but the text output was not that perfect and it's easy to lose my train of thoughts as speak and check what is being transcribed on the document. No wonder transcriptionist jobs still exist. This also made me realize why I was never a fan of tablet computers. There are no keyboards to feel, touch and find every letter as to let my mind wander on what my next word will be.  This is why I sometimes miss some words when my fingers cannot catch up with the thoughts in my brain. Isn't the brain just an amazing thing?

Which reminds me that I should really get back to studying or starting another batch of bread. But here I am still pecking away on my keyboard.  Another one on my to-do list in the near future is to get on that category list. Adios for now..until the next irresistible urge.

Novice Homebaker Series: Ciabatta

Wet dough. That's what makes this intimidating. I've tried no-knead bread before but nothing with a fancy name that I can possibly buy at a local bakery here except baguette. Even with that, it's been a while since I got some personal satisfaction of being able to make one.

I started with this recipe from Jenny Can Cook but ended up cutting them up into smaller one by watching this video on the tube since that I thought it might easier and faster to bake and eat. I haven't exactly proven that but I only managed to make it into 4 and it was already tricky to make it hold a shape and not spread out on the tray.
It took me at least 4 hours to get it in the oven, being the slow and novice baker that I am. Then, the final result came past midnight after it has been cooled. It took a little bit self-restraint to just tear it up while it was still warm. If I had done so, I might have found it still raw inside, I think.

*
The long wait is over and I was actually munching on my ciabatta sometime between 2-3 am. It was crusty but pillow-soft inside. It's such a contrast with my usual bread choices for baking which are usually pretty solid and filled inside unless I use an egg. I ended up peeling one piece naked for the crust and trying to decide if I should bring out my homemade yogurt cheese or just stick with my latest experiment called no-tahini hummus. That, itself, is another possible post to write about later.

Happiness is when you bite into a bread you just made yourself in the wee hours of the morning. I can't wait for my son to try this possibly add this to our "fave bread list."

Future experiments.  More from reddit.