Food/Drink

Fancy Parfait Is Fancy

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Yesterday when I wasn’t feeling well I opted for a safe Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal, it was a good comfort food on a cold day. It was even colder this morning, but I had a craving for all things fruit. It’s not like me to have a yogurt parfait during my weekend, mainly in due part to bringing these to work on a regular basis. However unlike my work parfaits I can be a little more creative, and not be restricted by rules of portability. I pureed a bunch of different frozen fruits together; in this case I used red dragon fruit, peach, mango, pineapple, and blueberries with some honey and coconut milk. I was originally going to make it into a breakfast shake, but there was enough in the pitcher that I couldn’t have finished it all. So I made it part of a yogurt parfait, a mix of vanilla greek yogurt, chopped kiwi, the dragon fruit mixture, more vanilla yogurt and topped with cherry granola, mandarin oranges and honey. It felt almost like dessert!

It was packed with plenty of healthy swag that I think it helped me get through a more eventful day off. I finally had enough energy to get my care packages finalized for shipping! 😀 You’re first Florida! :v

I found out that I might be off for Valentines Day this year. I’m not sure why but I’m already contemplating a Valentines Breakfast to make for myself, gotta spoil yourself sometimes. 😛 Last year I made a portable chocolate themed breakfast parfait with candies and the whole shebang. If I’m staying home this year I’d want to do something nice, that would put me in a good mood to a start of my weekend. I’ll have plenty of time to think about it.

From Vegetarian To Meaty

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I like my breakfast to have a side of science.

Today was one of my busier day’s off. I had to take care of a few things around the house, and I made a different breakfast to counter the last couple of bacontastic ones. I made a Chinese style Frittata with a spicy gingery oyster sauce, brown rice and some yogurt and mandarins to counter the sick burns that awesomesauce leaves.

Almost vegan… almost.

The Frittata is packed with all kinds of vegetables; like an entire shredded carrot, bean sprouts, green onion, mushrooms, chopped spinach, and some chicken broth for extra flavour. I didn’t use a single bit of cheese on this breakfast, which is a rarity when it comes to omelettes and frittatas (at least for me). I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. It isn’t everyday that I think about putting carrots into eggs, and I’m actually not a big fan of carrot, but I’ve found if I shred it I can tolerate it more than whole. The best part is that I’ll have leftovers for the next few days. 😛 I’ll be able to bring questionable homemade food to work for the old unimaginative old biddies to awkwardly glare upon.

Hawt

There’s an optional sauce you can make that consists of oyster sauce, chili garlic sauce, sambal oelek, or sriraccha sauce. I added some ginger to mine for a little more zing, and almost everything I put ginger into seems to amplify the flavour factor. But if you’re lazy any sauce will do.

Look it’s food!

I tried another food lifehack; slow cooking Mongolian beef! I made a Mongolian beef sauce and added some sliced sirloin into the crock-pot along with some bell peppers and mushrooms and let it all mingle for about 6 hours. I stir fried some snowpeas and carrots with more of the bean sprouts from this morning; everyone seemed to love it. The meat was melt in your mouth delicious, and the best part was that little effort had to go into it, get some meat, veggies, sauce and just let it do its flavour-thang. I’ll have to consider more crock-pot related ideas down the road, especially for those busy work nights. I’m finding that I’m having to cook more, and on some nights I feel like I barely get to sit down.

Curry In My Favour

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Curried Rice with Moroccan seasoned chicken sounded good tonight. It warmed up the house and made for a pleasant aroma. I bought some chicken tenders and pretty much just used different seasonings, there was no recipe followed here it just tasted really good. I’ve also been looking up recipes for the weekend, planning to do some more Asian shenanigans to fuel that nerd energy. I’m thinking either Japanese or Chinese.

First Yogurt Parfaits Of 2021

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Portable Yogurt seems to be my prime goto during the week when I grow bored of breakfast in bar form. You can use pretty much anything for a container, but I prefer these yogurt cups. They come with a dome for storing cereal, or other kinds of toppings.

I’ve reached a point with my workday parfaits that I don’t need to even look at recipes, unless I’m looking for flavour inspiration. I almost always use oats with these things. One scoop per cup does the job.

Equal parts milk and yogurt come into play; sometimes I’ll also do straight yogurt, but I prefer it to be kinda like a smoothie bowl. In this case I’m using regular milk and honey sweetened greek yogurt, as greek style yogurt is DUMMY THICC on protein. Then of course comes flavouring my canvas. For the two parfaits I made I decided the base would be my matcha/monkfruit powder.

I like to use chia seeds whenever possible. They’re a great thickener if you want your breakfast to have a pudding like consistency, and have plenty of nutritional value. Plus they add a nice crunch.

 

Mixed in a different fruit into each one. The one on the left got the blueberry treatment, and for the other one I tried dragonfruit. I ate that one today, and I’m thinking if I go to use it again to add a second fruit like strawberry to it for added flavour. Dragonfruit is good for you, really high in fiber, but at least in frozen form it’s quite lacking in taste. I’ll be looking forward to some blueberries and matcha tomorrow, that particular set has become a regular staple and a good combo with matcha. Both green tea and blueberries are rich in antioxidants.

To top it off I added fruity granola for additional crunch. Eating one of these gives me enough energy to power me up until I go home for the day, and I like them because they’re easy to make ahead. This is probably my favourite breakfast lifehack.

Dumplings Dumplings Dumplings! (With Soup)

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I was originally going to make beer brats for dinner tonight, but the rain changed my appetite to something a little more warm and brothy. I bought some chicken tenders, red bell pepper, a carrot, onion, garlic, and baby portabellos, all seasoned with pepper, lime chili seasoning and some soy sauce, served over some rice noodles and topped with dumplings! I also threw in some cilantro, green onion, and leftover quinoa. If I can utilize leftovers into a new dish I always make an attempt.

Colour My World

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Ever have one of those mornings where the weather is dreary enough that you just end up in accidental hibernation? I practically had to drag my ass out of bed this morning with a mental reminder of all the stuff I had to get done today. Not all brunches are big fabulous events, they can be small and modest. I had one Hawaiian bun staring me in the face this morning, and the idea of bacon and eggs stuffed in between with a mayo seasoned with chili lime seasoning and some pineapple salsa, and a little feta cheese sounded nom. I also had enough Greek honey yogurt and tons of fruit and juice to make my own colourful healthy shake. It mainly consists of yogurt, a banana, frozen dragonfruit, and orange juice.

It might be a rainy day, but that doesn’t mean I can conjure the taste of summer to add some colour on what would otherwise be a quiet gray afternoon.

The First Weekend Breakfast Of 2021

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Some bacon and eggs sounded nice this morning. I stuffed an omelette with some feta cheese, and made a tomato garlic sauce with the remaining bacon grease, a little cilantro and some lime chili seasoning. The jam is homemade strawberry pineapple, and the bacon is just bacon as bacon is perfect just the way it is. Twas good comfort food for a rainy day.

I have played a bit more with the Canon EOS T7i Rebel as a webcam, and it works quite nicely! It still runs at 30fps via USB, but if I ever wanted to I could plug it into my computer via HDMI to my Elgato HD60 Pro Capture Card for full 60FPS, but for now I think I’ll just experiment with the camera as is. It’s actually kinda cool having professonal looking DSLR features with the power of a webcam! Assuming I ever show my face to the world they would be able to see every single pore! O_o

The Return Of Food Porn: New Camera Edition

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It was a semi lazy dinner night. I marinaded shaved steak in thai sweet chili sauce and cooked it with some sliced onion, and then placing my meet between two Hawaiian sweet buns with some pepper jack (though I laid out a spread of other cheeses for other flavour palates). I contemplated making some oven fries on the side, but opted for a salad instead:

Bought a mix of salads, chopped up some tomato, sliced an English cucumber, added some mediteranian vegetables some quinoa and a homemade honey sriracha dressing. I thought these would make a good couple of test subjects for my new Canon Rebel T7i (800D), tested on the built in food setting with the stock lens. I still need to practice more with background blurring, but I can tell I’m going to have a lot more fun having full control of my shot.

Going Bananas

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Or Banana Nesquik rather… Decided to put a spoonful of the banana powder in my overnight oat mixture and it tasted pretty good mixed with chocolate chips and a touch of granola. I have a couple healthier ones to finish out the week, been doing my best to try and plan ahead. I made a blueberry matcha one, and a strawberry one with garden strawberries and some (British) strawberry nesquik for extra vitamins and natural strawberry.

I would have also shared another round chicken dinner porn, but I was so hungry I forgot to take a picture. Oh well, consider yourselves spared!

Using My Noodle(s)

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I felt like doing Italian tonight. I made a chicken pasta with a tomato mushroom pasta sauce, a three color salad made of mozzerella, tomato and basil, and some corn. I was inspired by a recipe, but couldn’t find proper ingredients so turned it into my own thang. For the sauce I used:

  • 1lb can of diced Tomato with juice
  • Pint Of Baby Portabello Shrooms
  • 2 boneless chopped Chicken Bewbs
  • 2 Tbsp Italian Flat Leaf Parsley
  • 1 grated Carrot
  • 1 chopped Serrano pepper
  • 1 tbsp of Vietnamese Garlic Chili Sauce
  • 1 tbsp of Garlic
  • Salt and pepper to taste

I browned the chicken in one pan, and I placed the entire can of tomatoes and their juice, added the serrano, carrot, garlic, sauce, mushrooms and parsley and seasoned it with salt and pepper. After I finished browning the chicken I placed it in the sauce and let it simmer for about an hour with the frequent stir. You can actually eat it after half an hour, but waiting longer does make it more tender. It hit the spot! Plus I have more for later.