Fried rice is one of the main dinner options. Not long before everything blew up, I made this meal for Lee-Anne and told her it was my "poverty dish". Everything in it is fairly cheap, nutritious, and has a good shelf life.
Its' original inspiration is just a reflection on the staple foods of the world: rice and beans. My roommate has a friend who made us rice and beans in the past, which was delicious and she boasted that those two ingredients were all you need.
So I attempted to emulate that, but the result was lacking. You can think of this recipe less as something originally intended to be "fried rice" and more as "rice and beans" souped up.
So obviously, you need rice and beans, which together make a complete protein. I don't have a rice cooker right now, so I cook one part rice to two parts water in a pot on the stove top. When the rice looks like it has mostly absorbed the water, I add an egg. The egg is what makes it "fried rice" instead of a stirfry.
Back in college, we had a stirfry station. You could request rice or noodles, then there was a selection of vegetables, proteins, and sauces. I learned some rudimentary culinary skills by reverse-engineering their techniques. When I tried to recreate it at home, I called the result "stirfry"
But one day, when I was using rice instead of noodles, a roommate asked me if I was making fried rice. I told him that I was making stirfry, because that was what I was tring to replicate. He told me all I had to do was add an egg.
And I never looked back. Apparently some people scramble the egg and then add it, but I add it to the rice as it's cooking. My way makes it an "integration" rather than a "topping"
I use a can of beans. I haven't used all of the types we have in our unit yet, but so far, kidney beans do pretty well. You can get dry beans and soak them, but honestly, I tried that once and it didn't work so good. Still have half a bag of dried beans, so I can still get good during the pandemic.
In the image above, we used tofu, cabbage, snap peas, broccoli, mushrooms, cellery, and onion if I recall, I was just trying to use up the stuff that would expire. Going forward, I will be using those frozen vegetable mixes.
My chosen sauces are Honey Garlic and Sriracha. I can get a large bottle of honey garlic at the local Food Basics, and I can get a large bottle of Sriracha at Dollarama.
Every ingredient in this recipe is pennies per meal.
By the way, I mentioned in my post, Panic Buying, that every brand of rice except one had been bought out, but I couldn't remember the specific brand that failed to sell during a pandemic. Turns out, it is Y & Y Ultra Premium Jasmine.
And I think I mentioned that it's always been a dream of mine to purchase one of those giant sacks of rice, but I could never justify it. Well...
What better excuse than a pandemic? I decided not to go as low as generic "long grain white", but not so high-end as "ultra-premium Jasmine" and just went with "Mili Premium Jasmine".
As far as dinner options go, I've been alternating between fried rice and pasta. In this image we're using rotini, which is a noodle shape mostly seen in North America. It's like fusili, but with wider ridges. It is my preferred pasta, because those ridges are fantastic sauce catchers.
Last I went to the grocery, I could only get capellini, because everything else was bought out. I have since discovered a pre-made penne dish in my freezer. It was a bit boring, but I dressed it up with some ground turkey and sauteed onion. Just finished it, somnext up is the capellini.
I love the names of noodles. Spaghetti, macaroni, fusilli, penne. Just so fun to pronounce.
Oatmeal is my standard breakfast nowadays. It has similar virtues to rice, those being that it is one part oats to two parts water. In this image, I am using brown sugar and a splash of milk, because at this time, those are things I have access to. Honestly, if I'm relying on my roommate for anything, it's a consistent flow of brown sugar and eggs.
This is a throwback to Katimavik, where in the last rotation we were all nominated for specific duties based on the talents we had demonstrated, instead of assigning a "House Manager". One of the leading duties I was requested for was to be the group baker. Since then, I have frequently gifted family, friends and neighbours loaves of fresh-baked bread. I have always said that, it's something you can make in a large batch and when you give someone a loaf, they never forget you.
I have gotten a bit lazy due to professional obligations, but during quarantine, I have maintained a steady supply of bread.
They have put item restrictions on wheat, so you can get it, but not in the mega packs. They forgot to include yeast though, so I can't find that anywhere. I'm using old yeast for these loaves, which may have impacted rising.
I can't publish my recipe, because it's a Katimavik thing
Here we have pumpkin bread and pumpkin tarts. I had a can of pumpkin puree and I needed something to do with it. To my surprise, I had all the spices necessary! My pumpkin bread is the thing my roommate has enjoyed the most out of all my creartions.
I discovered lemon filling and cherry filling in my cupboard, so I will have to make more tarts or pies in the future.
Pumpkin bread recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6820/downeast-maine-pumpkin-bread/
Pumpkin tarts recipe: https://www.myorganizedchaos.net/2014/09/mini-pumpkin-pies
Blueberry tarts recipe (just because it's a favourite): http://www.dinnerwithjulie.com/2015/07/27/super-simple-blueberry-tarts/
This is a blueberry smoothie. At one point, I got really into the idea of smoothies, but I gave up on it when my blender broke. So I had a bunch of frozen fruit in my freezer, and I'm just beginning to experiment with that. My roommate has a real nice blender, and after making blueberry and raspberry smoothies, I still have mangos and strawberries, as well as a crap-ton more blueberries.
I don't know about claiming a recipe, but equal parts milk and the fruit of your preference?
And we end with dessert. This is caramel swirl ice cream with praline nut mix. My favourite icecream is pralines and cream, and this is kind of functionally that. When I got the praline nuts, I had forgotten I had icecream. I wouldn't indulge in this during the current crisis, but hey, I got a lot of ice cream, and a lot of nuts, and I gotta use them. What can I say
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