COVID-19: A Food Diary Day 66-69 - Cooking for One
May 24, 2020
Here's the thing about cooking for one -- there's a fine line between having/wanting leftovers and making sure you don't make so much of something that you get sick of eating it. I was a little off-base in my calculations this week. The Indian butter shrimp, delicious as it was, ended up being lunch for 2 days after the initial dinner (and I had halved the recipe), so I was kinda bored of it by the 3rd dose. In some cases, I would have frozen a few portions (like the adult spaghetti-os), but I didn't think it would freeze well, especially because the shrimp were previously frozen. Because I'm making a concerted effort to make a dent in the food I have, I attacked the freezer bit by bit this week. That said, I of course ordered more groceries because, well, because I was running out of some things so I might as well. It was my first experience with Wegman's via Instacart; the other Instacart orders I have done were quite limited, but this was a proper grocery haul. My experience was very mixed. It was easy to get a spot and I was very happy with the quality of the items, especially the produce (I got a perfectly ripe pineapple, much to my delight) but they made a number of weird, non-approved substitutions (garlic pierogies instead of pork dumplings?). Probably won't be doing that again, although now I have some credits from them, so it's tempting.
A few months back I purchased a Mealthy CrispLid, which effectively allows me to use my Instant Pot as an air fryer. I've been playing with it a little and I'm not sure I see how it's wildly different from the oven, except that it's a bit quicker due to the convection. Anyhoo, Wednesday I made an air-fried chicken sandwich and served it with some frozen onion rings. Due to poor planning I had taken out some hake from the freezer to make air-fried fish and chips Thursday night. I should have made something else with the hake -- partly because I had just had the fried chicken sandwich and partly because when I took the hake out of its package, I noticed it had skin on one side. For some reason (maybe because I had already cut up the potatoes, seasoned the flour and breadcrumbs, and cracked an egg?) I skinned the hake filet (poorly) and went on my merry way. I also realized that a pound of hake is a lot for one person, resulting in leftovers. Friday night I was cranky and in need of some comfort food -- so I made carbonara, one of my go-tos. Saturday morning, I treated myself to an order of dim sum from Nom Wah Nolita. Any other meal I didn't mention (except breakfast, which was either a slice of toast and pineapple or I didn't eat it) was leftovers of something I mentioned above, sometimes with a spinach salad. Once I finish up all the leftovers I can continue trying to dent the freezer, except I've already made that challenging for myself. I'll explain tomorrow.