Food Odyssey: September 2020

This post is coming a little later than I wanted it to, but nonetheless, here it is. Remember that I am not in any way associated or affiliated with any blog, company, Youtuber, etc., that I mention in this post. I am just sharing things that I liked and/or tried. Let’s get to it.

Let’s start with breakfast. I love breakfast and brunch. So many delicious carb-loaded options and so many pounds gained. My carb-loaded option of choice at home is the breakfast sandwich.

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Let’s start with the bread shall we? I got these artisan rolls from Costco and I want to say they are ciabatta rolls. Ciabatta is one of my favorite breads because it just toasts so well. Split the roll in half, stick it under the broiler (unless you have a toaster) with butter and BAM! You got the beginnings of an amazing sandwich. Inside the roll I have honey (which you can see soaking into the top of the roll), goat cheese, roasted red bell pepper, arugula, spinach, a fried egg and breakfast sausage. The best breakfast sausage you will ever have is Tennessee Pride. Just sayin’. I think Jimmy Dean sausage is remarkably bland, but maybe that’s just me. For a little extra flavor, I added some hot sauce and pickled onions later. It was an interesting sandwich experience.

Something I made for the first time is an egg frittata. I know that’s nothing unique for people, but this is the first time I have tried one. It is incredibly easy to make and you just throw the contents of your fridge into it.

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This recipe is from Sunny Side-Up by Waylynn Lucas. The frittata has spinach, roasted bell peppers, goat cheese and caramelized onions in it. If you haven’t figured it out, I like goat cheese and I’m experimenting with roasted peppers. I am not the biggest fan of an egg-y breakfast, so I drowned the frittata with Cholula hot sauce and guacamole. I just made it because it’s an easy low carb breakfast option. Bread is not kind to me.

Moving right along to lunch/dinner, I made a vegetable soup.

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This soup is Love & Lemons recipe blog’s many-veggie vegetable soup. Like the recipe title implies, this soup is loaded with vegetables. Sweet potatoes, green beans, cherry tomatoes (not a veggie, but might as well be), onions, zucchini, kale and carrots. I was actually surprised at how good this soup was. You would think with all those vegetables it would taste like you gathered a bunch of twigs and leaves from outside and threw into some vegetable broth. How very wrong I was.

Speaking of comfort food, I made curry. Expect lots of curry recipes this fall and winter season.

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I didn’t make it look quite attractive, but this is a caramelized onion, coconut and egg curry from Made In India by Meera Sodha. The coconut broth and seasonings were delicious, but the caramelized onions put the sweetness a little over the edge for me. I would be interested in adding other vegetables and maybe even using chicken. If anyone tries this, let me know what you think.

There’s no good segue into the next few recipes, so be prepared for abrupt transitions. So I don’t know if I said this in the last food post, but I am an adamant lover of fish. If I had to choose fish, poultry or meat to eat for the rest of my life, I would choose fish. That being said, I made salmon cakes.

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These salmon patties are courtesy of the Cooking Classy recipe blog. This recipe was quite good, but I think I would put more old bay seasoning in them next time. I would also try eating them a chipotle or sriracha mayo. Or even better yet, some mayo mixed with sambal oelek for a good kick. I know sriracha is the THING for people these days, but sometimes it just doesn’t have enough heat for me, so I use sambal oelek instead. I don’t know if that’s an appropriate substitute, but who cares?

In my last grilling excursion for the summer, I made some jerk chicken. If anyone is a fan of the show Psych, you may know they reference jerk chicken quite a few times. I think that is the first time I had ever heard of it. Naturally, I had to try it.

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This jerk chicken recipe comes from the Once Upon a Chef recipe blog. I have tried a few recipes from her blog and they were all fabulous, including this one. I am not sure how authentic jerk chicken is supposed to taste, but I know the marinade usually consists of Scotch bonnets, allspice berries, thyme, garlic, onions and ginger. Authentic or not, I recommend this recipe. It has a good balance of spices and it’s cooked by FIRE. Who doesn’t love grilled meat? Also, I actually bought this chicken whole from my local farm and butchered it myself. I thought I would be squeamish doing it, but it actually wasn’t bad. Now I have the backbone and neck to make chicken broth with.

In this picture, I paired the jerk chicken with some coconut rice, mango salsa, fried plantains and avocado. It was a refreshing combination and decent way to close out the summer.

Lastly, let’s talk dessert. I had to pay one last homage to summer, not only with jerk chicken, but with a triple berry cheesecake muffin recipe. Can I get an AMEN?!

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I wish my muffins looked prettier, but if you go to the Pinch of Yum recipe blog, you will see what they are supposed to look like. They were rich, soft and buttery. Everything you could ask for to induce a heart attack. I loved them and would make them again. What more can I say?

Last, but not least, chocoflan. I believe chocoflan is a Mexican dessert. It consists of a layer of rich chocolate cake on the bottom and flan on top. Then you add some caramel sauce and pecans to top it all off. I would have never known about this gem if it wasn’t for my auntie. God bless her. This is easily in my top 5 favorite cakes.

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The recipe can be found on the Food Network website courtesy of Marcela Valladolid. One modification that I made is that I used store bought chocolate cake. I will say that it seems like the type of store bought cake does make a difference in cooking time. I forgot which cake mix I had the best results with, which sucks because I keep messing up the chocoflan with these different cake mixes! But even though I mess up this recipe 75% of the time I make it, you just throw some caramel sauce on it and no one can even tell that your flan looks diseased and the cake baked for too long. That’s how we do it baby. Plus, the cake softens up after being covered in the fridge overnight. Still tastes amazing. I know what you’re thinking: Why not just follow the recipe and make the chocolate cake from scratch if you’re having all these issues? Well, that would make too much sense and I’m not about that life.

That’s all I have to share with you all for September 2020. Write your comments, complaints, critiques, hate, death threats and suggestions down below. Thank you all for reading and God bless! Enjoy this picture of Hunter on your way to the comment section.