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Aaaand here it is
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Noice, serve that over a nice juicy brat sometime.

I'll take a pic next time I'm cooking something but here's some stuff I've shared with friends in the past.

That's gorgeous Linko. What's your go-to dish?

Just recently I've done my best to increase my repertoire of "go-to dishes." If it's just me I've fallen into doing asparagus and rice with whatever protein I picked up from the store that week, chicken or fish or something. If it's for guests, there might be a recipe I wanna make specifically for the occasion, but the biggest mainstay is something that got ironically named "Spicy Bricey Pasta." It's just spicy italian sausage cut up into bite-sized slices and pan fried with diced bell pepper, onion, garlic, as much crushed red pepper as you want per your spice tolerance, maybe also zucchini slices if you want something green but it's optional. Make that in a saute pan so you can just pour red sauce directly over it when it's done and serve it on some penne pasta. I'll make some next week and get pics.

I make a big chili once a week most weeks and that's one of my default easy meals. Dark chocolate and birds eye/cili padi peppers really elevate it.

Quality plating linko

kalua pork! super smokey, super salty

(we even repurposed the remains into bbq pulled pork tonight so it's two meals in one!)

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I made steak and shrimp pasta with a parmesan cheese sauce. It came out... meh. Proteins were great but the sauce was too thick and I wasn't crazy about the flavor. Will try again with a different sauce recipe next time though!

It LOOKS delicious. But you really do have to just stick to making a particular dish several times to get good, consistent results. Sometimes I even cook something I've made before, which had previously come out great and I thought I had it pretty much down, only for it to come out with a lot of mistakes. Ideally you should try it again soon, and even if it comes out great the second time, try to plan to make it again sometime before the process fades from your mind.

Then again, that might be a little pricey for a dish with both steak and pasta, lmao. You could make it with just chicken or something instead, especially if you want to focus on making a good sauce anyway.

It really wasn't more expensive than most other meals we tend to make Family of 5 so I tend to make enough to also have some leftovers for school lunches/etc. For this particular one, the steak was obviously the most expensive ingredient, and even that was just a couple cheaper Walmart sirloins. A bag of frozen shrimp is usually enough for two or three meals. I used a steak and a half for this dish then the other half I sliced up thin and made some janky but tasty beef jerky. Expense also kinda is a moot point in our house because we have a family member with Celiac disease so we have to get the gluten free versions of ingredients like the pasta, seasonings, etc, which always come with a markup over the normal versions.

Thanks for the advice on cooking it again soon. That's a great idea. When I do my chili I like to change things up slightly from cook to cook too, just to see if there's a way to make it even better. I think the tweaks I'll make with this pasta would be 1) use angel hair instead of spaghetti, 2) use a deeper dish or cook the noodles separate from the sauce (liquid reduced before noodles got tender all in one pan), and 3) just find a different sauce recipe, this one just wasn't it.

I mean to say "steak and shrimp" rather than "steak and pasta." But you're right, I've also noticed that shrimp isn't actually crazy outside of my price range at the grocery store or anything. With how ****ing expensive EVERYTHING is all of a sudden, suddenly stuff that felt luxurious is no better than anything else. There are big bulk packages in the freezer aisle, or I can get a bunch fresh already-cooked fish for like five bucks or so, which they PROBABLY intend for people to just eat with cocktail sauce but I'll use it for pasta, onigiri filling, fried rice, or omelettes.

I used to have real problems ever getting chicken to come out right. It just felt like it had a different texture every time I made it. Nowadays I wouldn't say I'm great at it, but I got a lot better when I just decided "okay, I'm making chicken breasts every single week now" for, like, a couple months straight. I hardly ever make my own sauces, but maybe I'll take a page out of your book and start trying that out, just for fun.

This may be basic advice, but it's something I keep having to relearn, so I'll share my experience: if your dish came out tasting blander or less spectacular than you were expecting, especially when you've made it in the past and you feel sure it had all the same ingredients and the same cooking methods, try JUST adding some salt. It legitimately does just punch up every other flavor in your dish, and if you're like me and cook by just sprinkling some in without measuring, you'll unintentionally short yourself now and then.

there's something very satisfying about a late night cheese and crackers

also i love love love curry

any suggestions on something i should make this week? something fun? tasty? aromatic?

Blessed be our Hogfather this Hogswatch night.