For the two weeks or so, I am going to be posting 5 recipes. The first one was yesterday and the final one will be on February 18. I worked on them for an hour on Saturday before I crashed. The 5 recipes will build on each other and use each other leading up to a two-course Mexican meal. Though I’m not sure if I should call it a two-course meal or a three-course meal. It’s two full meals and a side.
I wanted to address a question that some of you may have about how in the hell am I posting every weekday with brain fog and fatigue. The answer is I am not writing it on those days. During an up day in my energy cycle, I write as many posts as I can before I crash (that is generally maybe 4 posts, 5 if I am lucky). I also write on days I don’t cook because all of my energy has to be on cooking on that day.
Each post takes about 20 minutes to write, maybe a bit more depending on how I’m feeling and whether it’s a long Storytime or not. Last week, I posted my first baking (mis)adventures post, which I am not going to try and keep up with. I hope to do it every week, but that might not work.
On another note, I want to point out how I see my recipes. Here is a classical music video of how I see my recipes.
Just like music composers have a bunch of instruments and notes to choose from, chefs and cooks have a bunch of cultural flavors and ingredients to choose from.
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So that video is several variations on the song Happy Birthday. Someone wrote the original music that Happy Birthday is set to and then the Nicole Pesce did variations on it based on different classical music composers. This is done in classical music where different composers use themes from other composers and they create their own variations on it
So, now I’m going to apply that to cooking. Someone wrote the original recipe long, long ago that we call Chicken Tenders and then someone came along and did a variation on that recipe based on different culture’s flavorings (jerk in Jamaica, Cajun in Louisiana, Soy Sauce in Japan and China, Gochujang in Korea, and waffles in Alabama). This is done in recipes where different recipe writers.
So what that means is that I am taking a bunch of different recipes or one particular recipe and I put my personal spin on it. Just like music composers have a bunch of instruments and notes to choose from, chefs and cooks have a bunch of cultural flavors and ingredients to choose from.
Is it my recipe? Yes. However, I got the original from someone else. So, I’m not quite sure how to deal with that and that is why it took so long for me to start this blog. My plan right now is to give attribution to the recipes that I got the base idea from. That is not to take anything away from the original writer(s) or say their recipe(s) are bad, they made it to their tastes and their style, I’m just putting my own variation on it.
What I cooked this week.
I cooked this week, but I don’t have any pictures to prove it. I forgot to take pictures of almost everything that I cooked this week. I will try and do better next week. But here is a list of what I cooked this week:
- Korean Ground Beef Bowls – This week, I made this. I am going to do a variation on this where I double the sauce, add more ginger, and mix the cooked rice into the mix as soon as the sauce is mixed in (rather than have it over the rice). This recipe is delicious, but my family and I love sauce, so we usually double-batch everything.
- Cream Cheese Wontons – This recipe is only the dough to make the wontons, I made my own cream cheese stuffing that I will share in a few weeks.
- Ginger Chicken – I made this recipe based on a recipe my mom and I watched when I was just starting the year of gluten-free diet. Sandra Lee on the Food Network wrote the one ours is based on, but you wouldn’t even know it because we changed up the process so much. We use chicken, mash up the mushrooms, garlic, onion, and ginger.
The Chronically Ill Chef 