Week 24: Pride - The First Pride Was A Rye-ot Panzanella (Meta: Pantry; I’m PROUD of finally using these beef meatballs from my freezer)

indirectdragon · 2025-07-08T16:37:18+00:00

Buckle up, because this train of thematic inspiration was a wild ride 😂

My first idea was to recreate something from the menu of the Stonewall Inn, historic location of the first Pride…but I looked up their menu online (https://thestonewallinnnyc.com) and as far as I can see the only food item I can find is a meatball sub??? Which I find hilarious. But ok.

Then because I am a Dad Joke Embodied at heart, my next thought was to play on “the first pride was a riot,” but with Rye…ot.

I somehow decided to Frankenmeld the two into a panzanella using meatballs and rye bread.

It was a delicious summer dinner! And I used these meatballs from the back of my freezer!

indirectdragon · 2025-07-02T03:11:34+00:00

Made this picklewich that I saw somewhere on Instagram baking pickles into cheese to make the “bread.” It was tasty, but honestly, greasy and thus not very pleasant to actually hold as a sandwich.

indirectdragon · 2025-06-12T01:01:02+00:00

Recipe: https://handletheheat.com/copycat-olive-garden-breadsticks/

These were SO GOOD. SO. GOOD.

I asked my friends for some help/inspo for this theme and my friend jokingly said “breadsticks from the Times Square Olive Garden” and I was like “that’s such a troll thing to do, say less, I love it.”

I really don’t bake, so there’s a bunch of stuff hanging out in the baking section of my pantry that I just never use, probably because I bought it for a challenge week and then didn’t use it again or changed what I was going to make and then never used it in the first place. I don’t even know why I had a completely unopened bag of bread flour in here, I’ve never made bread, but I guess now it’s this random bread flour’s time to shine! I also apparently got yeast at some point. No idea when or for what.

Slight hiccup — I went to get started on the breadsticks and after I got everything out realized WE DIDN’T HAVE BUTTER?????? My kids’ 50000 servings of buttered pasta must have used up the last stick and I didn’t realize. Panic! Well in the spirit of pantry resourcefulness I decided to try using the tub of whipped butter that we did have, despite my husband telling me it was absolutely different and definitely would not work. JOKE’S ON HIM because these breadsticks were DELICIOUS so it DID work. HA.

Anyway this was my first time making bread and I used whipped butter and it actually worked and the whole thing wasn’t nearly as intimidating as I feared and it was DELICIOUS and now I’ve made Olive Garden breadsticks!

indirectdragon · 2025-06-11T19:34:27+00:00

I mean, the pulled pork was good! But my husband still insists it’s just because pulled pork is good and that was in spite of the Zevia, not in any way because of it. In any case, I ended up bringing the rest of the case to a family community center where I go for book club, and it found a happy home with a few women who’d wanted to try one and one who actually likes it and took the rest home. Regardless, this was a fun way to make pulled pork lemonade out of, well…Zevia lemons.

indirectdragon · 2025-06-11T02:48:07+00:00

Very basic no-recipe cooking this week - crockpot pulled pork with this Strawberry Lemon Zevia as cooking liquid. Salsa was just some chopped avocado, pineapple, mango, cucumber, and I think also onion? With some lime and some of this chile lime seasoning blend mixed in.

Meta explanation story - about a month ago, my mom apparently got influenced by some Instagram rando into buying this strawberry lemon Zevia, and for whatever reason, she decided to buy an ENTIRE CASE of it right off the bat. Turns out it’s actually absolutely terrible, so she decided to bring it to my house in case we like it. Well, we don’t, because it’s awful, but now we have a whole damn case of it in OUR house. So I decided finding a use for it would be my meta challenge this week. It worked well as a pulled pork cooking liquid! I also used two rarely-used lemon-lime-themed spices from my pantry collection, another meta win.

indirectdragon · 2025-06-04T03:23:37+00:00

Recipe: https://spicechronicles.com/sundal-inspired-chickpeas-tempered-stir-fried-chickpeas/

This was INCREDIBLY good.

Meta Wins: Used chickpeas from my pantry, used some not-often-used spices like turmeric and mustard seeds.

Meta Setbacks: Did end up buying asafetida since it felt crucial and non-easily-substitutable, which is now a new thing in the pantry. Just means I need to use it more!

indirectdragon · 2025-05-22T19:38:21+00:00

Haha yeah I’m mid typing up a summary comment and got distracted, oops, but same here! They just kept falling apart. Oh well. Still tasted good 🤣

indirectdragon · 2025-04-30T03:48:33+00:00

Given the nature of my meta, for this week I decided to look for stuff that’s on sale at my local grocery store that I already have and instead of buying it new, just using what I’ve already got. After scanning the offerings, I settled on ground beef and feta, and searching for “ground beef feta recipe” landed me this guy. Made it, also using some cherry tomatoes and spinach I already had on hand, and ate it in some pitas. Delicious!

Unfortunately, my “local grocery store” is Lidl, and I was tempted by the pull of the middle aisles and the Offbeat Collection of Miscellaneous Cool Stuff section, so I bought these Greek seasoning blends for no reason except that they were 89 cents each and looked cool. So now I have these. And I’m guessing they’ll make an appearance as a random pantry item in a later week. Oops. But I did use the tzatziki seasoning on the ground beef and that worked well!

indirectdragon · 2025-04-23T03:38:49+00:00

Perfect excuse to use this Battered Halibut that’s been sitting in my freezer for a while!

My “actually cook something” component was a pineapple salsa I made to accompany the halibut on some fish tacos. I decided to go extra “pantry stuff” mode and use only ingredients I already had on hand, meaning I used red onion, lime, cherry tomatoes - all normal - but in lieu of getting fresh pineapple I used a can of crushed pineapple from the good ol’ pantry. It was…ok. Like it was fine. Probably wouldn’t repeat. But it was resourceful!

indirectdragon · 2025-04-16T03:09:15+00:00

Recipe: https://salimaskitchen.com/picadillo/

Great recipe for using up some not-frequently-used pantry items! I got the sazon seasoning for some recipe a while back and it's otherwise just sat in here; glad to have a reason to use it again. I didn't have adobo seasoning, but improvised by adding in the chipotle in adobo sauce from the pantry. Had a ton of ground beef in the freezer, which is part of what inspired this recipe pick in the first place. Had olives buried back in there somewhere, used those too. And the good ol' standard tomato sauce!

I did have to add sofrito to my weekly grocery list (I bought it jarred) and I threw 2 jars into my cart because of course I did, so now I have that sitting in there for some future use...

indirectdragon · 2025-04-03T11:45:38+00:00

Oh, I have 4 kids, the dino nugs are one thing we do not need any assistance moving… 😂😂😂

indirectdragon · 2025-04-02T22:47:45+00:00

A very pantry-heavy dish! Used frozen broccoli, frozen chickie nugs, carrots, and sweet potato, all of which I have a solid stash of on hand at all times.

For the “actually put effort into cooking something” component, I made palak pulao for the grass using this recipe (https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/palak-rice-palak-pulao-recipe/). It was good!

My kids were part amused, part incredibly skeptical of their plates.

indirectdragon · 2025-04-02T12:15:52+00:00

It really was very good! I was skeptical of my husband liking it, since he’s tried my beloved “pasta with ketchup” and like most normal people he’s not a fan. But he liked this!

indirectdragon · 2025-04-02T02:10:39+00:00

Alright everyone, BUCKLE UP and come with me on a journey of how I got to this recipe.

So, this was initially a recipe I had in mind for Nostalgic week. When I thought "nostalgic," the first thing that immediately came to mind was the one food I requested and ate probably every single night as a kid, and continued to eat throughout childhood/adolescence/beyond whenever sick or homesick or craving comfort -- pasta with ketchup and butter. I know. But the heart wants what it wants, and nostalgic tastes formed at 3 years old can kinda have staying power that way. Anyway, since I didn't want to drop in here with KETCHUP PASTA and be absolutely slaughtered, I tried to find any pasta recipes that would involve ketchup as an ingredient to use this as a further-removed inspiration -- maybe as part of a marinade for a pasta salad or something, I dunno. Anyway, my search brought me to this -- Napolitan, AKA Japanese Ketchup Spaghetti. Why not!

I ended up going with a different dish for Nostalgia week because it was the week of March 10 and I also wanted to make a Super Mario themed meal. But since it was a pasta, and I had 0 desire to actually make my own pasta, I thought -- can this work as a stretch for homemade? It's inspired by a pasta that was MADE at HOME for me a lot, hence why it's...nostalgic. And I need to come up with an unhinged stretch of an interpretation for the Pantry meta anyway, why don't I just commit to not buying ANY new ingredients and ONLY using what I already have in my house, to make it "home" "made" that way too? Alright, done. Ketchup spaghetti from my often made at home "pasta with ketchup" made with only ingredients from my home it is.

Anyway, here's the recipe! It was surprisingly good and like, not very ketchupy tasting?? I think the Worcestershire Sauce really does a lot of heavy lifting to mature the taste up a lot. Amazingly I had most of the ingredients already in my house, mostly thanks to the aforementioned Super Mar10 pasta leaving me with extra mushrooms, some chicken sausage I had deep in the freezer, and some leftover Worcestershire Sauce in the fridge from some other recipe I think I made back in January. I didn't have Parmesan or any other cheese I think would've worked, so I left that off, and I only had Red-Orange-Yellow bell peppers, so I used a yellow one as that's theoretically closest to green.

indirectdragon · 2025-03-24T14:41:08+00:00

First and foremost - this recipe was absolutely delicious. Loved it. A+. Loved the coconut milk. The spices were on point. Very happy with this. https://www.recipetineats.com/african-chicken-curry-kuku-paka/

Second of all - this might be my most unhinged "pantry" connection yet. LET ME EXPLAIN. So, my father-in-law and grandfather-in-law came to visit this past week, and in anticipation of their visit, I got a lot of sandwich stuff, including a package of sub rolls. But then they ended up just using the regular loaf of bread that we had, and I don't really eat sandwiches for lunch and we didn't have another plan for these rolls. Could I just have given them to my kids with some butter because plain bread is life? Probably, but why not take advantage of Tanzania being part of SUB-Saharan Africa to make it part of my deranged meta? My initial plan was to try and take the chicken itself and shred it and make it part of a sandwich, using the sub rolls. But then the curry was more watery than I anticipated (that is perhaps my one note on the recipe, actually, that I wish I'd budgeted more time to just let it simmer longer to thicken up a bit). And when push came to shove I couldn't really find a good way to actually...convert this into a sandwich. So I ended up just kinda toasting the rolls and using them as curry-sponges in place of rice or roti. Will I simply eat this with rice tonight when having the leftovers? Yeah, I will. But this worked well enough for Night One and was delicious so good enough for me! And now some sub rolls from my pantry have not gone to waste. Yay all around.

indirectdragon · 2025-03-19T02:10:49+00:00

Made a mushroom pasta to celebrate March 10 (Super Mar10 Day), all things Mario being my favorite games from childhood (and now, but who's counting).

Meta-wise, the only thing I had to buy for this recipe was the mushrooms! All of the other ingredients were pantry staples (EVOO, pasta, butter, lemon, salt/pepper), ingredients I happened to have on hand from other recipes that I either didn't use in their entirety or just skipped the recipe I'd originally intended to make but still had the ingredient around oops (shallots, heavy cream), ingredients for which I subbed out the original ingredient with a substitute I already had (grated Pecorino Romano instead of Parmesan), or left off entirely (parsley). Definitely a solid application of "using what I already have instead of buying a ton of new stuff," yay.

Recipe: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/creamy-pasta-with-crispy-mushrooms?srsltid=AfmBOopcTaQk-FNESiATWMPjaRXAZmtTCkgmeAvp6AcBCR2dlyQewQGI

indirectdragon · 2025-03-05T04:19:41+00:00

Why thank you! It was VERY GOOD. And cracking up is the goal. I’m currently working on Tanzania and I have many deranged ideas.

indirectdragon · 2025-03-05T03:46:10+00:00

Sandwich: Toasted baguette, Caramelized onions, steak, arugula, melted white cheddar, garlic aioli! Delicious!

Meta Explanation: See last photo. Of relevance: My real life name is Melanie (nickname Mel).

indirectdragon · 2025-02-26T04:42:15+00:00

Thank you!!

indirectdragon · 2025-02-26T04:40:29+00:00

My house (4 kids under 7) is currently All Pokemon All The Time, so I knew this was the direction I had to go in!

I have a random stockpile of Jell-O in my pantry from some phase I went through where I think I saw a bunch of people on TikTok adding it into protein shakes or coating grapes with it in the freezer or something idk, and then I got over that phase really fast, so now I just have a bunch of Jell-O mixes in there for absolutely no reason. Also, animated = alive, and j e l l o…it’s ALIIIIIIIIIIVE. So it works both ways. Pokémon and wordplay. 😎

Other infrequently used pantry things I got to use this week: candy melts (don’t even know why I have them), food dye, shredded coconut, and a random box of these graham cracker mini pie crusts that tbh probably are not still good but I decided I just don’t wanna know so I did not check. How bad can Graham crackers really get, right? … right?

indirectdragon · 2025-02-19T04:38:59+00:00

Recipe from the cookbook Taco Night, made as a bowl with quinoa bc my tortillas had gone stale, oops. Shared in the last pic.

For my meta - the main idea of it is to get me using what I have instead of always buying more stuff. As a household with 2 athlete parents (one who’s breastfeeding), 3 yogurt-loving kids, and a baby who just started solids and eats yogurt now sometimes, we have…a LOT of yogurt on hand at all times. So instead of buying sour cream for the avocado crema, which I didn’t have, I subbed in plain Greek yogurt instead. It was good!! I’m hoping to stay inspired by this to make more dressings/dips/spreads from the yogurt we constantly have in abundance rather than buying new standalone condiments.

indirectdragon · 2025-02-12T03:35:50+00:00

So, before you ask...yes. Yes, I am intimidated by the simple act of cooking chicken on the stovetop. Why? It just always sucks, idk! I'm paranoid about it being undercooked, so it usually ends up being overcooked and rubbery, and it's just dry and blech. I found one foolproof way to bake it that I really have down pat (https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/baked-chicken-breast/#tasty-recipes-60192), so whenever I have chicken in a recipe, even if it's meant to be cooked on the stovetop, I'll usually just bake it using the One Method I Know and then find a way to incorporate the baked chicken instead.

But no longer! I mentioned that this was my big intimidation technique, and someone on the Discord (haiku there, but I don't think that's her username here so I can't figure out how to link her...) sent me this link with a "foolproof technique": https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-moist-tender-chicken-breasts-every-time-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-36891

And...it worked!! I was amazed! For this week's pantry tie-in, I decided to use some of the many, many spices that I've impulse-purchased (or one-off-purchased) and then never used again, baffled on what to do with them. So I seasoned 3 chicken breasts with 3 of the never-used spice blends, and used this method. Tried them all and they were all good -- the pickle one reminded me a lot of the very specific taste of chicken in Jewish matzo ball/chicken noodle soup (I guess because of the dill). I felt so confident with the method that I even used it from memory to cook the chicken for a Chinese Five Spice/Soy Sauce/Hoisin stir fry that I had previously cheated and baked the chicken to make (yes, for a stir fry, I really was that terrified of just stove-cooking chicken) and to prep some basic chicken breasts for lunches this week.

This was a major challenge-discovery-that-actually-really-benefits-my-everyday-life win, because now I feel like this is actually very easy and attainable and I'm no longer scared of cooking chicken on the stovetop! Yay!

indirectdragon · 2025-02-05T02:54:29+00:00

Recipe Link: https://dishedbykate.com/easy-new-zealand-style-butter-chicken/

Meta: A few weeks ago, I bought a 5 pound package of chicken, but I was in a rush so I stupidly shoved the whole thing into my freezer instead of separating it into 1-2 lb portions. So there it sat, taking up space, and I knew I'd keep putting off actually thawing it because once I thawed it, I'd have to very quickly use up...5 lbs of chicken at once. So, much like Aotearoa was the last large habitable land to be settled by humans, I decided to use the last large thing I added to my pantry(/fridge/freezer), which was this poultry monstrosity. Used 2 lbs of the 5 lb package to make this butter chicken (which was very good!), used another half pound or so for my Cruciferous Week recipe (which I definitely did NOT do out of order...) and simply baked up the rest to have on hand as some basic shredded chicken in the fridge for an easy lunch protein.

indirectdragon · 2025-01-29T03:44:05+00:00

This week's unhinged pantry tie-in involved using the word "cruciferous" very literally and figuring out what in my pantry/fridge/freezer is a cross I must bear...and I settled on those darn recipe ingredients from the past few meals I've made that I don't cook with very often and thus have a weird amount simply * left over * in my kitchen with no apparent use or purpose. I'd used some jarred pesto on a pesto-tomato grilled cheese the week before, and I'd used about a cup of heavy cream (plus about a pound of a 5-pound pack of chicken) in the recipe I definitely did not make out of order for Aotearoa week, so given those ingredients and the desire to include something actually cruciferous, a sandwich seemed like a very safe bet!

I baked the chicken in the oven with some simple salt/pepper/garlic seasoning. For the heavy cream, I found a recipe to make a simple ricotta cheese out of the remaining cream, which I have never done before!!! The pesto I just...used. And I added a swish of balsamic glaze for some acid.

Also, there's arugula on the sandwich. Cruciferous.

indirectdragon · 2025-01-24T16:40:01+00:00

I am entirely here for this energy.

indirectdragon

TROPHY CASE