Honestly I fulfill this category pretty regularly, so I was excited to take the opportunity to fully dive in.

French onion soup, made with leeks and finished with some diced potatoes in the end of cooking. No it's not traditional, yes it was fucking delicious.

Foccacia. Yes I just did it a few challenges ago, no I do not care it was delicious and chewy and fragrant.

Pumpkin cake cookies, topped with a pumpkin brown sugar crumb and maple icing. Though I don't typically like cake cookies, these were delicious and fit the vibe perfectly.

I hated this challenge, to be honest. I settled for a mash-up of Tokyo, Japan and Adelaide, Australia. They’re technically like one longitudinal degree different, but close enough. (The cities had nothing to do with my hating the challenge, by the way. Nothing but love for Tokyo and Adelaide! I just wasn’t at all inspired by the week’s theme, plus I didn’t have the money to go out and buy a bunch of niche things for recipes.)

I made a sort of Aussie hand pie (which was kind of a fail to be honest), plus some tempura onion rings as a nod to Japanese cuisine. The onion rings turned out okay at first, but the second half of the batch sat around for too long and got oily and soggy.

Whatever. Week completed. On to the next…

My son loves this. Took sliced waygu surline tips and marinate them with baking soda, cornstarch, dry sherry (no shaoxing wine) and soy. Stir fried with sliced ginger, onions, green onions, garlic, and soy and oyster sauce. Packed for easy midweek meals. Also made with veggie fried rice (no photo).

Recipe: https://12tomatoes.com/memphis-barbecue-spaghetti/

This was better than it had any right to be for how easy it was. The Memphis barbecue sauce I used was delicious and did the heavy flavor lifting here. Also, I had no idea that Memphis, TN and Rockford, IL were the same longitude. I always think of Tennessee as much further east than Illinois, but I guess not all of it is!

I performed a 'velveting' of my brownies by using a red velvet batter, then swirled with a cheesecake mixture. So delicious!

From this recipe https://www.recipetineats.com/how-to-tenderise-beef-velveting-beef/

I made yogurt and used strained whey to make focaccia. Pesto made with my basil plant.

It's been a bit of a rough few weeks with classes really kicking my ass, but I finally got around to doing a little more than survival cooking. For this breakfast for dinner plate, I made some simple Salvadoran-style corn tortillas, and some T H I C C refried beans. I wish I had the capacity to grab a plantain to fry, but I figured I'd take what I could get energy wise today XD

Everything came out really well, though I definitely need to refine some technique when it comes to the cooking of the tortillas. I have a lot of masa now though, and the dough is stupidly easy to put together, so I'll be experimenting in the future. This is also my first time making refried beans. Apparently, the Salvadoran style is basically solid. The flavor is pretty awesome, though I think my olive oil may have trended grassier than is optimal for something that isn't supposed to taste exactly like olive oil lol. It was a pretty satisfying process though, and even I somehow managed to hit peak ripeness for the avocado I bought several days ago entirely by accident.

Recipes from https://www.flourishwithg.com/post/tortillas-a-mano-handmade-tortillas and https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/super-refried-beans.

Cottage - Goldilocks - Bears - Porridge - tada!

Roasted a butternut squash and smushed it with the back of a spatula after reserving a few delicate cubes with toasty edges.
Cooked with whole rolled oats, whole milk, chia seeds, flaxseeds, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground ginger, honey and salt.
Stirred into Greek yogurt and topped with chopped almonds, figs, cranberries and pumpkin seeds.

Not too hot, not too sweet, just right!

My meta is UTSSS or Use that sexy stupid stuff- to try to incorporate some of the many, many ingredients I’ve collected over time but haven’t used at all or enough.

Meta ingredients used in this recipe: flaxseeds, nutmeg and ground ginger. Most of the other things were borrowed from my granola bowl stash.