Kinda silly that I didn't do this already but now my gallery has folders organizing food, photography, and tea, with restaurant food having its own folder too so it's not just purely in scraps and people know it's not my food.

Hi guys a friend generously got us $200 of groceries but I accidentally left two cartons of eggs out overnight which means I need to cook these things fast before they go bad. I'm upset about it because it means less options and less food for later unless I can freeze whatever I make from them or make something that will last longer. I know quiche is an option but am curious to know if anyone knows anything else I might be able to do so I'm not just making one thing.

Our kitchen only has 3 microwave sized countertops which can barely hold our appliances. There's nowhere I can reasonably place a cutting board, let alone have the space to hold multiple ingredients. Needless to say, I'm not sure when or how I'm going to cook big meals from scratch, even though I finally have access to more affordable food.
This makes me quite sad but there's not much I can really do about it unless I maybe invest in a foldable table for preparing food on

Times aren't being nice to anyone at all and I'm not excluded from that. On top of a lot of stressors in my life (losing health coverage, losing mom to a fire) my financial situation is pretty screwed and I can barely afford anything that costs more than 5 dollars at the store which is... almost everything now, so I can only buy what's on discount, usually stuff that's on its way out with no real choice in what I get because I just have to take whatever's available. I've tried food pantries in the past but most of what they give is pretty bleh stuff that doesn't align with my particular food sensitivities. The most I've been able to make from scratch is a banana milkshake and some baked seasoned okra.
I have a lot of trauma around food from being poor all my life, and I managed to escape that life of scrounging and eating expired food and eating the cheapest processed stuff for a good while but now I'm back in it and the trauma is coming right back. My desire to even eat anything is getting less and less.

Needless to say, I have no idea when I'll be able to post anything new. and that really upsets me, because I haven't been able to love the food I eat in a long time

So it's no secret I'm super passionate about tea and some people have been asking me to come up with custom blend ideas for different things, and I thought maybe it could be a service I can provide. Basically someone commissions me based on a theme or character or their flavor preferences, and I come up with a blend to their satisfaction. And if they pay extra, I can make the tin label you need on Adagio Teas to create a custom blend. The rest they'd need to do themselves, like inputting the recipe into Adagio and ordering a sample tin which is just $6. And they'd have this blend for life to order as much as they want from Adagio if they like it.

My question would be if people would be interested and what a fair asking price for a blend recipe would be?

I think I have 3-4 food photos I haven't posted yet just because the process is not something I want to deal with right now (Very depressed from ongoing family emergency) and by now I forgot where I got the recipes x-x I'm sure I could find some of them but one was something I made myself.
I dunno when I'll have the energy to post them but I'll try to soon

I'm just posting this journal so I have a place to easily find my ideas for improving on some recipes I've made so I can test it out later.

Pumpkin Pie Cheese Soup: Needs chunky bits, add purple and orange sweet potatoes, rainbow carrots, and sweet onion.

Curry Basil Rice and Ground Lamb: Add mint, lemon zest, and tzatziki sauce

That's all I can think of for the moment but I'll add notes here whenever I think of something.

I got a good deal on ground lamb again, and I wasn't interested in any of the recipes I found. So I'm going to come up with my own recipe for it today with the ingredients I already have. I have an idea in mind now that sounds like it'd be pretty tasty, so we'll see how it comes out! Wish me luck!

Sadly I won't be able to get a higher quality photo of it because our lighting is garbage without the kitchen light :[ But I'll still try to get a photo regardless.

The Wintery Dawn summer sausage and smoked cheese soup I realized had a horrible typo where I said ounces instead of tablespoons, which was double the amount of what it was supposed to be. The ingredients listed 8 tbs of butter, but then in the directions I said 4 oz of butter twice and 4 oz of butter is the same as 8 tbs which is WAY MORE BUTTER than needed. I have fixed it but man I can't believe it's been wrong this whole time -headdesk-

I recently went to a VERY generous food pantry that offered a lot of fresh foods rather than those ones that give you just recently expired foods, so I have a lot of stuff to work with now and I'm finding recipes I can put together with what I got. I also got some foods on sale.
I'm hoping to try a bunch of new things this upcoming week when I have the time, for example I'm going to one-up the cheese danishes I made earlier by making strawberry cheese danishes with fresh strawberries, and some basic pork katsu sandwiches taking what I learned from a hello fresh chicken katsu recipe.
I'm very excited to make some good food! I'll still be making different spaghetti recipes as well, but I need to use all the fresh stuff ASAP.

We are drowning in spaghetti noodles and I just want to have some variety with them because I'm so bored of your typical tomato sauce spaghetti. Nothing too fancy, the recipes need to be easy to afford since I'm on a budget. (I have less than 100 dollars right now)

So I actually have a LOT of food photos I've accumulated over the years from various restaurants... the problem is I can't remember which restaurants they were or even what some of the dishes were exactly. But they're really nice photos of good food. Plus, it's been so long that I can't give a fair critique of how the food tasted.

I know they're my photos, but I feel bad if I can't credit where the food came from. So what's your guys' opinions? Would it be bad to post food photos I can't name the restaurants for, or even what the dish is?

Edit: Actually I managed to find the credit for quite a few places thankfully, but the question still stands for the ones I don't know

I don't know why I'm so bad at baking when I'm so good at all sorts of things, but trying to make cheese sticks, or cake, it always goes horribly wrong in one way or another. Baked goods are my kryptonite and I don't know how to get better at it...
Today I followed all directions for baking a cake, even additional tips for making sure it came out right, and still had one half of the cake fall apart... Now I'm trying to hide my sins by making it the bottom layer and making the one successful cake round the top layer. Man. I wanted to make a good cake for my roomie's birthday and it was a boxed mix and I still couldn't get it right. I'm seriously doomed to fail at baking.

I got some ground lamb for a good price and I want to do something besides burgers for once. I found 3 recipes I'm interested in, and I can't decide which one I want to do. Two of them have a lot of ingredients and the other one has a lot less ingredients, and they vary in terms of complexity of the cooking process.

These are the recipes I'm interested in:
https://beyondmeresustenance.com/ea.....lamb-couscous/ Pros: Simple to make, one pot, has apricots. Cons: A lot of ingredients
https://drizzleanddip.com/2018/09/2.....t-yellow-rice/ Pros: Never made a South African dish before so very curious, has apples. Cons: A lot of ingredients, using the oven in the summer
https://www.milkandhoneynutrition.c.....ch-pasta-bake/ Pro: Less ingredients, therefor less cost, love pasta. Cons: Not as exotic and flavorful as the other two are, using an oven in the summer

The question is, what are you the most interested in me cooking?
You can vote here: https://forms.gle/sPXY4qCzsUmbipyYA

Have had a lot going on these past few months that makes me both too exhausted and too poor to really make anything that isn't already prepared. On top of that, I have a food sensitivity issue that causes me to be bored literally sick of foods, as in if I eat a food too much and try to eat it again, I'll gag and might throw up. And there's just general food boredom, if I'm bored of a food I can't eat it without a lot of forcing myself and that can lead to gagging again. I only have a handful of foods I can tolerate right now and afford, and it's been making me pretty depressed on top of a lot of other things. I don't do well when cooking depressed, I end up messing things up if I try.
I don't know when I'll get a break mentally and financially, but I hope I can get back to cooking something eventually.

My whole way of shopping for food has been utterly destroyed by the inflation we've been experiencing from the pandemic. Chicken is 3x the cost, what used to be cheap is often up to twice or more as it was, I spend 30+ more on groceries than I usually do which eats into my foodstamps a lot. Recently it was up to 60 dollars more than usual.
I don't know what's 'affordable' any more that I can eat that I'm not sick of at this point. I have a food sensitivity issue where if I eat something too much, I can't eat it any more for a really long time, years, because if I try I'll get squicked out by the taste or texture and struggle not to throw up. It's dumb, something to do with ADHD and food sensitivity.

Point is, I'm running out of options and there don't seem to be any viable solutions. I miss cooking but I can't do it when it costs this much.

I learned stir frying kale in olive oil is absolutely amazing. It has the texture of deep fried batter which is so so satisfying.

Raw kale is for masochists who eat it for the health benefits without realizing that it's god tier when fried. This is definitely a cooking veggie. Boiling not so much, but it's still better than raw. I honestly don't think kale is supposed to be eaten raw.

My major weakness in cooking is anything bread/pastry related
So I've attempted this more times than I should have to make stuffed breaded cheese sticks to mimic school lunch cheese sticks, but I have the same issue every time. The dough just puffs up to ridiculous amounts.
I've tried different methods to make the sticks, rolling them up individually, then putting them between two sheets. I get the dough as thin as I could get it. I forgot to let the dough double in size the first couple of times because the recipes didn't mention that step, but even after I did the same issue still occurs. It's starting to feel like an impossible task and I can't figure out why I can't get it right. My last attempt I'm not sure if the issue was because the dough grew in size as we were shopping and had to be refrigerated a couple days. I haven't tried making home made dough yet, because I feel like that's a step I should take after I figure out the premade dough first.
Could really use some advice.

I've been on what seems like a never ending search for a good mac n cheese recipe, preferably oven baked. But my problem is I am constantly coming across recipes that don't have seasoning, or just throw in cheese rather than making a sauce or adding anything to make the cheese creamier. I'm trying to find a good base that I can adapt to something more my own. Lack of seasoning I can work with, but when it comes to the cheese I really need something creamy, and I don't want to just resort to velveta cheese. Also I prefer creamy mac to lumpy mac. So if anyone knows a recipe or two I could try it'd be appreciated!

I'm really hoping after the pandemic is over I can check around to see what restaurants are still around and which ones are new, so I can start showing off some of the interesting food I've found around here. I like finding weird combos and interesting twists, and you can find a lot of that around here. I was planning to do this before the pandemic hit but I hope I can go back to it and post more than just my own food here, because I just love food in general and like to share what stuff I eat.

So I went to a picnic last weekend and I made cucumber sandwiches, but I only needed 2 lemons for it. The problem is, the store was out of single lemons, so I had to buy a bag of lemons and now I have all these leftover lemons that I don't know what to do with. I'm not super interested in desserts right now, but other dishes like pasta and soup I'd be interested in. So if anyone knows any they could direct me to, I'd appreciate it!

I invested some of my savings in to a new camera since my old ones are off color and have trouble focusing these days. It's not great for video and it doesn't have a lot of the extra features but that's because everything goes in to taking quality images.
So yes, expect better pictures of food!

Made corned beef and cabbage with potatoes for st patties day, I was planning to take photos but I ended up being so excited about eating it that I forgot T-T
Oh well, maybe next year...

Okay so every week the food bank has given us a huge container of instant oats and there's no way we can eat all those oats in a week so they're piling up. I really need some recipes that use oats, because this is ridiculous and I'm getting tired of just plain old oatmeal. I found a recipe for a pumpkin crumble which I already posted here but I definitely need more recipes to get rid of these darned oats.

Also suggestions for the other stuff we have would be appreciated.
Other food we have in excess thanks to food bank include tomato sauce, rice, dried split peas, dried beans of various kinds, and so so many raisins.

I know I haven't been on this account in a long time, one reason being I forgot what the password was, the other being that I haven't had a decent kitchen to cook in in a LONG time. The kitchen we have right now is very small, so there's not a lot of room to cook fancier meals. Plus I'm not making as much money as I was, so I can't get the ingredients I want. I really miss cooking. I've made a few things here and there and I'll post what I have, but it's not much.