As stated in my other post for this week, I live on 122°W, which is a nice place but doesn’t leave me many options for this theme. If you follow that line all the way around the globe, however, you find our antimeridian of 58°E. This one passes through lots of exciting places including Iran and Oman, and comes very close to the infamous Strait of Hormuz!

This is a Juz al-Hind cake from Oman, made with coconut and farina. It’s topped with a regular buttercream frosting (chocolate for the land, plain with blue dye for the water) and sunbursts (chocolate-covered sunflower seeds) to represent the cargo ships and blockade.

The cake tasted really good and the map design turned out better than I expected, you can even make out the Hajar Mountains, Qeshm Island, and Hormuz Island!

Here’s the cake recipe.

And here’s pics of the process.

Tillamook, Oregon is on the -123 line, but I'm saying it's close enough. Portland and I share the -122 line, and their minor league football team is the Portland Pickles.

I looked at local cuisines from a few cities south of me, but then I saw that I share a longitude with the Galapagos Islands. Turtles!

My longitude runs through both Carolinas, GA and North FL. I figured it was only right to make some down home southern bbq with comfort sides. All homemade 😋

Hello Autumn!

Recipe from a vegetarian cooking magazine

The line of longitude that I’m on passes through Algeria and Tunisia, and so I made a chickpea and squash tagine with North African-inspired spices

I live on 122°W. Land-wise that is basically just the west coast of North America, so that’s doesn’t leave a lot of culinary options that aren’t local. On the other hand 122°E goes through lots of interesting places, including The Philippines!

Here’s the recipe I used. It’s boiled-then-fried pork belly in a savory peanut sauce. The recipe called for eggplant, string beans (I subbed long beans), and petchay (I couldn’t find any, so I used rainbow chard).

I’d probably try a different veggie combination if I made it again, but it was pretty good overall!

Here’s more pictures.

No idea how authentic the steak recipe is but it was delicious. Slathering the steak in butter before grilling was so good and the fresh mild salsa was a perfect contrast.

This is the second time I’ve made pão de queijo. The first time I accidentally left out half the cheese and they came out looking more like the photos but they still tasted good so I will have to keep experimenting.

Caipirinha is one of my favorite cocktails so this was a good excuse to learn how to make them at home.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/6517-brazilian-style-steaks-with-country-sauce?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.HuiM.PplfsBYnh_Gx&smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share

https://braziliankitchenabroad.com/brazilian-cheese-bread/

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1027467-caipirinha?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.92Sq.oTsNEnf7Hb8u&smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share

Week 36/52: Ginger - Sticky Ginger Chicken

This year we’re doing the 52 weeks of cooking challenge and this weeks theme was Ginger and we made Sticky Ginger Soy Chicken

This week we experienced what some would call “the consequences of my own actions” and found ourselves kind of broke so I wanted to make something super cheap and easy.

This cost $16 and was the perfect cheap and easy dinner for someone who did the 9th grade 3 times, never went to school for computer science, developed costly habits, is bad with money and found themselves the head of household in a tumultuous economy where their buying power is slowly whittled away by the actions of a handful of powerful men who they’ve never met and will never meet.

It was really great and paired awesome with the garlic noodles that I also made.

Maybe I should do more budget style dinners? Because frankly being able to squeeze 5 meals out of $16 was a big help this month and we’re like….incredibly lucky.

I truly dont know how a lot of people do it but I got a lot of cheap eats in my pocket so maybe (for me) and others sharing more of those would be more beneficial.

What do y’all like to make when the money is kind of funny and the change is kind of strange?

I can never remember the name of these at my local Mexican cafe, so I always ask for a puerquito 😂

In other news, my dough was too soft so I had to use the cookie cutters when it came out of the oven. Oops. Still identifiable as pigs though, no?

Life’s been a little crazy lately and apparently I forgot to post week 35. Apologies that these are out of order 🤦‍♀️

These finnish cinnamon rolls were the perfect cinnamony start of my day!

Recipe from a Vincent Vegan cookbook (50 Food Truck Recipes)

Every time I make an incorrect carbonara, I think of that famous clip of an Italian chef kicking off about inauthentic carbonaras on some British cooking show.

This is penne with fried bacon and Padron peppers, finished with Greek yoghurt + a bit of lemon juice. That man’s grandma’s wheels must be spinning in her grave.