Beef Chili

Beef Chili

20150814:
After seeing a recipe for beef chili on a can of beans, I decided to make some.

Ingredients:
Ground beef - 1 lb. | Sun dried tomatoes | Diced tomatoes - 1 can | Black beans - 1 can

Steps I Took:
1) Used canola oil.
2) Cooked beef for about 6 min on high until brown.
3) Added sun dried tomatoes (pre-chopped from jar).
4) Added vegetable soya sauce (soy sauce).

Beef - 93% lean / 7% fat

5) Drained beef.
6) Added diced tomatoes first.
7) Added black beans (undrained).
8) Let simmer for about fifteen minutes.

Comments and Results:
I planned to eat the dish over three meals and so today I ate a third of it. I liked how I could taste the diced tomatoes. The beans and beef also tasted good.

Furthermore, for whatever reason, the dish was free of this weird aftertaste that is usually present when I heat and eat beef chili from a can.

Added diced tomatoes first.

I wonder if the reason is because I used black beans and the beans used in canned beef chili are pinto.

I should also note that the dish tasted exceptionally good for its simplicity; there were no herbs, no spices, no garlic, and no onions.

Anyways, I'm happy to slowly be getting back into cooking! 3:00PM PT

Fettuccine and Tuna

20150806:
Today I put together a simple dish with the aim of trying to cook a little bit more.

Ingredients:
Fettuccine - 1/4 box (2 servings)* | Soy sauce | Pasta sauce - 8 oz. | Tuna - 1 can

*I estimated using a quarter of the box, but I later found out that the box has several concentric circles for measuring out the amount of pasta.

Steps I Took:
1) Added some soy sauce to a pot of water and brought the water to boiling.
2) When the water started boiling, I took two ends of the bundle of fettuccine and broke it in half.*
3) I boiled the fettuccine for exactly eleven minutes (al dente).
4) Drained a can of tuna and mashed it at the bottom of a bowl.
5) Poured in the sauce and continued mashing.
6) Stirred the tuna and sauce in together with the pasta.

*I almost always break the bundle in half.

Comments:
The dish was delicious. The firmness of the pasta combined with the big tomatoes in the sauce went well with the texture and flavor of the tuna. 8:22PM PT

In hindsight, I wish I had an egg or two to cook and add to the dish.

20150813:
An easy variation was to buy some (imitation) crab sticks / crab meat and add them instead of the tuna.

Like the tuna, it was helpful to mash the crab sticks in order to get a finer texture.