banh mi with chicken meatballs

We’re getting ready to move on Thursday, which means not only the kitchen but the entire apartment is a mess of suitcases, boxes, and cleaning supplies. Yesterday I boxed up most of our kitchen supplies, and today I cleared out everything else in the cabinets so I could clean them out. In the midst of all this super exciting packing, I realized that we have a lot of food left in our fridge.

I always try to eat my way through as much of the random food in my fridge and freezer as possible before moving, mostly to avoid the impulse to throw things away at the last minute when I decide “I don’t want to deal with it.” Salads were an obvious choice, with all the produce we had laying around, but we also had a lot of random things to eat up…like teriyaki ginger meatballs. Meatballs…garlic mayonnaise…carrots…cucumber…and then I realized that we had almost everything we needed to make a rough variation of banh mi xiu mai, Vietnamese meatball sandwiches.

sesame peanut noodles with chicken

I’m going to try to exaggerate as little as possible when I write about these noodles, but it’s going to be hard. I love these noodles. They are so addictive. And they’re best eaten cold, which means you can make a whole bunch of them, throw them in the fridge, and eat them on a whim whenever you want. They’re awesome.

back where it all began: dad’s kitchen

My mom bakes a mean cake, but my dad is really the one who taught me to cook and, more importantly, to really love and enjoy food. So I thought I’d kick this blog off with an amazing meal I made with my dad, brother, and step-mom just before I left for Brooklyn last month.