This week we were back to only cooking for two, so we’re back to just three recipes (and smaller portions). My roommate chose all of the recipes (I was a bit occupied with work), and it’s been interesting to roll the dice by entrusting someone else to entirely decide what to cook. Nonetheless, the week had hits (as it always does).

Our three recipes were:

1. Cowboy Caviar, 2x (Budget Bytes). I didn’t expect to like this nearly as much as I did. I’ve always thought that I didn’t like cold dishes, especially cold “salads” (not actual salad, but dishes with the word salad in them, e.g. potato salad/bean salad). This is basically a bean salad, and it’s incredibly refreshing - especially when you just take it out of the fridge and start eating directly from the container.

2. Parsley Pesto Pasta with Peas, 2x (Budget Bytes). This week, I zested my first two lemons, and made my first batch of pesto (food processors are quite incredible). Anyways, I thought that this was really solid - the lemon in the pesto was quite surprising. Drop-off in quality throughout the week was about what I expected of pasta, so perhaps it’s best to just steal the pesto recipe from here and apply it to other dishes as necessary. Pasta is best fresh.

3. Slow Cooker Carnitas, 1.25x (Budget Bytes). Once again, we adapted a slow cooker recipe to the Instant Pot. Worries about having enough liquid led to us adding a cup of orange juice, which then produced results that were closer to a pork soup when cooking was complete. We decided to move the meat into a skillet and finish it off there, which led to the end result (the leftover liquid got used to cook rice). I unfortunately didn’t taste this fresh off the stove, though it smelled wonderful. It didn’t hold up as well, due to the fridge and microwave producing some less tender results after reheating.