Some additional cooking adventures:
Gnocchi with pesto sauce
This was decent. It was extremely difficult to figure out when to stop kneading the dough (it never felt ready) and we ended up with about four times as much dough as was needed. Tasted good in the end. Probably doesn't score high enough on the effort/reward ratio to do again compared to regular pasta but was fun.
Blueberry pancakes
My mother's recipe, this was a good one.
Chicken tagine and tahdig/jeweled rice
This one turned out great. Small story time:
When I last went to Spain I purchased four jars of saffron. One I gave to my grandparents, one I gave to my parents, one I gave to Angela and Mart as a thank you for hosting me in the Netherlands, and one I kept for myself. I made some regular saffron rice with it a couple of times and it turned out okay, but not great, so I had saffron sitting around that I couldn't make good use of. Fast forward nearly two years and a friend and I are discussing unusual food combinations. We get to the topic of cinnamon and she mentions a Moroccan chicken dish that has a sweet cinnamon flavor to it, and I don't catch the dish name so when I try searching for "Moroccan cinnamon chicken" I stumble upon chicken tagine, which looks quite good. The correct Moroccan cinnamon chicken dish is actually called chicken pastilla, which I haven't made but have since eaten and it's definitely unusual but very good - it's like a pie with chicken as a filling, but has a sweet-savory mix due to cinnamon and powdered sugar. It works better as an appetizer to share with multiple people than a main dish, but it was a good experience. Anyway, I didn't make that, I made chicken tagine. And tahdig had been something that I wanted to try for a while and it seemed like a good fit to go with chicken tagine, so I made both.
My housemate and I have agreed that this is the best thing we've made (bibimbap is a close second or perhaps my personal favorite). The chicken has a spice mixture that includes cinnamon, paprika, cumin, lemon zest, and more, and is additionally augmented with olives, carrots, and onions. It's a highly savory flavor with a little bit of spice (not that hot) and is balanced perfectly with the tahdig, which is a fruity mix of saffron rice and pomegranate, apricot, cranberry, and a lot of butter.
10/10 would make again.
Barbecued stuff
Got a free grill from our neighbors so this has been fun.
Bibimbap again
Never disappoints
Chicken tagine and tahdig again
Just as good the second time.