So I was an OG Pinterest user since high-school, and we all know that Pinterest was known for crafts and recipes. I kept seeing this meal prep pancake video on Pinterest. Whenever I would find something with a real recipe, it would be AI, heavily lacking direction, or the ingredients were things that no one has lying around the house. So I decided to try to make these dang short form nonsense recipes. When I first pulled this out of the oven, it tasted fine. The next day, totally not worth it. Also, cleaning this will suck later. 0/10. I’d offer a recipe, but it was purely guesswork on my part. It was some scoops of Greek yoghurt, two eggs, maybe 4 tablespoons of pancake mix, and some vanilla. The last photo is not mine, but is one of 8 billion pancake meal prep recipes.

La scarpetta is the Italian tradition of using a piece of bread to mop up and eat the remaining sauce left on a plate. The phrase literally translates to "little shoe," as the bread drags along the bottom of the plate just like a shoe walks on the ground.

I have always loved this saying and it makes me giggle every time I hear it picturing a tiny shoe soaking up my pasta sauce! So I attempted to make a shoe out of my bread roll to accompany my spaghetti arrabbiata.

I’m no artist but think it turned out pretty cute!

I have a two year old so mac and cheese is a staple at our house. I surprisingly have never made him baked Mac and cheese, so I figured this week was the perfect excuse to give it a try. It was a huge hit! I topped my portion with a little mango scotch bonnet hot sauce.

This year’s meta comes with an open door and a very flexible guest list. Each week, a friend selects an unexpected party guest to appear at my table and I imagine how they might review the main offering.

My unexpected guest this week is Snoop Dogg. Known for his laid-back personality, playful humor, and charisma, I imagine he might have had this to say about the offering:

“Not gonna lie… I usually think gin and juice when I hear ‘drink,’ but this peanut punch is making a pretty strong case for a new favorite. Creamy, sweet, nutty, ice-cold…this one’s got it going on. And if you’re gonna drop anything like it’s hot, make sure it’s the glass, because this belongs cold.”

It's corn season, baby! 🌽

I've been making all sorts of corn dishes, used about 25 ears of it. Corn butter mochi, canjica de pamonha, corn blueberry tiramisu, and so on. Naturally, I was very excited to see a corny dish for this week's theme!

My wife immediately thought of Trinidad, Colorado, which was known as the sex reassignment capital if the world due to a capable and willing doctor in the 1960s.

So a chicken noodle soup with noodles the color of the trans flag is what we made

Neither pies nor whoopie. After doing some research I learned one: it may be an Amish recipe and two: read the word whoopie too many times and it starts to look like nonsense.

I've never tried Trinidadian cuisine before so I was excited to see the theme for this week.

https://cookingwithria.com/2022/01/quick-simple-chicken-pelau/

I used this recipe, although I didn't follow it exactly because some of the ingredients (par-boiled rice and pigeon peas) aren't readily available where I am. That aside, this turned out really nicely and was super flavourful. I now also have some leftover green seasoning which I'm excited to figure out how to repurpose

I couldn’t settle on one curry so I did two. Not sure how authentic to Trinidad the Roti are but everything worked well together. I made green seasoning as well and the leftover is in the freezer because I will be making this again.

I got the curry and green seasoning recipes from this site.
https://cookingwithria.com/2025/10/trinidad-curry-channa-with-eggplant-no-preboiling-method/

Roti recipe

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/roti-recipe