It has been brought to my attention that I have not updated in a while. I have been very busy with classes and activities and things, but I have lots of pictures with fun cooking stories that I will eventually share.

I am currently eating what doesn't really count as cooking at all. Right now I am intermittently snacking on month old chocolate, almonds, and a vegetable bouillon cube. I need to go grocery shopping really badly, and hope this is the worst my meals will ever get. I had bread earlier and some applesauce. Also, there is no picture of this definitely culinarily questionable trio, as it's such a travesty that it should not be visually documented.

I can cook meat!

Yesterday at the store, I caved and bought some meat, because I was craving some. I looked for some easy-to-cook chicken, and found none, but I did end up finding some Putenbrust for schnitzel (which is already filleted turkey breast). I looked in my trusty cookbook, the More-with-Less, for ideas on what to make with this meat, since I wasn't in the mood for my one default way of cooking white meat: stir-fry. Unfortunately, apart from soup (also something I'm not good at cooking) the book had no words of wisdom for turkey. Fortunately, after doing some impressively quick thinking†, I decided to look under the chicken recipes since chicken and turkey are basically the same thing.

I found a wonderful recipe called something like Honey Chicken, or something to that effect. Great, I thought! This way I can kill two birds with one stone. I can use up my icky honey and make a really cool meal! (The honey I bought at the market last week is partially crystallized and has a really grainy texture I'm not fond of, but that doesn't matter when it's going to melt anyways.) Unfortunately, the recipe said to cook it in the oven for over an hour, and I don't know how to use the oven (and also, I'd have to do some really complicated math†† to figure out what temperature to bake it at). Also, it was already after 7 pm and I didn't want to wait until 8:30 to eat. Fortunately, I did some more quick thinking and decided I would just fry it on the stove.

Unfortunately, the recipe called for margarine, curry powder, and salt, as well as honey, and I don't have any margarine, and I wasn't sure about the curry powder. More to the point, I wasn't sure if I like curry powder. Fortunately, I used olive oil in the pan instead, and quickly located the curry powder and measured some with the palm of my hand and added it to the bowl with the honey. Unfortunately, I them underestimated how easily the salt would come out of its box and poured out way too much. Fortunately, I was pouring it into my hand, and not directly into the bowl, and so I dumped most of it down the drain after failing to get it back in the box. Then I poured the mixture over the turkey pieces in the pan. After a while it looked really cool, like this, only cooler (because this was at the end, when it was cooling down)†††

I then served it with rice, and some freshly cooked green beans.

The good: NO MORE GREEN BEANS! (until next week or until I buy some, whichever comes... oh wait, I guess just until I buy some more) The turkey was actually surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, given the honey) delicious. I also did not overcook the rice. I also added such a minute amount of curry powder I couldn't taste it at all, and instead decided to add cinnamon, which added to the interesting flavor.

The bad: I added too much water to the rice, and would have overcooked it if I had tried to use all the water up. I also scorched some of the green beans. I also may not have cooked the turkey quite enough; it wasn't pink inside, but the texture seemed a bit off.

The verdict: I will definitely be trying this recipe again. I might try baking it next time, to insure that the meat gets fully cooked, and also, hopefully the honey sauce thickens a little bit more. There could be two different variations on this recipe: one with more curry powder and no cinnamon, and the other omitting the curry powder and only adding cinnamon.

† This is a joke.

†† Another joke. All you have to do when converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius is subtract 32 degrees, then multiply that answer by 5/9 and presto! You've got your temperature in Centigrade, where water freezes at 0 and boils at 100! What's that? You can't multiply by 5/9 in your head?!?! Okay, try dividing by 9/5 instead. Okay, okay, you got me, I find it pretty challenging to multiply by 5/9 in my head too. I think it's the 9 that gets me.

††† I really didn't mean to use so many variations of the word 'cool' in this sentence.

More of the same?

Since my last blog post, I have gone grocery shopping at least 3 different times to different stores, finding quite an assortment of foods, including müesli, bread, cheese, green beans, honey, bread, apples, bread, well, you get the picture. Basically, the winner this time has been bread, which is why I haven't posted anything recently, since most of my meals (breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner, bedtime snack) since discovering this wonderfully tasty bread (of course, I've forgotten what it's called) have been just that: bread, milk, and honey.

Nevertheless, here is yesterday's lunch.

First of all, it is a very balanced meal. There is the staple of lentils and rice, along with the peas, which are definitely my favorite vegetable, simply because they're tasty and very easy to make edible (e.g. you can just take them out of the freezer and eat). Even if you're pickier than I am, and refuse to eat them until cooked, you can just pop them in the microwave with a bit of water for a few minutes and voilà! That is the correct way to use a microwave!

Then on the side there are green beans, bought by the half-kilo at the market usually every times I go. I use about half of them each time I make them, so that's about a half pound of green beans for one meal. There's also a banana, to make it a perfectly well-rounded meal (the only thing that could have made this more well-rounded would have been an orange, since it's round). Then, for fun, is the amazing bread with some goat cheese on top.

I almost forgot. I had to be really creative and forgo my normal bread-and-milk subsistence for lunch yesterday because I have to take my new medication at lunch, and I'm not supposed to have dairy for three hours before and after taking it. So the goat cheese ended up being a nice touch as well as a very tasty one!

The good: This is ridiculously healthy. And the bread and cheese was really great.

The bad: You know that idea I had, the one where I was going to only add half of a bouillon cube? Well, I totally forgot to add any, so in addition to overcooking the rice, the lentils and rice combo was ridiculously tasteless (and I made way too much, so lots of tasteless leftovers too). Luckily I had some instant flavor (a.k.a. teriyaki sauce which tastes exactly like soy sauce) and then it was marginally salvageable.

The verdict: Don't forget salt or some other flavoring (or should I say flavouring?) because you can't get much more bland than lentils and rice. Next time, I will remember the bouillon.

Also, a brief interlude, on green beans.

These are green beans:

That speckled white stuff in the pan is minced garlic. If you don't have a garlic press, you can just chop it REALLY finely with a chopping knife (one of the really enormous ones). This is my favorite way to make green beans, and pretty much the only way I make them, actually. Unfortunately I don't quite have the hang of how to cook them where they are actually cooked, but not soggy.

For making Wunderbare (Wonderful) Green Beans™

Step 1: Snap the ends off of the beans. (Oh, and rinse them if they're dirty or have pesticides, but then dry them reasonably well. You don't want to get splattered with oil later.)

Step 2: Heat the pan with some olive oil. (The type of oil isn't all that important; I just like using olive oil for all of my frying.)

Step 3: Add the green beans and turn the heat down to medium or medium-low. Make sure the beans don't scorch.† Keep stirring them frequently with a spatula.

Step 4: When they are at least halfway done, add the minced garlic. (You might think to add it earlier with the oil, but the problem with that is that it gets all crispy and brown or black by the time the green beans are done, and then it doesn't taste good at all.†† You want it at most golden-brown by the end.)

Step 5: They're done when they are still squeaky when you eat them, but a darker shade of green and not quite as crisp. Let me know if you have any better ways for figuring out when they're done.

Step 6: Enjoy!

† I did this tonight.

†† I did this yesterday.

Also, today's lunch was leftovers of this. Except there were hardly any green beans left. And no goat cheese. :( And I replaced the teriyaki sauce with ketchup, which was also pretty good.

Welcome to my food photo blog!

My whole life I have eaten meals, or "meals", that have caused people to look at me oddly, while they ask me how I can possibly be eating whatever it is. Now that I am on my own, and usually too busy and lazy to go buy what normal people consider meal food, I have noticed that my creativity knows no bounds when it comes to making food with what I already have.

So, today I present to you my improvised supper:

Lentils with Peas. I measured approximately 100 ml of dried lentils, 300 ml of water, a vegetable bouillon cube which is supposed to make 500 ml broth and brought it to a boil, then simmered for about 20-25 minutes. Then I added some frozen peas, to give it more color, and a more interesting taste. Usually I make rice and lentils, and then serve it with tomato sauce of some sort, but I wasn't quite in the mood for tomatoes today. It turned out pretty well, except that it was way too salty, so I had a few glasses of milk alongside this dish. Next time I'll only use maybe half a bouillon cube.

The good: Lentils + Peas + Milk is really high in protein, which is good for someone like me who hasn't been eating much meat.

The bad: This dish is pretty high in Sodium, even with only a half of a bouillon cube. Also frozen peas usually have salt added.

The verdict: A nice change-up from the boring rice and lentils I've been making. Nevertheless, in addition to diminishing the amount of bouillon, I would probably make this with rice, to even out the texture a bit, since lentils tend to be pretty mealy. I would also add some kind of fruit, but I'll have to think about that one. Would raisins à la rice with raisins go well with peas and lentils?