Wednesday, July 20, 2005
When desparation sets in, a good meal can sometimes result
The past few weeks I've been working too much, out of town on weekends, and generally just far too busy to even think about cooking, let alone do it. This, combined with the fact that I'm saving up for a trip to Guatemala, has resulted in an almost daily panicked moment of low-blood sugar, followed desparate search of the kitchen, and concluding with a peanut butter sandwich and a general feeling of dissatisfaction.
Today would be different, I decided. Today, I would cook. Not wanting to spend money on groceries when I had a full fridge and fuller cupboard, I decided to just throw something together. This is what I came up with:
- Snap a sad and wrinkled looking piece of ginger from the back of the fridge in half, and discover it to be surprisingly fresh and pungent on the inside.
- Start a pot of the last of your brown rice boiling.
- Throw a bunch of frozen corn and string beans into a larger pot, along with a can of rinsed kidney beans. Turn the heat on medium under it.
- Mix chili powder and cumin in a dish with some water, and toss it over the corn etc.
- Pick a bunch of mini purple basil leaves from the plant in your window, chop them up, and toss them in.
- Turn the heat down under the rice.
- Grate the ginger over the growing meal in the large pot. Don't bother with a plate or anything, just hold the grater directly over the pot. It's okay if you get some corn kernels caught in the corner of the grater; they'll come off.
- Stir.
While that's heating up, take a break to feed some frozen corn to your snails, who don't seem to mind if you don't thaw their food. Watch the snails' eyestalks bend towards your hand as you reach into their tanks. Find them cute.
Rinse off the grater, cutting board and knife, and congratulate yourself on your economy of dish use, while looking around the kitchen for a clean bowl to eat out of.
By the time you find one, the corn-and-bean mixture should be ready. The rice, however, isn't. Go write a blog post about your meal while waiting for the rice to finish cooking. This will not only kill time, but also keep Frog from killing *you*. By now the rice should be done, so you should go to the kitchen, toss the rice and corn-and-bean stuff into the clean bowl you found, and eat it while you get back to work.
Today would be different, I decided. Today, I would cook. Not wanting to spend money on groceries when I had a full fridge and fuller cupboard, I decided to just throw something together. This is what I came up with:
- Snap a sad and wrinkled looking piece of ginger from the back of the fridge in half, and discover it to be surprisingly fresh and pungent on the inside.
- Start a pot of the last of your brown rice boiling.
- Throw a bunch of frozen corn and string beans into a larger pot, along with a can of rinsed kidney beans. Turn the heat on medium under it.
- Mix chili powder and cumin in a dish with some water, and toss it over the corn etc.
- Pick a bunch of mini purple basil leaves from the plant in your window, chop them up, and toss them in.
- Turn the heat down under the rice.
- Grate the ginger over the growing meal in the large pot. Don't bother with a plate or anything, just hold the grater directly over the pot. It's okay if you get some corn kernels caught in the corner of the grater; they'll come off.
- Stir.
While that's heating up, take a break to feed some frozen corn to your snails, who don't seem to mind if you don't thaw their food. Watch the snails' eyestalks bend towards your hand as you reach into their tanks. Find them cute.
Rinse off the grater, cutting board and knife, and congratulate yourself on your economy of dish use, while looking around the kitchen for a clean bowl to eat out of.
By the time you find one, the corn-and-bean mixture should be ready. The rice, however, isn't. Go write a blog post about your meal while waiting for the rice to finish cooking. This will not only kill time, but also keep Frog from killing *you*. By now the rice should be done, so you should go to the kitchen, toss the rice and corn-and-bean stuff into the clean bowl you found, and eat it while you get back to work.
