Free meal!

Tonight I made myself sauteed kale and tomatoes with rice. Preparation was exactly how it sounds. Not hard. Not impressive. Very delicious. 

The brown rice I bought using my parents' credit card last month at Price Chopper.

The tomatoes I got for free at Stop and Shop because they were mislabeled and I complained about it.

The kale I pilfered late last night from the college community gardens.

Rating: 7/10
Prep time: Set the rice to cook in rice cooker 30 mins before sauteing veggies. Total prep time, 35 mins.
Difficulty: 3/10

Next time I'll cut up the kale into smaller pieces and not overcook the rice (I hope).

Kristin

Salad-y Malady

Once in a while I get a horrid wake up call to the disastrous realities that stem from preparing food for myself. Last night was one of these instances.

Who would think that hotdog, spinach, macaroni salad, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and onion would be an odd combination?

What I got from it was a nauseous feeling.

BUT, I'm not totally convinced yet that it was the combination of foods that made me feel a little sick. While preparing the food, I had to keep sticking my head in the fridge to take out some of the ingredients. Right now, our communal dorm fridge smells rank.

One of my housemates put strongly smelling food in there and it made everything else (even the freezer) smell like her food. Which is not pleasant. Then, my food began to soak up the not-so-savory smell.

SO, it could be the smell and not the food combo giving me this weird feeling. Thoughts? Does this salad sound na$ty?

***

Update (7/22) - The next day I went and ate the leftovers. I ended up taking the hotdog out. Nauseous feeling avoided!

Kristin

Dessert Weekend

This weekend I was able to get away from school (and my non-airconditioned 150 million degree room) and go to the lake with a friend. We made chocolate peanut butter bars, clafouti, and chocolate covered strawberries. Delicious weekend.

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 20 mins in the freezer)

Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 8/10
Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 1 hour in the oven)
Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Difficulty: 1/10

Kristin

why hello there

I'm Debbie, the third (and mostly invisible) contributor to this blog. I'm 21 years old, and up until now have never really had to fend for myself in the kitchen. Someone was always around to feed me, or at the very least stand over me to say It's so simple what is wrong with you just keep stirring. Now that I've graduated from college and am leaving my parents' home for a teaching gig in Hokkaido, for the first time in my life I'll be in charge of nourishing my body!

This coming year can only be a win-win situation. I will either a) discover an innate talent and become the goddess of homemade cooking or b) lose a lot of weight. Be prepared for my epic culinary exploits, guys! 

My real posts will begin in August. But here's a picture of what I ate last week. I didn't make it. I didn't even buy it. My mom bought it and fed it to me. When left to my own devices I tend to stick to cereal.

Kimchi jjigae (soup), seaweed, sausages, rice.

"Rustic" Buttermilk Biscuits

I haven't been cooking much recently, but this morning I was inspired by a surprise ingredient in the family fridge: buttermilk! My dad bought some to make avocado soup, and it was just sitting there waiting to be whipped into some delicious buttermilk biscuits. I had never made these before, but when you're baking for someone with low standards (me!), I find that all you need to do is get some ingredients kinda mixed and in the oven, and you'll end up with something edible.

I used a recipe I found at food.com entitled "Southern Buttermilk Biscuits" (http://southern.food.com/recipe/southern-buttermilk-biscuits-26110).  

It was really easy and required almost no ingredients. My only problem was that I cut the butter chunks too big, so then they were huge and the dough (batter?) was really sticky and hard to work with. Also I had no circle cutter. Ultimately they looked nothing like the picture but tasted great. Case in point: you don't have to get better at baking, you just have to expect less from the results!

If I look at this picture too long, it looks like they're crawling towards me

Rating: 7/10

Prep Time: The recipe says 22 minutes, but recipe writers are always trying to impress you with their culinary skills when they estimate these things. More like 30 minutes. But still perfect as an "afternoon quickie"!

Difficulty: 4/10

Okonomiyaki Dinner Party

For those of you who don't know, okonomiyaki is a sort of cabbage pancake eaten in Japan. Okonomiyaki is relatively healthy, cheap, and ooo so delicious. Hands down it was my favorite food when I lived in Japan.

Not only does it taste AWESOME, but there's a certain social aspect that goes along with eating okonomiyaki. It's a food you eat with friends while sitting gathered around the electric grill to chat and make food together.

Since it's so cheap and easy to make, I decided to do okonomiyaki for tonight's impromptu dinner party.

Now, okonomiyaki can get complicated. You'll see some recipes online that call for special flour, daikon, things that you can only find at Asian specialty stores, etc. These are unnecessary. If you want to eat good okonomiyaki, all you really need is eggs, flour, water, cabbage, and the contents of your fridge.

Tonight's dorm fridge haul included:

tomatoes
onions
garlic

Not so involved, but enough extra ingredients to make a good, vegetarian okonomiyaki. We topped it with mayonaise and tonkatsu sauce and it was awesome!!

Batter and chopped vegetables

Okonomiyaki pancake

Over-ripe cherries

Finished !

Rating: 9.5/10
Prep Time: 1 hour (included frying up a TON of pancakes)
Difficulty: 3/10

Kristin

Martin & Kristin Reunion Special

Martin came to visit me today at school and brought along the things he found in his kitchen pantry at home. We had assumed that all grocery stores were closed on the 4th of July, but found out later that every significant store in the area is open for business...

Anyway, we started out with simple spaghetti and sauce:

Rating: 9/10 (Kristin), 6/10 (Martin)
Prep Time: 10  minutes
Difficulty: 2/10

Preparation took hardly any time at all because although we suck at cooking, we can boil water, to an extent. It was pretty hard, not letting the water boil over, but somehow we made something edible.

Next, since we're really bad at timing and synchronizing our cooking/ multitasking. We had canned vegetables for desert:

Rating: 1/10 (Kristin), 2/10 (Martin)
Prep Time: 1 minute
Difficulty: 4/10

WTF canned vegetables. More difficult to prepare than you'd expect:

Martin & Kristin

Avocado-y Breakfast

This weekend, I learned several things including #1) My mom pictures me someday married to a man at least ten years older than myself. I'm currently 21, and find that creepy.

#2) My mom had a variety of over ripe fruits and vegetables that she expected me to bring back to college and eat "within a day."

This is what it became:

For breakfast yesterday I ate: an over ripe, browning avocado, over ripe cherries, dough-y soft mango, and overly ripe smelling milk from my dorm's communal fridge.

Rating: 8.5/10
Prep time: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 2/10

I'm rating this meal so high because it contains so many of my favorite foods and tasted pretty good despite the dorm fridge-flavored milk (which I ended up throwing out after choking down half).

Kristin

Kristin's Bio

Hi I'm Kristin. I'm a graduate student at Smith College studying Education. I met both Martin and Debbie (my co-bloggers) while studying abroad in Japan our junior year of college.

Both Martin and Debbie are moving back to Japan to teach English, and I'll be stuck here reliving the hell that is being a student.

The difference is, this time I'll have to cook for myself. Even more hellish considering my limited cooking skills D:

I'm currently on the meal plan this summer, but I'll have to fend for myself on the weekends. Occasionally I will cook for myself, or prepare meals, but mostly this summer will detail the weird meals that you can put together from combinations of food stolen from the dining hall/ hoarded from the campus center cafe.

My real updates will begin in August. GET PUMPED YOU GUYS :D

Kristin

Howdy! Hi!

So, before any actual cooking with (sex)pots begins, I wanted to highlight that we've had an auspicious start: I googled the blog and it turns out it's the first thing that comes up! That's good, since my long-term hope for the blog is a (natural) segue into a book deal. If the dialog in Julie & Julia can get good reviews, then surely mine can too.

Anyway, my first post isn't much of a "cooking" post—more of a self-introduction as presented through food.  Here's the last thing I ate:

It's sugar decoration letters!! Or was, anyway. They are my favorite snack in the world (sans cake, obvi), and are indicative of the food standards I hold myself to. My mom and I were left alone to make dinner tonight, which meant the sugar letters became the meal's appetizer, eventually rounded out by pre-cooked chicken purchased from Stop & Shop. The usual cook—my dad—was out of town, and we saw no need to prove that we can get by on our own.

There is a saving grace, however. As an avid food network fan, I know that Sandra Lee is up for hours every night brainstorming how she's going to utilize her leftovers in "round two recipes." I'll have you know my mom and I figured out our round two in just minutes: this leftover chicken will reinvent itself as chicken salad for lunch tomorrow. Suck it Sandra!

Anyway, I expect the real cooking for me to begin next month when I move to Japan and get my first apartment. I technically have cooked things in the past, so there is a glimmer of hope for the future. Thanks Oberlin College co-ops for "teaching me how to cook"!

On a final note, a self-introduction suggests that someone besides me, Debbie, and Kristin may read this entry, and potentially want to know something about me, the author, Martin Rouse. I can assure you, the non-existent reader, that this is not the case. I just like writing about myself. But more importantly, I really really like Kristin and Debbie, and can't wait to get to know them better through their food choices and adventures.

Martin

PS- Hey guys I brushed my teeth! Note the generous helping of Red 3 and Red 40.