Dammit. My relatives have been cooking this whole trip.
Now it’s my turn.
Except… I have NO domestic kitchen skills. None. Zip.
I. Can’t. Cook.
I rely heavily on my financial clout to be able to gloss over this sordid facts. Thus, the horrific office job. Need food for friends or a romantic dinner for two? Buy it! Order in! Get take-out! Gourmet restaurant!
But I will never get away with that here. They expect home cooked. And let’s face it, these people are not going to be happy about my proposals of Kraft dinner, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or jell-o.
Help me!!!!!
I have taken the exact same photo of my cousin ‘eating’ a rat (well, minus you, plus her). What’s up with THAT?
http://www.allrecipes.com
I can’t cook either – except yesterday I managed to make a soup that was pretty good. One big can of tomato paste, five cups of water, some veggies chopped up (carrots, potatos, zuchinni), one can each of kidney beans and navy beans, two minced cloves of garlic, sprinkling of oregano and basil, let simmer one hour. Mmmmm!
Or you could order in and hide the take-out boxes. Always a safe option!
adobo and mushy peas?
chicken
bay leaf
garlic
peppercorns
1 part light soy sauce to two parts garlic
sugar (pref. brown)
just pretend you’re watching me cook it 😉 toss everything in, add water, boil. sugar to taste. simmer for as long as possible, then serve.
rice is also good (as you know) but get a rice cooker if you can because i can never cook it without burning the bottom.
OR you could just make pasta.
… alternatively, do like I do. Grab all your favourite ingredients (in my case, this means mushrooms, chicken, pork, lamb, suedes, parsnips, celery, beer, wine and lots of herbs, but you can come up with your own list). Fry any meat a little, chop up any vegetables. Drink some of the alcohol.
Put it all in a really giant pot and leave it simmering for about 6 hours, or until everything has broken down into a thick stew.
Serve.
It’s great! Ask!
mmmmm…. stew.
Damn you, boy! Stop teasing me with stew! *shakeyfist*
I say when in doubt, stir fry.
I can’t send you any recipes that don’t require my supervision… of course, you could always fly me to the Bahamas… just a thought ….
Alright, so that isn’t going to work… here is an excellent 6-8 person meal, if you serve rice and bread on the side. You can add 1 pound (.45 kilograms) of ground beef, 80% lean.
MEXICAN LASAGNA
INGREDIENTS
1 15oz (425 g) can corn drained
1 15 oz(425 g)can black beans drained (or 1 cup home cooked beans)
1 15oz(425 g)can tomatos chopped up with liquid
1 4oz (113 g)can green chilis chopped up
OR substitute 2 10 oz (285 g) cans of chopped tomatos and green chilis
for the separate cans of tomatos and chilis
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 t each cummin and oregano
1/2 package of Taco Bell Taco Mix or equivalent
(Optional) 1T crushed Jalopena pepper for a spicier taste
12 oz (340 g) shedded low fat Motzarella or Monterey Jack Cheese
8 9″ (22 cm) tortillas
DIRECTIONS
1. Mix well, corn, beans, tomatos, chillis, onions, and spices in a bowl. (Best if done ahead so flavors can mix.)
2. Spray two 9″ (22 cm) cake tins with no stick spray (could probably eliminate this step if you have no-stick pans).
3. Put a tortilla in each pan. Ladle in enough vegetable mixture to form a layer 1 bean/corn thick.
4. Sprinkle on about 2oz of cheese in each pan (enough to lightly cover). Repeat two more times and top with 1 last tortilla to form two “pies” with layers as follows: tortilla, veggies, cheese, torilla, veggies, cheese, tortilla, veggies, cheese, tortilla.
5. Bake in 400F (~200 C) oven for 15 minutes. Let cool 3-5 minutes and invert on a plate.
Or their choice of goat, live rats or crabs, it’s like a Poo Poo Platter… put a little flambe at the table and voila’!
-caellum
Frugual students cookbook .. got me through college…
Does this mean that when you return i can teach you a thing or two in the kitchen? a couple of very simple recipes that will tide you through times like these? if i were you, i’d go with a salad of some sort, bought pre-mix with tomatoes and avocadoes added, a nice vinagrette dressing (also bought), pasta (because if you can kraft dinner, you can cook pasta) with smoked fish or crab meat and quartered cherry tomatoes, cilantro, capers, and a light olive oil/redwine or balsamic vinegar dressing, just tossed and served warm, with cheese, fruit and wine for dessert. simple as pie. simpler actually. maybe even a bit of french bread rubbed with garlic. easy easy easy food.
good luck and let us know what the outcome eventually is. ah, ask Cait for help if you need it.
Hmm… what are suedes? Are they the creatures that suede comes from? (picturing a field full of four-legged, really soft creatures that can’t go out in the rain)
So ignorant of cookery, I can’t even recognize ingredients. 🙁 Marla
Should I know what this is? It is code for something really tasty, that just sounds repulsive, kind of like “Toad in the Hole” or “Spotted Dick”?
Please say yes.
I am *extremely* happy to hear that you are a non-smoker, although I do feel a little bad for outing Melly. She probably never smokes except when we drag her to smoky bars with grumpy waitresses, which is unfortunately quite often.
Given the scrumptious lasagna recipie you sent me, however, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you aren’t going to be very happy with my “I’ll only eat it if I can kill it” philosophy. I’ve caught fish and plucked poultry, but honestly, I haven’t eaten a dead cow or other 4-legged animal in about 15 years.
Wait! That’s not entirely true. I had roast pork when I was in Norway, because my friends there threw an enormous luau in honour of my visit. When people take the time to get an entire pig, impale it on a spit, and then cook it over an open fire pit on the beach, you damn well eat the thing. Plus, my friend Erik is a gourmet chef, so the pork was *damn* tasty.
That’d be a swede, yep… Bah!
Poo Poo PLatter is probably spelled horribly wrong, on purpose, but it is a chinese table flambe thing. Trust me, good.
And (hey!) I gave you a vegetarian recipe, sans the ground beef I suggested you add. I wasn’t entirely certain of your carnivorous/omnivorous/herbivorous tendencies. Not eating it unless you can catch and kill it is a fine philosophy. I can catch and eat anything, however. Rat, elephant, giraffe, leprechauns, sea horses…
So, not a vegetarian here, but not a taunter of vegetarians either and in possession of a fabulous array of vegetarian recipes, including the finest eggplant parmegiane anyone has ever experienced.
Caellum thumbs his nose at the other prospective husbands waiting in line and mouths “beat that you jam-smeared turd merchants!”
-caellum
See, here in Canada (well, the Bahamas, but whatever) we would call the thing pictured above a ‘turnip’. At least, I think so. I, uh, don’t go to the supermarket very often. *blushing*
Anyway, there must be some mistake, because I KNOW that Brits have at least one vegetable they call a turnip as well, otherwise it wouldn’t come up so often in Blackadder scripts. For example…
Edmund: Any bit of a mouse would seem like luxury compared to what Percy and I must eat tonight. We are entertaining puritan vegetable folk, Balders; and that means no meat.
Baldrick: In that case, I shall prepare my Turnip Surprise.
Edmund: and the surprise is…?
Baldrick: …there’s nothing else in it except the turnip.
Edmund: So, in other words, the Turnip Surprise would be…a turnip.
Baldrick: [realisation] Oh yeah…
But to me, a turnip looks like this…
… and then of course there are parsnips,
which look very similar. Add into the confusion that I believe the Scots and the English use Parsnips and Turnips the other way round, and I am then lost. Maybe your turnip is my swede?
You say tomato, I say swede…