Birthday dinner

[Chickpeas are good in a stir-fry with curry in it. Mmm.]

My mom was stressed out and unhappy on her birthday, last Friday, and still had to decorate a cake for some friends' birthday the next day (my mom is an excellent semi-professional cake decorator. She's good at it but she hates it so she only does it as a favor to people she likes, or the church. The church never pays her on time and treats her like dirt. End church rant). So while she was out picking up more supplies for the cake, I decided that I was going to make dinner. I didn't try for anything fancy - just pasta and salad - but it's still comical to see me and my dad trying to cook. He was the chef's assistant.

The chef's main problem is that she has no eye for measurement. No eye and no brain, either. I have no idea how many pints are in a quart or how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon, or how many ounces are in a cup, if there are ounces in a cup. I know that there are 16 oz. to a pound, but that's not going to do me much good in cooking.

"Does this look like a pound to you? How much is a pound of pasta? Is that a lot?" "Is this pot going to be big enough?" "Well, four quarts of water aren't going to fit in this pot. So we'll put three and hope that this isn't a whole pound of pasta here." Ah, improvisation. It didn't turn out bad, I thought. I tried to make mustard vinaigrette for the salad, too. I think it was a little oily or something. Halfway through making it I discovered that we didn't have dijon mustard - only French's or Jack Daniels Horseradish. What a choice. I went with horseradish.

Anyway, doesn't matter how bad it is, Mommy will always be glad not to have to make dinner!

Keep in touch

Well, folks, the school year is coming to an end. Please don't forget about Baldwin Blog! Let us know what you cook over the summer and how it turns out. And don't forget to share the disasters along with the successes!

Cold treat on a hot day

This isn't really a recipe, but it's food-related so I'll post it.

I had a little bit of juice left in my carton of white grape juice and I had an empty ice cube tray, so I filled the tray with grape juice and put it in my freezer. I had intended to make grape ice cubes, but I don't know anything about chemistry or physics or whatever it is that governs the freezing of liquids so instead I have little mini-slushes that I am eating with a spoon. Mmmmm!

Stir fry and salade niçoise

My luncheon stir-fry today consisted of mushrooms, onions, chickpeas, peapods, peppers and water chesnuts. The sauces were soy, stir-fry, teriyaki, a bit of vinegar and mustard. Spices were curry, lemon-pepper, Jamaican jerk seasoning and garlic. It was quite yummy. I like to throw all kinds of crap in there. I'm not sure if it's possible to do something wrong.

At tea, there was tuna on the salad bar so I made myself a salade niçoise. I made up some mustard vinaigrette, but I think I was a little heavy on the mustard. It would help if they hadn't replaced the dijon mustard with honey-mustard-in-a-dijon-jar, as they did a few months ago. Eeeeevil. Anyway, it was good. Lettuce, egg, tomato, black olives, and tuna with the dressing mixed around in there. A traditional salade niçoise has anchovies as well, but Baldwin didn't have any. Oh darn.

This looks useful...

I just found the Reluctant Gourmet, a culinary guide for the novice (by a novice). Looks very useful! I have just learned some stir-fry tips that I hope to use in Baldwin soon.

Why don't they have stir-fry on the weekend? And when are they going to fix the dishwasher, or whatever's wrong right now?

Cooking internship

I think I'm going to try cooking at home this summer. I'll have my Mommy around to supervise and suggest things and teach me how to do the simplest things that one would think I would know by now... Maybe then I will be in some way prepared for the Real World.

International restaurant

When I grow up and have money, I'm going to start a restaurant with all of my favorite international and exotic foods and force other people to like them. What do you think of that? There will be wonton, hot and sour and french onion soups, salads with mustard vinaigrette, raclette, fondue savoyarde, Chilean empanadas, lamb curry, California rolls, gnocchi, couscous, saganaki, ramen, and desserts like praline chocolate fondue, crème brulée, this lovely meringue cake that my friend Robin's mom makes, lychees, flan, and plantains with sour cream.

Bad idea to go Googling for food on an empty stomach. Hungryyyyyyyyyyyy...

Latin food... mmmm

A nice alternative to Baldwin are the dinners they have every once in a while on campus. You have to pay, but sometimes it's worth it. I went to Fiesta Fantastica last night and they had some yummy stuff there!

I-House Potluck

We are all invited to the I-House Potluck and are invited to bring a dish to pass.

Hmmm. Disaster ahead? Anyone have plans to make anything?

Baldwin breakfast

Personally I am enamored of their hashbrowns. I love buffet-style breakfasts. Or buffet-style food in general. I will miss you, Baldwin.

DISASTER BOY AND I SAW THE LIGHT

For the longest time I thought I could not cook, thay may be I was somehow retarded in my cooking skills, but that was until my father taught me how to make "Huevos a la Copa", (I have no idea how to translate that, because I don't know if you have that kind of egg here, but is semi-raw-semi-boiled eggs.) from that day and on, I would not starve when I was alone, or when I was hungry in the middle of the night. And now I want to share with you my revelation recipe.

Ingredientes:
2 eggs
a boiling eggs pan
water
oregano
salt
lemon

Ok, here we go. You take the pan, fill it with water and turn on the stove. Let the water boil, that is really important (notice the bubles coming up, they are cool). Now, after the water has boiled, turn the falme down to half and put the eggs in. For a normal Bolied Egg, it takes 5 minutes to be boiled, we just want the ....white part of the egg boiled and the inside, the yoke, liquidy. So you put it only up to 3min and 30 Sec., no more and no less than 3 mins.
You take the eggs out and break them and put the yummy parts in a bowl, put oregano, salt and lemon juice from the lemon. Taste it, if it is too lemony, you can add Oregano and viceversa.
Is better to dip bread in it, or cut lil chunks of bread and stick them in the eggs and eat it with a spoon.... yummy.
ENJOY, DISFRUTEN
CIAO

Scramble eggs "Fiesta"
If you have the opportunity to cook eggs in your cafeteria, do it, and here is a recipe.
"Ingredientes"
1/2 cup of milk
half of a tomatoe, sliced into lil squares
Oregano
2 eggs
soy sauce
salt
cheese

You take the milk and put it in a bowl along with the tomatoes, eggs, soy sauce(you can put ass much as you want, not too much though), oregano, salt and the binder....CHEESE!!
Start mixing them up in the bowl while you turn on the stove and in the pan you put just a lil bit of oil, the size of a quarter coin. Let it get really hot and then put the mixing in the pan. Stir and "voila", you have scramble eggs fiesta, a la Patito.

Next time I blog..... Semi bolied-semi-raw eggs....

Not for the faint of heart

Would you like to see a truly disturbing picture of Baldwin's lasagna from two years ago*? I gave you the smaller version. I have this image in a bigger size saved on my computer. It's even worse.

*Just to clarify: I also took the picture two years ago. This is not two-year-old lasagna, although it might as well be.

Receta del Dia
A lil "pimento"(peppers, green or red), with oregano, chicken, ham, french fries, a few slides of onion and "apio"(celery). now put all this in the stir fry "machine" and add the sauces.
The sauces is the most important part, you use just the right amount that you think is enough, but don't be cheap, you can always add some more to it. Stir it and wait until some of the onions are a lil brown on the edges, then turn off the thing and put on your plate.
Buena suerte.

A small fry does stir-fry with fries

The scary thing about the communal wok is that it's a wok.

No, sorry, the scary thing about the communal wok is that it's communal. So everyone else's food flavo(u)rs get mixed in there with yours. I'm glad I don't have any food allergies, so I can enjoy the loveliness that is... Wok Bar.

I've only just discovered Wok Bar, because it's the kind of thing that you need a helping hand with. You can't just jump at the wok by yourself - you need someone to guide you through the various wok processes the first wok time you use the wok. They have written directions for Waffle Bar (how difficult) but not Wok Bar. So one day I made Maria and Dory show me what to do. And they did. And I made some myself. And it wasn't very good.

But since then I've been improving. I made a lovely thing with curry and chickpeas today, which I blogged about in my blog and will shamelessly copy:

Ingredients: tofu, chickpeas, pineapple, green pepper, onion, peas, french fries
Sauces: oil, stir-fry, soy, teriyaki
Spices: curry powder, lemon-pepper, garlic powder

If you are a wok virgin, here are the directions. Throw a whole bunch of stuff in a bowl. Turn on the wok. Put some oil in. Not too much. Put some of the handy wok sauces in. Throw your bowl of stuff in and push it around with the spatula. Guess when it's done and take it out.

When I am a grown-up, I am going to get myself a wok and make nothing but stir-fry. The problem is that the meat in Baldwin is already cooked. I am a little afraid of cooking my own meat because I'm always so scared of overcooking my stir-fry that I'm more likely to undercook. Maybe when I grow up and have to cook for myself I will become a vegetarian. Heh heh.

Krista, you're so clever with eggs and all.

How to boil an egg

This is not an instructional post. This is a questioning post. How to boil an egg?

Last year my host family went to Paris for a week but I had class so I couldn't go. They left me plenty of pasta. I can handle pasta. Boil, picking various pieces out during the process to see if they're done, when they taste done, dump the water out and put the pasta on a plate. Sprinkle cheese on top, voilà, pasta.

They also left me plenty of lettuce for salad. And olives for salad. And dressing for salad. But I decided I needed a hard-boiled egg to slice up on top. So I boiled one but I had no idea how to do it. Is the water supposed to be boiling, then you put the egg in? Are you supposed to boil the water with the egg in it? Once the water is boiling, how long do you let it boil? Will the egg tell you when it's done? Is it done yet? How about now?

I know I've seen it done - my family boiled eggs every year for Easter eggs. But I don't remember paying much attention, which is the problem with most of my cooking woes.

So, with two squishy, runny eggs in the garbage, I gave up and ate my salad egg-less. Sighhhhhhhh...

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