Plan for dinner:

• One of those large sausages
• Two baked regular potatoes (possibly with cheese)
• Toasted buttered pita bread

I can just hear it now.

Welcome to Day 2 of CookOrDie: Adventures of a Desperate Cook! I’m Sacha Chua and I’ll be your host for today’s segment, “Veal sausage and potatoes”.

It has all the makings of a bad survival show… Hey, now there’s an idea – grab a bunch of geeks who have no idea how to cook, turn them loose in a supermarket with a budget of PHP 100 (~ USD 2) a day, and see how long they can survive without repeating recipes and using only a microwave and a toaster oven!

This meal was a bit more expensive than it should have been, but I know how to fix it now. It came to a total of (+ 44 9.25), or 53.25. I can improve this by using more potatoes, thus ensuring that I can keep half of the bratwurst for breakfast the next day. If I doubled my portion of potatoes and added some herbs and spices – would you believe that I have neither salt nor pepper? – then I could have a good meal for (+ 22 (* 2 9.25)), or 40.50.

Microwave chopped potatoes (1/4 ~ 1/2 inch) for 2.5 minutes.

Must find correct way to use butter to flavor these things. Trying to put garlic in butter didn’t really do anything either.

You know what? I should learn how to toast garlic, or however they prepare the garlic that goes on top of arrozcaldo…

Realization #1: Pita pockets are named pita pockets for a _reason_. I should try Hungarian-sausage+tomato+cheese stuffed pita pockets. Maybe tomorrow; I can bring neat little sandwich bags to the UPSA rehearsal.

Realization #2: If I slice the sausages before putting them in the oven toaster, then they have nice texture.

Tomorrow: Pita pockets of slice-toasted Hungarian sausages, mushrooms and cheese.