I microwaved the chicken adobo for another minute and a half just to
feel slightly better about it, and fried it together with half the
rice I cooked the other day. Then there was nothing else to do but to
try it, so I did.

It was… recognizable. Well, it tasted cooked, something which always
fills me with profound gratefulness. I think I need to add more soy
sauce and vinegar—and a different kind of vinegar, perhaps—as the
flavor was weaker than the four plates of adobo I cheerfully enjoyed
one summer outing many years ago. But it was recognizable, and that
makes me really happy.

For those who are not familiar with the dish, chicken adobo is the
lazy Filipino cook's best friend. It is rumored to keep indefinitely,
or at least for as long as needed (which is not very long, as I can
happily eat it day after day). Chicken adobo was what my mother packed
into my luggage when she found out I had to go to India; bags of
chicken adobo and packets of cream of mushroom soup, emergency rations
for a possibly finicky stomach. Chicken adobo is a Good Thing, and
learning how to cook it means I can stop buying sausages and start
buying chicken. Mwahaha.

I'm going to do my grocery shopping after I do the dishes tonight.
I've been keeping a list of necessities on the refrigerator door,
which makes shopping far easier. I'll eventually trim this to weekly
shopping, but I've come to realize that I urgently need to do some
shopping if I am to have a decent breakfast and lunch tomorrow.
Corn-based pitas are nice, but the cheese I have—prepackaged cheese
slices selected for their cost—can only be called cheese if you
stretch your imagination.

I have yet to start on the lettuce. I promised myself that I would eat
one individually-sized head of lettuce a day, but so far I have not
done so. Why? Perhaps I just need to mix up salad dressing. All the
books I've read tell me that commercial salad dressing is an
overpriced convenience and that mixing up a batch is easy.

But why do I need dressing? I used to pick leaves off the Caesar salad
at Italianni's before my sister drizzled dressing over it, saying I
didn't like the sour taste of dressing. Perhaps it was only because
the dressing was white and creamy and looked a little bit like
mayonnaise, and I still don't like plain mayonnaise. Now I will
experiment with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and see how that goes.

(Perhaps I should do that for lunch tomorrow: inflict two small heads
of lettuce on myself and see how well I do.)

Incidentally, my cooking misadventures draw the most comments: helpful
(and conflicting!) advice on measuring rice for cooking (general
consensus: it's up to you, really), recipe suggestions, shared
misadventures… I should remember to post something tech-related from
time to time. ;) Thank you so much for putting up with these stories! <laugh>