The dearth of recent CookOrDie posts doesn’t mean I’ve figured out how
to cook consistently well. Rather, it means that I just haven’t been
blogging much. <sheepish grin> Diane reminded me that some
people find my narrow escapes from food poisoning actually _amusing._
Sickos. ;b Well, that’s not what she said, but I’ll take the hind.

I have so far managed to survive my cooking. I consider that one of my
major accomplishments. This is what I’ve survived this week:

Bean soup—no, bean heap

I _meant_ to prepare bean soup last Friday: a nice, warm, nutritious
meal before we headed off to Pride and Prejudice. Soup mix, lots of
water, a bit of chicken stock powder for flavor. I left it simmering,
covered, and set the stove alarm to go off after the time indicated on
the soup mix packet. I then went to my room to talk to my research
supervisor over Skype. By the time I checked on it again, all the
water had evaporated. Oops! I quickly threw in more water, pushed it
around a bit, then turned off the heat.

Verdict: Still palatable. Pleasantly crunchy and textured, even. Needs
a bit more flavor. Probably better in small portions.

Almost-lemon dill chicken

One of the suitemates bought too much dill, so I searched the Net for
recipes involving dill and I settled on lemon dill chicken. I
remembered to buy the chicken, but I forgot to buy lemons. Oops. So I
reached for the nearest liquids: olive oil and balsamic vinegar. (What
was I thinking about? French bread?!) I mixed the oil and vinegar with
garlic and dill along the lines of the original recipe. I dunked the
chicken in the mixture and broiled the chicken again according to the
recipe. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the chicken actually
got cooked, although I wish I had seasoned it with something slightly
more flavorful (salt and pepper?) or marinated it or something like
that.

Verdict: Edible. A bit bland.

Too-dry rice

Oops. I put in too little water when I cooked rice.

Verdict: So far I’ve come up with several ways to use very dry rice.
=) Butter helps a bit. Heat helps a bit. Mixing it in with everything
else helps a bit.

Garlic fried rice

Doesn’t quite work yet. I probably should’ve added the rice before the
garlic browned. Maybe even at the same time?

Tomato, onion and cheese omelette

I’m getting better at these omelettes. =) This one was okay, too. I
sauteed the onions before making the omelette because I didn’t feel
like biting into crunchy raw onion at the time. Might be fun making a
salsa omelette, though.

Leftover stirfry

Chopped up remnants of that weird chicken thing + green beans I’d
nearly forgotten about + carrots I’d forgotten about + too-dry rice +
a generous pinch of ginisa mix + a couple of splashes of soy sauce =
some kind of leftover stirfry which will do in a pinch.

Rabbit-impersonation day

I bought a bag of Caesar salad mix reasoning that a head of lettuce is
intimidatingly large and that the ridiculous markup they have on
convenience mixes like that was worth it just to see if I could
happily eat veggies. I think it was meant for two servings as a main
dish. I ended up finishing the entire thing. I guess that’s a good
thing. Oh, Mom and Kathy will be pleased to know that I now eat Caesar
salad with dressing.

Life continues. If nothing else, I’m cultivating better resistance to
bad cooking. ;)