But how do I get rid of the smell?
On Christmas I unwrapped a spiral-bound book called Homemade in No Time: 400 Great-Tasting Recipes from Convenience Foods, which is a tad more euphemistic than its likely working title, How to Fill Four Plates in Fifteen Minutes with Things You Probably Have Lying Around the House.
My first reaction was to scoff at such a gift. I openly mocked its Taco Pizza and its Mashed Potato Soup. Pffft—if I’m going to cook, I’ll cook REAL food, with FRESH ingredients. I don’t need a step-by-step guide to beanie-weenies.
But within a few days I’d swallowed my pride, because you know what? I’m a lousy cook. No, I take that back. A lousy cook would try to prepare food but invariably kludge it up. I am not a cook at all, or…no wait, wait, I’m a NOVICE cook, a culinary newbie. Perhaps I will later prove to be incompetent, but for now I am merely inexperienced.
My debut No-Time meal came last week, when I served up Beer-Chili Bean Soup (ingredients: beer, chili beans, condensed beef soup, cooked turkey, dried onion, Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder) to a couple of friends.
It tasted…about how you’d expect a dish based on warm beer to taste. The key to the success of this dish was the three-days-post-surgery timing, when I could HARDLY be expected to prepare anything fancy. No comment on the beer-chili from either of my guests, which I’ll take as a good sign, because hey, at least my friends are polite.
This week will be a busy one for me, so I plan to cook TWICE. Crazy, I know. Tonight I made three servings of orange roughy with black bean sauce (on rice, with salad), and Tuesday night there’ll be couscous something something. The fish…tasted better than it looked, for sure. For a while I was worried it would be a huge flop, but in the end I cleaned my plate. I wasn’t planning on the lingering fishiness of my apartment, though. My kitchen smells like fish. My clothes smell like fish. I made hot chocolate for dessert, and it tasted like fish. I cooked all the fish and put it in airtight containers in the fridge; I washed all the dishes; I ran the exhaust fan; there aren’t any fishy-bits in the trash—whence the persistent aroma?
I’m far from the first person to realize that I can save bundles of money by cooking my own damn food, but…wowie. Tonight I spent twenty-eight dollars on food for the next five days (plus a few odds and ends)—I would guess that’s about half of what I’d spend for five days of my usual yogurt/latte/Chick’n diet.
I’m seriously considering moving back into town once my lease expires because oh-em-gee Central. Effing. Market. You guys. Seriously. Is Central Market national yet? If it’s not, you’re missing out. Or maybe it’s the Trader Joe’s of the South. Something like that. Anyway, spectacular supermarket. I was on the verge of tears for most of the half hour I spent there tonight. It’s beautiful. And it’s cheap(ish). How is this possible I don’t understand.
Is that all I had to say tonight? I think it is. Crap, it’s past midnight. I was able to focus on my homework today, in the few spare hours I had between lessons (two cancellations), so that was nice. School all day tomorrow, then a lesson out in BFE. It feels good to be busy.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 am
Sounds like you’re trying lots of fancy things. I can’t say I’m a wealth of information of meals in 15 minutes or less, but:
I’m a fan of take boneless skinless chicken breasts, throw it in a pyrex with olive oil and lemon juice and some herbs, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Mix and match with vegetable and grain of your choice.
Plain yes, but flexible and easy.
And the fish smell? I had the same problem when I had defrosted the fish ontop of the dish drainer. Took me a little while to figure out there was fish juice lingering in the cavites. Of course that was AFTER I scrubbed the entire kitchen and even scrubbed part of the carpet. Grar.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:47 am
Hmm, that doesn’t sound too challenging. I usually hate cooking meat, but I think I could manage to throw some raw chicken into a dish…
January 25th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I dunno honey, I just cooked fish and I don’t think my apt smells bad.
January 26th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Glad i’m not there, Patty… Hope you enjoyed.
Natalie, Not sure on the fish smell, as I don’t do fish in general. Could your apartment, perhaps, not smell like fish, but rather you have fish oils or smelly bits stuck in your nose? Have you tried snorting… hmm, baking soda, pixi sticks, crack, jello… to see if it clears it out? Well, maybe those aren’t the best ideas… whatever.
It sounds like an interesting cookbook. Central Market (Which is HEB) is not national, nor public, last I heard, so there are likely no plans of even going terribly regional. H.E. Butts was a Texan, and that’s where it primarily (entirely?) is. And yes, that’s really his name. Howard I think. Not Hugh.
Be sure that when you’re cooking your meat that it gets cooked thoroughly. The easiest way for a chicken breast is to cut it open and make sure it looks done… white, not bleedyoozy… thats supposedly 160F at the center if you wanna use a instant-read thermometer (good investment, btw) Pork is similar, but 180F to kill off the lysteria (which I haven’t heard of a poisoning from pork in quite a while)
Cooking is like chemistry, with less risk of blowing things up, and less expense of screwing up. If you can follow directions, its really not all that hard. Just annoying to spend an hour cooking then eat it alone in 10 minutes.
Am I longer than the original post yet???
PB