Mmmkay.
I know I slacked off, with a perfect run of zero for seven when it comes to photographic evidence of my culinary (mis)adventures; I can only offer excuses of the weakest sort, having been unable to puzzle out the disjointed and arcane connection apparati that are intended to bring together my camera and desktop in perfect union. In the end, I simply resorted to the crappy camera phone, thus the funky quality on about half the pictures. Still, when contemplating the final product it might be better to get a bit of distortion between the viewer and the rather pale and unappetizing platters I managed to turn out. This is not to imply any lack of taste or texture; rather, the truth was much the contrary in that just about everything I prepared looked dull and tasted delicious. Undercooked chicken is especially delicious, both flavorful and tender; all I need to work on is presentation and actually
cooking the meat thoroughly, and I figure I graduate to the hallowed culinary rank of College Student With Microwave. Don't believe me?
I forgot which day I cooked what, so I'm just tossing these to the motherf@#!?%n' wind. One of the better meals, taste and presentation-wise: hawaiian pineapple chicken teriyaki kabobs with brown rice and salad. Salmonellicious!
Cell phone camera! Also came out surprisingly good, considering I had absolutely no idea what I was doing other than putting a bunch of crap in a skillet and chucking it around like the Swedish Chef with a feral wolverine clamped to his wrist. Err, hawaiian teriyaki egg-fried rice with shrimp and veggies FTW!
Now we get into the boring stuff; this was a quick dinner one night, and the only claim to any sort of culinary effort expended was that I had to prepare and consume whole-wheat pasta for the first time. Turns out, dark brown pasta == light brown pasta. Anyway, homemade ceviche on top of whole-wheat angel hair pasta to make a pretty basic seafood pasta delicious. If I could have figured out some sort of sauce to make with it, would have been even better.
Shrimp sandwich for lunch one day. Novel idea, and came out pretty delicious. Not much actual cooking involved, short of broiling the finished creation in the oven for a few minutes to melt the cheese and other sundries and bring out that panini-press toasted look. Also, giant white hand!
These were pretty awesome; essentially, they're "Berry Burgers" which are prepared my mixing coarsely-diced fruit in with hand-made hamburger patties. The taste of the individual fruit doesn't come through, but it does make the burger much sweeter and juicier. I tried it with blueberries and then pineapples; if you ever actually give this a shot, try the blueberries first. The burgers were delicious and the added sweetness contrasted beautifully with the sharp flavors of the onions and pickles. And since those pictured above included pineapples, I had to slather on some Hawaiian Pineapple Teriyaki Sauce (tm); that stuff is made of ultimate win. And Jews!
Another cop-out; so much of a cop-out in fact, that as you can see I forgot about taking a picture until I was about three-quarters through with the meal. This was some hawaiian pineapple teriyaki chicken with whole-grain couscous, taken to work and reheated. Turns out that yes, that plastic is microwave-safe! However, apparently crappy disposable plastic silverware is not. Alas.
Another cheap cop-out, this was the first time I'd ever had cottage cheese with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. I've recently taken up late-night cottage cheese snacks as a way to help gain muscle (supposedly) and so far it's had absolutely no noticeable effect. Still, it was delicious and that's enough for now.
I had another cheesy picture of some canned sardines I snacked on one day when I didn't cook anything, but it seems my phone fails at transmitting in the dank suburban cavern whence I dwell. If I have seven above, great; if not, just take my word for it. Or wait; I've been meaning to try and bake up some cheesecake after finding this awesome recipe, and I only need like two ingredients that aren't readily available. Who knows; as for the going under budget thing, umm...I kept all the receipts, but really I don't see much point in going through the work of totaling it all up when I'm almost certain I went over budget. Still, on each shopping excursion about half of what I picked up was just for general sustenance and had nothing to do with these recipes, so I don't feel so bad about spending so much. Did you know a jar of pickles is like, four freaking bucks? A cucumber is thirty-five cents. Is vinegar and salt the fabled Philosopher's Stone of food storage, able to turn lead into gold and a bunch of cucumbers worth a buck into five dollars of pure culinary
gold?
Bastards.
Oh, hey. There might be a few pictures in this post.
Just a heads-up.
