I don’t know how many times I’ve sat, most likely in just my boxers, eating macaroni and cheese, wondering how to make it taste less boring. Granted, this probably isn’t something most people worry about. Most people would just buy different food but, as you’ve probably noticed, I’m different. At least that’s what everyone tells me.
So, I set out to make boxed Velveeta Macaroni and "Cheese" not taste as dull. I tried many things, most of which ended up tasting...well, they weren’t dull anymore, but they weren’t edible either. The root of the problem is that the "Cheese" isn’t actually cheese. It seems to be some sort of soft silly putty that has been dyed yellow and flavored "cheese". Not very appetizing. My goal with this was to mask the flavor of the cheese with something else...but at the same time, have that something else not taste worse than that which it was replacing.
The solution? Jack Daniel’s Spicy Southwest Mustard. This stuff is great. It’s like mustard...only it tastes way better. And it has all kinds of spicy stuff (as you could probably guess from the name) that is good at hiding the cardboard flavor of the cheese.
Anyways, without further ado, I present to you:
...
I sat here for a few minutes trying to come up with a name. The best I could come up with was Boxed Macaroni and Cheese and Mustard, but that didn’t sound very good.
Skipping the title, we move to the list of ingredients.
| Ingredients:
- Velveeta Macaroni and "Cheese"
- Texas Pete hot sauce
- Cajun seasoning
- Dried Cilantro
- Jack Daniel’s Spicy Southwestern Mustard
|
|
First, make sure the frying pan is well oiled.
Er, no.
Start by taking a nice low-angle shot of the stove with the faint hope that you can actually catch a reflection on the camera.
Success! Of sorts!
While the water was boiling over, I took some pictures of the ingredients. First up are the ones that belong in the water:
Some may argue that the leftmost one actually belongs in the trash, instead of in the water. They may be right.
These go in the pasta, after it has been drained.
At this point, the water should be nice and boiling. I added the hot sauce (very liberally) and the cajun seasoning at this point, followed by the pasta.
I let this sit for a while, thinking about what I was doing. It felt weird. If I kept it up, I’d soon start changing it in even bigger ways. Soon, I would probably end up removing the cheese-flavored rubber wannabe sludge. I didn’t have much time to think about this though, because the pasta was done. I drained the water and put it inside a leftover container. Yes, it moved directly to a leftover container. I don’t have any proper dishes that could hold this much macaroni, and if you put it back in the pot, it chars.
Here it is, in all of its unadulterated glory:
Proof that the cheese is based on silly putty:
Add Spicy Southwest mustard and Oregano:
Mix well. Mix until you sling bits of pasta and "cheese" all over the place. Once that is done, serve with some gin. It helps you forget that the ingredients that you added cost far more than the pasta itself. I cry myself to sleep at night thinking about this.
It’s not actually that bad. In fact, it’s quite good. I would know because I just ate it. I can’t write on an empty stomach, you know.
|
The chinese food place that delivers to my apartment never puts egg in the chicken fried rice. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I feel that there should be egg in my chicken fried rice. Perhaps, you may say, "It’s chicken fried rice. It’s not chicken egg fried rice." It’s not called "chicken carrot pea MSG fried rice" either, and it has all of those things in it anyways. Hah.
Anyways, it always bugs me, and I always want to tell them to put egg in it, but I never remember when I call. What ends up happening is that I put the thing of chicken fried rice in the ’fridge, and add egg later.
First, something completely unrelated. I cleaned the crap out of my kitchen. I scrubbed the stovetop as hard as I could, but I couldn’t get it to really shine. Don’t ask why I wanted the stovetop to be shiny. I don’t really have anything better to do these days. Regardless, I brought out some buffing compound I had used awhile ago for some parts on my car. Yes, automotive buffing compound. A few minutes later, the stovetop had a nice deep reflection to it, which was pretty much completely ignored by the camera:
Moving on, the first step in cooking anything is to put some oil in a frying pan.
Well, not the first step in cooking anything. In fact, it’s the first step in cooking just a few things. The problem is that it’s reflexive now. This morning, I was going to have some cereal, and I put oil in a frying pan instead.
This time, however, I’m supposed to put oil in a frying pan, and I did so with much excitement.
I probably should list ingredients somewhere around here.
| Ingredients:
- Old chicken fried rice
- Eggs
- Oil, to put in a frying pan
|
|
These are two of the ingredients. Naturally, the oil is already in the frying pan at this point.
Add egg and chicken fried rice to frying pan, where it joins the oil. It’ll look something like this:
The next step is to sit and fiddle with the camera until it starts burning. Curse, throw camera on counter, and stir. Depending on how crappy your camera is (mine is pretty bad), your meal may have turned completely black at this point.
Stir it for a bit, looking for the batteries to your camera, which went flying all over the place when you threw the camera down. After you find the batteries, and the egg has caused everything to coagulate into a solid brick of "food", remove from heat and put into a plate.
Serve with a Coke for the ultimate in authentic uh...flavor.
|
After quite a bit of time, I’m finally pulling things back together and working on the site. Sorry for the poorly lit photos taken with a cell phone. I need to buy a new camera.
I went to IKEA today and picked up a bunch of things, including several lamps, a new coffee table, and two end tables.
Coffee table:
I still have a bit of work to do to hide the wiring for the lamps.
Fishbowl, end table:
Bought the fish a stick of bamboo to um, swim around. This end table replaced the horribly tacky one that used to be there. Aside from nearly killing the fish a few days ago (the table collapsed and spilled the fishbowl on the ground), it was just plain ugly. The drawer on the front is nice because I can lose my bills in there.
Wider shot of the side of the room:
The sofa isn’t new. I’m looking into replacing it with something less offensive, but it will remain there for some time. The hamster cage (with one hamster, named Hannibal because it ate its cagemates) is off in the corner. My cell phone whited out the lights in this photo.
Other end table:
Along with a shot of the light that didn’t wash out, you can see part of the other sofa, and the other end table that I can lose things in.
Planning on another trip there to replace my dishes, which also came with the apartment. More pictures of the kitchen and such to come later.
|
Haven’t cooked anything other than a cake (from a box) over the past few days. We’ve been snowed in, so I can’t get anything to make anything with.
We will continue once I can get to the grocery store without being run over by the indigenous people who pilot 3-ton SUVs down the neighborhood streets at speeds that would be illegal on the autobahn.
| Posted at 9:40am on Thu, Feb 15, 2007 - 0 comments |
|
One of my staple breakfast foods is the omelette. While I like to add other things to it, I generally have to make do with what’s in the fridge.
For an omelette, the only things I absolutely need are:
| Ingredients:
- 3 Eggs
- Cooking Oil
- Cheese of some sort
- Salt & Pepper
|
|
In addition to the cheese, chopped or cubed ham may be added. I also like to add onion and tomato.
Regardless, without further ado, let’s get started. First, here’s a shot of my kitchen. I like to keep my work area clean, partially because I think I’m becoming somewhat OCD about keeping things clean, and partially because it doesn’t sit right with me to cook in the midst of a bunch of molding remnants of old food.
I also like to keep an air cleaner nearby my cooking area. Since I live in an apartment, the fan above the stove does little other than help circulate food smells around the place. I run the air cleaner whenever I’m cooking.
Finally, I like to have a coaster of some sort in the middle of the stove, to set things down on. I usually use the lid to an old butter container or, in this case, what I think was at one point a sour cream jar lid. The coaster prevents dropping food bits all over the stove, and makes cleanup easier. I usually just toss the coaster in with the regular dishes.
Now for the actual food-making part, which I imagine will be more interesting than hearing about my kitchen. To begin, I place the three eggs in a bowl. This is more habit than anything else. There’s no actual purpose to placing them in the bowl, because I take them out immediately after.
I remove the eggs from the bowl, wondering why I put them in there in the first place. I break the first egg over the bowl, making sure to catch the yolk inside of the eggshell. For either cholesterol reasons, or because this has been ingrained into my mind since birth, I leave one yolk out.
After this, I dump the rest of the eggs into the bowl. I got lucky this time around and managed to keep the first yolk in the shell. Usually, my clumsiness results in the first egg being splattered across the kitchen, with about a fifth of it landing inside the bowl. Generally, this fifth is mostly egg yolk.
Following this, I beat the eggs until the yolks have been completely broken and mixed into the whites. For this, I use whatever I can find, including but not limited to pan handles, screwdrivers, or my finger. Luckily, I had chopsticks this time.
By this time, the stove has heated up and I can spray a bit of cooking oil onto it. This is, once again, just a habit. Cooking spray rarely seems to work to do anything other than make the omelette taste oily. I pour the eggs into the pan, trying to make them cover as little area as possible. Whoever installed the stove here must’ve decided that nobody ever wants anything to be level, so the eggs always end up sloshing to one side.
While the eggs are busy burning in the pan, I shred some cheese into a plate.
After shredding the cheese, I add a bit of spices to it. Generally, "spices" means "whatever is lying around and looks like it might belong inside food". In this case, cilantro leaves. I mix the cheese around to help distribute the cilantro.
Now it becomes time to pry the charred brick of eggs from the "no-stick" surface of the frying pan. Grab your hammer and chisel, and chip away until you can see the underside of the omelette. It should fall apart into about 10 different pieces as soon as you look at it, none of which will be properly cooked on the bottom. I usually wait until the egg on the top has solidified a bit, then check underneath the omelette to make sure that it’s a good color for an omelette.
I flip the omelette now, to begin burning the other side. I’ve always seen people doing fancy tricks with omelettes, such as flinging them into the air and catching them upside down. I don’t trust myself doing this, so I flip it with a spatula. Not as showy, but you don’t end up with charred egg attached to the ceiling either.
Once both sides have turned into a burnt crisp, indistinguishable from what they originally looked like, I put the cheese on the top, trying to distribute it evenly across the top of the omelette.
After that, I grab one side of the omelette with a spatula, chisel, or other flat object. I fold the omelette in half, dispersing the burnt flavor throughout the cheese.
Once the omelette is transferred to a plate, I can begin sawing it open to eat it.
Delicious!
Disregard the fact that this was posted at 11pm. Omelettes are really a breakfast food, not a dinner food.
|
|
