The Story is Cooked!

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Tomato Flop

Ryan decided that he wanted grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch today, and then he asked if we happened to have any tomato soup (he likes Progresso Hearty Tomato; I hate tomato soup in general, so this question was clearly only in his own interest). I didn't really feel like doing any work at the time, so I ventured downstairs to see what the pantry held. No tomato soup, no diced tomatos (despite the plethora we had--about 6 cans worth--a month ago. I have no idea where they went!), but two cans of tomato sauce (not that I know what use we have for that!) and two cans of tomato paste (vital ingredient in chili). Feeling ambitious (though only toward cooking--not graph theory, or topology, or representation theory, or the theory of what we're going to do next year, etc.), I looked on the internet for tomato soup recipes. Almost every one I found required fresh tomatoes, which we did not have, or whole canned tomatoes, which we also did not have. However, I did find a vegan recipe that only required tomato sauce (and cornstarch for thickening, but I figured flour would work just as well, and rice milk, which we did not have, but I figured cow's milk was a perfectly acceptable substitute since I didn't care about the vegan-ness at all), so I asked Ryan if he would like me to make him tomato soup. He sadly replied, "We don't have any?"
"No, but we have tomato sauce...."
"Do think you can?" Ryan asked.
"What, you think I won't be successful?!" I answered.
Of course, he reassured me that was not his thought at all; he just didn't want me to go to all that work. I insisted, so we made the soup. Ryan added some "Old World Spices," and I added the milk and flour. Then Ryan said it tasted like dough, so he added the other can of tomato sauce, since we had only used one at first (he was reluctant to waste the tomato sauce, but, as I have previously mentioned, I have no idea what we would do with it otherwise). It still tasted like dough, apparently, so Ryan ate his grilled cheese sandwich without tomato soup, which I dumped down the drain. Clearly, I was not successful. Maybe next time. Maybe there will never be a next time.

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Friday, November 11, 2005

Indonesian Peanut Sauce Chicken

We decided to try this recipe before we realized that it called for chili sauce, which we didn't have, so we went to Albertsons to pickup some. There were only a couple of options so we got a hot one from the Asian food isle and a mild one next to the BBQ sauce. When we checked out the expensive one rang up wrong so we got it for free. The recipe we have wanted us to cook the chicken pieces whole for 20 minutes, but that would have taken too long, so we treated it like a normal stirfry and cut the chicken into little pieces and cooked it without any oil for about 5 or 6 min (until it's done). Oh we had onion and red peppers in there too. Once the chicken was cooked we took it out and put in crunchy peanut butter and chili sauce (about equal amounts) stirring constantly and adding water in small amounts until the peanut butter is all melted and the whole thing is boiling. After that we added the chicken back in just in time for the rice to be done.



The chopsticks are authentic southeast Asian utensils (a wedding present from Pierce Baehr out of Papua New Guinea). This recipe is definitely a keeper!

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Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Addendum

I still hate Krispy Kreme, and, yes, I do gag whenever I think about the gobs of glaze on any of their normal donuts, but I must confess that the Boston Creme (although I supppose at Kripy Kreme it should be Boston Kreme--oh, yeah, they call it something else weird) and the Cinnamon Apple-filled donuts that Ryan got weren't awful (they weren't glazed). However, they still weren't very good. Dunkin' Donuts is much, much better! I realized when we left Kripy Kreme the other day that it's the glaze that makes them so gross--I've never liked icing. My sister and I used to split cake anywhere we went--she ate the icing, I ate the cake. (Of course, I don't even really like cake now, but that's not the story here.) So when you melt down tons of icing a day and then pass through it tons of rings of dough that have just bobbed in millions of gallons of oil, I just can't quite find it attractive. Or even close to edible.

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Sunday, November 06, 2005

Rebekah's Fatwa on Krispy Kreme

We went to Krispy Kreme tonight (they just opened this weekend). Rebekah confirmed her gag reflex to the mention of that particular doughnut establishment with a real gag at the sight of the fountain o' glaze. She had one bite of her free doughnut and then gave it to me. Not that this has much to our cooking (which we have not had a lot of time for lately) but I thought the Kingsleys would like to know that Missoula now has a Krispy Kreme. Do they have them in Ireland?

Thanksgiving is coming so we should have some cooking adventures in the near future. (the tablet PC just interpreted "future" as "fatwa").

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