Tobin and Erin

STORY TIME!

“Escapades of the Woman and Her Pan, Part II”

I made myself a home-cooked meal tonight! It all started form a meager little potato, a container of chopped onions (do you KNOW how much one onion is???? it’s ridiculous, really), a container of chili flavoring, two eggs, some chicken/rice/noodle mix, the Pan, and one pot. Oh, and some pinched or yoinked olive oil (pinch and yoink don’t quite mean steal).

I washed and chopped that potato like a pro, then put oil, onions, chili spices, and potato into the Pan and turned the burner up. Then I sat back to read about good ole Toshie before I boiled up the water for the chicken/rice/noddle stuff (that’s appropriate, btw…and Oriental dish and an Oriental book; so it was a THEMED dinner too! man I’m good). I had been reading a while when Jerkiar popped in. I was excited to see her since she is an SA this year and didn’t play volleyball. We talked awhile, she made her ubiquitous Crystal Light, and then she was on her way. I had stirred the potato mixture several times by now to make sure it cooked evenly. Then I discovered I had the wrong burner on. Sigh. Start all over.

I cranked up the RIGHT burner this time and settled in to read again before cooking my Oriental dish. I was interrupted from Toshie getting her first washing machine by the sound of fierce crackling and popping that seemed to originate from…you guessed it, the RIGHT burner. I hastened to turn it down a bit. A lot, that is. Well, it was then that I noticed the potatoes had been cooking a good half hour by now (more if you count the heatless saturation in oil that occurred before I figured out the burner trick); so I started boiling the water for the rice/chicken/noodle mix.

After that boiled, I put in the mix and waited a couple of minutes before adding the two eggs to the potato mixture. Those were some funny looking eggs. Of course, I didn’t have milk and I cracked them right into the pan, but still…

The potato dish was done! Fine (I think that’s Italian or Greek or something for “finished”)! I removed the rice dish from its burner (don’t worry, I turned them all off too) and let it cool so it would “thicken”, as promised by the handy instructions on the side of the bag. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I started eating the potatoes. Despite the fact that my onions had evaporated somewhere between saturation and over-cooking, it tasted great! Of course, that may have been because of the nine hour wait between meals and the yoinked salt I discovered.

Why isn’t the rice thickening, you say? Well, perhaps because I guesstimated on the “one cup and three quarters” water measurement (you know, turn on the faucet and turn it off when it feels good). Anywho, I used the lid as a strainer and rid myself of extra juice. By then, however, I had finished off the entire potato dish and an orange (ok, not in my original cast of characters, but he really was there all along), so I just had a small serving of that and put the rest in a container for later.

Phew! That was a long story. But lemme just say, food tastes better after you yourself have cooked it. Try it sometime. And be willing to laugh at yourself. Peace out, folks!