One of the new pots courtesy of my parents
I can cook. I’m not a gourmet chef but I can cook even though I haven’t mastered bread yet. Thanks to my mother, grandmother and two years of cooking class in high school with Miss Sooden, I can pretty much do anything, even make a white sauce.
The problem with living on your own is that sometimes it’s just tedious to cook when it’s just you. Yes, yes, I know: make enough for multiple meals and freeze what you don’t use but sometimes laziness plays a big role and I don’t cook.
I order in instead and at an average of $20 a pop and I’m sure I’m lowballing that estimate. It eats up my cash obviously. So this year I’m going to make a concentrated effort to cook about 90 per cent of my meals. I’m not going to commit to 100 per cent because sometimes you do want to order in.
My parents, who had no idea of this, gave me a lovely set of pots for Christmas. I’ve already started using them. The stoneware pot is also from them. They gave me a gift card to get a good set of dishes but I bought the pot instead.
This set of photos is me making stewed chicken with lentils. Delicious, easy to make and hey, vegetables. The best part is that you can add whatever you want to this dish including carrots, mushrooms or tomatoes. The trick is to burn the sugar so you get that nice brown colour.
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- One of the new pots courtesy of my parents
It took me 3 attempts to get comfortable with the hot oil and burning sugar. Also, for people like myself that mainly use salt and black pepper, and for general safety of your readers, do discuss the consequences of throwing in a hot pepper ! without scoring it first.
I love the pots and the covers, you can see what’s going on inside.
Good luck with the goal !
Oh, yes! I need to remember to mention not throwing in a hot pepper. A friend asked me to make a video of the sugar process.
When I moved out to the country, my expenses were due to skyrocket, as the rent was much more, commuting costs, utilities (at my old apartment, they were included). Interestingly… I always seemed to have money at the end of every pay period, and I never did when I lived in the city. Turns out, I eat almost ALL meals at home now. It’s weird. I never realized how much money I was spending before. You can’t just order Chinese food out here… it’s too far to deliver. I have large stockpiles of everything I could *ever* need in preparation for some kind of country-armaggedon (LOL) and it’s hilarious. A friend who doesn’t drive cat/house-sat for me for a week, so she was housebound and told me she was not in need of *anything*. The stockpiles did her just fine. This year I also took up extreme couponing, so the vast majority of food in my house was really cheap… probably 50% or more off retail price. Which is kind of why I have two of everything.
It’s funny you mentioned Chinese, Jo. I just made some tonight! I was pleased because I had every thing I needed except a red pepper.