Food and science
Jan. 16th, 2005 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plutherusYay! LJ's back up! Congrats and thanks to the lj team who worked tirelessly to make it happen!
Because, you know, they did all that just so I could tell everyone that I have a futon now. I bought it yesterday, got it delivered that afternoon, and last night had the best night's sleep I've had for months. I was getting so tired of sleeping on the floor on a thin airmattress. Yes, very exciting I'm sure.
I'm now stocked up on groceries again. I've always thought it strange that you end up spending less money when you have more. Since I got paid on Friday, I had enough to buy several bags (as much as I thought I could carry on the bus), and now don't have to buy food out for at least a couple of weeks. I even got some containers and an insulated bag, so I can cook here and take my lunch in with me to work. Hooray. Aren't you glad the livejournal staff worked for 36 hours so you can read this crap?
I'm constantly amazed at how good food cooked at home can be. Even when you have no idea what you're doing. My recipe books are still in Eugene, so I've just been experimenting at random. I've discovered a lot of uses for soup. One of my favorite things to make, because it's so easy and always comes out well is a chicken dish, made thusly:
Pour 1 cup raw rice in the bottom of a casserole dish.
2-3 pieces of boneless skinless chicken breasts on top of it, raw and thawed.
Vegetables on top of that. Today was frozen green beans. I've also used asparagus (and, by the way, this is the only way I've ever found to make canned asparagus palatable). Frozen mixed vegetables work well, too. I use a lot of frozen vegetables in my cooking because I don't get to the store that often, and so when I do I always lay in lots of frozen veggies.
Optional: several slices of cheese on top of the vegetables. I usually use deli swiss, but Tillamook cheddar (mild or medium or else the flavor will overwhelm everything else).
1 can cream of soup, spread over it. (Various cream of's work well, cream of mushroom seems to go with just about anything, with cream of chicken or cream of celery, you have to choose a vegetable to go with it.
1 can milk. (The same can the soup came out of. Fill it with milk and pour it over the stuff in the pan.)
Stick the whole thing in the oven and bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour (it's done when the chicken is tender and there's no pink. I tend to end up with more pieces than the 2-3 I put in because I'm so paranoid of undercooking chicken, I pull it out, cut it open, and stick it back in. If you're less paranoid than me, you can test it with a fork.)
The cream of soup and the milk will soak into the rice under the chicken, making it fluffy and tasty, as well as into the chicken.
It looks disgusting before it goes into the oven, but I'm always shocked at how well it comes out.
Feeds four. Or, if you're like me, makes one dinner and three lunches.
I also love how much cheaper it is to cook for yourself than to eat out at all. For instance, the above costs:
1 cup rice: about 50c
3 pieces chicken: 4.50
Cheese: four slices from a 2# block of tillamook cheddar: 25c
Vegetables: 1.00
Milk: 40c
Can of soup: 79c (Oh, yeah, always buy store brand, not Campells or something: it's thinner and soaks into the rice better).
Total cost: $7.44 for four meals, each of which is far better, tastier, and healthier than you can find
in any fast-food restaurant. The whole thing freezes well (I used to sometimes make it on a Sunday, put it in four separate containers (gladware: 1.99 for five, reusable) and take one to work with me a day and cook it in the microwave there.)
And, speaking of cooking with soup, I also do a lot of stir-fry. Especially now that I have a wok (Thank you![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dragon_gunner and meisha!) No, I don't generally put soup into the stir-fry (though now that I think about it, I bet those dry packets might work well for flavoring. I'll have to try that some time). Anyway, about soup: I've found that a can of soup instead of water can make some amazingly good rice. Again, go with generic (store-brand), cuz it tends to be waterier and thus absorbs better. I found some French onion soup for 49c a can recently, and poured it into the rice, along with about 6oz of water (making 8 oz of rice and 16oz of fluid, making the 2:1 mixture recommended on the rice package). Damn, it was good. Didn't even really need the stir-fried chicken and vegetables to go with it. Chicken soup works well, too, or any of the thin watery types that wouldn't make very good soup on their own. I bet chunky chicken noodle soup with vegetables in it would work well too as the rice base, not needing anything else added to be a complete meal. Hmmm... And, in another experiment last week, suggested by my lack of anything else in the house, as many of my cooking experiments are. I had previously made a stir-fry, and had two cans of pineapple chunks. I opened one to pour into it and discovered I'd accidently bought crushed pineapple instead of chunks, which I didn't think would make good stir-fry. So I opened the other after confirming that it was, indeed, chunks not crushed. (They were properly labeled, I just wasn't paying close enough attention while shopping). Anyway, I drained the juice from the can of chunks, and the entire can of crushed pineapple, into a jar which I then later used as the fluid for rice, instead of water. Wow, that made some amazing rice, with the bits of pineapple scattered throughout. Just a few slices of chicken on top of it, cooked in a pan with just a bit of soy sauce and tarragon, and it made a quite scrumptious meal out of leftover bits that would have otherwise been thrown away.
So this concludes this week's episode of Bachelor Chef. Next week: "Mmmmm.... Pasta!" or "Mac and cheese and stuff for half the price and twice the flavor as anything you can get from Kraft."
In other news, the speakers on my PC seem to be dying. It sounds like I'm getting really bad reception on the radio, except I'm listening to mp3's off my hard drive, so I don't think that's the problem. Bummer.
Oh, yeah, and Yesterday, no, make that two days ago, Friday, the Huygens probe landed on Titan, and started sending back pictures of the surface! Yay! Our first peek beneath the clouds! Congrats ESA on the farthest away successful landing of a space probe, and to humanity for learning more about the planetary system in which we reside!
And, that same day, the Kansas supreme court ruled that "warning stickers" on any textbooks that teach about evolution, fossils, biology, geography, and other things that contradict certain people's interpretation of the biblical account of creation violate the separation of church and state, and thus are unconstitutional and must now be removed. Hooray! It was, asreynard52 pointed out, (Dexter)a good day for SCIENCE! (/Dexter)
Because, you know, they did all that just so I could tell everyone that I have a futon now. I bought it yesterday, got it delivered that afternoon, and last night had the best night's sleep I've had for months. I was getting so tired of sleeping on the floor on a thin airmattress. Yes, very exciting I'm sure.
I'm now stocked up on groceries again. I've always thought it strange that you end up spending less money when you have more. Since I got paid on Friday, I had enough to buy several bags (as much as I thought I could carry on the bus), and now don't have to buy food out for at least a couple of weeks. I even got some containers and an insulated bag, so I can cook here and take my lunch in with me to work. Hooray. Aren't you glad the livejournal staff worked for 36 hours so you can read this crap?
I'm constantly amazed at how good food cooked at home can be. Even when you have no idea what you're doing. My recipe books are still in Eugene, so I've just been experimenting at random. I've discovered a lot of uses for soup. One of my favorite things to make, because it's so easy and always comes out well is a chicken dish, made thusly:
Pour 1 cup raw rice in the bottom of a casserole dish.
2-3 pieces of boneless skinless chicken breasts on top of it, raw and thawed.
Vegetables on top of that. Today was frozen green beans. I've also used asparagus (and, by the way, this is the only way I've ever found to make canned asparagus palatable). Frozen mixed vegetables work well, too. I use a lot of frozen vegetables in my cooking because I don't get to the store that often, and so when I do I always lay in lots of frozen veggies.
Optional: several slices of cheese on top of the vegetables. I usually use deli swiss, but Tillamook cheddar (mild or medium or else the flavor will overwhelm everything else).
1 can cream of soup, spread over it. (Various cream of's work well, cream of mushroom seems to go with just about anything, with cream of chicken or cream of celery, you have to choose a vegetable to go with it.
1 can milk. (The same can the soup came out of. Fill it with milk and pour it over the stuff in the pan.)
Stick the whole thing in the oven and bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour (it's done when the chicken is tender and there's no pink. I tend to end up with more pieces than the 2-3 I put in because I'm so paranoid of undercooking chicken, I pull it out, cut it open, and stick it back in. If you're less paranoid than me, you can test it with a fork.)
The cream of soup and the milk will soak into the rice under the chicken, making it fluffy and tasty, as well as into the chicken.
It looks disgusting before it goes into the oven, but I'm always shocked at how well it comes out.
Feeds four. Or, if you're like me, makes one dinner and three lunches.
I also love how much cheaper it is to cook for yourself than to eat out at all. For instance, the above costs:
1 cup rice: about 50c
3 pieces chicken: 4.50
Cheese: four slices from a 2# block of tillamook cheddar: 25c
Vegetables: 1.00
Milk: 40c
Can of soup: 79c (Oh, yeah, always buy store brand, not Campells or something: it's thinner and soaks into the rice better).
Total cost: $7.44 for four meals, each of which is far better, tastier, and healthier than you can find
in any fast-food restaurant. The whole thing freezes well (I used to sometimes make it on a Sunday, put it in four separate containers (gladware: 1.99 for five, reusable) and take one to work with me a day and cook it in the microwave there.)
And, speaking of cooking with soup, I also do a lot of stir-fry. Especially now that I have a wok (Thank you
dragon_gunner and meisha!) No, I don't generally put soup into the stir-fry (though now that I think about it, I bet those dry packets might work well for flavoring. I'll have to try that some time). Anyway, about soup: I've found that a can of soup instead of water can make some amazingly good rice. Again, go with generic (store-brand), cuz it tends to be waterier and thus absorbs better. I found some French onion soup for 49c a can recently, and poured it into the rice, along with about 6oz of water (making 8 oz of rice and 16oz of fluid, making the 2:1 mixture recommended on the rice package). Damn, it was good. Didn't even really need the stir-fried chicken and vegetables to go with it. Chicken soup works well, too, or any of the thin watery types that wouldn't make very good soup on their own. I bet chunky chicken noodle soup with vegetables in it would work well too as the rice base, not needing anything else added to be a complete meal. Hmmm... And, in another experiment last week, suggested by my lack of anything else in the house, as many of my cooking experiments are. I had previously made a stir-fry, and had two cans of pineapple chunks. I opened one to pour into it and discovered I'd accidently bought crushed pineapple instead of chunks, which I didn't think would make good stir-fry. So I opened the other after confirming that it was, indeed, chunks not crushed. (They were properly labeled, I just wasn't paying close enough attention while shopping). Anyway, I drained the juice from the can of chunks, and the entire can of crushed pineapple, into a jar which I then later used as the fluid for rice, instead of water. Wow, that made some amazing rice, with the bits of pineapple scattered throughout. Just a few slices of chicken on top of it, cooked in a pan with just a bit of soy sauce and tarragon, and it made a quite scrumptious meal out of leftover bits that would have otherwise been thrown away. So this concludes this week's episode of Bachelor Chef. Next week: "Mmmmm.... Pasta!" or "Mac and cheese and stuff for half the price and twice the flavor as anything you can get from Kraft."
In other news, the speakers on my PC seem to be dying. It sounds like I'm getting really bad reception on the radio, except I'm listening to mp3's off my hard drive, so I don't think that's the problem. Bummer.
Oh, yeah, and Yesterday, no, make that two days ago, Friday, the Huygens probe landed on Titan, and started sending back pictures of the surface! Yay! Our first peek beneath the clouds! Congrats ESA on the farthest away successful landing of a space probe, and to humanity for learning more about the planetary system in which we reside!
And, that same day, the Kansas supreme court ruled that "warning stickers" on any textbooks that teach about evolution, fossils, biology, geography, and other things that contradict certain people's interpretation of the biblical account of creation violate the separation of church and state, and thus are unconstitutional and must now be removed. Hooray! It was, as
reynard52 pointed out, (Dexter)a good day for SCIENCE! (/Dexter)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-01-17 02:36 am (UTC)Uh uh...twas you on IM...I just typed faster ;p
And yes, I AM glad LJs back up so I can read EXACTLY this type of crap! Good sleepage on your new futon (which I'm assuming did NOT come from the rubble heap of the Target you described). Or maybe it WAS and you got a discount on the model due to building destruction.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-17 01:22 pm (UTC)Well, yeah, but you got it into LJ faster. And with an icon! :)
Actually, the futon was discounted. It was supposed to be $375 for frame and mattress, but it was on closeout, a discontinued item, and the only one they had was the demo model. So they let me have it for $140, including delivery and a new mattress since I didn't like the one they had on it in the showroom :) Kinda funny, because I didn't like any of the other ones they had out, which all cost far more. Unfortunately, it's metal not wood, but still looks good. And the cats like it :) And, aside from four bolts, it was already mostly assembled when it got delivered :)