Finals Food

Finals week. It's a time of dread for most college students, a period of cramming, sleepless nights, endless rounds of coffee, and meals of limp cafeteria french fries.

For us Parsons students, of course, it's nothing of the sort. All-nighters are a normal part of our weekly routine. Most of us count ourselves lucky if we manage get to bed at 4 am. It is not unusual to have been awake for a solid 48 hours at a time or more. Our class times run from a minimum of 3 hours long to a maximum of 6 hours, with a mandatory 30 hours of class per week compared to the average college students' 15-18. Our teachers (whom I am convinced the majority of are notorious sadists) are one to every 18 students, which gives them plenty of opportunity to spend special individual time with each student, to instruct us. To critique us. To tell us we're doing it wrong and to do everything over. We spend most of our time outside class buying materials, working on projects, writing essays, and studying for Art History exams. On most days, we are a bundle of jittery nerves held upright only by caffeine and adrenaline, but honor-bound by the snootery that is prevalent in our high-profile school to still look "fierce", to not show what a mess we are, to trek the mile to class, carrying our huge portfolios and tottering in skyscraper heels. This is our regular life, for weeks on end.

Finals are just a step up. Only it's Finals month, not week. One month of shading, vectoring, sawing, photographing, cutting, pasting, and inking. One month of transferring documents from one format to another, trekking to the computer labs at two in the morning to print images due in a few short hours, and redoing spreads when a teacher deems them insufficient. One month of consecutive all-nighters, stress, and emotional breakdowns. No one is forcing us to do this but ourselves, so in a way I suppose only we are to blame. We put our time and energy and (no drama here, sleep deprivation is serious) health on the line to achieve our dreams and goals. And because of this, I can confidently say that a student at Parsons works just as hard, if not more, than any average student at a "regular" college.

Which is why it so completely galled me when I confided in a friend who attended a "normal" college how completely exhausted I was, and received the incredulous response "But you're in art school!"

Excuse me?

The voice in my head bordered on hysteria. I'm sure if he had said that to my face, I would have hit him. I was speechless with indignant shock for a good few minutes. I wanted to scream--and not just at him, but at all the people I've encountered who'd said "Oh, you go to art school? That must be fun!" I wanted to shriek "Just because I go to art school does not mean I sit around doodling rainbows and unicorns all day long!" I could hear the little, broken, emo-kid wail in my mind "No one understands meeeee!" I should have let him have it. I didn't. But at least now you know why I've been so absent, so woefully negligent for the past...months?

It's almost over. Only five more days of torture (and I do mean torture, because I literally cannot conceive of how I will finish all that needs finishing in five days. Which is why I am writing this post, to ease my quiet panicking.) before I pack up and leave NYC, a city which I have grown to completely love, but haven't had time to enjoy.

And with that little bit of martyristic prattle aside, we can get on to the food bits of this post.

I'll be honest, I haven't really been cooking much lately. Aside from during a visit by The Boyfriend over his spring break (tomato soup, grilled cheese, potato salad, lemon chicken, fried rice. In rotation. The Boyfriend is not an adventurous eater), and a last-minute catering gig for a party which I will eventually recreate and blog, I've been throwing meals haphazardly together and subsisting off the generosity of my classmates' huge school meal plans. And here are the results--for the most part, not bad, if a bit (alright, a lot) odd.










Bowl of macaroni with tomato sauce and mushrooms. Looks a bit chunky, because instead of simply pouring the tomato sauce on the drained pasta I stir-fried the whole lot. It made the taste heartier, and better. That pink sausage in the corner there is my finger.




Mushroom bruschetta. Essentially mushrooms, onions, and chives sauteed in a lot of butter, and placed upon toast fried in a frying pan with (you guessed it) more butter. It was heaven. Although The Boyfriend will surely disagree.










A bento box I brought to class, with leftover salmon, steamed rice, grape tomatoes, and broccoli and asparagus I blanched in the microwave with my mom's Pyrex measuring cup.

Another bento, in my new special onigiri bento box (I am slightly addicted to buying bento boxes and supplies--I now have 3, as well as a whole stash of little picks and bottles). This one had onigiri, grape tomatoes, a boiled egg, and apple bunnies. The apple bunnies were surprisingly hard to make! There are only two because I wrecked the rest of the apple with my failed bunny attempts.


My first-ever wild salmon filet. The farmed stuff will forever suck in comparison. Totally worth the $6.88. Drizzled in a little lemon juice with salt & pepper, I picked it apart with my fingers and annoyed The Boyfriend with my rapturous texted comments. I have to note that the color was amazing. I had no idea "real" salmon was supposed to look like that--this photo is completely unedited!

Fried potato and onion. This was just because I realized I had a huge sack of potatoes and onions in the fridge. A delicious carb overload paired with rice.


Lemon chicken. I really will have to give a detailed recipe on this eventually, because I've altered it so much since the first time I made it.


There is no name for this dish. It's a bizarre combination of grits, butter, and peas, topped with tobiko (flying fish roe). Comfort food. It sure photographed well in my desk lighting.









Chicken-veggie soup. I had no noodles, so instead I substituted more peas, more carrots, more celery. I stir-fried everything, first the chicken, and then the vegetables, along with some diced spring onions, and then tossed everything into a cup and a half of boiling water and simmered for a few minutes. It was delicious.


Sometimes I really believe that food is the only thing keeping me sane through all this. No matter what anyone says, dieters, health nuts, whatever, there are inherently good feelings associated with food, with the act of eating. And in the middle of everything right now, it's so good to sit down for a few minutes and eat something.

I Forget to Eat, and Ensuing Failures

Fire Alarm Count: 31

One of these was at 4:30 am. Seriously? Seriously? Who the fudge (it's censored because my mother reads this blog. Hi mom!) is cooking badly/smoking at this hour? If it were up to me, I would demand to know the identity of the guilty culprit and then cheerfully beat them to death. Which is, of course, why it's not up to me.

All ranting aside...so the past week has been fairly eventful, food-wise. The main thing being, of course, that this Friday, I forgot to eat. Yes. That's right. Those of you who know me well will know how absolutely shocking this is, considering usually all I think about is my stomach. 9/10 times you catch me zoning out whenever, it is likely not my next fabulous art project that I'm thinking about. It is what I'm going to make for dinner. So for me to forget about that...well...let's see how this happened...

Friday morning: I don't have time to eat. This is not unusual.
Noon: I have forgotten my 3 objects of which I must draw for Drawing class. Feel like an idiot. Run back to my dormitory during my 1-hour break to get said objects. Grab a hot dog w/ ketchup and mustard along the way. It is not particularly filling, and I debate buying some other sort of junky fast food on the way back, but decide I don't have time to eat it.
10 pm: Texting The Boyfriend, I realize that my hands are shaking and that I barely have enough energy to stand thanks to my relative lack of energy input.

Upon realizing that all I've had is a hot dog all day...I run to the fridge and find...nothing. Ever since class started, Mi, E, and I haven't been cooking daily like we used to. Which means, of course, that our fridge is not nearly as well-stocked as I would like it to be. There was a smallish bowlful of dried, days-old rice on the countertop and a bag of frozen mixed veggies in the freezer. After much scrambling, I come up with this:



Brown Rice Porridge with Mixed Veggies.

Basically, I rehydrated the dried-out rice in a pot with about a cup and a half of water, then tossed in half a cup of frozen vegetables. The bowl on the left contains cucumbers pickled in soy sauce, which is a common Chinese side dish eaten with rice porridge. Not pictured here is the bowl of sliced vine-ripened tomato I marinated in a bit of oil with a large pinch each of salt, sugar, and chopped fresh basil. On the right, you see some of the delicious chicken that E brought back from home.

In fact, the chicken was so delicious I feel the need to elaborate on it....



This is what I had for dinner about a week ago. Brown rice with fries and spicy Korean chili-chicken. That's not the official name--I'll have to ask E what it is as some point and then beg for the recipe because I must have this chicken again sometime. It is the best chicken ever.

Er...so if you care, even a little, about my nutty cooking exploits in college, you may wonder, So what have you done lately?

I'm working on this microwave cooking business. I swear. But the thing is, some things just don't cook the same way in a microwave as it does in an oven...as my latest cooking disaster will prove.



Cheesecake. I love cheesecake, always have, even when I was a little kid. I think it's pretty odd--cheesecake is a pretty "adult" dessert, isn't it? Either way, at all the parties my parents ever went to, I was the only kid there that ever wanted the cheesecake. And when I figured out last year that I could make it on my own...

Anyway, I've gotten pretty good at cheesecake. The original recipe is from Kraft Foods, but ever since following this recipe to the T the very first time I made it, I've been continuously tweaking it according to suggestions by the people who've eaten it (and my personal taste, of course), and here's what I've come up with. It's more than pretty good, and really, I'm not one to brag about my cooking too much, because I'm starting out and mediocre at best...in my opinion this is the very best thing I make. My dad approves of it. Which, I assure you, is a big, big deal. Because my dad is the pickiest eater in the world. He'll eat anything, but for him to actually like it and have nothing critical to say...well, that is a rarity. Trust me.

Yumi's New York-Style Cheesecake

1 cup graham crackers, crushed
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
1 1/4 cup sugar
4 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened
Don't even try to soften these cream cheese packets in the microwave. Don't do it. You'll just make your microwave explode. If you must microwave, take them out of the packets and do it at 30-second intervals. Or better yet, just take them out a couple hours ahead of time and let them soften on their own.
1 container (16 oz.) sour cream
1/4 cup flour
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla

~Heat oven to 325 degrees F.
~Beat cream cheese, flour, baking powder, 1 cup sugar, and 1 tsp vanilla together until well blended.
~Add 1 cup sour cream, and then the eggs 1 at a time. Beat on low speed until it's smooth, creamy, and delicious.
~Mix the graham cracker crumbs and melted butter together to make the crust. I usually pulverize the graham crackers in a food processor and then add the butter, but this time in my dormitory with no food processor to be found, I did with a mixing bowl and the bottom of a Pyrex measuring cup. Turned out just fine.
~Press the crust mixture into a pan. I prefer a 13x9" pan lined with aluminum foil, but sometimes we can't always have what we want. You can basically use any sort of oven-safe container you deem acceptable. Please remember that aluminum foil CANNOT go into the microwave. Please. Chuck your container into the oven and let it bake for 10 minutes, then pull it out.
~Pour your cream cheese mixture over the crust and then bake for another 40 minutes, or until it no longer jiggles like Jell-O.
~Beat the remaining sour cream, sugar, and vanilla together, and spread it over the cheesecake. Bake for another 10 minutes, then pop it in the refrigerator for 4 hours to chill.

Makes enough for...well, it depends on how big (or small) you slice it, but from my experience if you bring this to a party with known cheesecake eaters, there probably won't be any left by the end of the night. So do what I do--make two, and leave one at home. Just for you.

Do be warned, this cheesecake will rack up the calories like no other. It is an indulgence. Completely worth the two pantsizes, in my opinion, but then again...I would do so much for a good cheesecake.


Okay, amazing recipe aside, when I tried to make it yesterday, it flat-out bombed. I get the feeling it was some combination of my botching the order of mixing the ingredients together, and the fact that I microwaved it (I can hear all the anti-microwave-chefs around the world gasping right now...get over it). In any case, while the taste was exactly as I remember it, the texture did not come out right at all. Instead of being smooth and dense like it's supposed to, it had a curdled consistency vaguely resembling the steamed, beaten egg my grandma used to make me for breakfast when I was a kid in China. Which isn't entirely unpleasant, but disturbing enough when you're expecting thick creamy cheesecake. Here's what it looks like:



The Boyfriend, who had come to visit and was the reason for my attempting this in a microwave in the first place, swears it isn't bad and ate both the mini ramekin-cakes I made, but I don't believe him. I guess I've spoiled myself on my "perfect" cheesecake, because I couldn't bring myself to finish even one. I was too put off by the consistency. In fact, I was too depressed by this abject failure to even use all of the cheesecake mixture I had made (and I'd halved the recipe). Instead I just shoved it into the back of the fridge and crawled into bed.

Today, faced with the dilemma of needing my mixing bowl back, I decided that the main problem with this newest cooking exploit was the microwave. That darn microwave. I don't have this microwave business quite figured out yet, but I was unwilling to ruin any more perfectly yummy cheesecake mixture by microwaving it. So this is what I did instead:



Pressed the remainder of the crust crumbs into the bottom of a clean plastic dish left over from one of Mi's microwave meals, poured the chilled cream cheese-sour cream mixture on top, decorated it with sliced strawberries, and left it in the freezer. It's still there. I'll tell you how it turns out. I'm too nervous to try it now...

So instead, here's a picture of what I had for lunch today. Fried rice with mixed veggies, onions, and vine-ripened tomato. Nothing special, but the colors are pretty...and it was very tasty, in a homey sort of way. Not that I'm getting homesick or anything. Really.

Like Deconstructed Pizza

Grilled cheese and tomato soup, that is. I just described it as "deconstructed pizza" to get The Boyfriend interested in it. And that's what I made for dinner tonight.

Of course, no meal preparation in this dormitory would be complete without a fire alarm interruption, of which there were 2--one just as I was about to get started, and one just as I was almost finished with the soup.

Fire Alarm Count: 17.
No, I didn't add wrong. There was also one at noon today when Mi, E and I returned for a short reprieve from our classes.

WAIT--Make that 18. It just went off as I am writing this, at 8:59. Yup. And we didn't get back in until 9:30, because some people who decided to stay in the building looked out the window and an RA saw them. The building advisors wound up making us stand outside while they checked every room in the building. Do the math--12 floors, 12 suites per floor, 2 rooms per suite. That's 288 rooms to inspect. Clearly, the ones who alerted the RA in the first place were dumbasses. If you're going to break the rules, at least do it inconspicuously and without inconveniencing everyone else.

Now let's get back to the food...

I have never made tomato soup from scratch before (read: I've only ever made it out of a can). But I love tomato soup. I love tomatoes, for that matter, but tomato soup is special. I prefer mine thick and sweet and acidic and basil-y, and for me it's what chicken noodle soup is to others. Better yet, since it's completely vegan, Mi, who is pescetarian, can eat it too. So today, I looked at those four beautiful vine-ripened tomatoes in the fridge and decided it was time to use them. And what would I make to accompany my lovely fresh tomato soup? Grilled cheese. I believe I've mentioned before that I love my grilled cheese. I could probably live happily on it for the rest of my life. And grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup is my idea of heaven. I'm such a food geek, I know.

But anyway, my first time making real tomato soup, I decided to wing it. And it came out exactly the way I'd hoped.



Tomato Soup Not From a Can

4 medium vine-ripened tomatoes, cubed
2 large tomatoes, cubed
Don't get your tomatoes from a supermarket. I bought mine off one of the many street carts selling vegetables and fruits in NYC, and the produce there is much better, not to mention cheaper.
2 sprigs of fresh basil
1 tbsp salt, plus more to taste
2 tbsp sugar
3 tblsp olive or vegetable oil
Olive oil is preferable, but I have yet to find a market where they sell it for less than $8 a bottle.
1 tbsp garlic powder

No water. No water is needed for this recipe. This is for thick, delicious tomato soup with nothing to dilute the flavor. If you want watery tomato mush, go elsewhere where they tell you to use water.

~mix the oil, salt, and 1 tbsp of sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Add the basil leaves and crush them slightly (I did my crushing with a whisk) to release the flavor.
~Pour in the cubed tomatoes, and toss it all together so that it's nicely coated. Let it sit in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. This is my "treatment" for tomatoes that are not home grown, which in my opinion, will never be as good as a tomato you grew yourself. If you're lucky enough to live near a farmer's market, try there. Either way, I prefer to soak my tomatoes in this solution a bit before cooking.
~After 10-15 minutes (or if you just decided to skip this step), heat up a bit of oil in a pot and put in the garlic powder. Fish out the basil leaves and put those in the pot too.
~Then pour the entire contents of the bowl into the pot...and stir. Add the second tbsp of sugar. Taste the soup before adding salt as needed. Put the fire on medium heat, and stir some more. Keep stirring until the tomatoes have cooked down into soupy mush.

Yields: Enough for about 3 bowlfuls, depending on the size of your bowls. Enjoy with freshly fried grilled cheese, like we did, or with crispy garlic bread.

And It Starts Again...

Fire Alarm Count: 13

Today we had 2 fire alarms literally within 30 minutes of each other. This is getting absurd. Yumi is not pleased.

Furthermore, it has interfered with my cooking. E asked for my chicken teriyaki for dinner today. I can't tell you how happy I was that someone actually liked my cooking enough to specifically request something.

But after the second fire alarm today, the dorm room RAs announced that to prevent further fire alarms, we were not allowed to cook for the rest of the day.

The idea that I could potentially get in trouble for being able to cook was just ridiculous to me.

On a separate note, my room mate, L, moved into our dormitory for good today. So since we couldn't make dinner we decided to go out to eat. The Coffee Shop is a cozy diner and bar on the corner of Union Square. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the tasty burger (they're willing to make them rare! Some restaurants don't do rare meat for fear of health problems) with guacamole I enjoyed. But the restaurant lighting was so dim any photos would have come out crappy anyway.

You would be getting a recipe for crab and cucumber salad today, which was supposed to be a side dish for my teriyaki chicken, but since I wasn't allowed to cook today that didn't happen. I plan on making it tomorrow, so...till then.

More Idiocy and Grilled Cheese

Okay, so I realize it's unusual for me to be making a post this early. You can blame this on the morons who live in my building, who managed to set off the fire alarm at 9 in the morning.

Fire Alarm Count: 10

On to the food. After trudging down 11 flights of stairs first thing in the morning, when I returned to my dormitory I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. The simple grilled cheese is imperative to keep me happy and content under stressful conditions. This is soul food, my friends.



































Grilled Cheese to Soothe the Soul

2 slices of bread, preferably organic Italian bread from Whole Foods
1 or 2 slices of American cheese
2 tbsp butter (yes, it's a lot of butter. I promise it's worth it)

~Heat up your pan over the stove. When the pan is hot, add one dollop of butter to melt.
~When the butter is completely melted, put one slice of bread down on the pan. On top of this, add your cheese slice(s) and your second slice of bread.
~When the bread facing the pan is lightly browned, melt the second tbsp of butter in the pan and flip the sandwich carefully with a spatula.
~By the time the second slice of bread is crisp, buttery, and delicious, you should be unbearably hungry. If not, I forbid you to eat this sandwich. Send it to me.
~Slice in half, watch the strings of gooey cheese pull apart, and enjoy.

Makes enough for 1 person. Or maybe not. You may need to make two of these. I do. Often.


Oh, wait, make that 11 for the fire alarm count, by the way. I made a quick run to the Financial Aid office with E and by the time we got back, there were fire trucks lined up outside our building.

To end this post on a cheerier note: Yesterday, this blog reached 100 hits! Yaaaay! Please help me make it to the 1000 mark too~!

Using Chicken Teriyaki for Evil

Fire Alarm Count Thus Far: 6.
In case you couldn't tell, it's really starting to piss me off. I mean, is it really so difficult to turn on a vent fan and open a window? Let me answer that for you. No. No it is not. Better yet, don't burn anything in the first place. I'm sure at this point, the NY Fire Department, who has come down every time the alarm has sounded, hates us and wishes we were dead. I bet that the one time there is an actual fire, they're going to think, "Screw this, it's just another stupid teenager who can't cook for shit and is too dumb to open a window."

Now that I'm done with that little rant...let's get to the cooking.

As you might have gleaned from this post's title...tonight I made chicken teriyaki! I'll be very honest, whole chicken legs make me a tad nervous. It is much trickier to tell if they are fully cooked than with chicken breasts, since the texture of cooked chicken leg meat is not too dissimilar to that of raw, partially frozen chicken leg meat. The first and only time (to date) that I have attempted to make fried, whole chicken legs, my mother failed to tell me that the drumsticks needed to be stabbed several times in order to cook thoroughly, and so I dipped and re-dipped the chicken legs into the hot oil until the breadcrumbs nearly turned black, and still the meat next to the bone remained pink and decidedly raw.

Today, cooking for my two suitemates Mi and E and The Boyfriend (who had come to visit), I was determined to do this right. I stabbed those chicken legs 5, 10, 15 times as if they had done me some great personal wrong before letting them sit in fridge and soak up the marinade for a half hour. Then I fried them in a pan over the electric stove (which I love) for a long time until I was sure those legs were completely cooked through.

Marinating chicken legs.

And before you ask, it was yummy. A resounded success, if you will. Especially since this is my first time using chicken drumsticks for anything besides fried chicken or curry. It made the whole kitchen smell delicious, The Boyfriend hung around behind me while I cooked staring intently at the pan, and just to be evil, E and I opened our dormitory door and fanned the smell out into the hallway to tempt innocent passerby.


Photo of me browning the onions and scallions, taken by The Boyfriend who was hovering around with my camera. Like my cupcake earring? It's my favorite pair.



Drool-Worthy Chicken Teriyaki

4 chicken legs with skin still attached
1 medium onion, diced
1 scallion, chopped
1/4 cup sesame oil
1/2 cup teriyaki sauce
1/4 cup cold water
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp vegetable oil
black sesame seeds for garnish

~Stab the chicken legs multiple times with a small knife until they are appropriately perforated (not actually, just make sure you stab it enough so that cooking it won't take forever). Chuck them in a large bowl while you mix the marinade.
~In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Pour over the chicken legs, and dunk the chicken in and out of them until they are soaked and more or less submerged. Pour half of the onions in and mix it in good. Pop this in the refrigerator to marinade for about 30 minutes.
~Near the end of the 30 minutes, it is probably a good time to start making your rice.
~After 30 minutes are over, pull the chicken out of the fridge. Heat up the vegetable oil in a pan, and when it's hot add the remaining onions and most of the scallions, setting some aside to garnish. Saute until the smell of the onions are wafting up from the pan before putting the chicken legs in.
~When one side of the chicken is nicely brown, flip it to cook the other side (This task can be made much easier with a pair of wooden chopsticks or tongs. Since I had neither, I made do with a wooden spoon).
~Meanwhile, use the leftover marinade to make a sauce by adding the water and cornstarch to the bowl and whisking it all together. Wait until both sides of the chicken is browned before adding this mixture to the pan, because if you don't you will wind up boiling the chicken instead of frying it like you're supposed to.
~Stir the contents of the pan slowly to keep the liquid from sticking the to bottom of the pan and burning. By the time the sauce starts to thicken, you can stab a couple of chicken legs a few more times to the bone to see if they're done. You will know the chicken won't make you sick if you slit it open and the meat inside is white and the juices that gush out from the incision are clear. A few spots of pink near the bone is normal, as long as it's not actually bleeding.

Makes enough for 4 people. Serve garnished with reserved scallions and steamed rice topped with sesame seeds.


I used store-bought Tsunami-brand teriyaki sauce for this, because I didn't have all the ingredients on hand to make it from scratch (in case you were wondering how I managed to have bottled teriyaki sauce in a kitchen I just recently moved into but not ginger or brown sugar, which by all rights should be staples and are the two ingredients I'm missing...I brought it from home). But if making it from scratch is more your style, check out this recipe from Recipezaar, which got very high reviews, and tell me how it turns out so I can use it the next time my kitchen is more well-stocked.

You can also use chicken breast for this recipe, obviously, but let's be honest, chicken legs just taste so much better.

























The Boyfriend, eating my chicken teriyaki and rice. I almost wouldn't believe his pronouncement of it being good if I hadn't also eaten it myself.

The Idiots Who Can't Cook and Marinara Sauce with Fresh Basil

It's been a few days since I've made a post. No, that does not mean I haven't eaten anything since my last post. I took the train back to my house to pick up a few things and slept over at The Boyfriend's house with a few friends, and my diet on those days consisted mainly of Philly's cheese steak and Papa John's pizza.

I would like to take this moment to crown Papa John's as the best restaurant/takeout pizza you can get. Why this bold declaration, you ask?

*It's not super-greasy. Many restaurant pizzas have so much oil floating on top of the cheese that it could be soaked up with a sponge.
*The cheese is not burnt, it is perfectly soft and melted.
*The tomato sauce is not just salty, it is sweet and tastes deliciously of tomatoes.
*The dough is soft and bread-y.
*The crust is crisp, but not hard.

Yes. I love my pizza, and Papa John's has appealed to me for all of the above reasons.

On Monday morning, my dad dropped me off at Princeton Junction Station. After I took the NJ Transit back to New York, and rode the subway to 1st Avenue, all the while lugging a duffel bag that I swear weighed about 80 pounds (I'm 105 lbs., so you see why this is a problem.) and carting a plastic crate loaded with even more stuff, I was too broken in body and spirit to even attempt to make myself dinner. So I caved and ran to the nearest CVS and bought myself a few cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli. (Oh no she di'nt!)

Anyway, onto food that I actually made. I have had a package of linguine sitting on my desk shelf since I moved in (if you squint at the picture of my desk I posted on August 20th, you'll see it sitting next to the bag of rice), and since Mi and E had invited a friend, J, who lives on the 1st floor of our dormitory building, up for dinner tonight, I figured tonight would be a good opportunity to use it. So on our way back from Orientation, we stopped by Whole Foods and grabbed a jar of 365 Everyday Value Classic Marinara pasta sauce, frozen okra, and some Canola Oil (we looked for olive oil, which I prefer, but all they had was Extra-Virgin for like $10 a bottle and we're too poor for that).

Back in our cramped dorm room kitchen, I was about to start cooking when...dun dun duuuun! Disaster strikes! The fire alarm starts blaring, for the second time that day (we were gone for the first time). My room is on the 11th floor, and during fire alarms we aren't allowed to take the elevator, so it was down 11 flights of stairs we went. By the time the fire trucks had pulled away, it was 6:45 and dinner was late.

Okay, as I was typing this, the fire alarm just went off AGAIN. And apparently the reason for these THREE alarms in one day was because some people kept burning stuff on the kitchen stove, which created so much smoke that it set off the alarms. What the fuck? (this is probably a good time to mention this blog is not for young impressionable children.) It is not difficult to keep from burning things on an electric stove. If you're really that bad at cooking, you should probably either have someone teach you how to avoid burning things, or just stay the hell away from the kitchen. I'm getting tired of walking down 11 flights of stairs in the midst of a piercing fire alarm.

ANYWAY. On to the recipe. Before walking down 11 flights of stairs for the second time today, I would have said this isn't going to add any kind of extra wisdom to one's mental library of culinary knowledge...but now I think otherwise. So without further ado, I present spaghetti for dummies.


Twice-Interrupted Linguine with Marinara Sauce and Veggies

4 servings of linguine (about 2 oz. per person)
1 1/2 cup of marinara sauce
1 large tomato, diced
1 onion, diced
1 cup okra, chopped
1/2 cup button mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp oil
a few sprigs of fresh basil, chopped

~Toss the linguine in a pot of water with a pinch of salt and set it to boil.
~In a large pan, heat up the oil and put in the chopped basil leaves and diced onion and stir on medium heat until the onion is lightly browned.
~Add the mushrooms, okra, and tomato, and push it around some more until the tomatoes become mushy.
~Tip in the marinara sauce, and stir it until it's hot and the entire kitchen smells like an Italian restaurant.
~The linguine is done when you throw it at the wall and it sticks. Do not overcook it. I prefer my pasta with a little bite--al dente, for all you cooking geeks, meaning to tooth. Cooking this particular pasta to al dente should take about 10 minutes in boiling water. Drain your linguine and divvy it up into four bowls. Pour the sauce and veggies over it and enjoy!

Makes enough for 4 people.

Sauteing the onions and basil.


This is J.



























You can also basically do this with any other type of pasta. I intend on making it with shells, which is my favorite pasta shape because the yummy sauces can hide in the little "bowl" the shell makes, and each bite contains a burst of tomato-y goodness.