Cooking

This week I ventured into the relatively unknown territory that is the kitchen.

It is a scary thing to know that someday soon I will be an official “grown-up” and will have to make meals for myself, so I decided the only way to start learning how to cook is to dive right in.

Step One: Choosing a Meal to cook

It seems so simple, yet it was the hardest thing to do for me.

So, I rounded up three friends and lured them away from a night out at the BLUU and asked them what they would want for a dinner. The overwhelming answer to that was “Bread! Good bread,” and “Something edible.”

Starting from those epic words of advice, I decided to turn to my iTouch. Even for the simple question of what to eat for dinner, there’s an app for that.

I let my iTouch randomly choose a type of food and I decided on chicken fettuccini alfredo, a Caesar salad, and "good" bread for my meal adventure.

Step Two: Finding a Recipe

Finally knowing what I wanted, I turned to the ever-knowing Google and typed in “chicken fettuccini alfredo.” From there, I picked the one recipe that looked the most descriptive and decided to give it a shot.

Here is the recipe I found.

Step Three: Buying Ingredients

For this step, I decided Central Market was the way to go. Some of the ingredients seemed odd to me so I decided to go to a place where you are always more likely to find an odd food item.

When I got to the store, it was basically a mess trying to find the exact things I needed. Things like “3 tomatoes” were easy enough to find, since I generally know what a tomato looks like.On the other hand, “four cloves of garlic” was a complete mystery to me. Luckily I had enlisted the help of a close friend who led me around the store like a confused child.

With his help, I paid and headed to a kitchen to get the hard work done.

Step Four: Cooking the food

Since it was my first time making something non-microwaveable, I followed the recipe like it was the Bible.

I chopped.

I sautéed.

I boiled.

I stirred until things began to look edible.

And lo and behold, a meal came out of it.

Step 5: Eating

I held my breath until my friends ate the first bites. After seeing approval, I tried it for myself.

Yum. It was so much better than anything the BLUU had to offer, and I made it myself (with some help).

Along with watching Julie and Julia (which, ironically enough, is about a woman who cooks and writes about it in her blog), break-n-bake cookies, and good company, this potential disaster turned into an adventure I am ready to repeat again.

Really, any excuse to avoid the BLUU is good in my book.

So, with two adventures under my belt, I’m ready to step it up a notch. Any suggestions will be taken into consideration, as always. Dancing lessons could be fun...

Adventure on,

Katie