all I do is cook

except, not really.

I was with my friend, Ryan, the other night, and we made a late-night supper.  I've been wanting to learn how to cook, and he went to culinary school, so hey, why the heck not?

we picked some recipes out of a cooking magazine, (maybe food network magazine? does such a thing exist?) eh, who knows.

we ended up choosing to make penne noodles, with a vodka/tomato sauce (now don't get your panties in a wad, the alcohol from the vodka gets cooked out), we steamed an artichoke, and I got the job of making a pecan pie.

we steamed the artichoke and as an appetizer, we dipped the "leaves" in ranch, and then cut up the heart of it.  It was so gooood.

mixing the ingredients for the pie

in the meantime while my pie was baking, this is what Ryan was up to;

my pie turned out really well, if I could say so myself.
(I had a really good recipe to follow.)

final product pictures.  The pasta turned out great, and overall the meal wasn't that hard.  Maybe I won't starve after-all living on my own.  (or use all my money at fast-food joints...)

midnight snack in a tube

my good friend, Betsy, had just gotten back into Nashville after being in Nebraska for a couple weeks, so we got supper, went shopping for groceries, and worked on some songwriting.

I had been wanting to break in my "new" kitchen, so while we were getting groceries, I decided I wanted to make some cookies.  I didn't have any ingredients to make cookies from scratch (and didn't know what ingredients I would need to buy off the top of my head) so, Betsy suggested that I start out with just buying some cookie dough, and baking that.

we turned on the oven to 350 degrees, and the kitchen filled with an awful smell.  Since it was the first time using the oven in the house, since we've moved it, we came to the conclusion that the oven needed to be cleaned.

neither of us really knew how to clean a "self-cleaning" oven, but we pushed a couple buttons, and had to wait a couple hours.

in the meantime, Betsy stole my guitar and played in the kitchen

after writing for a couple hours, the oven was done cleaning itself.  We were both really tired, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the chemicals or something from the oven had gotten into the air, and into our brains, so we were a bit crazy from that. 

I didn't have any spray butter for the pan, so I just rubbed a stick all over before arranging the dough.

and wha-lah

you can all start calling me Rachel Ray, or Paula Deen now.  I've received several calls from tv stations for me to start my own cooking show.

first attempt at dinner

Since I am now living in a house, without the "luxury" (if you can call it that) of a university cafeteria, I have to make my own meals.  Besides making ramen yesterday in the microwave, I made my frist meal today.  I bought the Great Value mac & cheese at walmart.

First of all, I made the mistake of doing this...

I found it was pretty easy after all.  I just boiled the noodles for 6 minutes, drained the water, added "milk" (I don't drink regular milk, so I substituted Vanilla Almond Milk) and some blue bonnet vegetable oil spread.  

It was a bit dry, and didn't taste very good.  But, it wasn't bad for the first try!