lessons from an evening with rachael

joel is the cook in our family. he enjoys it.
unfortunately, he is also spending an inordinate amount of time away from home these days, working full time and taking classes at psu.
that makes me the interim cook. oh joy.

so, last evening at 8pm i was in the kitchen, battling rachael ray and her ubiquitous grimace, attempting to come out with sesame-ginger-chicken-cabbage-noodle-hopefully-not-disgusting sometime around when joel got home from class. now i know why rachael grins.

i thought i'd share a few lessons, tips, and thoughts from my experience:

~scallions and green onions are not the same thing. they just look exactly alike.

~you can blow across the top of green onions like a flute. a flute that tastes like onions.

~the food processor is evil.

~make sure you put the food processor together properly before shredding cabbage in it. unless you're into chic-cabbage decor.

~either fresh ginger root or my ginger candle smell like ginger. not both, because they smell nothing alike. the ugly stump i'm torturing with a peeler has more street cred, so i'm saying fresh ginger.

~never, ever leave a frying pan drizzled with olive oil on a burner on high heat unattended. no matter how cool the lunar eclipse is. turn the stupid burner off! dinner can wait for a lunar eclipse!

~don't put water in a hot frying pan drizzled with smoking, burnt olive oil. (note from the chef: i'm not actually stupid enough to do this on purpose. i set the pan aside - right next to the spaghetti that was boiling over.)


dinner was delicious!