I think I know why I'm not married...I would probably either kill or starve a husband. I can't cook a simple dinner to save my life. And I have no idea how to just 'throw' something together.
Tonight was my first night home with nothing to do in a long while. I had some sea bass in the freezer, some frozen corn (which I'd boiled and saved from the spring), and I still had some potatoes. How hard could it be to broil the fish, microwave the corn and bake a potato? Well, problem one - the potatoes were a little old... no biggie, I can just boil and mash'em, won't even notice!
So I put the still partially frozen fish in some blueberry vinaigrette, some lemon juice and garlic... ok yeah, like I said I don't know how things go together...into tin foil and put it under the broiler on high (then I decided it would be a good idea to find out how long to cook it by googling it). I cut up the potatoes, threw them in the pot to boil and put the corn in a microwaveable container. Man, I felt like it might all come together. Ha!
I looked in the fridge - uh, no milk, oh, there's heavy cream... err, well, there WAS heavy cream, this was more like moldy cream. While in there, I noticed the cheese had gotten completely covered (and I've cut off mold 2 or 3 times before), so out that went, then there were the strawberries from...who knows...and some Greek yogurt that was at least a couple weeks old. Guess I should take the garbage out tonight (for the second time, since when I got home the old garbage was home to a pod of fruit flies)... oh did I mention that while cleaning up my living room I learned that beef jerky grows mold? Yeah, totally gross.
Now that your mouth is watering, back to the food. After 8 minutes, the fish wasn't close to done, so I put it in a different dish on top of some butter (like google said!), put some garlic powder and cayenne on it - yes, I'm sure these would all go together perfectly. Google also told me what to substitute for milk in my mashed potatoes - sour cream (that was not expired).
Once the potatoes seemed sufficiently boiled, I drained them, added a stick of butter, sour cream, garlic, bacon bits (cuz bacon makes everything ok, right?). Pulled out my hand mixer and went to town. Who knew you could mess up mashed potatoes?! At one point, I tried scooping the edges of the pot into them middle with my fork...got the fork caught, sprayed mashed potatoes (very thick and sticky potatoes I might add) all over my counter and when I cleaned it all back up, I finished mashing them, only to see that in the battle between fork and blender, the fork won... my beater is completely twisted. :(
I was so ready to throw in the towel at this point, but hunger won out. I pulled the finally finished fish out of the oven, the warmed corn out of the microwave, and loaded up my plate. All in all, it was edible. I've definitely made worse (oh the burnt mac and cheese... bleh!). But I guarantee, I won't be recreating this anytime soon. I just kept think, the poor fish died for this?!
So, anyone out there interested giving lessons in cooking simply?
