I've mentioned before in a post quite awhile ago that I have to use recipes because I am not a wife nor a mother and therefore do not inherently have the ability to cook without them. Well, it has become my goal to change that. By learning to cook that is; not by becoming a wife or mother. That's a little eccentric.
Plus, I now have people to cook for! Even better. I love cooking for people.
So, what was on the menu last night? Chicken somethin' something'. Okay, so I really don't have a name for it. I bet it has one if you google it.
Yesterday at about 11 am I decided to take the chicken out of the freezer and it was taking a lot longer than expected to thaw. I wanted to make sure I was extra safe with this thawing out process because I am feeding three people other than myself, and I didn't want to be responsible for making them sick. So what did I do? Googled it. (Seriously, I don't know what people did before google.) The USDA is more helpful than I ever realized.
I put the chicken breasts into a ziplock baggie, placed it in cold water, and changed the cold water every thirty minutes until the chicken breasts were thawed. This only took about an hour.
Afterwards I rinsed off the chicken (just a safe practice here in Honduras, and probably everywhere), and cut it in half horizontally lengthwise so the pieces weren't as thick. Then I cut the breasts into strips and placed them into my homemade concoction to marinate in the fridge all afternoon.
The marinade consisted of crushed pineapple, lime juice, ginger, curry, and soy sauce. Just a sprinkle here and a dash there. I used my own judgement with no measuring...scary.
Three minutes after I cut up the pineapple, I was swarmed by bees. But that's a whole other story.
About 6:45 pm I started cutting up the vegetables for stir fry: a potato, carrot, broccoli, green pepper, onion, and the rest of the pineapple. I wish I had a red pepper to go with it, but I couldn't find one at the market. Towards the end of cooking the vegetables, I added a little bit of ground ginger. And, I fried up these vegetables while simultaneously cooking rice.
Once the vegetables were finished, I covered them with a lid and started cooking the chicken. See, I was cooking three parts of one meal with only a two burner electric stove.
In the end there was rice, stir fried vegetables, and chicken. Cooking time was about an hour. Might I just say all three parts were still warm when we started eating. Score. And I was asked what I did to the chicken. Score again. And I was told that I'm the only gringa who has been able to cook rice. Three scores in one meal. I'm just going to stop there or my next meal will end up terrible.
But all in all it was nice to be able to cook for the girls. It felt like home. I miss cooking for those I care about. Let me just say, this will be happening more often. I just wish there was a way I could bake here.
"Three minutes after I cut up the pineapple, I was swarmed by bees. But that's a whole other story."
ReplyDeleteI think I would like to hear this story. ;)