Taco night! For one.
My fridge currently looks like this:
So why don’t you come with me as I liveblog a fun-filled foodie adventure for a man who can only reliably cook one dish.
The only way I can trick myself into putting in the two hour effort it inevitably takes to cook myself one depressing meal is by imagining the Minimum Edible Product, also known as the “what if I lose all motivation and need to rapidly make myself shitty embarrassing food that I will gobble down in shame and tell no one about” contingency plan.
Minimum edible product for a quesadilla:
Put olive oil in a cast iron pan and heat on high heat til it’s almost smoking. Put shrimp in there. Turn them over after a minute or so.
Spray a little olive oil onto a skillet and put a flour tortilla onto it with a single slice of cheese on it. Turn the skillet up to high.
Once the cheese is starting to melt, put the shrimp on top of it.
Peel it off with a spatula
Eat in the dark.
OK, it’s 8:22. Let’s go to the supermarket! I am wearing a towel.
8:26: Ok I'm dressed. Let's go!
8:33: Walking into whole foods. List: Onions Shrimp Cheese Table grapes I just walked in and forgot about everything but these table grapes look good Shopping cart I can't live blog this hold on
8:39: I have: a family size thing of pineapples some table grapes two green juices peeled garlic. I am standing in front of the onions bc I forgot whether I want white or yellow onions. I'm going to guess white. I'm unsure of the difference. This decision will haunt me for the rest of this shopping trip.
8:48 I always feel like I'm buying too much cilantro
8:58 Ok I think I have everything. Shrimp, cilantro, garlic, onions, peppers, cheese. Tortillas at home. I am in the soda aisle, weak with hunger.
9:12 I am exiting the whole foods.
9:25 OK I am back home. I want to sit down, because I'm hungry and because I have too many groceries to put away now. I drink 1/3th of this giant drinkable yogurt, put Drake on the bluetooth speaker, and resolve to get up and put stuff away and get started.
9:40 I have put all the groceries away. I have drunk more of the giant drinkable yogurt. Time to start chopping and cooking these onions and peppers. It takes about 40 minutes, so I start them first.
9:48 The onions and peppers are chopped, the stove is on. It took me an hour and a half to get to the part where I turn the stove on.
Now I have some time before I have to do anything, so I should explain this onions recipe. I got it from Mark Bittman's "How to cook anything: the basics" and I no longer remember what it said. Here's what I do:
Throw onions in a pan with NO OIL. Cook onions COVERED on MEDIUM HEAT (I have tried uncovered and high heat separately, and each time they burned)
Take the lid off and stir every 5 minutes
After 15 minutes, add oil
Continue stirring and checking and tasting every 5 minutes til they're how you want them
9:56 I have stirred the onions. They're looking a little burnt. I thought I smelled them burning a little. I turned down the heat. That was a big game changer when I realized you could adjust the heat in a recipe depending on what was happening inside the pot. I'm going to begin cutting the avocado for the inside of the Quesadillaish
10:02 The onions looked and felt a little dry, so I added the oil early at 10 minutes. The avocado is cut.
10:09 The onions are tasting good, they'll be ready in 5 minutes. I just diced the garlic. Now I just wait.
10:15 OK it's go time. I move the onions to a plate, they're a little burnt.
10:20 I put some oil in the skillet and turn the heat up to high. I throw in the shrimps, after a minute I turn them over and they look like this:
10:24 I put the tortilla over some spray olive oil on the other skillet, put the cheese on it, and then throw all the other ingredients on top of it
10:29 I have finished cooking and plating everything. This is the final product:
Prep time: 2 hours
Cook time: 30 minutes
Cost: $96
Taste: OK. The tortilla is stale. I can't close it because I put too much crap in it. And there's too much hot sauce in it to taste much of anything else. Plus I'm kind of full from all the drinkable yogurt.
Overall this is one of my more successful taco nights.