Sunday, November 16, 2008

Redolent is a lovely word

Pungent smells, sharp smells, the air heavy with spices... Smells once foreign to the western nose, strange and exotic like cinnamon and tumeric, mixed with smells so familiar and ancient that they're tied to deep traditions in our culture: clove, mustard.

These are the kinds of smells that the word redolent was created to describe, and our house is redolent with layered spices.

I really, really wish that it was because of baking or cooking, and not because Connor got into the spices while I was elsewhere.

Because then there would be the implication of tasty food, instead of the reality of a (possibly indelible) bright yellow stain on the linoleum and counter.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated, living with autism

Monday, June 30, 2008

Pork souvlaki

Haha, see? It's still June!

... yeah, I suck.

Sorry for leaving you all hanging on the edge of your seats, imaginary audience, feverishly clicking refresh for a whole month to no avail.

Today, I present pork souvlaki, by way of apology.

You will need:
A big lump of pork, no bone. Boneless rib roast or shoulder works very well. About 3/4 kilo per person if this is the main course
oregano, if you've not got it already
red wine (or red wine vinegar)
extra virgin olive oil (get the good stuff, it's SO worth it)
BBQ skewers
a BBQ or grill
sea salt or kosher salt

You already have:
pepper

So yeah, this one is sort of using almost nothing from the basic list, but it's yummy and super easy, so you'll forive me, right?

Cut up your lump of pork into 1/2 or 3/4 inch cubes. Ish. Dump them in a bowl and pour 2 tablespoons of red wine and 2 tablespoons of olive oil over top. Mix it around until all the meat is pretty well coated.

Add 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, 1 teaspoon of oregano and 1 tablespoon of sea salt. Again, mix it around until everything is pretty evenly coated.

Cover it, and put in the fridge for a couple hours to refridgerate. (If you are using wooden skewers, soak them in water for about a half hour before you're ready to cook.)

Turn on your grill, as high as it goes. Get it nice and hot in there. Skewer the pork, leaving an inch or so at each end of the skewer so you have something to grab to turn them (and swear about when you burn your fingers)

Turn the grill down to a medium-low heat and put the skewers on. Turn them regularly to make sure all the sides get cooked. They should be cooked through after about 15 minutes.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Wacky Cake

Cooking isn't Complicated returns after a long hiatus, to show that Baking isn't Complicated, either! At least, sometimes.

Today is wacky cake, one of my favorite recipes growing up, and kids can make it. In fact, I helped Kalen make it last night.

You will need:
8"x8" pan
flour
sugar
baking soda
cocoa powder
vanilla
vinegar
brown sugar
cornstarch

You already have:
small pot
measuring cups and spoons
salt
butter
vegetable oil (for some inane reason, this isn't on the list of essentials. Consider it there now.)
In an 8"x8" pan, dump:

1 1/2 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 c sugar
1 tsp baking soda
3 tbsp cocoa powder

Mix it around with a fork until it's pretty uniform. Make three holes in the top, and pour in:

1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp vinegar
6 tbsp oil

Pour 1 cup of cold water over the whole mess and mix it up with the fork. Don't lose the fork! My brother baked the fork in the cake once, over 20 years ago, and he still gets teased about it. I'm just sayin'.

Go back up to the top, and preheat your oven to 350 f.

Put the cake in for 25-30 minutes. Probably better on the long side unless your oven runs hot.

While it's cooling on a rack (don't take it out of the pan), get a small saucepan and dump:

3/4 c brown sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch

Mix them a bit, and pour in 1 1/2 cups of cold water. Stir it around until there's no guck sticking to the bottom, and turn on the heat. When it starts to boil, stir it for 3 minutes, and/or until it gets clear and thick.

Take it off the heat, and put in 1/4 c of butter. Stir until it's a yummy butterscotch colour.

Cut up the cake into 9 pieces (more and less are both sacrilege), and put one in a bowl. Pour butterscotch sauce over top, and eat it with a spoon. Other people can fend for themselves and get their own darn cake.

Yelp because it's still super hot. Eat it anyway.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Stuffed Potatos

These are possibly the second easiest thing in the world to prepare, after chicken with crunchy skin. And they feel like cheating, because the end product is fancier.

Nota bene: start well ahead of when you want to serve them: these don't care if they're cold in the middle of the process, and you can do the 'rice crispie squares' trick of pretending these are all crazy hard to make, and aren't you cool?

You will need:
Baker potatos, 1 per person, and one or two extra, because they'll get eaten.
Cream cheese
other cheese (I usually use cheddar)
milk
bacon bits

You already have:
butter or margarine
an oven
a baking tray/cookie sheet
a 'how to cook everything' cookbook.

Bake the potatos. Your 'how to cook everything' cookbook will tell you how. Personally, I use the microwave, with the button that says "potatoes". Remember to stab them with a fork several times first, or they'll explode.

Once the potatos are cool enough to handle, cut them lengthwise, as close to the skin as you can manage, so you end up with a 3/4 potato and a 1/4 (or less) potato. Scoop out the potato insides into a pot, without getting too close to the skin - the potato shells should hold their own integrity. Do this to both parts; the 3/4 and the 1/4.

Over top of the potatos, dump a generous amount of butter, a couple kinds of cheese, crumbled bacon, and some milk. Either mash it or beat it until it's evenly-ish mixed.

You will note no proportions in the last paragraph, beyond "generous". That's the thing that makes this recipe so easy. Too much cheese? Oops, darn. Not enough bacon? Oops, darn. The potatos don't care. You're basically just making mashed potatos and adding some tasty things. I usually use bacon, butter, cream cheese, shredded aged cheddar and milk, but there's no magic list. Use what you like!

Spoon the mashed stuff back into the potato shells. You will have more stuff than space to put it. Pile up more on top so that it looks a little bit like the potatoes exploded in the oven, and this tasty stuff just spilled out. If you still have more, you can pile stuff onto the 1/4 shells as well. I've done this the last couple times instead of making potato skins, and it worked well.

A little while before you're going to eat, say, 15 minutes or so, put them into an oven preheated to 350f. For the last two minutes, put them on the top rack, and switch your oven over to broil. Watch them. Watch them. When the tips of stuff start to turn brown, take them out and serve.

These are tasty, just like you'd expect baked potatos with cheese and bacon and butter mixed in, and look fancy and complicated. Perfect for impressing people like family-in-law or prospective dates. (Um, probably not both at the same time. Just sayin'.)

James

ps: I had to go through about a thousand times to spell potato(e) consistently. Because in my brain, potatoe looks wrong, but potatoes looks right. In the interests of electron conservation, I went with the shorter versions.
Also, if you're reading this on Monday, note the time travel, because it's posted on Tuesday. /creepy music

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Pork chops in mushroom sauce

For today's episode of Cooking isn't Complicated, we're digging way back into my bachelor days, before I met (and married) people with mushroom allergies. You could probably also do this dish with chicken and chicken soup, but that kinda misses the point of the whole 'pork and mushrooms' thing...

You will need:
Porkchops, bone in, the thin, fast cooking kind, 1 per person
cream of mushroom soup, a can for every 2-3 porkchops
canned and/or fresh mushrooms, volume managed by your preferences

--------
You already have:
frying pan
cooking oil
oven safe large pot (or casserole dish)
celery
oven
multispice

Fry the porkchops as for Salty Pork of Doom, except without using the salt and multispice. You also don't need to be super paranoid about the flipping and the cooking through, because they will also cook in the oven, later.

Preheat your oven to 350, the Universal Temperature.

Chop up your mushrooms, if they aren't already sliced. When I used to do this, I'd use a can of sliced mushrooms per can of mushroom soup; it's very shroomy, which is good. If you are using fresh mushrooms, keep a few of the prettiest slices aside.

Dump the soup and the shrooms and a half-can of water (per can of soup) into your pot/casserole. Stir it until mostly mixed. Obligatory disclaimer: I had a casserole dish; I've never tried this in the oven safe pot. My gut instinct says 'add more water'. Slice up a couple celery sticks and mix them in. Throw in the porkchops, shake some multispice (not too much) over the top, and slide the whole thing, with lid, into the oven for about an hour.

If you're feeling super fancy, I bet you could pull the chops out, and either in the oven or on the stove, keep the sauce cooking at low heat for another half hour or so to turn into a nice thick porky-mushroomy gravy.

Serves well over rice, or with potatoes on the side. Non green vegtables, like cauliflower or carrots or a mix, go well with this, but aren't strictly necessary, what with mushrooms in the main course. If you kept aside some sliced mushrooms, scatter them aesthetically over the porkchop when serving.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Chicken Soup with Rice

Yes, it's Tuesday again. It seems that nowadays all I'm using my blog for is the occaisional episode of Cooking Isn't Complicated. I wonder if I should migrate this to Facebook as well. Is anyone actually still reading?

Anyway, chicken soup with rice. In case you haven't noticed the trend, winter is about comfort food - warm soups, and stews and that sort of thing.

You will need:
A rotiserie chicken

You already have:
Carrots
Celery
Onion
Rice
Salt
Large pot with lid

You might (probably) want:
Thyme
a collander or strainer thingie.

Buy a rotiserie chicken from your local deli. They're yummy. Eat most of the meat.
Chop up whatever meat is left over into smaller-than-bite-sized pieces and store them in the fridge.

cut an onion into quarters, and throw it along with the chicken carcass into the pot. Fill it with water to a couple inches below the top, add salt and thyme to taste*. Put it on the stove, and bring it to a boil, then reduce the temperture so that it stays at a slow boil. Check it occaisionally over the next day or two, and add water if it starts getting too low. You can continue to boil it slowly for days and days, until you want to actually make the soup. However, unlike scotch broth, you don't really need to leave this to your descendants in your will to bring out the full glory of the dish.

When you decide to start making the soup, keep the liquid and dump the bones and stuff. The easiest way to do this is just to strain it through a collander into another pot, if you have one available. If not... you're smart, you'll figure something out.

Put the liquid (now called stock) back onto the stove, at the 'low boil' temperature. Throw in the chicken meat and a generous handful of uncooked rice. Dice up a couple of carrots and a couple stalks of celery very small and dump them in as well. Make sure it's still at that low boil (adding stuff cools the soup, go figure), and then go away for an hour or two. Come back and it's ready.

Enjoy!

James

*"To Taste" is one of those vile cooking phrases. It doesn't mean "taste it and see" it means "if you like it salty, add lots of salt". It is a trial and error process. My recommendation is to go light on salt and stuff, because you can always add more later.

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Scotch Broth

For today's episode of Cooking isn't Complicated, we pull out a warm comfort food from childhood: Scotch Broth.

You already have:
Large pot
Carrots, Celery, Onions
Butter (or margerine)

You will need:
~2lbs of lamb stew meat, or a (cooked) leg of lamb.
Pot barley
oatmeal

You might want:
A stock pot (also known as a Really Large pot)

If you are starting with lamb stew meat, you can either brown it first, or not, by preference. My recommendation, partly because lamb stew meat is tricky to find at your local grocery, is to get a leg of lamb, roast it, have yummy roast lamb, and then start making scotch broth.

Put the meat or lamb bone into the pot, fill it with water, and boil as per the following chart:
-browned stew meat: an hour or so
-uncooked stew meat: a couple hours, or until the meat is well cooked through
-lamb bone: as long as you feel like. I recommend at least overnight, on a slow boil. Leaving the boiling stock to your children in the will is probably not necessary, unless you want then to have a really good broth.

If you're doing this with a bone, strain the stock into another pot before continuing. Kinda important, this step.

Chop up a couple cups (total, not each) of carrot, celery and onion and throw them in. Throw in a generous handful of barley, and if you're working from a leg of lamb, chop up any leftover meat and throw it in, too.

Boil it gently for another hour or so.

In a frying pan, melt about a quarter cup of butter (or margerine, if you insist) and brown about a quarter cup of oatmeal in it.

Dump the browned oatmeal into the soup, and let it sit on it's gentle boil for another 10 minutes or so. Long enough to set the table and yell at people to come eat.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Because it's a Tuesday...

...that means it's time for Cooking Isn't Complicated.

(yeah, I know. So sue me.)

Today, spaghetti sauce

You already have:
Large pot with lid
Frying pan
salt
pepper
multispice
Italian seasoning mix
Tomato sauce
Tomato paste

You will need:
~1 lb lean ground beef
2 or 3 bell peppers; green, yellow or orange (not red; red disappears in the sauce).
an onion
3-4 cloves of garlic (about 1/4 bulb)
spaghetti

You might want:
2-3 more cloves of garlic (if you like garlicy sauce)
(a can of) diced or chopped tomatoes
oregano
thyme
another large pot

If your pot is the sort you can brown or fry things in, you won't need the frying pan. Brown the ground beef (by which I mean: fry it over medium high heat until it's all brown) and if there's lots of fat, drain it off. Dice the onion and garlic and add it to the meat, continuing to fry it until you've got a nice strong garlicy-oniony smell in the kitchen. Add some multispice, and drop the heat down to medium low. (Move it from frying pan to large pot, if necessary.)

Pour in the tomato sauce and paste (and optional diced tomatoes) and stir until it's more-or-less uniform. Let it get to a boil, which will be more of a blooping, messy thick sauce boil than a furious rolling liquidy boil. Add some salt and pepper and more multispice. Add Italian seasoning until the top of it is mostly covered (yes, I mean it!). (Add extra oregano and thyme at this point, if you want.) Stir it in really well, turn the heat down until it's just barely splorking.

Go away and let it blork happily away for an hour or so, if time is a luxury. Or do this next step right away if it's not, or if you're really hungry. Time makes it better, though. Wash and dice your bell peppers and stir them in. Let it get back to a slow splork and leave it in that state while you boil water and make spaghetti per the package directions, or the "stick to the wall" method, if you like. Another large pot is really handy for this, but use your small pot if you need to. Wash the wall if you used the "stick to the wall" method of testing your spaghetti for doneness.

Serve, and refridgerate or freeze whatever you don't use. Stays good for a week, easily, in the fridge, and freezes quite well.

Enjoy.

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Salsa, baby!

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but here it is again, newly repackaged for Cooking isn't Complicated.

You will need:
5-6 tomatoes (firm not-quite ripe is best)
a bunch of green onions
1/2 a large white onion
1/2 a long english cucumber
a bunch of cilantro
about 1/2 jar of hot stuff. (my brother uses jalapenos, we use hot banana pepper rings.) I say 1/2 jar, because the ones we buy are big jars.
several clean, empty jars (or several hungry people in about 2 days).
something to pass the time. A movie or two that you don't need to pay 100% attention to is good.
----
You already have:
sharp knives
cutting board
large pot

Dice up all ingredients; smaller is better. Sometimes we leave some pepper rings uncut, cause they're pretty. Dump into a pot (including some of the hot pepper juice) and stir, leave for a day or two. Decant into jars. You want the liquid to barely cover the vegtables in the jars. It never lasts more than a couple months in our house, but is still good at the end of that time. Dunno what the actual shelf life is. Sometimes if it's not spicy enough, we add a few drops of tabasco or Frank's to each jar.

Enjoy!

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated, reruns

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Salty Pork Of Doom

Yes, it's the return of Cooking Isn't Complicated. I was trying to do this as a 'weekly' thing, and then got distracted. Shiny. Today's recipe is shamelessly stolen from Raven.

You will need:
Pork chops (with or without bone; your preference)
--------
You already have:
Frying pan
Cooking oil
Salt
Multispice

Put some cooking oil in the bottom of your frying pan and heat it up to 'most of the way hot' - maybe 6 or 7 if your dial runs up to nine. Liberally salt and multispice both sides of the porkchops and toss them in. If your multispice is a salt-based spice like seasoning salt, you can skip the salt and just use multispice.

Maybe put a lid on to avoid splatters, leave the porkchops for 3-4 minutes, unless they start to burn. Flip 'em, and repeat. Flip them once or twice more, if you're paranoid and don't think they're cooked. (I do this. Somewhere in my past, I was instilled with a deep-seated fear of undercooked pork. Oddly, undercooked chicken doesn't really bug me.)

Goes well with a potatoe-y starch, especially a lazy one like fries. Green vegetables work well with this, like broccoli or peas. Less green veggies like carrots or cauliflower not so much. I have no idea why.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Honey mustard chicken

In today's episode, we shamelessly steal from the back of the Campbell's soup can.

You will need:
3-4 skinless chicken breasts
liquid honey (if it isn't part of 'sandwich stuff' in the basics, like it is for me)

You might want:
fancy mustard (instead of plain, below)

You already have:
frying pan
mustard
cream of chicken soup

Brown the chicken, either as whole breasts or chopped into bite size pieces; I've done it both ways. If you don't chop it up, be careful to brown it at a little lower heat so the chicken cooks through before getting crunchy on the outside.

Mix the soup, a half-cup of water, 2 (generous) tablespoons of mustard and 2 (generous) tablespoons of honey, and dump it over the chicken. Reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes. Serves well over rice; feeds roughly 3-4. Fair warning, I've always made this with fancy mustard; never tried with plain.

-------
As an aside: Whenever I say something like "brown the chicken" that's cooking shorthand. You've "already got" two things to open that up into useful instructions: your "how to cook everything" cookbook (I have the Five Roses one, and it's like solid gold), and your "How do I..." person to phone. I'm serious about being able to phone me if you don't already have someone like that.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Eggs, the easy

Look, eggs! On a Tuesday! I'll just pretend this was on purpose, and not the result of horrible procrastination.

Today's guest chef is not-me James. Other people are totally welcome to guest chef - just send me a recipe with the "you will need/you already have" headers.

-----
How to fry an egg, the easy.

I don't know about other people, but I hate cooked egg yokes with my
eggs. Lots of people will scramble their eggs, and I do that too
sometimes, but really the easiest way to cook an egg is to fry it. I
also hate uncooked whites, so how do you go about making both things happen?

You will need:
A lid for your frying pan (you might have this already)
an egg

You already have:
frying pan (Can be regular or nonstick)
butter/margerine
Spatula/flipper
water (I hear most people have that on tap)

Heat your pan up to a medium heat on your stove, I usually just turn the
knob half way, but some stoves cook hotter or colder, If you know this,
thats good, if not, you'll survive.

Once your pan is warm, add a little bit of butter or margerine to it. I
usuallly put about a teaspoon, just enough to coat the pan
if your butter or margerine starts to brown right away, the pan is too
hot. hold it under the tap for a few seconds and pour out the water to
cool it off. (if you do this, please wait for the pan to reheat before
proceeding)

crack your eggs into the pan. Cracking eggs does admittedly take a
little practice, you can hit them with the back of a knife to crack the
shell a little (don't hit too hard) once you have a crack that goes a
little ways around the shell, put one thumb on each side of hte crack
and pull them apart, . Do this over the pan, but not more than about
15cm over the pan or the yolks may break on impact. If you break a
yolk, don't stress it, we all break the occasional yolk.

Once the eggs are in the pan, put a little water (maybe 2 tablespoons)
into the pan and put the lid on.

If you have a see through lid that fits your pan, this will make your
life easy. if not, (I sometimes use a plate to do this (make sure your
plate is a type of ceramic that can take the heat if you want to do
this) and always make sure you can remove it without burning yourself)
just check it often. It should take between a minuite and a minuite and
a half to cook.

You will know it's done by having the yolk clouded over by some milky
stuff, and the white will be a uniform white all the way to a yolk. The
white next to the yolk will be the last part to cook, so if it looks
darker near the yolk, it needs just a bit more time.

Once it is done take your spatula/flipper/kinfe and make sure the eggs
are completely seperated from each other, and slide them gently around
the pan to make sure that they are not stuck to the pan. Then simply
pour them out gently onto your plate, just tilt the pan slowly until the
eggs slide out.

I like to serve them on toast, but everyone's different.

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Sneaky cooking secrets

It's tuesday, which is Cooking time around here. I'm not doing a recipe today, I'm just going to briefly reveal a couple of the secrets of good cooks. Later today, we'll have a guest chef in to talk about how to cook perfect eggs.

Secret #1: Follow the directions.

Yup, that's it. Odds are these days that when you buy something, it has a recipe on it, or directions on how to cook it. So, um, do what the folks who made it said. Sometimes companies will have an ulterior motive, like giving out recipes that use their ingredients, but if the recipe sucks, no one will buy the ingredient (more than once). So the recipe or the directions (if it's a staple like rice or something) is generally going to produce food. A couple months ago, I got all kinds of huge compliments on a fantastic stirfry/chinese food spread I laid out. Check this out:
-Teriyaki pork (recipe from my brother. This one doesn't count)
-Beef with pea pods (googled "beef with pea pods recipe")
-chicken chow mein with vegtables (recipe on the back of the chow mein package)
-steamed short grain sushi rice (directions on the package)
-fried potstickers with spicy soy dipping sauce (directions on package, sauce from package)

Neat, eh?

Secret #2: Experiment in your seekrit laboratory, not on your dining room table.

My wife and I went through dozens of iterations of spaghetti before I ever had the balls to feed it to friends or extended family. Ditto teriyaki pork and BBQ chicken. Ditto all of those awesome homemade soups and the soda bread and all the rest. All of these things served as meals for us (and later, our kids) before we ever served them to anyone else.

Also worth mentioning is the huge number of things we've tried and gone "That was edible, but we're not going to try that again." Those are things our friends have never seen, and probably never will. Unless we try it again a few times, with different variations, and hit on one that works. Then we'll do it again a couple times to make sure that wasn't an accident, then we'll we'll cook it on a Friday Gaming night. "Shucks, this? It's pretty easy, you just blah blah, and remember to stuff the thing."

If you'll excuse me, there's a horde of angry cooks outside, demanding I shut up now. Later today, eggs!

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Bachelor Soup

You will need: Nothing you don't already have

You might want:
an egg
frozen veggies

You already have:
large pot
Ichiban
Dry vegetable soup mix

Start making the vegetable soup according to it's directions. If it includes a "simmer for X minutes" at the end, then about 5 minutes before it's done, crunch up the ichiban noodles and toss them in. Optionally add about a cup of frozen veggies. Turn it up so that it boils again, then back down to a simmer for the last 5 minutes.

If you like, crack an egg into a bowl and stir it with a fork until the yolk and the white are mostly mixed up, then pour it into the soup and stir. Give it a minute or so for the egg strings to cook through, and done.

If you're being fancy, you can chop up real vegetables instead of frozen, and add some diced cooked chicken or something, but then it stops being bachelor soup and starts being real soup.

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Chicken with crunchy skin

This is the chicken I used to sucker my wife into saying "yes" when I proposed. It's also Kalen's favorite food, and consistently gets raves of approval from people who've been given the recipe.

It was provided to me by my mom as a survival food when I first had to fend for myself, and is officially The Easiest Recipe In The World.

You will need:
chicken parts, with skin. 1 or 2 per person
--------
You already have:
baking tray
tinfoil
oven
multispice

Preheat oven to 400 F.
Spread tinfoil on baking tray (making little folds to help grease run away is optional, but recommended.)
put chicken on the tinfoil, skin side up
shake multispice generously on top (I use Lawry's seasoning salt and lemon pepper)
put in the oven for 45 minutes.

Go seduce someone with your awesome chicken.

James

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Essential Tools

We interrupt the ongoing 5 questions meme to bring you episode one of Cooking Isn't Complicated: Essential Tools

In this episode we'll discuss the premise of the series and cover off the basics.

This show was born in a fever dream, but I don't let anything so mundane dissuade me. Basically, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, I wanted to host a cooking show that was all about how easy it is to actually cook stuff, based on the stuff I had available to me when I lived in my brother's basement. What that amounts to, in essence, was a fridge, a stove, a microwave, a kitchen (literally!) the size of a closet, and a teeny pantry shelf able to hold about 2 grocery bags worth of food, if the bags were small. The only redeeming feature was a long counter (that happened to be around the corner in the bathroom). Now that I'm not feverish anymore, it makes way more sense to update that with the experience I've had in the decade+ of cooking since I lived in the Basement of Doom.

So, the essentials. This is the stuff that I think is the bare minimum for a kitchen to have and be a useful place to cook. As I go along, for any given recipe, I will note what you need above and beyond the essentials.

- Fridge. Can be a bar fridge, needs to be a real fridge if you regularly cook for more than just you.
- Stove.
- Oven. Probably not an issue, since 99% of stoves and ovens come attached to each other. (If you're like me, you went the majority of your life not knowing that a stove and an oven were not the same thing. The oven is the inside part, the stove is the stuff on top.)
- Oven mitts
- Microwave
- Small pot (comfortably hold a can of chunky soup with an inch or two of space at the top), lid optional
- Oven-safe large pot (comfortably hold about 5 liters of water, with an inch or two of space at the top) with lid
- Largish frying pan, 10-12 inches across, ideally with a high side.
- Baking sheet (often called cookie sheets); one with 4 raised sides is recommended.
- Tin foil
- Stirring spoon
- Spatula (plastic, if your frying pan is non-stick)
- Small sharp knife
- Large sharp knife
- A cutting board
- 2-cup microwave safe measuring cup
- Set of measuring cups (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1 cup)
- Set of measuring spoons (1/4 tsp through to 1 tblsp)
- Salt
- Pepper
- Multi-spice. Everyone has their preference; pick one or two. Spike, Lawry’s seasoning salt, Mrs. Dash, lemon pepper mix, whatever you prefer.
- Italian seasoning mix. You can’t make Italian-tasting pasta sauce without something like this. Believe me, I’ve tried.
- Tupperware or equivalent other-branded food storagey thingies. One that’s as big as you can make easily fit in your fridge, one that’s a convenient lunch size.
- Tomato sauce
- Tomato paste
- Cream of chicken soup
- Ichiban noodles (not the ‘bowl soups’, just the noodles+flavour packages)
- KD
- Dry vegetable soup mix
- Dry onion soup mix
- Carrots – goes into a lot of foods, stays good for-almost-ever in the fridge.
- Celery - ditto
- Onions - ditto
- Ketchup
- Mustard
- Rice (if you love yourself, get real rice. Minute rice isn’t actually any easier to make, and is much horribler. Voice of Experience talking here.)
- Bread
- Butter or margarine
- Sandwich stuff (whatever you like to put in/on your sandwiches.
- 2 or 3 prepared foods; stuff like Chunky soup, Lipton Sidekicks, frozen entrée’s if you have a freezer
- A “tells you how to make everything” cookbook.
- A “tells you how to make easy stuff for people who can’t cook” cookbook.
- Someone you can phone to say “How do I…” This is one of the traditional roles of mothers. If you don’t have someone already doing this, I’ll do in a pinch. E-mail me for my number if you don’t already have it.

Highly recommended, but not strictly necessary:

- A freezer is also highly recommended; not so much for the cooking part as for the “not going to the store every other day” part. Food storage=good.
- Tupperware or equivalent other-branded food storagey thingies above and beyond the minimum two is good. Food storage=good.
- Frozen veggie mix (if freezers were required instead of recommended, so would this be).
- Other condiments of choice. (relish, whatever. Ketchup and mustard, however, aren’t optional.)
- Cassarole dish, with lid. If you have one of these, your large pot above doesn’t have to be oven-safe anymore.
- Toaster ovens are da bomb. But they don't actually do anything other appliances can't, except be small and convenient.

Labels: Cooking isn't complicated