Do the Cooking By the Book

Yesterday, I was in a terrible mood for no real good reason. I know everyone has had those before...but it was particularly odd. I wasn't angry, or sad, just...terrible-feeling. Nothing was helping. So, I decided to do some cooking.

I have discovered, out here in BYUland, that I love cooking. I already knew I liked cooking, and I've always enjoyed baking desserts and things, but here I've really realized that making a full-on meal is one of the most wonderful things. I'm not awesome or creative at making particularly inexpensive, unique, OR healthy things, but I LOVE following recipes, combining ingredients, mixing, making smells, making meals, and making myself feel instantly at home.

Not even necessarily "oh mom used to make this I can taste my childhood" at home. More like "look, I just made something amazing that my mother made once (or not). I'm my own adult!" at home. Making things like Chicken Cordon Bleu, various casseroles, Apricot chicken, and other fancy-sounding recipes is the most adult thing I've done here and, frankly, the aspect of college life I feel most confident in my personal success.

Even Pasta-Roni and Easy Mac is a wonderful little adventure when I get to think "now which meat would make this more a meal? Which vegetable??". Cooking is the BEST way to distract myself from homework, and makes me feel productive and adult, instead of facebook or silly little websites that make me feel like I have no motivation to learn (even if that is sometimes very much the case).

As such, yesterday, when I was in this disgusting mood, I figured the best thing to do was cook. I pulled out my cookbooks and scoured them, but as I refuse to buy chicken until it comes down from $6 for 3 breasts and I had already ran out of hamburger meat, my only meat option was stew meat. And I really didn't want to just make pasta-and-sauce. Nothing in my cookbooks looked good...probably because I was in such a disagreeable mood.

I decided, somehow in some way I don't remember, that I was going to MAKE MY OWN RECIPE. This normally fails. Hard. But I was in such a disagreeable state that I figured even if it bombed, I couldn't feel any worse, so why not.

I decided to combine my stew meat with some green peppers I had frozen, which made me decide I should just go ALL OUT and make a shish-kabob-syle-pasta-type-thing. I didn't know what to do for a sauce, but everything worked out AWESOME.

So, below, is my "recipe" that I have created and approved (as have my roommates) C:.

Ingredients- Keep in mind these are all VERY rough. Regarding the salt, pepper, and spices, I really just poured stuff in when it looked like I should, then added some more at the end. So I'm probably way off. Anyway! You'll need about 1/4 pound of stew meat or other thinnish slices of beef-type-meat, a few good handfuls of Penne (I used half a bag), a can of pineapple (the wedge kind... I actually ended up eating about 10 of the pieces afterwards, so you can use a little less than the whole thing, depending on preference), half a green pepper or so I would guess...it was what I had frozen :P, 1 tbsp of salt, 1 tbsp of pepper, and 2 tbsp 1 tsp cajun seasoning or whatever "throw-in" spice you have around, like Emeril's BAM! or maybe you're awesome enough that you can make your own using...uh...I don't know how spices work so I'm not going to pretend. Also, vegetable oil.

Directions- Boil the pasta according to directions on the box. After this has been going a little bit, preheat a saucepan with oil, then begin to cook up the meat. It will bite you, as hot oil always does, and you'll be stirring the pasta, too, so you're going to look REALLY COOL during this part while you do the crazy "I don't want to get burned but neither does my food" dance.

Add the peppers to the meat so they cook up nicely, then pretty soon afterwards, pour in the pineapples. The juice from the pineapples combined with the juice from the meat and the oil are going to make a delicious sauce, which was a huge relief to discover. Keep this on about medium heat; it has an awesome bubbly, frothy kind of look at this point.

Once your pasta is done cooking, strain the pasta and add it to the sauce. That sounds backwards all typed up. Add the spices, then stir well. Season to taste because I don't trust my "directions".

It's very tasty! The cajun spices, whatever the heck that is, made gave it an almost barbeque-y flavor, which is perfect because I was going for a "kabob-type" flavor. Also, the meat was a little tough, but that's because I don't know how to cook beef that's how it tastes on a kabob.

Also, I vote someone else should try this and tell me if my roommates could just sense my bad mood and didn't want to perpetuate it or if I ACTUALLY thought of something tasty. :)

At the very least, it cured my bad mood.

"Cooking by the Book" is from Lazy Town