Danny ChaiIn an effort to cook more, I bought a Rachael Ray cookbook with 365 30-minute meals. First of all, 30-minute meal my arse. *Maybe* if you have an army of assistants who prep all the chopping and whatever, but even then, 30 minutes is a stretch. In fact, her directions overlap the cooking directions a lot, to fit in that 30-minute window, and for a non-cook like me, it’s a recipe for chaos. For example, last night it said to boil pasta for a certain time, and the directions emphasize *while* boiling the pasta, put into a pan olive oil, butter, onions, etc. I follow directions as they’re written, so I did the sauteeing while doing the boiling. But I’m not good enough a cook to juggle multiple things going on at one time; I get flustered and stressed. I should have done things sequentially. So curse you and your artificial 30-minute schedule.
Anyway, dinner was a disaster, and we inflicted it upon the poor, unsuspecting Hyuns. The recipe was for Mac and Cheese with Broccoli. Somehow, I turned it into, it wasn’t soup, not even really stew, more like cheese infused gruel. Seriously, that’s a gift, to mess up a recipe that bad. Lesson learned – don’t try out new recipes on other people.
Anyway, at dinner, I joked that we should all go around and talk about our exes, just to make the conversation more uncomfortable. Bea says to me, incredulously, “You have an ex???” Ouch. And yet, not the first time I’ve gotten that reaction.