One Pot Cooking

I've often compared studying abroad to living in the Great Depression, especially when it comes to apartment living.  Example: I save all my peanut butter containers to use as tupperware.  As many of you may know, I have very few kitchen and cooking supplies.  I own only one pot, one cooking spoon, one small cutting board, one plate, one bowl, one mug and one glass.  I do have two spoons, two forks, two butter knives and three steak knives.  I have no oven, just two hot plate like eyes.  So, needless to say, trying to cook a meal is always an adventure.  Today I thought I'd post about my adventures in cooking.  What I cook, how I manage it, favorite "one pot meals," etc.

To begin with, food staples in my apartment.

• Chicken
• When I buy it, I cut it into one person portions, seal it in zip locks and freeze it.  Then whenever I want to have chicken for dinner I put it in the fridge to defrost during the day.
• Carrots
• Which are full sized carrots and come in very large containers.  They're good for snacking as well as a good ingredient for a meal.
• Onion, garlic, lemon, olive oil
• I have very few spices (cayenne pepper and "chicken" spice), so this helps give my food flavor.
• Noodles, marinara sauce
• To mix it up I buy a different kind of sauce each time, right now I sun dried tomato and a few weeks ago I bought pesto.
• Instant soups
• I've found these really great instant soup mixes at Real.  They've got a great tomato soup, as well as a mushroom one and an asparagus one (real veggies in them!) that I've tried and liked.
• Eggs
• I make omelets a lot when I'm at a loss for what to eat
• Instant coffee
• Y'all know how I feel about this, I hate it, but I have to have some coffee.
• Müsli, milk, bread, peanut butter, nutella, jelly, apples, bananas, ham, cheese
• Daily staples

So that's about it, I buy some other things to mix it up, but I nearly always have these things around.  It's really very boring.  If I had something other than a mini fridge (which I share with a roommate who takes up two shelves and the drawer, leaving me with one shelf) and one cabinet to store all my things, I might have more exciting options.  I have conjured up some recipes with these ingredients.  Generally they are one dish meals, though, as I only have one pot.





Some favorites:

• Sauteed chicken, onion, and carrots.  Flavored with chicken seasoning, cayenne pepper and fresh squeezed lemons.
• I ate this tonight.  I also had mushrooms so I threw those in there.  I felt like I needed something green so I sliced a cucumber on the side and for desert I melted a little butter with honey and lemon and sauteed banana and strawberry in it.
• Pasta with sauce and vegetables.
• This is always an interesting experience, as I only have one pot.  I have to cook the pasta first, drain it, heat up the sauce, dump the noodles back in and hope not to burn anything.

Some of the more exciting meals I've made:

• Fried chicken
• I was missing the south and had the ingredients.  So I took a chicken breast, dipped it in eggs (whipped with a bit of milk), and coated it in a mixture of flour, cayenne pepper, chicken seasoning and salt, then fried it in olive oil.
• Avacado, carrot, apple salad in a homemade salad dressing
• This was a "refrigerator roulette" day (meaning I didn't have much left, so I was cooking with whatever was in the fridge).  I chopped up half an avacodo, and a few carrots.  Then I sauteed half an apple in butter and honey.  I made the salad dressing with water, balsamic, honey and spicy mustard.  It was yummy.
• Chicken noodle soup

• I made this twice in one week.  Sauteed chicken, carrots, onion, garlic with chicken seasoning, cayenne pepper cooked in water with noodles and a bouillon cube.

So anyway, that's about all I got for the time being.  It will certainly feel like a luxury when I get back to the states and Molly and I have a real kitchen, with a normal sized refrigerator and an oven too!