Some Cooking Tips

Hello again. Another Monday come and gone. And again I had no class. Well actually, I thought I had no class and it turns out I missed a 45 min session of Ayesha (our program head) going around to everyone, asking them what internship they were at and whether or not they liked it. So I guess I can live with missing it. It was totally unintentional though! So anyways, my Monday involved not going to class. Instead I went out to a nearby coffee shop near campus with Teresa and Sasha and Lesedie (a Witsie who hung out with us at Wits rural) and tried to get my reading done for my classes this week. Then we went clothes shopping unsuccessfully (unsuccessful for me because I couldn't figure out the sizing system and didn't want to keep holding up Teresa and Sasha so after trying on three different sizes of one shirt didn't bother getting new sizes for anything else). I want to get a few long-sleeved shirts that are more casual. I way over-packed in terms of business-appropriate clothing and under-packed in terms of normal winter clothing. The problem is that I am very used to wearing t-shirts in the winter, because everywhere you go it's heated. Except central heating is not a big thing here. So even if it's not that cold outside, it can get really cold inside. Hence the need for more long-sleeved shirts. Anyways, after two shops we gave up and went grocery shopping instead. I bought fresh baked bread (less than a dollar! I love shopping here) and have finally mastered the bread-slicing machine. It was a proud moment.

We had an Italian night last night and I was in charge of making the sauce. It actually went really well surprisingly enough. Especially considering that I wasn't exactly following a recipe. I had a rough idea of ingredients I would need and a little bit of a game-plan in terms of how to cook things, but mainly I was playing it by ear. Anyways, long story short, the sauce turned out well and so today I bought more ingredients I could use in sauce, because it was actually kind of fun and I would like to do it again. If you want my fail-safe recipe that I used last night, here it is:

-put some weird tomato and onion combination (found in a can) in a pot with oil and add in some finely chopped carrots and some of your own onion
-heat that for a bit
-cut up some peeled tomatoes (you can peel them easily by putting them in boiling water first. thanks mom for the tip) and scrape them haphazardly with a knife to get out some of the seeds
-put those into the pot
-add in an undetermined amount of garlic
-add in more of that tomato and onion mix
-smash some of the tomatoes somewhat effectively with a spoon
-stir that around and then while it's heating go on your computer and waste time on facebook
-get up when you remember the directions told you to put in basil
-put in some basil, skimp a little
-add some premade pasta sauce, but not too much because it smells a little weird when compared to the sauce you're making
-add in some carrots because you have some more leftover
-let that simmer (or whatever it does on a hotplate that kind of has a shaky control of heat) for an hour or so while you watch Freaks and Geeks over the shared itunes network of the international house
-add in some more garlic and a tiny bit of cheese
-taste it to make sure you didn't accidentally stir in rat poison during the chaos
-throw away the rat poison, why on earth do you keep that around when you haven't seen any rats? especially near food. come on now
-pour the sauce into a nice serving bowl, or whatever bowl is on hand
-take the premade sauce with you in case you're the only one who likes the sauce you made

hooray, you did it! congratulations

next time you should also add (but were too lazy to go shopping last time for):
-a little bit of tomato paste
-rosemary
-parsley

Happy cooking to one and all