Home-cooking

Over the past two weeks, I have assumed the role of cook, as it’s far too much work to cook for oneself upon completion of a day in the field and I find it to be rather therapeutic.  Generally, my recipes are either spur of the moment, written down on a scrap piece of paper in some drawer at home, or lost in cyberspace on a website that I didn’t bookmark.  In spite of this, a limited budget, and a lack of oven, I’ve managed to pull together some decent dishes.

My favorite meal thus far primarily resulted from an effort to make a dent in the jar of shredded beet root that had been sitting in the refrigerator for over a week.  I heated this up with fried onion and garlic, which are staples in every meal, par-boiled, fried carrots, and rosemary.  Mix all of this up with rice and a beet soup base, and, voila!

One of my co-workers had been going on about potatoes and his mom’s mashed carrots and parsnips, so this became dinner one night.  From the potatoes, I made home fries with garlic, onion, red pepper, rosemary, salt, and pepper.  I let them cook, covered, over a medium-low heat for about fifteen minutes, or whenever I remember to tend to them, so that the potatoes would soften.  Another fifteen minutes, or so, with the cover off and a bit more heat crisped them up nicely.

These aren't actually my pierogies, but they look similar.

I was feeling ambitious one day and decided to attempt pierogies.  Every time that I make them, I remember how time consuming and tedious a task this can be, so it takes a few months for me to forget the last ordeal and have the urge to make pierogies again.  My most recent experience was no different.  I didn’t measure ingredients very precisely, so I spent lots time kneading in extra flour to get the dough to the proper consistency.  I still don’t think I managed to do this, since I fought with the dough, as I usually do, to keep it rolled out with my makeshift wine bottle rolling pin.  The real kicker was when I wanted to count my stuffed and sealed pierogies, once I had used about two-thirds of the dough, and they were all stuck together in the bowl.  I couldn’t separate them, so I opened and gutted every one of them and re-rolled the dough.  I was fairly efficient with the boiling and frying process, probably because I was ready to be finished.  Although, in the end, my cabbage and mushroom and potato pierogies were enjoyed by all and I learned some valuable lessons, which I will hopefully remember for the next time...