On Cooking

Besides the hardwork, new friends, and spectacular, breathtaking, tear-inducing mountainous landscape, one of the most eye-opening aspects of being here is cooking for myself. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have honestly never had to full time shop and cook for myself, so without the Tuscarora family meals or the all-you-can-eat St. Olaf cafeteria, I was thoroughly lost the first time I stepped into the Safeway grocery store in Estes Park. After blindly stumbling around for awhile, I came out with some bread, peanut butter, yogurt, almonds, apples, and chocolate chips. And that is what I lived on for the first week. I got extremely exhausted of eating peanut butter sandwiches and gooey blobs of almonds and melted chocolate chips. So the next time we went shopping, I significantly classed things up, purchasing eggs, soup, and even onions!

Only three weeks of cooking for myself and I have already learned some valuable life lessons.

1.     The dinner-cooking ordeal takes AT LEAST an hour. Do not start at 10pm.

2.     Potatoes and ketchup are staple foods. Hands down.

3.     Sautéed onions make everything tastier, make you look like a masterful chef, and make the kitchen smell delicious.

4.     Thaw chicken before cooking it otherwise it ends up burnt and frozen at the same time.

5.     Tortillas=versatile and effective for all your sandwich/burrito needs.

6.     I really hate buying raw meat. The juicy chunks in their strange plastic packaging just make me uncomfortable. I don’t know why. 

7.   Burnt grilled cheese where the cheese isn’t melted yet but the bread is a toasty carbon crisp is a BAD TIME. ALWAYS cook it on medium you impatient fool!