Microwave garlic spinach

Okay, here's my lunch for tomorrow:

Now, I also took a close up of the green things in the corner:

Now, on the left are obviously green grapes. On the right is something I discovered how to make in the microwave. It's, yep, garlic microwave spinach.

That probably sounds totally gross. But hear me out.

Take maybe 1 tsp of butter in a microwaveable bowl, and throw some minced garlic, salt, and pepper. Microwave for 25 seconds. Then, add a couple handfuls of spinach to the bowl, making sure to thoroughly coat the leaves in the melted butter, and microwave for another minute.

The result is amazing. It's almost like spinach chips, or something (but they're kind of greasy, so don't eat it with your hands). Foodies can kvetch all they like that I'm ruining perfectly good leafy green vegetables by putting them through the Paula Deen method, but still. Try it.

Microwave Omelet-scrambled egg-thingy

Okay, this is a very simple lunch+snack I made for tomorrow (yeah yeah I like to make bento boxes, wanna fight about it?) but the most important part about it is the yellow stuff on the far side. The point is, I figured out how to make eggs in the microwave.

I was skeptical at first. After all, changing the cooking method usually changes the end result. The tomatoes from the tortellini with tomatoes made in oil tasted very savory while those stewed with the oil added later were very sweet. Omelets in the microwave had to be nowhere as good as their pan-fried counterparts, right?

Well... not exactly. At least, I'm not an egg connosieur, so maybe I just can't tell the difference. But these eggs in the microwave (mixed up, with 1/2 tsp soy sauce, 1 tsp sugar, 1/2 tbsp milk) for one minute, with saran wrap over the bowl I cooked them in, tasted pretty damn decent. How bizarre.

I'm hoping this will save me some money in the future, as eggs tend to be cheaper than things like lunch meat (but they're still not as cheap as peanutbutter!). Budget-enforced vegetarianism, here I come!

COOKIES!

Alriiight. I made some chocolate chip cookies in the microwave last night. I picked up some refrigerated cookie dough. Tasty enough as is, but I wanted cookies. I stuck a few spoonfuls on a Pampered Chef small round stone, but for those who don't have it, any microwave plate should work. They definitely stick a little but they are still quite tasty. Just stick it in the microwave for two minutes. Let them cool a bit before eating and enjoy. They are not the best cookies, but they were still quite tasty.

Pasta! With Sauce!

Today I made some pasta! Yummo. Bascially, I just made it in a microwaveable bowl. Depending on the amount of pasta, it takes around 6 minutes to make in the microwave. Drain the water and add a little bit of spaghetti sauce and marinated artichoke hearts. If you wanted to, you could heat it up so the sauce was warm, but it was fine without it. Instant meal! The downside to this is that I now have mostly full containers of spaghetti sauce and artichoke hearts in my fridge... Looks like I'll be making more pasta next week!

Tortellini with Grape Tomatoes: Take 2

Apparently cooking with oil in a hot pot is beyond dangerous (I kind of get that feeling sometimes, but you know what, sometimes I'm bad at not risking myself for science).

If you want an equally delicious and much safer version, you can simply boil a bit of water with salt in the hot pot and add the tomatoes, boiling them until they burst. Then you can strain them out of the water, add them to the tortellini, and then add the oil/salt/garlic. If the tortellini is already warm you can eat it as is, but otherwise you should heat it up for about 30 seconds in the microwave. It does taste slightly different, but is very good. Also, you won't have to worry about setting off the dorm's fire alarm, which everyone in the dorm will definitely appreciate.

After making this twice in two days my room still smells like Italian food.

We'll keep you updated on if we find any more ways to stew those tomatoes.

Tortellini with Grape Tomatoes

Here's my lunch for tomorrow:

Well, half of it anyway. The other half is apples and grapes. I'm not sure if I'll reheat it or not (I don't think the plastic container is microwave safe) but either way it'll probably be good.

Okay, pretty much everyone knows how to make pasta in a hot pot, so that's what I did with my tortellini. After that was done, the tomatoes were harder. I poured a layer of olive oil onto the bottom of the hot pot, put some salt, oregano, and minced garlic onto that, and waited for it to heat up. The tomatoes took forever, but eventually I figured out that I could leave the tomatoes on the heating element and check at five-minute intervals and move them once they'd burst like good stewed tomatoes. Then I let them cook for a little longer, added in the tortellini and mixed it all up again. It took almost a whole hour, but it'll probably take a lot shorter next time considering I'll know what to do with the tomatoes and I have tortellini now in my freezer.

It was kind of funny, people walked by my hall and kept commenting on how this floor smelled like good food all the time.

If you want to make this on your own be very careful with the oil. I'm pretty sure hot pots are not made to cook oil and you don't want to start a fire.

Grocery Shopping Week 1

Grocery shopping for this week:

Strawberries, sharp cheddar, granny smith apples, baby corn, koala cookies, tupperware, iced tea, olive oil, tortellini, grape tomatoes, minced garlic, and oregano ($34). Most of this is for my lunches this week -- well, pretty much all of it. Tonight I'm going to try to make some cold pasta. I'll post on that later.

Part of the experiment here is to see how long food will last, especially fresh fruit. Apples usually last quite a while. I'm not sure about the strawberries, but they'll probably all be eaten before they go bad. I still have some grapes from last week's shopping trip, and they still seem decent, but I don't want to keep them around for too much longer.

So, we'll see how this goes.

Introduction

This is a blog about dorm food.

Okay, not really, because it is edible.

But, it's similar to dorm food in that it is made in a dorm. However, unlike the food in the dining hall, this food is made by students with tools readily avaliable in the dorm rooms or at the hall kitchen.


Watch us as we fail to make delicious food with such limits forced upon us.