a disaster a day

this post's for you, S.

deep down i hope this'll be the last tragicomedy cooking post. even deeper down, however, i know there must be an inner reserve of strength to fight the self-delusion. in fact, i'm quite resigned to the fact that my place's most certainly not in the kitchen. i don't need molecular gastronomy, i just want to not-starve. that's not asking for very much, is it?

after the coffeemaker on sunday, the prawn stock on monday (literally reduced to nothing at all) and the rice cooker on tuesday, i'd thought the kitchen was running out of ammo against me. as of this morning, the score was still 2:0 in the kitchen's favour. but i awoke with a renewed zest to actually do something right today. and i'm not just saying it, i was absolutely certain that today was the turning point. after all, how many more appliances could pull a decepticon and outwit me!

so with great drive and determination, i set out to make dinner. realised i'd perishables in the refrigerator that will go bad soon (well, duh...) and thought i'd whip up something cutting edge and innovative. ok so i lied about only wanting to not-starve. then i opened the refrigerator and accidentally found myself in an old mother hubbard moment. i'd 1/2 an aubergine (my new favourite vegetable), 4 semi-rotting tomatoes, 1kg of ageing onions, greek salad cheese and caviar. undauntered, i decided to attempt a vegetable stirfry. plus points for creativity, no? so i sauteed the sliced onion and aubergine with oyster sauce, diced the better half of a tomato, mixed it with the crumbling cheese and plated the lot. half hot, half cold. because i'm such a good cook, i obviously inhaled my dinner and was satiated. or not.

still peckish, i did something i'm not proud of. it was something i'd sworn i'd stop doing, something i'd rationally decided was beneath me, something my parents would be horrified about should they ever find out, something that made me start to question my self-worth. i broke into my stash of emergency microwave dinners. and this' when the fun started.

the kitchen gods must've sensed my budding optimism a mile away and saw it as an opportunity. i emptied the lot onto a plate, covered it with another plate like the good girl i am, added an additional 2 minutes for good measure and nuked it.

6+2minutes later, i remove my steaming dish from the microwave and take a tentative nibble. so far so good. this goes on for a few more chews before i hit something cold. and crunchy. something suspiciously like an ice crystal, or fifty. i stir the plate of microwaved goo and it makes a scary scratchy sound against the plate.

here we go again.

pertinent thought of the day: why's even a microwaved dinner beyond my reach?

p/s this episode took precedence over my kettle incident in the a.m. let's just say overflowing kettle + electric base = kettle death. the current count is kitchen 3 : me 1. it's mutually assured destruction, i kid you not.