April 21, 2006

A quickly prepared meal (that was anything but). My vacation is rapidly coming to a close. Today I did not do anything that I planned to do. After watching several hours of television (mostly court programs), I went to a photo copy center to make a few copies. I had a week and a half to do my planning, but once again, I’ve let procrastination get the better of me. I now have Saturday and Sunday to do my lesson plans for next week.

After making my copies, I went food shopping. I bought about 4 or 5 bags of groceries. I wanted to buy enough to last most of the month. Also, since my macaroni & cheese was so well received, I decided to make macaroni salad. My plan was to bake some chicken, and while the chicken was baking, I would divide up the various meats I bought and put them into single servings bags. Once frozen, I only need to defrost the single servings to cook (single servings meaning enough to last me for a couple of days). It is cheaper to buy meat in bulk (or family size), and divide it into smaller portions. By the time I finished dividing up the meat; I could then cook the rice, and make the macaroni salad, all this while the chicken was baking (anyway, that was the plan).

So, is there a point to this rambling?

The chicken was baking, the rice was making, and everything was going according to plan (that is, until my neighbor came into the kitchen). My neighbor (the screamer) came into the kitchen while I was cooking. I told her that I would be finished in a half an hour (30 minutes). She said, “oh, no rush”. But then, she starts preparing lasagna. Originally, she said that she only needed one pot to boil the pasta. I let her get the pot, but before I knew it, she was in full cooking mode. I purposefully stood and watch her hoping she would get the message. After about 10 minutes (of me , she said something to the affect of “oh, I didn’t know you were waiting for me. You should have said something”.

Although the conversation was very nice, I would have preferred to have the kitchen all to myself. I could have finished in 30 minutes. Unfortunately, sharing the kitchen added another 2 hours to the time I was planning to spend in the kitchen.

I attached a photo of my finished product. For dinner, I made bake chicken, yellow rice, macaroni salad, and kale. The orange drink in the photo is Tang. After I post this blog entry, I will go into the kitchen to wash my dishes.

My computer is acting up. I was not able to upload the photo. I will try again at another time.