Transient Transplant

I don’t enjoy cooking.

I’m not good at it.  It seems to take forever.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love food.  I live for a wonderful meal.  I just don’t have the patience or skill set to pull it off on my own.

I have a friend who sent me a recipe for fried rice, telling me that it would last me a while and would be worth the effort.

I typically don’t mess with any recipe that contains more than five ingredients or takes a long time to make.  This recipe was the opposite of these qualifications.

I decided on Sunday that I would make the fried rice and have it for meals the rest of the week.

Cooking for one, I tend to try to use the bags of steamed vegetables (and rice as well) so that tends to be my go-to for sides.  It takes five minutes, it’s done and there isn’t a massive amount of leftovers.

My first shock came when I read the back of the bag of brown rice and realized it was going to take not five minutes but about an hour.

I almost gave up then and there.

That’s about all it takes for me to pick up the phone and order take out.

But I persevered.  I poured the rice into the pot, brought it to a boil, and waited.

My friend said it was best to let the rice cool for about an hour.  I sighed and wondered why I had decided to try this when I realized two hours would have passed and the only thing I would have accomplished was cooking rice.  I wouldn’t have touched the 85 other ingredients involved.

I wondered if plain rice would be a sufficient dinner.

I stared in dismay at the pot, filled to the brim with cooked rice and texted my friend to ask if she was sure I shouldn’t double the vegetable amount.

I told her I’d put the five cups in but it seemed like a lot.

She clarified that it was, in fact, five cups of cooked rice, not the uncooked like I had measured out, then seeing that there wasn’t that much left in the bag, dumped the entire thing into the pot.

Good catch on her part.  Crisis averted.

I spread what ended up to be about 15 cups of rice out into the Pyrex casserole dishes that I own, quickly texted my dad to ask if I could freeze rice and reheat it for a later use.

This was absurd, and I was over it.

I let all the rice cool, then went ahead and froze it after I got the thumbs up from my father, who is a great cook (a gene that I most definitely did not inherit).  He tends to be on the receiving end of the “kitchen crisis” phone calls.

I decided I was in too deep to quit now.

I fired up a pot with some cooking oil and started in, frying the eggs, cooking the vegetables (ok, I cheated and put a bag of steamed vegetables in because the thought of cooking/cutting/working on something else was too much).

It was more than five ingredients.  But it ended up being worth it in the end, as it was delicious.

I had a new dish to add to my repertoire of revolving meals, which is always a good thing, considering I have my father make and freeze lasagnas every time he and my mom come to visit Seattle so I know I have a decent meal in my arsenal for an emergency situation.  Like when I’m a lazy bum and don’t have the energy to make a meal (which easily happens about once a week).

And the good news is I already have the rice frozen and ready to zap for next time that I’m ready to make a great meal. Just like I would have if I had bought the 99 cent frozen rice from the store like I normally do.