It’s been said that the true religion of Japan is neither Buddhism nor Shinto, but is in fact food. Flicking through the channels today, I decided not to watch any programme about food, which left me with very few options: a Go tournament, a samurai drama, and a show with a spinning jenny or something in it. All other programmes were just celebrities doing food things. Eating food… talking about food… comparing food… I did find an interesting programme teaching people about computers though. They even opened one up and showed the CPU, memory and HDD. They explained the difference between memory and the hard drive, and the differences between Windows and Mac quite fairly. I was surprised not to find any misinformation or anything that was unfair or at all biased.
I tried making myself some dinner today. I bought some steak and eggs and chicken nuggets at Feel News (I believe it’s called “Feel” for short) and decided to try some steak and fried eggs. Well I don’t know if it’s my rubbish, ancient frying pan or the gas cooker being weird or if I’m just a very very poor carpenter blaming my tools, but I made a mess of it. The steak seemed done, and I cut it to look in as my mother suggested, and it seemed fine, so I took it out and left it on a plate while I had a go at the second steak. When I looked back at the first one on the plate, it was bleeding. So I put that one back on and tried them both and when I took them off and ate them, they didn’t really taste like steak. In fact, they didn’t really taste at all. So I doused them in salt until they tasted like salt and they were fine then 
The olive oil was shooting everywhere in drops so small I couldn’t see them, but could certainly feel them when they landed on my hands, so I cooked the steak with my leather gloves on. Cooking the steak was a bit gross. I spent some time with my friend Nicholas today and he told me that he’s a vegetarian. I love my meat, but looking at the steak sizzling away, it was really obvious that it’s part of something that’s not so different to me, and that’s what would happen to me if I were put in there and that would really hurt. Anyway, chicken nuggets aren’t as likely to give me a guilt-trip as they’re so over-processed it’s not obvious what part of what animal they came from.
Next, the eggs. I figured it would be a nice way of knowing if I had the temperature right for the steak, as eggs are a bit quicker to respond to the heat, and it turns out I had it right. I know this, because I put the egg on with the temperature a bit higher than I had it for the steak and it immediately turned brown underneath, with a puddle of egg-white (or “albumen” if you will, which is such a silly-sounding name for something which you wouldn’t expect to have such a silly-sounding name) on the top. I put the temperature back down and that egg-white still didn’t go away. Gave it a flip and ate it in the end and it was alright, but let’s just say the yolk went everywhere and the egg which I had intended to go from plate to mouth ended up on my face (zing!).
Orientation is tomorrow and I believe that Yamasa provides some food. I’ll check this out at orientation to keep my face egg-free.
Also, if anyone has any simple recipes, comment please!
That Steak story is hilarious! Leather gloves even!
Have some interesting baking recipes. Chocolate cake anyone?!
Not food, but I see Havok won an Emmy NM
No, you don’t want to end up with egg on your face.
Hey Daniel. Great to hear of your exploits and a belated happy birthday.
I’m trying to experiment with food at the moment in college. Last year, somehow, I ended up agreeing to make dinner for both James and Hazel and you know how critical they are. I forgot that I had agreed to it until an hour before hand which gave me very little time.
Anyway, here’s what I made.
Ingredients: *Pasta shells *Salt *Ragu Traditional Sauce *Grated Cheese (Cheddar and Mozerella) or you can grate it yourself if you have the time. *Mince Meat
To buy myself some extra time I bought garlic pizza breads from Domino’s as starters and passed them off as my own cooking. Don’t tell them though. I don’t think they noticed.
*Cook meat on a pan over the oven turning it over. It’s okay if there’s little bits of pink left over. *During this, have your shells sizzling in a saucepan of water and stir them every so often with your pinch of salt. Not sure how you like yours so taste it when you think they’re ready. *The ragu sauce should be sizzling in a saucepan too. When ready – about 10 minutes I think, mix the meat and the sauce in the “sauce-pan”. Get it? Sauce-pan? *Then you get a large yoke. You put your shells in first, then your meat sauce and then your grated cheese. *Put it in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes and voila, you’ll have what James called “a new world of shepherd’s pie” and what Hazel called “pasta bake”.
Hope that helps, Daniel. Best of luck in your endeavours.
If you or anyone reading this has any cool recipes (especially for meals without red meat and cheese – my new roommate doesn’t like them) please leave a comment here or on my own blog at kevinreale.blogspot.com
Isn’t that 4 sauce-pans?
heh, yes Daniel. You’ll figure out some more meals soon enough. Or make friends with lots of girls, if they’re anything like your friends here they’ll have no problem cooking for you