College Cooking with Kristen

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, which means food is on my mind.  Ok so food is always on my mind, but you get the idea.

Cooking in college can be rough.  Most of us are cooking noobs, and don't have the time nor the money to make anything very fancy.  Because of this, I thought I would be a saint and share my favorite meals with you.  They are fast, easy, and cheap.  You can thank me later. 

Canned Soup
Ingredients:  Canned soup.
Instructions:  Dump soup in bowl.  Microwave.

Boiled Potatoes
Ingredients: Potato, salt
Instructions:  Boil water, add salt.  Cut potato, cook in boiling water up to 15 minutes.

Toast
Ingredients: Bread
Instructions: Place bread in toaster, and heat.  Add butter, jam, honey, peanut butter, cinnamon sugar, etc.

I may have had two pieces of toast while I wrote this blog...

Tuna Fish and Rice
Ingredients:  Rice, canned tuna, soy sauce, sweet relish, garlic powder
Instructions:  Cook rice, and boil water.  Place rice in bowl and add said ingredients and add hot water.

Egg and Rice
Ingredients:  Egg, rice, soy sauce
Instructions:  Crack egg over freshly cooked rice, add soy sauce.  Stir.

Before you get all Caucasian on me, the rice is hot and cooks the egg.  Sheesh, calm down.

Chili and Rice
Ingredients: Hormel chili, rice
Instructions: Cook rice, stir in canned chili

This picture doesn't do it justice.

Squash
Ingredients: Acorn Squash
Instructions:  Preheat oven at 375.  Cut squash in half and place in one inch of water rind up.  Bake for 45 minutes.

Proof that college students can be healthy AND cheap AND lazy.

Spam and Eggs
Ingredients: Spam and eggs.
Instructions:  Fry spam, scramble eggs.

This was dinner today.

Spam and Rice
Ingredients:  Spam and rice
Instructions:  Cook rice, fry spam.

 

Grilled Cheese
Ingredients: Bread and cheese.  Meat, egg, mustard, and spinach optional.
Instructions:  Grill the sandwich.

If you want your sandwich to seem fancier, just GRILL it.

Grilled PB&J
Ingredients: Bread, peanut butter and jelly/jam
Instructions:  Grill it dumby.

Seriously.  You can grill ANY type of sandwich.

See how witty I was with that?  None of those meals were real recipes and they didn't require more than three ingredients...Ok, so it's not that funny.

But the truth is, I haven't made a real meal yet.  All that stuff above is what I really eat, and that's the fanciest it gets. I refuse to buy ramen, and I'm not living off of cereal, but I'm not eating anything that my mom would make for dinner either.  You may think I eat like this because I'm a poor starving college student, but that's not exactly the case. 

Like this Uber Frosh, I may blame my crappy meals on being poor, but I'm pretty lucky because my parents give me grocery money.  The real, less cool reason I don't cook anything is I'm just too dang LAZY.  I hate cooking, and I get home from work at 7:30 every night.  The last thing I want to do is cook and wait another hour till I can eat. 

And that's why most of my meals consist of rice, eggs, or meat from a can. 

Toast and Avatar saved my life.

I just finished the worst three weeks ever.  Ok, they weren't the worst ever, but they still sucked.  School just has a way of causing an unhealthy amount of stress in my life and I don't always appreciate it.  But I'm not going to explain all the crappy things I've had to deal with for the past few weeks.  You don't care, and I don't want to think about it anymore. 

The important thing is I survived, and there are three things I have to thank for that.

1) The knowledge that Thanksgiving break was around the corner.
  That's really all I have to say about that.
2) Avatar.
 Not the blue kind, the avatar with an arrow on his head.  I'm currently halfway through the third season.  It's SO GOOD.  My roommates and I were trying to decide which bending skills we would pick if we had the option.  Meghan said fire, Aubrey said water, and I said air.  But I'm still not sure; they're all so awesome.  

Yes, I did draw this.  I was willing to do anything besides my paper.

3) Toast.
We bought a toaster a couple weeks ago and it's basically the best thing ever.  We have been eating A LOT of toast.  I've had four pieces in one day.  Twice.

Toast with butter and honey.

Toast with cinnamon sugar.

Toast with peanut butter and honey.

Toast with butter and jam.

  

There are so many delicious options when it comes to toast.  Consuming just one piece is out of the question.

Bye.  I think I'm gonna go make some toast now.

HALLOWEEN

Yeah, yeah, I know Halloween has gone and passed, but I've been kind of busy, so I can't ALWAYS be on top of it and current with these posts.

Yes, I do realize how defensive I sound in the last sentence.  And no, I don't know why I'm responding to comments that I made up in my head.

Halloween.  (That's the scariest font I could find. Blogger has a very limited selection).

Halloween is an awesome holiday that makes absolutely no sense.  While Mexico celebrates Day of the Dead to remember their past family and friends, the U.S. celebrates Halloween. It's a pretty sacred holiday for us.  That's why we dress up in costumes that vary from princesses to bananas, go door to door of perfect strangers, threaten them with tricks if they don't give us candy, and then go home and eat all of it.

Like I said, Halloween is awesome.

I always loved Trick or Treating.  What kind of kid doesn't?  You get to dress up in a costume and collect pounds and pounds of free candy.  I remember the first Halloween I got to trick or treat with only my friends and WITHOUT my parents.  That's when I got serious about trick or treating.  We found the best route, ran to every house, and cut through yards.  Anyone who couldn't keep up got left behind.  Luckily, I had lots of skinny friends.  We would collect so much candy that we'd have to drop it off at home halfway through because our pillow cases would get too heavy.

Professional trick or treaters.  I didn't get the memo to dress like a barbie.

I used to get enough candy to last me the year.  Of course it was all the gross candy I didn't want.  Who the heck wants to eat a gummy eye ball?  Chances are it was made in China and has lead in it.  Speaking of candy, have you seen this video yet? 

I really loved dressing up in Halloween costumes.  But somehow people always assumed that I was a boy.  One year I dressed like a scarecrow.  Hey, I looked adorable.  Anyway, an old lady kept saying I was such a cute farm boy.  I was so mad.  Yes, I was wearing a plaid shirt and overalls, but my face was also painted like a scarecrow.  FARM BOYS DON'T WEAR FACE PAINT!  A different year I dressed like a soccer player.  Only I added an afro, buck teeth, and over-sized ears to the costume.  People kept on calling me a boy.  I've also dressed like an elephant, dinosaur, and a fish.  I'm starting to see a theme here...

That's Lily, but I wore it too.

Halloween is just innocent fun when you're a kid.  And then those kids grow up and go to college.  And then they corrupt Halloween. 

Halloween is no longer about dressing up to get candy, it's about dressing up to get laid.  At least that's what I assume when I see all the pictures of girls dressed up like sluts.  Oh sorry, I meant sexy bunnies and nurses.  So if your costume was "sexy" and you posted pictures on facebook, chances are I looked at them and laughed at you.  And that's the honest truth.

But I'm not gonna hate on you if you decided to dress a little slutty for one night of the year.  I get it.  The thing that makes me mad is when mormon girls go to mormon parties dressed like skanks.  THAT makes me mad.  It makes everyone else around them uncomfortable, and it lets every guy around them know that they're ready for a NCMO.  (If you're not familiar with BYU lingo, that's short for non-committal make out).

Moving on...now I will post some pictures of my never ending Halloween weekend.  Pictures that prove I was social.  THREE nights in a row.

Thursday night I went salsa dancing with Jenai and Ashley.  I was a raccoon. 

 Friday night we hit up the Asian Ward dance and then went to the dance party at Alpine Village.  If you were wondering, that's where all the skanks were.

I wasn't a very good mime.  I still talked a lot.

 Saturday night I dressed like a chola for our ward party.  I was a chola last year too, but the only piece of clothing I repeated was the bandana.  I'm proud of that fact.

This year.

Last year.

It just bugs me when I go to Party Station and the only women's costumes are some form of lingerie.  So please don't hate me if I offended you; maybe I just hate the girls in sexy costumes because I'm jealous.
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Nope.  That's a lie.