Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 10

No getting around it: this past week, from last Saturday on, was pretty craptacular.

How bad?  Something happened that has prevented me from driving for the most part, until further notice.  No, not a speeding ticket or anything like that.  I haven't had a ticket in... wow.  Over ten years now.  Not since I racked up those three in less than a month and a half (with two of them in Virginia on consecutive weekends... hey I was eager to see my girlfriend what can I say? :-).

I like... I like... to believe that things are getting better though.  Why do I say that?

My cooking skills leave much to be desired.  It's not that I'm a BAD cook per se, it's more like... well, I'm intimidated by the kitchen.  It all goes back to that Boy Scout Jamboree, and my night to cook for our troop.  I put WAY too much salt into the mashed potatoes.  So much so that it's rumored that the ground where we dumped it at is still too barren for foliage to take root (sort of a mini "Devil's Tramping Ground").

Yes, I've blogged before about some excursions into culinary experimentation.  Recently I wrote about preparing wild boar baby back ribs.   That was pretty easy though: laying the ribs on a foil-lined pan and cooking for two hours.  Very little preparation at all.  I think the most complicated dish that I've documented on this blog has been baking a pecan pie... and I got that recipe from a friend in Belgium.

Ever since then I've been a little scared to make more than a Chef Boyardee pizza.  I won't deny it: my diet has mostly consisted of frozen food, Subway sandwiches and Cocoa-Pebbles.  But with inflation hitting hard and less money to spend on "extravagant" cuisine, I'm having to learn to overcome my fear of the kitchen.

So that brings us to tonight, and what I did for dinner.

I had no idea what to make for dinner, just that I was hungry.  Tammy - my dachshund - was getting hungry too.  No, I didn't want Chicken McNuggets again.  We've had that twice already this past week.

Then I remembered that I had some spaghetti - the kind you find on the pasta aisle of any grocery store - and some sauce and parmesan cheese.  Christmas gifts from a friend who wants me to cook more for myself.  So that's what I endeavored to do.

I knew enough about cooking spaghetti to know that you break the noodles in half before you put them in the water.  And after Googling it I learned that you put the pasta in the water after it's started boiling.  Eleven minutes later the spaghetti had finished cooking.  A heapin' amount of sauce and cheese later and it was all finished.

And, I surprised myself by how good it was!  Making it myself, somehow made it even better.  It was easy-peasy Japan-esy.  And now I have another dinner to add to my (admittedly small) repertoire.

But you want to know what the best part of cooking spaghetti tonight has been?  It's been discovering that Tammy loves it too.  I had no idea that a dog could enjoy pasta, but apparently she does.  So now there is something I can whip up in the kitchen, that she and I can enjoy together.  Much healthier than sharing McNuggets too, no doubt.

So, that's today's post as part of blogging every day for Lent this season.  I have an idea of what tomorrow's post will be.  In fact, I'm about to watch another episode of it now.

More later.

Categories: cooking, lent, lent2022, tammy