prefix menu for the week

the past sunday i made myself a big bowl of salad, and a pint of strawberry and granola yogurt. i portioned them into 6 ziploc bags and 4 boxes respectively. the idea was to have 1 box of yohurt as breakfast and 1 ziploc bag of salad as lunch/dinner for this week. it's friday and i have finished 3.5 boxes and 2 ziploc bags.

apparently variety is the next thing i should work on. nevertheless it's already a big step for taking better care of myself when i am at cambridge, considering i've been only eating vending machine junk, with occasional canned whole kennel sweet corn from the convenience store on kirkland.

pasta dinner

i think i am done with cooking for this trip. making pasta fresh from semolina for eight people in someone else's kitchen wore me out. it doesn't help to have guys who do nothing but stand around criticizing. anyways, the dinner still turns out OK. here's what we had:

mango salsa farfalle
penne baked in tomato sauce topped with crispy eggplant
fettucine with pancetta butter
angel hair with "coral shrimps" in creamy garlic sauce

what i've learnt and come up with though, is the following set of rules when cooking for friends and family. it's by no means comprehensive.

Rule #1. do not let anyone who does not know anything about cooking into the kitchen! the kitchen is a sacred place reserved for those who appreciate culinary arts only. nothing is more frustrating than having people who know nothing telling what you should be doing.

Rule #2. avoid cooking in someone elses' kitchen - you don't know where the ingredients and utensils are. it's only going to cause frustration.

Rule #3. specify the food/drinks you want the guests to bring over to avoid surprises. chinese take-out and hand-made italian pasta don't really match.

Rule #4. don't let the guests come before you are almost ready. you want to be entertaining your guests too and not just stuck in the kitchen!

666

fang and i invented a salad with three fiddlehead ferns, each of which looks like the number 6. along with sauteed wild mushrooms with garlic and cherry smoked elk ribs from the ferry plaza, and a chambertin, dinner was wonderful.

it's unfortunate that i forgot my camera. lo-res pics are on my bb, but i haven't figured out a way to export them yet!