stand back bitches, I am learning to cook!

I've been downloading recipes for a few weeks so today thought "you should maybe cook one of them since you're destroying the planet printing them out".

I found 4 recipes to make this week: chickpea soup with roasted garlic, some quinoa snacks I was advised not to make because quinoa is disgusting, quinoa pancakes (see previous item), and flank steak chili that boosts immunity because of the spices and shit in it.

I went to safeway and found everything all by myself. I also set a record because I went down 7 aisles (I usually only go down the aisle that has coke, and that's only if they don't have a coke display set up when you first walk into safeway, which is most of the time).

When I was checking out I went to Ms. Catherine because I like her the best. She took one look at my groceries and said "baby girl, what are you up to?" The first time I met Ms. Catherine she said "oh, are you having a party baby girl?" and I was like "um, no, those are my usual groceries".

most impressive grocery list EVER - btw, skipped the vegetable oil and used olive oil - vegetable oil just sounded like an oxymoron - what vegetable has oil in it????

I explained to Ms. Catherine that I'm learning to cook, mentioning specifically quinoa, and after she stopped laughing she said she thought I would do okay, but then sent the girl who was bagging my groceries to get me a box of chips ahoy (they were on huge sale). She said "if your dinner doesn't turn out Ms. Catherine gives you permission to have cookies for dinner". She's better than the pope.

So as part of the recipe I had to "pan sear" a flank steak. I had no idea what that meant. I looked it up online and it turns out the directions were perfect. Then I was heating my cast iron skillet and realized I had no idea how to tell when it was hot enough to do some searing. I called my mom (she helped with that part, just to be honest that I didn't totally do the recipe by myself - also, she gave me a totally cool tip: grate up a lemon and freeze it, then added it to shit you cooked after you cook it because it tastes good - also she translated quarts to ounces for me because I couldn't leave my chili by itself to go look that up on the internet).

I had to cut up the flank steak into little pieces. That was kind of gross.

it looks like I killed someone and then chopped them up on my cutting board - GROSS!

Then at some point I had to add a bunch of liquid stuff, beef stock, tomato sauce, blah blah. I still had two cans of stuff left and was like "FUCK!" because the pot I was cooking in was too small. I managed to transfer it to a bigger pot but then accidentally ran one of my pot holders down the garbage disposal (lesson learned about cleaning as I cook).

too fucking small, and pot holder accidentally fell into the other sink which is how it ended up in the garbage disposal

I started getting a little cocky after tasting my chili, and realizing it was actually edible, so I added some other stuff (sriracha sauce, green tabasco sauce, an entire can of diced green chilies, extra garlic) and it tasted even better. To me, at least. Of course it's simmering now. Could go downhill any moment because I always forget to check on it and make sure it isn't burning and shit.

Spices! Sriracha sauce! Wine! It's almost like I know what I'm doing!

Tomorrow I make the quinoa snacks and pancakes. Wednesday I make the chickpea soup.

Then, on to CHOPPED!

I'm KIDDING, of course.

BTW, got a viscosity injection in my knee (they gave me three times the normal dose because I'm special) and am not really supposed to be standing around cooking and stuff. But my knee feels fine. And I wanted to give a huge shout out to Dr. Koenig at Kaiser. Best. Knee. Doctor. Ever. She's going to get my zombie knee back in line so I don't have to have another surgery. And she's going to get me a TENS for free. If it reduces the pain even by a small percentage I will be VERY happy. And maybe bring her quinoa snacks.

Kidding again.