A Note About the Paucity of Pictures

(don’t you just love alliterative titles? I do).

Someday, I promise, I will have pictures to go along with all the text and recipes. That day will be when I either find my camera charger cord or cave and go buy a new one. Hopefully one of these things will happen soon, because if you are like me, you can only read so much without a picture. After all, this isn’t, like, college (not that I did my reading anyway, really (sorry parents (but it’s ok because I just used the word “paucity,” right?))).

So, pictures: coming soon to a blog near you. Namely, this one.

What I Made Last Night

So, I was wondering what the first actual recipe I should put on here should be — should it be something fancy, to show off my mad skillz? Should it be something outrageously delicious, that gets you all hooked and convinced that I am a culinary goddess? Should it be vegan, sustainable, organic, gluten-free, blah blah buzzword etc. etc.  so I can show how hip and healthy I am?

Nope. Because, if you are actually not a real cook yet, none of those things would be remotely helpful.

So, what’s easy, breezy, cheesy (a day without cheese is a day wasted, in my opinion), and will appease-y (SORRY I HAD TO) your hunger? CHILI. Yep, chili. Not glamorous, but it will fill you up AND leave you with some bangin’ leftovers, which will, in fact, get better every day (the savvy post-grad gourmand knows that he/she will not actually want to cook every night, and so anything with copious amounts of leftovers that keep for a while is extra awesome).

Chili is REALLY EASY to make. You can get pre-made chili spice mixes at the grocery store that are actually pretty good. Last night, that’s what I used, because I was too lazy to measure out the chili powder, cumin, etc. (I used Old El Paso, the only kind available at my grocery store). The only real concern with these is that the sodium content is pretty high, so what I like to do is add more stuff than the packet recipes call for — it will give you heartier chili with more servings and less sodium.

So, here’s the recipe I used last night:

brown ground beef (or turkey, if you prefer) in a skillet; I used around 1.5 lbs. (browning it means cooking it over medium heat until it’s, well, brown. If you’re using beef, you don’t need to heat any oil — it has quite enough delicious fat already in it)

dice 1 medium yellow/white onion; cook with meat (because onion makes everything more delicious)

drain meat and onions (you don’t want to eat that grease — ew) and put into a bigass pot

add 1 jar (around 15oz) salsa, 2 15-oz cans of beans — kidney, red, habichuelas rosadas pequeñas (in my case), whatever your bean preference, and, for some extra crunch, 8 oz frozen corn, along with the spice mix and 2 cups water. I also threw in a whole bunch of crushed red pepper because I like my chili spicy.

Stir, and bring ingredients to a boil.

Simmer on low heat for as long as you can wait until your hunger consumes you — the longer you let it cook, the more the flavors will seep together to create deliciousness (which is why it will be even better tomorrow). You might also want to add some more water if you prefer more broth in your chili.

Serve with sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese, jalapeño-cheddar cornbread*, and salad (If, you know, you’re committed to vegetables. I have to admit that I didn’t have any last night. The PGG girl is nothing if not honest).

ENJOY. Tonight, tomorrow night, and for lunch every day for as many days as it takes until it’s gone. Or! Freeze the leftovers after they’ve cooled, and then one night in two months when you look in the fridge and cringe at that one wilted head of lettuce and wonder if you can make some sort of pasta sauce by combining all your condiments, you will remember that you have a pre-cooked meal buried somewhere in your freezer! Huzzah!

* jalapeño cornbread:

buy some cornbread mix (jiffy is, in my opinion, the best, which is quite possibly because I have never seen any other kind)

prepare as directed

add 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (more/less depending upon your cheese preference)

and 1 jalapeño, diced (note: if you don’t want a bit of a kick in this bread, remove the seeds of the pepper — that’s where most of the spice is. But you could also just man up and include the seeds.)

I HIGHLY recommend baking this bread in the form of mini-muffins (0bviously, only if you happen to have a mini-muffin tin — I still don’t quite understand why I myself have one), because

a) miniature things are awesome

and

b) this bread is like crack, and it’s better to have fun-sized pieces so you feel like you ate more (case in point: last night, my boyfriend had 14 mini-muffins)

serve warm!

The Rules

So, in order to full immerse yourself in the PGG experience (what is that, exactly? I don’t know yet either! Isn’t that exciting?), you will have to follow some simple rules, because I feel like rules are important.

Rule #1: Thou shalt be willing to get thy hands dirty.

How, pray tell, can you prepare meatballs, or tenderize chicken, or even crack an egg, if you are afraid of germs? Yeah yeah, salmonella’s bad…but you’re not going to get very far culinarily (is that a word?) if you’re loath to get some yucky stuff on your hands.

Rule #2: Thou shalt clean things properly.

Yeah, so, if you’re going to get dirty, you also have to clean…like, with hot water. Scalding is preferable. As is dishwashing soap. You might have a dishwasher — if so, congrats! and, you must not live in NYC — but there are still some dishes you have to do that won’t fit in it. DON’T LET THEM GET ALL CRUSTY AND CAKED. EW. DO WASH THINGS FAIRLY QUICKLY AFTER USING THEM. Or, you know, get someone else to do it, like I do (my boyfriend, who, as I mentioned, is a totally incompetent cook, is an excellent dishwasher).

Rule #3: Thou shalt have a cutting board just for garlic.

Ok, so this isn’t really a rule so much as a vehement suggestion. You really only need two cutting boards: one on which you use garlic, one on which you don’t. Label them, buy different-colored ones, do whatever you need to do to tell them apart. Trust me: nothing is grosser than garlicky fruit salad.

Rule #4: Thou shalt be willing to experiment.

Don’t like blue cheese? Try a recipe with it anyway. Don’t like sweet and salty together? You should really go eat a chocolate-dipped pretzel and get with the program. Don’t like mushrooms? I don’t either. In fact, I really hate them. BUT I have still been known to cook with them once in a while.

The point is, we tend to have pre-formed ideas of what we like and what we don’t based on our preferences as kids. Our taste buds change over time and our palates becomes more sophisticated (which, as far as I know, is actually because our taste buds are slowly dying so things don’t taste as strong, which is kind of depressing). So, try new things — now that you are old and decrepit, you might be surprised by what you like.

Rule #5: When looking at recipes online, thou shalt read the comments.

The comments help SO MUCH — you can get some great ideas about altering the given recipe and making it better. I find that real people’s responses are almost always more helpful than the recipe itself, because these people have tried the recipes out for themselves in real life. Please also comment on the recipes I post with your own findings — everyone’s tastes are different, and learning to alter recipes according to your own tastes is a big step. This brings me to the final rule:

Rule #6: Thou shalt not forget that I am not an expert.

I am a regular person. I have no training. I don’t, in fact, particularly know what I am doing. My word is not law, despite the fact that for some reason I seem to have written these rules as commandments, which is somewhat misleading and also a little odd, but let’s not go there.

I tend to not do things exactly (I shall, however, attempt to measure things for the sake of clarity in recipes). I am messy. I cannot work miracles. Sometimes I get carried away by thinking I am witty and just become annoying. Please remember these things when reading this blog, and offer constructive comments whenever you want. I want this to be a helpful, fun forum full of healthy, hearty culinary discourse. Or whatever.

Ok, that’s all the rules I can think of for now. Shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Hello world!

Welcome to The Post-Grad Gourmet!

Here, you will find recipes, cooking and shopping tips, nutrition information and discussion, and general musings and ramblings by me, the Post-Grad Gourmet Girl (PG^3? Acronym to come). Unfortunately, in the beginning, it’s likely to be more of the latter, as I get this thing off the ground.

What’s the point of this, you ask? Well, there comes a time in every person’s life when he or she must begin a new life, one of independence and self-sufficiency. As I myself have learned in the year and a half since graduating, this is rather harder than it sounds (they really should offer “How to Be a Grownup” classes in college, no?). Some of us (not me) are more successful at this whole adult thing than others, but whether you’re a management consultant, a starving hipster artist one unpaid internship away from being legitimately funemployed, a college student who just moved off-campus and no longer has a meal plan and is suddenly missing the salad bar, or a 36-year-old who just moved (er, got kicked out) of Mom’s house, you all have one thing in common: you need to learn how to cook.

Why? Because it’s way cheaper than eating out all the time (ok, maybe the consultants don’t have to learn), and when your mom calls and asks if you’ve figured your life out, found your soulmate, gotten a full-time job, and are taking care of yourself, you can at least say YES! to that last one, which will hopefully placate her and make her leave you alone until the rest of the stuff is figured out. Plus, frankly, you’re getting too old for ramen twice a day. My goal is to help make the whole taking care of yourself thing easier, particularly when it comes to food.

I like to cook, but I recognize that not everyone does (my boyfriend, for example, freezes up and gets legitimately miserable when asked to, say, boil water, and still has to ask me “how long?” every time he microwaves something. He’s 25). I shall thus try to make this blog helpful to those of you who don’t and those who do. I will try out recipes so that you don’t have to; I will learn what all that weird food terminology is and translate it for you; I will venture into various grocery stores and give you the scoop; I will make sure all of what I suggest is viable in a tiny little kitchen like mine. Basically, my philosophy is, if I can do it, you can.

So welcome, post-grad gourmands! The journey begins.