Day 7: Cooking

Cooking is difficult here.

I can't read any of the labels in the store, I don't know what half my options are, and every single website I read tells me how to cook things with ingredients I can't get. I've been living off plain noodles alright for the past week, sometimes picking up some pre-cooked meat at the supermarket for some variety. But I know I'll soon get tired of that, and I don't want to get fried food whenever I'm feeling bored. It's expensive, it's unhealthy, and it's just a patch to a bigger problem; I need to learn how to cook.

I found this recipie for Gyudon, a sort of beef and rice dish, and it looked simple-ish. I studied up how to chop onions, I went to the store, twice, to pick up ingredients, I calculated reduced values for only making a single serving, but the one thing I couldn't find was how long I should cook the beef for. It seemed that searing beef in a pan was a mystical, long-lost art, at least as far as the internet is concerned. But I had a website that gave approximate times, so I could go with that.

 I started cooking, going painstakingly slow, taking great care not to mess up any step or forget anything. I left out the sake and mirin because, let's face it, that was too expensive for me to be experimenting with. Everything was going pretty well. I managed to mix up my base, and even chop the onion without too much trouble or any cut fingers. I could even feel when the onions were getting tender; confidence was pretty high. I got the beef out and fit it all in my little pan. I cooked it for a while, flipped it over, cooked it some more, flipped it over, and cooked it some more. I cooked and cooked until my base boiled away and the meat burned against the pan. But none of that mattered, because I'd left my watch upstairs, and there was no clock in the kitchen. I had no way of knowing if I'd been cooking the meat for five minutes or fifteen. I cut it open, but I read online that brown beef doesn't mean safe beef. I had a pan full of great-smelling food, my belly was empty, and I had no idea if I could eat it or not.

I had no choice; that panful of delicious meat is sitting at the bottom of a trash can now. In a huff, I ate up my rice. At least then I'd have something to eat while I figured out what else I could have for dinner. I was on the last forkfuls when it hit me: I had more than enough ingredients to try again. Only problem? I'd just eaten the last of my rice.

So, after waiting all day with visions of Gyudon dancing in my head, after getting over my initial fear of something new and actually trying, after more than an hour of cooking and cleaning, I'm sitting by my laptop eating fruit snacks while my dinner's in the garbage. It's petty, getting upset over something like this when I've got enough to eat, but I just wish I could figure this out. Man can live on plain noodles and bread alone, but it makes for a long fifteen weeks.