No More Ketchup

So there I was.  Standing in the staff break room today, a week into my third year of teaching.  Warming up instant oatmeal.  Instant.  Oatmeal.  Behind me, two other teachers sat in front of full Mexican meals they had packed for lunch.  As my stomach was growling how pissed off it was that summer is over, I realized that teaching is just too hard to do on a stomach full of a half a cup of oatmeal.  I'm going to have to become an adult if I want to teach the children.

In my first attempt to force myself into cooking, I decided a week ago not to buy any microwaveable meals (my old lunch/dinner staple).  Instead, I rolled my cart up and down the aisles picking up everything that looked good to me.  You know what I had for dinner last night?  I had Thai peanut sauce marinade on boiled Orzo with some tofu in it.  I have adopted a seven-year-old's approach to cooking: this tastes good, and so does this, I'll put it in a bowl and watch some TV.  What I ate last night for dinner tasted about as good as the ketchup sandwiches I used to make myself every day after school. 

And it's not for lack of good influences that I've ended up like this.  My mom and grandma are INCREDIBLE cooks.  My grandma cooked the best school lunch in the state of South Dakota for decades.  And my mom is even better than her, and thankfully less obsessed with leftovers.  My roommate makes truly delicious vegetarian food, which I previously considered impossible.  My friends Chelsea and Edwin made gnocchi (I don't even really know what that is) from scratch while writing their own cooking blog.  The only reason I even tried out tofu is because my friend Kieley made vegetarian stir fry last week. 

Today marks my admission into the club of Adults Who Know How to Fend for Themselves.  Every Sunday, I'm going to make myself meals for the week and post the results on this blog.  I'll write about my successes, and also admit to my ketchup sandwich failures... should there be any.  So there it is.  Good luck to me.