Shokugeki no Becky

Yesterday-ish (depending on what side of the international date line you are on), I graduated with my MA in Art Education.  It was pretty anticlimatic.  With covid still being a thing, there was no chance of me making it to the ceremony, and in fact, I couldn't really even go out and celebrate, because Mongolia still shows few signs of getting their cases under control...although restaurants DID reopen yesterday for takeout and delivery, and I'm at least allowed to leave Zaisan, so Engrish and I got together for Indian and beverages and bitchin'.  I thought I'd at least have my name published, but as the grad office had to remind me, I checked the "no publication" option when I applied for graduation - my cyberstalker may be on his best behavior due to his custody trial, but I wouldn't put it past him to act up in the future, so least said, soonest mended.

Homemade salsa

The true upshot of this change in my status is that I no longer have to confine myself to APA format and can use as many four-letter words as I want, which means that it's about time for me to start blogging again.  Yes, I'm going to blame my ongoing delinquency on grad school, which, coupled with a pandemic that never seems to end, robbed me of pretty much all motivation to write "for fun."  It's true that the pandemic is ongoing, but this is probably something that I actually should write about, so I'll pick up where I left off:  Food.  As mentioned WAY BACK in my last post, I have finally learned the fine art of cooking your own damn meals, every damn day (ah, yes...those four-letter words!  How nice they feel!).  This last lockdown was our fourth, and let me tell you, they suck major balls.

Note: Note how I normally stock my fridge.

You may have picked up on this if you're one of my six regular readers, but the kitchen is where the most evidence of my status as a counterfeit grown-up is found.  In a typical year, a close inspection of my refrigerator will reveal coke, a pitcher of lemonade, condiments, and eggs (which may or may not be edible, because even a 6-pack of eggs goes pretty slowly for me).  Typically my freezer has ice and frozen chicken breasts.  Sometimes bread, if I've been on a French toast kick.  It's not that I can't cook...it's more that there's very little reward for cooking food that you're only going to eat by yourself.  I mean, think about it - after doing all the cooking you STILL have to do all the cleaning, and not once during the meal does anyone tell you how tasty it is (unless you talk to yourself.  Which maybe I do).  The reasonably rational side of me thinks that cooking your own food should be healthier and cheaper, but after the last six months, I have very little evidence to back that up.  Although maybe (probably) that's just me.

Newest culinary discovery: Homemade chocolate sauce

However, at the very least, I've unlocked this particular adulting skill.  Although my first week and a half of lockdown I subsisted on a rotation of pasta and red Thai curry, I've gradually opened up all sorts of new worlds of culinary discovery.  My fridge and cupboards are stocked with a variety of ingredients that I can use to make single servings of different things, throwing in a handful of this and a splash of that.  Turns out, there are cheats I never knew about.  I finally figured out that chicken wasn't the only meat I could freeze a single portion into a ziploc baggie, quick and easy to defrost in a can full of hot water.  I've also learned to chop or grate my veggies or cheese, FINALLY reusing those take-out containers I've been collecting the last year and a half to store them in the freezer.

Another cheat: indoor weenie and/or marshmallow roast

My bags of groceries look less and less like an eight year-old turned loose at the checkout with a big wad of birthday cash.  Okay, I'm willing to admit that, more often than not, restocking my coke supply is what forces me to go out shopping, but along the way I've found good meat at our Rosie's, mozzarella cheese at the little shop in Enkhjin apartments, and Korean ingredients at almost all of the shops in Zaisan, ensuring that, at the very least, I can make that spicy marinade that Bronte taught me, back in the day, and - BONUS! - I can make a whole bunch of it at once and freeze that into ready-to-go portions (the smaller, round takeout containers are best for that).

Throw in cabbage and tteok-beokki and it's basically dalkgalbi 

I've also braved the pitfalls of ordering your groceries online.  I wasn't quite convinced about this one...last summer I attempted to make Good Price bring me a flat of Coke, and that didn't work out.  The idea of letting someone else pick out your veggies just seemed like asking for a bag of produce that was about to go off.  Just before the first lockdown ended, though, I got to missing pizza pretty badly.  I dug up my old recipe for flatbread (or the closest recipe I could find), threw some pasta sauce and mozzarella cheese on it, and called myself a culinary genius...but had to admit that it was missing something.

V3: Using homemade alfredo for sauce and with jalapenos added.

Which is crazy, because I actually love cheese pizza, but my own just needed a bit of something more.  Pepperoni is basically non-existent in Mongolia, so I went for the #2 pizza topping, Italian sausage...mainly because I knew Rosewood Market made it AND that they delivered.  

And that's how I ended up down the rabbit hole.  About once a week I make a big list with all sorts of things I could live without, but since I'm already living without human contact, seem a lot more necessary.  Big baked chocolate chip cookies?  Better have two.  Huge jar of tahini?  Much better than making my own!  Avocados that I will forget to use until they have gone bad?  Sounds good to me.  They usually have salsa, but the last couple of times it didn't show up on the website, so I even got all of the ingredients and made salsa myself, which may be the first time in five years I've done so.

Fortunately the lockdowns have usually had some break in-between them, and usually come with some warning before.  This means my cooking has gotten progressively more extravagant.  Rather than just making a bit of taco meat, throwing melting cheese on it and slapping it onto a tortilla with some salsa, I could pick up a can of refried beans, or find a jar of something approximating guacamole (it's not actually guacamole, but unlike those avocados I keep wasting, this crap doesn't go bad)...because I'd have a week or so to prepare.  Not so much THIS time, but some of the others.  That said, if you find yourself in Ulaanbaatar the day before a pandemic lockdown, you're better off not planning to go anywhere if you need a car to get there.  I mean, unless you REALLY like your car and want to spend hours in it not moving.

Lockdown masterpiece: Cheesy baked alfredo tortellini

I guess I should probably end this on some kind of positive note, and talk about how using the recipes that I learned in my friends' kitchens made me feel closer to them in my isolation, or that the recipes I picked up traveling somehow helped me to relive my experiences in other countries while I was grounded...but that's bullshit.  If I weren't fairly introverted by nature, I feel like there's a good chance that I would have done something irreparable a long time ago.  By the time I got to Engrish's yesterday I was pretty much starved for attention - I had verbal diarrhea to go with my potty mouth, and was probably telling the most boring, inane stories of all time.  Lucky for me, she'd had almost as little human contact, so either she didn't notice, or she was willing to live with it.  Maybe a little of both - Engrish is a lot kinder than me.