My attempts at cooking...

As many of you know, I am not a cook by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, I can cook, but I often choose not to cook especially when I am cooking for just myself. In fact, there were many a night when I would just have a Lean Cuisines for dinner. One the other hand, cooking for a group of people and/or entertaining is something that I enjoy doing. I can follow a recipe just fine as long as its not too complicated, but I'm not like my mom who can just create delicious dishes from memory.

Regardless, I have started trying to cook more here in the Phils and am finding myself enjoying it quite a bit. Last week, Ali, Riley, and I made dinner for 16 people. We made pasta with homemade spaghetti sauce, veggies, and salad. This in of itself was quite a feat since we only have two burners and four pots/pans. But, everything came out okay and warm at the same time. It was fun. Last night, Ali and I prepared Ali's famous chicken stir fry with rice - lami kaayo pud (which means "also very delicious" in Cebuano). Ali was in charge of buying the veggies and I was supposed to buy chicken. Sounds simple enough, right... after asking for four chicken breasts, I was handed a bag with chicken breasts. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that there's no such thing as boneless chicken breasts here. So I had to figure out how to de-bone the chicken. I have no idea how you are actually supposed to do it, but I ended up just ripping the chicken meat off the bone with my hands. Seemed to work out just fine. Anyways, after cooking the chicken and sauteing the veggies, Ali added coconut milk and curry powder for flavor. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of this masterpiece (I need to get better at taking pictures of just normal life stuff), but thought I would share anyways. The dish was a big hit with Matt and Francis!

(This is where the magic happens!)