Eating well with the stuff on hand

About once a week I feel the need to eat a "real" meal with veggies, some kind of carbohydrate, and some form of animal protein-- and not from a frozen box I pull out of the freezer. Now, I am an abysmal cook, mainly because I just don't care about food that much apart from its qualities as fuel and the substance that prevents that unpleasant "hungry" sensation. Another contributing factor to my lack of culinary development is that I have very, very few ingredients on hand and I don't like buying "food" like, say, brown sugar, which isn't really food unless it's combined with something else. I also hate experimenting with food; I always have this terrified feeling that my concoction will blow up in my face like one of Neville's projects in Snape's potions class. Basically... I'm lazy and like to eat 10 minutes after I get home.

But once a week, usually around the weekend, I feel like doing something more than boiling a package of ramen or a box of frozen pirogies.

Tonight was one of those nights. After working six days straight (and it was that week fresh back from vacation, too), I was in need of some serious nourishment, and more than that, I needed to unwind.

So, on the way home, I stopped at the state store and picked up a bottle of my favorite wine. Not only is Sutter Home's White Zinfandel absolutely delicious to my undiscriminating palate (I like sweet, light wines), it also set me back a whole $6.35 with tax for the bottle I'm about to polish off. Everybody needs to have a go-to bottle of booze that that isn't going to wipe out their whole checking account but that they can confidently take as a hostess gift or just grab for themselves after a long day at work. This is mine.

After 3/4 of a glass while kicking off my shoes and greeting the cat, I started on dinner. I thawed out an individually-frozen chicken breast in the microwave and roasted it, using my fresh herbs and the instructions from Sarah McColl's fabulous vlog. She roasts a whole chicken, but my chicken breast came out after about 20 minutes looking cooked all the way through, and I'm not showing any signs of food poisoning yet (maybe all of the alcohol in the wine fried the salmonella bacteria). Add some nuked frozen veggies and some leftover pasta from a quickie dinner earlier this week, and I had a feed-a-guest worthy dinner to enjoy with my Harry Potter movie.

Alas, however, after my delicious dinner, I craved dessert-- preferably a chocolatey, cakey dessert. I'm pretty much out of ice cream, finished my Oreos two days ago, have no cake mix, and it's the end of the month, so I'm pretty much tapped out until my paycheck on Tuesday and am trying to economize. Not to mention a trip to the store was probably out of the question with so much wine in my system.

This is the type of occasion for which everybody needs to have a wide variety of cookbooks on hand. My favorite cookbook for desserts, Clarion County Historical Society Cookbook (available here, I think) was given to me by a former boss. I'm sure it's good for real food, too, but the dessert selection is absolutely fabulous. I also love it because the recipes are published just a they were pulled out of Aunt Amy's kitchen drawer. A lot of these recipes are obviously leftover from the world wars-- i.e., "Eggless, Milkless, Butterless Cake" (page 84), and therefore perfect for people with a limited range of ingredients. Betty Crocker thinks that I have a spacious kitchen with an island cart in the middle, a six-speed bowl mixer, a blender, a double boiler, and five different types of flour. The Clarion County Historical Society hopes that I have some sugar and a bowl somewhere.

Much to my happy surprise, I found exactly what I needed on page 115, right above my lucky microwave fudge: "Microwave Brownies." I didn't have any chocolate chips, so I'd despaired of brownies or fudge, but I found this, and I did have some cocoa. I had to microwave it a couple of extra minutes, but it turned out great and went fabulously with the wine. :) Perfect summer or efficiency-kitchen dessert, too-- no oven necessary:

1/2 c. butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/3 c. cocoa
3/4 c. flour
2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. nuts, chopped (I don't like nuts much and therefore didn't have any, so I skipped those)

Place butter in baking dish; microwave on high for 1 minute or until melted. Pour butter into a batter bowl, add sugar, eggs, cocoa. Mix well; then add flour, vanilla and nuts. Pour batter into buttered dish. Cover with a paper towel and microwave on high 5 to 7 minutes or till toothpick (I used a knife) inserted in the center comes out clean (I gave up after 9 minutes; I like gooey brownies). Rotate the dish after 3 minutes for more even cooking (my microwave has a turntable, saving me the trouble). Use a 9" pan (mine was 8" and worked fine).

There was a frosting, too, which I didn't make, partially because I prefer unfrosted brownies, partially 'cuz I just wanted to eat my brownies, already, and partially because I don't have any powdered sugar. But here are the instructions in case you want to try it:

3 T. butter
2 T. cocoa
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
2 T. milk
1 tsp. vanilla

For the easy milk chocolate frosting melt the butter; stir in cocoa til dissolved. Add powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Stir til smooth. Spread over cooled brownies.

So, the moral of the story is: find cheap booze you like, always have frozen chicken on hand, and find an old-fashioned cookbook, because they are totally the best.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some wine left and I really want to continue my Harry Potter marathon.