23 May 2015

How to Breakfast

Also known as, "The next time someone says that cooking simple things is always so easy, please smack them for me."

So husband and I wanted sandwiches. Easy enough. He'd just gone shopping yesterday (keep the date in mind, eh?) and picked up tomatoes, cilantro, and onions. Lovely. I figured we can nip into the kitchen, maybe fry up a spot of tofu, slice up the tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, and throw on a squeeze of lemon or something to perk it up a bit.

Just after I finish reading this bit in a book I'm in the middle of. Also, we're both tired, and didn't want to get up. A half hour later, we both mustered up the motivation to move. Out came the tomatoes, out came the onion, out came the tofus, and so on. Once the veg were sliced up all nice and thin, I got the pan ready for frying the tofu. Husband reminded me of the cilantro. "Yeah, good idea. Can you grab some for me, please?" He did. And there was half the bag of the stuff completely wilted looking.

"Steve, why's this cilantro wilted?"

"What the heck. I just bought it yesterday!"

"Just wash it up. We'll make dhania chatni."

He does so. And the stove smokes all over the place. Apparently, a thing dropped onto the pan underneath the coils (yes, we live with electric stove right now) and started smoking. On went the exhaust fan. It doesn't exhaust much, except for the cook, because it sounds loud and annoying, while not really sucking up all that much air. Sigh. Steve went to go get the blender, and the other stuff for the cilantro chatni.

I was babysitting the tofu, so it doesn't burn.

It didn't burn. But the smoke alarm had to say its piece anyhow. At 8:00 in the morning. While the rest of the floor is sleeping. I grabbed a long handled broom, and shut it off (the smoke alarm, not the stove). By the time I got back to the stove, the tofu had finished the cycle where it was releasing from the pan easily, and hooked back around to sticking. I scraped it off, and managed to flip it in one piece. Good gods, I hate low fat cooking so much. If I'd had enough foresight to dump in a 1/4 inch of oil, this wouldn't be an issue.

Steve got back with the stuff to make the chatni. He made it. It was amazing tasting. The tofu was finally done. All this took the better part of 40 minutes. FORTY MINUTES. It really shouldn't take this long to run into the kitchen, fry a couple of pieces of tofu, and slap it between two slices of bread with some veg.

It's now going on ten in the morning, and nothing's really gotten done, except a giant pile of dishes, the making of the cilantro chatni for later.

Those were some mighty fine sandwiches though.