La Cucina Italiana...Roni Style.

I thought I looked like a pretty classy cook, so I took a picture of what has become my typical fare: a handful of some cheap pasta (I get a 500 gram bag for 37 cents) and some red onion, garlic, and basil (fresh basil in this pic...I stole some off of Angela's basil plant on the terazza. Oh, no. I'm the moochy roommmate) sauteed over olive oil and then mixed with some tomato sauce and spiced up with a little pepperoncino. Sounds tasty, and it is incredibly cheap to make. But after months of this entree, pasta in tomato sauce has become almost as unappetizing as mushrooms smothered in bleu cheese dressing (that is about the grossest sounding thing I can personally think of). So, I've been venturing beyond.
Tonight, I made a little stir fry thing! Mmmm, looking at this picure makes me want to whip-up another helping.

Just for the world's information: I can cook rice! I remember hearing my Aunt Cindy lamenting the sad state of domesticity by complaining that girls these days don't even know how to cook rice. I thought to myself, "Pshaw, I can cook that non-glutenous grain. You just read the directions on the MinuteRice box." Ha! overconfident past-self, it's not so easy! I've scalded rice to the bottom of the pan many times here in Italy (and still do occasionally) but through trial and error I have become a rice-cooking woman. (Marry me!) In fact, rice pudding is my new favorite treat.

Today, I ventured out into entirely new terrain and tried some cupcakes from scratch. I've actually never made a cake without a Betty Crocker mix, so this really was trail-blazing for me. You can tell from the pics above I was less-than pleased with the result. Aestetically, these cupcakes are not appealing, but I assure you they taste delicious. It's just hard to cook things here because the ingredients have different names, I don't have the appropriate measuring tools, and, the big one, my oven does not have any markings to tell me how hot it is. So I just guess where 350 degrees Fahrenheit (or 180 degrees Celcius) and I think I guessed to high because my cupcake tops were browning while the inside was still a very gelatinous mass.

And besides cooking and eating, I do go to school, but who wants to hear about that?