Cooking for myself part 3

Tonight, I arrived home with three big bags of groceries, and Sam asks, "Oo, cooking something elaborate tonight?" My answer was no, because the groceries were meant to last me the whole week. I initially didn't have plans to make anything fancy because I was just plain hungry, but I guess it did turn into quite an undertaking. The result, however, was quite yummy =D

Yet another characteristically colorful plate

In case you can't see what's there, the plate has chewy udon-like noodles (they're a little thin to be real udon), pepper-marinated steak buried under slightly caramelized onions, lightly broiled Chinese vegetables (the name on the label is just 菜 心, literally meaning vegetable hearts, but I think think the English name is Chinese broccoli), topped with some stir-fried yellow pepper slices and sweet pea pods. In the bowl is a salad of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, more yellow pepper slices, pumpkin seeds, raisins, and slices of dried apricot, all in a light Italian herb vinaigrette.

I've gotten pretty good at the make-everything-in-one-pan approach...tonight I fried the meat, adding the onions about halfway through, then cooked the noodles, then finally the vegetables, so both the noodles and the veggies had a bit of the savory beef flavor. Working in this order, it was also much easier to clean the pan heh.

However, one of the frustrating things about cooking in Macau is that it's not that much cheaper than eating out. All things considered, this meal probably cost me about 25 MOP (about $3 USD) to buy the ingredients, plus at least half an hour of prep/cooking time, whereas I could have gotten a big bowl of noodles with meat/veggies or 20+ dumplings for the same amount. On the plus side, cooking for myself is admittedly infinitely healthier, so I guess I'll keep working on it =P