I came, I saw, I stirfried by Jenny X. '13

School has already started, but I have one last part of summer to share, and that is how I managed to feed myself for three months. You see, this immediately ties into how I’m going to feed myself for the next three months.

I’ve lived in Burton Conner since freshman year. BC residents are not enrolled in the MIT Dining Meal Plan, but we are blessed with full kitchens, which I haven’t really taken advantage of save for ramen and the occasional pasta. (I’m actually really ashamed.)  For the past five semesters, I’ve also lived under the architecture studio lifestyle, which somewhat stipulates that every living moment, you should be working on your studio project; that was not an environment conducive to learning and practicing cooking. So I bought many, many meals from the eateries and La Verdes convenience store in the Student Center, a three-minute walk from studio. That cannot be healthy or economical in the long run.

This summer, I had the opportunity to live in an apartment in Somerville, MA with some friends. We had a kitchen with all the cooking utensils I can imagine. We did not have the Student Center. And so begins my journey of “Non-Ramen Cooking in the Kitchen”. 

The beginning of the summer was a little depressing.

This was one of our first “classy apartment dinners”.

I eased my way into “actual cooking” by boiling corn. Baby steps.

And then I took a bigger step, and bought meat for the first time in my life. And cut it. And activated the once-dormant Asian stir-fry gene in my DNA. And I never looked back.

(I didn’t have my own rice cooker, so all my stir-fry concotions were served with angel hair pasta.)

Hodgepodge of ingredients!

Meat!

Korean spicy stir-fried pork (recipe)

Chicken + Tomatoes + Zucchini

Pork + Eggplant

Beef + Peppers

Now that I have some experience with stirfrying a few things, I’m excited to learn the intricacies of this way of cooking. Stirfrying is such a simple procedure, there must be other factors that determine whether you did it well or not. To continue this exploration in the dorms, I’ve completed step one.

I bought a pan.

We’ll see where I go from here…

How do you like to cook?