i'm in culinary

last night was quite possibly the greatest stay-at-home night ever. i went to my best friend's house and cooked an appetizer dinner with her. now i am NOT kitchenally inclined. i can boil water, scramble an egg, and make a bowl of ramen noodles. but that is pretty much were it stops. so when charged with finding something to cook last night, it took me most of the day online (at work). i finally settled on two recipes; polenta crostini with sausage topping, and gruyere herb puff pastries. oh, and three bottles of wine.

well after wandering around this city's smallest grocery store for an hour (obviously only 5 of those minutes were spent picking out the wine) i finally made it to my friend's house and starting cooking at 8pm. 2 bottles and 2 hours later we had prepared all the food. my puff pastries looked like cookies, and the polenta crostina tasted more like cream corn pancakes. fortunately my friend made an amazing pesto chicken pizza that delivered us from evil. at that point, another friend joined us with more wine, and we had a thoroughly wondrous evening.

so if you ever have a quiet evening during the, ugh, work-week, you should get some friends and food. you're not 70 years old, so it's never too late at night to cook and eat. the key to the evening however is this: drink cheap wine, and use it in the food. cause then you're not drinking. technically, you're just cooking with wine. and don't be afraid to try some crazy recipe. even if it comes out nasty, it's probably still better than ramen noodles.