I cooked a thing!

The whole 'wee, I can burn water' thing has gotten a little old, so lately I've been cooking a lot more and trying to refine my technique. Unfortunately, this has resulted in a much higher food bill, so I decided to try to figure out some budget cuts while continuing to cook tasty things.

Chicken and Corn fried rice with lemon spinach seemed like a tasty thing, if not the healthiest thing in the world. I made mine with half corn and half peas, and I used one of the chicken breasts I got on sale for 99 cents a pound (a big breast,over a pound I guess, cut into very small cubes). I took the blogger's advice and halfed the recipe, and I ended up with four hearty servings. I think the only thing I had to buy special was the onion - everything else was on hand - so I'm not sure about how much it cost, but I guess it probably figured to about what they claim.

I wasn't too sure about the egg. I mean, I've scrambled eggs before, but I wasn't entirely sure what would happen when I dropped the egg into a pan with that much hot oil. It didn't say whether to beat the egg before putting it in the pan, but I thought it would cook too fast to scramble up once it landed in the oil, so I just sort of broke the yolk and swirled the egg around a little before dumping it in. Then quickly scrambled things up once it was in the oil. That seemed to work out pretty well. Everything else went just fine.

I felt that the recipe could have used more onion, and not minced onion but chopped onion, but onions are pretty cheap. I keep thinking of fancy stuff to add and then remember that this is supposed to be a money saving meal. But I guess if you've got extra veggies laying around, lots of different stuff would work. And the spinach is great, I always end up with too much since the turtle started going on hunger strikes whenever I try to pass some off on him. He better watch it, these budget cuts and my newfound desire to attempt to cook things could go badly for him.