I Am Bismark

while i was doing my taxes, i took a look at how much money i supposedly made last year and then how much money i have in the bank. yeah, for some reason there was a huge discrepancy there. looking over my last years spending reports, i am quite certain that a huge hunk of that money went towards eating out (compounded by the fact that for a good majority of the year i was paying for two people each time), so i decided to greatly cut down the number of meals i buy at a restaurant. honestly this is pretty tough for me, because i always feel like i’m too busy to cook and i rarely feel like the things i make taste all that good. but at the encouragement of my mother, i made the commitment. right now my goal is to only eat out on fridays and saturdays. thats four days and thus 8-12 meals eaten out fewer than before. this going to save me a ton of money and hopefully help me shed a few of those soft spots that tend to pop up throughout the semester. i don’t have some great plan on how this is all going to work, but yesterday i went on a big $75 grocery trip. for pretty much the first time ever, i actually made a shopping list, which is a first for me. i got a lot of good food that i am actually excited about eating. so today was day one with my filled cupboards. this morning i decided to use a bag of lentils that i first purchased back towards the beginning of my internship. yes, i carried these lentils with me for the last year and across two states (just some proof as to how little i actually cooked). i got some tips from my mom and i threw together a lentil stew in the crock pot my mom sent me last year (which i’ve never used before today). i put in a can of diced tomatoes, a can of chicken broth, the bag of lentils, some sauteed carrots and onions, spicy turkey sausage, and some spices i borrowed from my roommate. i let it cook for about 7 hours, and i’m proud to say it tasted quite excellent.

the finished product (like i said, the crock pot is from my mom.. ignore the flower pattern). after dinner, i decided to try out this recipe for breakfast burritos that my mom sent me a few days ago. here is how it went:

here are all of the ingredients i got together. i decided to cut the recipe by 3/4 just to give it a shot for the week.

first i chopped up half of the green pepper.

second i friend them a bit in some butter.

then i broke the eggs and mixed in some pepper and milk.

i beat the eggs.

next i drained and rinsed the can of black beans.

i scrambled the eggs with the peppers and butter already in the pan.

*ryan’s tip for scrambled eggs: the less you stir the eggs, the fluffier and more moist they will be. if you just stir the constantly, they get all dry and crumbly. i lift up one side, tilt the pan so the raw egg flows underneath, rotate the pan, and repeat until done. learned this on my mission.

once the eggs were done i added the beans and mixed them all together.

then i laid out a burrito tortilla on a piece of plastic wrap.

i filled it with the egg mix, salsa, and some cheese. then i rolled it up and wrapped the plastic around it. my first one messed up pretty bad because the tortilla broke, and i realized it was because the tortillas were cold. i stuck them in the microwave for a bit, and the rest went quite smoothly.

i ended up with six burritos (not quite the eight that should have come from a fourth of the recipe). the sizes varied a bit, so i will find out what’s too big and what’s too little. all of the burritos are now stacked in my freezer, and i will let you all know how good they end up being for breakfast!