Big cities are expensive and before I came to Washington, D.C. I knew I would be "eating in" as much as possible.
My roommates and I get along really well. I knew we would be peas in a pod when my most important roommate criterion was met: combining finances when it comes to food. We love to cook, and we cook almost every night.
Our parameters and/or roadblocks:
A is a vegan.
L won't eat beets, cherries, or goat cheese.
Thanks to malaria pills I took during world travels in 2008 and 2009 I can't eat acidic foods like tomatoes, and eggplants trigger my migraines. A and L love spicy foods, and I have a more sensitive palate.
Our roadblocks:
Our "fully furnished" apartment contained no measuring spoons or cups and no sharp knives. Some other pepole in our apartment building had no serrated knives, and others had no cutting boards while we had around five. We've done some trading and sharing.
Our "fully furnished" apartment is also without a dishwasher. This is a huge problem for us. I often think of my grandfather, Papa Bee, when I cook. He loved to cook and was very creative, but he hated to do the dishes and he often left my grandma's kitchen a mess. The food was worth it. Still, none of us like to clean our own dishes. Our new fix: we've made friends with our next-door neighbors and we now use their dishwasher.
We live in a bit of a food desert. There's a supermarket around the corner from our apartment where we can get produce at affordable prices, but things like chips, milk, and cereal are marked way up. Apparently there is a Safeway supermarket near us. I helped another intern in our building carry her groceries into the elevator, and asked her where she went for our food. She told me there was a Safeway grocery store nearby in Southeast Washington. "But," she told me, "It's in a bad neighborhood. A really bad neighborhood. I'm not kidding. When you leave Safeway, run, don't walk."
I knew that wasn't going to work for us.
Still, we've made it work.
Where does our food come from?
Safeway delivery orders, Giant delivery orders, lugging grocieries from the Van Ness Giant, fresh produce from the Eastern Market, and the occasional haul from Trader Joe's near Foggy Bottom.
Now to the fun stuff. What have we cooked?
One of our first meals.
L and I have only cooked meat once, and it was just ok. It looks pretty, though! Chicken with cilantro, lime, and a few shakes of chili powder cooked in our George Foreman grill. We ate these with beans and maza that A made.
One of our favorites.
We made a fresh salsa: roasted yellow corn, avocados, diced red and green bell peppers, chopped onions, cilantro, and lime juice. This is a great dinner! All fresh ingredients from the farmer's market and blue corn chips.
We've been trying not to repeat meals but this one was so good, we made it two weeks in a row. Cooking "vegan" has been much easier than we anticipated.
A Mexican dish
The roommates talked me into this. We made enchiladas with many of the same ingredients that we used in the fresh salsa: bell peppers, corn, garlic, onions, and we added butternut squash (I eat so much squash in the winter). L had homemade enchilada sauce. It was delish, but a bit too much tomato for me. We added lime and cilantro to the sauce. It was great!
One of my favorites:
Pasta with veggies and cream sauce with sauteed garlic. This recipe didn't work as perfectly as it has in the past for me. In the past this recipe says that I should put cold peas and fresh spinach in with drained pasta and the spinach will wilt. This was strong-willed spinach. We added some heat to wilt the spinach, then added carrots. We made a red sauce for A, and roasted garlic with some balsamic vinegar.
A weird one.
L and I were preparing to go to an important service at a synagogue far away. It was 6pm, and we realized we just wouldn't have time to make it out to Tenleytown and walk a mile to a service held in a place we've never visited. We ran out to a bakery and picked up a round ceremonial challah, grabbed some apples and honey, and "live-streamed" a service in Columbus.
It was a pretty funny setup. We dressed as we would if we were going to shul, put a laptop and some food on our ironing board in our room, and prayed. It was a very new experience.
All-time favorite.
Banana chocolate chip muffins. We have made these five or six times now, and every time we come WAY too close to leaving out important ingredients. Once we left out the chocolate chips, once we left out a cup of flour, and once I almost forgot the bananas! Ridiculous. They always turned out well.
We're OK cooks, but we have fun. Come join us for tasty vegan treats sometime!
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