Well, I'm kind of amazing

Warning, this is a long post, with pictures and the pictures were kind of cut off but you can view the whole of it by right clicking and selecting "view image", so I do apologize for anyone who has to sit for the loading time, and sorry for the crappy cropping. I hate blogspot. I miss you JournalSpace.

Anyway, I made myself dinner. This isn't a rare occasion or anything but I thought I'd go ahead and share my meal with others, in case anyone wants to try this extremely simple and filling dinner. It took me about 35 minutes to make, mostly because I am a wreck in the kitchen. I'd say this whole meal could take 20 minutes, only because the potatoes need about that long to soften up.

I had a salad, homemade chicken soup, and homemade mashed potatoes.

So here we go :)

I started off preparing the chicken. I don't like a lot of chicken in my soup and homemade chicken soup fills up EXTREMELY fast. So since it's just me tonight and I basically made this meal for the potatoes, I used the smallest piece of chicken we had.



I like my chicken strips to be all sorts of sizes, but also very small. I hate big pieces of chicken. They take forever to fully cook, usually get burnt, and the flavor is hard to absorb in thick, chunky pieces. Before I went and sliced it all up like a madman I added spices to the chicken, then let it sit while I worked on everything else.

After I did all the cool chickeny stuff I went ahead and cleaned my mashed potatoes. Make sure you clean them well because they are grimy. Use hot water and soap and rinse thoroughly, obviously.

Since we lack a potato peeler I just cut the potatoes up as is, threw them in a pot, and filled the pot with cold water until the potatoes were submerged. Flip it on high and stick the thinger on it so it can steam (but let some steam escape... this pot was made for it). Bring it to a boil and then set it to medium high or so.



Then I got my pot o'soup and noodles ready.



Fairly straightforward. You can buy chicken broth plain from campbells at almost any store you go to. I used two cans of that and filled the pot with some water until I decided that was enough, then threw in the noodles for about 10 minutes (while the potatoes were on and the chicken was being cut).

Then I cooked the chicken.





I only cook it until it's all white and then I throw it in the pot since it'll cook a little bit on there (since it should be boiling anyway).





Throw some spices in that bitch. I just use whatever's in the pantry. I try to chill on the cayenne pepper though. The last few times I have made this I've added way too much, which limits the ability to eat a lot in one sitting without your nose dripping snot everywhere. Ew.



Now I usually add vegetables to my chicken soup but I had none and also forgot to. Which is okay, the soup is still bomb. I usually used the steamed veggies from the grocery. 5 minutes in the microwave and you have seasoned, low-fat veggies awaiting you with no butter or salt added. It's really nice. If I had more pots I would also probably just cut and make them myself, but we only have one pot so it's hard to do things like that. Anyway, I focused on the salad, which literally takes 5 minutes to make, 2 minutes of that being taking everything out and ripping up some lettuce.

For this, you need: lettuce, extra virgin olive oil, green olives...



And you also must have soft mozzarella cheese. You MUST have this:



Your salad will be an utter disaster without this cheese. You CAN substitute it with goat cheese, but you'd need tomatoes to pull it off with style. Tomatoes also adds a little color to the salad, but they aren't necessary with the mozzarella cheese.

Pick your lettuce leaves, cut your cheese, throw in some olives, sprinkle some olive oil, add a DASH of salt and a whole bunch of pepper and mix and tada, you have a really yummy salad that's pretty damn good for you:



Now we turn our attention back to the potatoes. 20 minutes should have flown by so it's time to strain your potatoes fully and add in a gob of (un)salted butter ( :( ), a tablespoon to be exact.



You gotta work fast cuz these suckers will cool before you know it. Don't be shy to keep the stove on for warmth's sake.

Anyway. You can also add a quarter of cream or milk to your potatoes. I seen my mom do this. But since I have no cream and our milk is fat free I figured my potatoes would be severely lacking. So I improvised and boy am I glad I did.

I took this much chicken broth from my completed soup:



And then I added milk the rest of the way:



It looks a little like cum, but I promise it tastes a way lot better.

Mix it in and mash those potatoes up like you're beating a hooker:



And then you're done. That's it.



:) It was soo delicious. Those potatoes were the BOMB.