  I came across this French girl's urlLink food blog while looking for a baked beans recipe, and she inspired me to blog about my own cooking experiences (There was a link to Alton Brown's urlLink blog/site . Will check it out later). Wish I had a digital camera so I can take pictures of my food, but I guess that'll have to wait until my brother moves home for the summer.
Last Saturday I had Marianne over for dinner (as hinted two posts ago) because I had a jar of Tesco korma sauce that had to be used. There are two stories in there -- I got the korma (a mild coconutty curry, if you didn't know) from Taiwan, where a Tesco had opened near my grandmother's place. Since it's a British chain, the supermarket carried Tesco brand food, like curries, pasta, baked beans, digestives, dried soup, etc -- many of which Chinese people do not eat (much of the store carries Chinese groceries, of course).
As a Chinese person who misses British food, I was like "THANK YOU GOD!! " On the other hand, I was really torn because I also wanted to eat a lot of Taiwanese food, which you either can't find or can't find it made correctly in the U.S. (Boba tea made properly tasted SO much better. ) So I ended up getting a jar of curry, some packets of instant custard, and a few Kinder Buenos, not as much as I otherwise would've bought (my low supply of Taiwanese currency and the weight of jars and such had to do with it too).
And then, the night I got home, my dad opened my curry, thinking it was peanut butter. I was like, Oh, my precious curry! Now I have to eat it instead of watch it sit on my beside table. (Well, actually it was more like, dude, can you READ? ) It wasn't very funny at the time, but that was why I had to use it up when I did. Anyway, that curry was probably the easiest part of the whole meal. Cut some chicken, cook it in the pot, dump in the curry and cook some more. I made naan to go with it because I had time on my hands (found the recipe on allrecipes.com). I also made some curried spinach thing that tasted more spinach than curry. I think I'm most proud of the basmati bread, which was my own recipe inspired by online recipes, a basmati rice editorial on Amazon, and personal eating experience.
I made it pilau-style by frying the rice with oil, butter, and spices (cumin seeds, whole cloves, and a bay leaf), then I dumped everything in the rice cooker and let it do its thing. It smelled better than I ever thought rice could smell and came out nice and fluffy too. I made apple crumble for dessert; it didn't look like it was supposed to but tasted okay. I made some of my instant custard to go with it, which tastes better made with milk than with water (understandably).
I was going to make custard from scratch, too, if more people showed up. Oh well, some other time then. I did a little baking between then and now. First some bisquits that didn't seem to rise enough and tasted doughy. Then on Wednesday I made French bread dinner rolls (recipe curtesy of allrecipes.com) for roommate dinner on Thursday, which turned out pretty well if a little deflated (from the rolls having to rise in the oven then waiting outside while I preheated it). I also ordered a kitchen scale, which will make it easier (i.e. possible) to make food from British/Taiwanese recipes. Yay. 
