Adventures in cooking? Bring it on.

Typically I don’t have everything I need in order to make something I really want to try, and I have an almost religious objection to making a special trip to the store. So I start looking for something that’s close, which will substitute and satisfy my “close enough” requirement.

One night, I got to craving chicken marsala. I had the pasta, chicken, and mushrooms. Did I have marsala wine or shallots? Nope. Well, here’s what I did.

2 lbs of chicken breast, cut into pieces or strips
1 pack of fresh mushrooms
1 chicken bullion cube
onion salt
garlic powder
1 c of wine (whatever you have on hand. I used Boone’s tropical fruit wine. if you use a sweet wine, dump in a couple tablespoons of vinegar to balance it out.)
a handful of sun-dried tomatoes
1 T butter
1 small bottle of Perrier

Cook all of the above until it looks / tastes done. Serve on whatever pasta you have in the house. You can switch out wines, pastas, add peppers and/or scallions, but this is a great basic recipe that you can play with. Goes great with salad.

That may look like the weirdest recipe for chicken marsala you’ll ever see, but you’d be surprised at how good it tastes.

Likewise, I made enough chicken rice soup for a sick little boy last weekend out of two skinned, chopped chicken nuggets, a handful of frozen peas and carrots, a half cup of cooked rice, two cups of water, and a chicken bullion cube.

And I did some kitchen jury-rigging tonight too.

We went at a run all day long, as my son had a birthday party to attend down in Santa Fe (that’s on the south side of Mexico City, and we live at the north. Traffic is insane). As we were coming back, my husband got a call that the network was failing at work, and since he’s the boss, he had to go in and make sure it got fixed. So he was gone all afternoon.

Generally, I don’t cook much on weekends, but since he had to work today, I decided it was the least I could do to make him a good dinner, even though he said I could just order pizza. But he hates pizza. So I ambled into the kitchen at 6:47 p.m., took a look at what we had and said:

“Oh crap.”

I didn’t really do much grocery shopping this week. You know how much fun it is, trying to patch a decent meal out of whatever you can find? I’m actually being serious. I love the challenge of this. Anyone can make a delicious meal from a fully stocked pantry. It’s like, ok, I have two cans of tuna, rice, pasta, and green beans. WTF can I make?

I did slightly better than that tonight, however. I found a packet of chicken breasts, a frozen pasta combo thing, and broccoli. I’m not sure what you’d call what I made, because the pasta side dish was actually Mexican. It was pasta poblana with rajas (peppers) and elote (corn). And I added butter, Italian spices, various miscellaneous spices (ie, anything in the cupboard that looked likely) chihuahua cheese, Parmesan cheese, milk, a chicken bullion cube, water, a half packet of colored vegetable rotini I found… and I forget what else. I grilled the chicken and stirred it in. Then I made garlic bread, using butter, garlic powder, and Oaxaca cheese.

The steamed broccoli we ate plain, along with the Mex-Italian chicken pasta and bread. My family loved it. But fuck me if I could make it exactly like that again.

How about you guys? Do you stick precisely to the recipe? Do you make it up as you go along? Or do you order out?

And now, what you’ve all been waiting for:

The big winner this week is Laura K. Email me your address, and I’ll send you Anya’s book!

And because y’all were so talkative last week, I’m drawing a surprise second winner. Wendy, you can choose from Boundless, Your Alibi, or The Average Girl’s Guide to Getting Laid. Email me the title you want, and your choice of format.