It seems as though every time I decide to branch out and attempt to cook something that I've never cooked before, I end up writing about it. I've been eating ham and rice casserole for as long as I can remember. My mom used to cook it all the time for my family and I even got a taste of the good old days when I recently went home to visit. About a year ago, she sent me a copy of the recipe and told me it was an easy dish to make. The recipe had been sitting on the shelf this whole time, but today I decided to give it a go.
I made a list of all the items I needed before heading to the local grocery store and it seemed pretty straightforward. Some of the ingredients were actually spelled out for me; "10 1/2 oz can of beef broth" and "9 oz package of cut frozen green beans." I wasn't anticipating any difficulties at all; which was my first mistake.
I'm the kind of guy that needs clarification on the simplest directions. If someone tells me to take two steps forward, my instinct is to ask exactly how big those steps should be. When the recipe called for 10 1/2 oz and all I saw were cans of 10 3/4 oz, I started to hyperventilate. When I saw the smallest bag of frozen green beans was a 40 oz, I knew my dinner was doomed. I literally stood in front of the rice for five minutes wondering if white long-grain rice was really what I wanted.
After I had decided that what I had was the best I was going to do, it was time to combine everything together. Now, I had never watched my mom prepare the casserole longer than it took for me to come into the kitchen and grab a cube of ham so I had no idea if I was supposed to cook the rice before mixing the ingredients. The recipe told me to stir in the rice with hot cooking oil, but did that mean cooked rice or straight from the box? I figured that since I would be add all of the other ingredients shortly, it had to mean uncooked, but I was never really sure. When I put the concoction in the oven, it didn't look anything like the dish I had as recently as two weeks ago. I had no idea what it would look like forty-five minutes later, but I pressed on.
The casserole ended up looking pretty close to what it was supposed to, but it still tasted awful. It was way too mushy and my estimation of 9 oz must have been pretty far off because the taste of green beans was overpowering. My mom sent me this recipe because it was an easy one. I don't think I'll be making it again any time soon because of how "easy" it really was. What exactly was the point of this entry, you may ask? One to prove exactly how inept I am in the kitchen, and two because I couldn't think of anything better to write about. Now I can get back to my video game.
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