Cooking Challenge of a Lifetime

Dinner is proving to be a challenge. Not willing to eat cereal or crackers and cheese for dinner every night, as my dear novio was before I arrived, I'm trying to expand our dinner options beyond pasta but have, I'm afraid, reached an impasse. We have a kitchen, but we don't know how to use the weird oven, which you have to light--somehow, somewhere--with a match. We have no measuring cups, measuring spoons, sharp knives, or mixing bowls. We don't have a large pot, or glass Pyrex pans (not that we can use the oven anyway). No blender or food chopper. Andrew said we didn't have a can opener, but there was, thankfully, one in the drawer. Only yesterday did I finally find salt and pepper at the grocery store.

Besides pasta, omelettes and other egg-related dishes, salads, and toasted-cheese sandwiches, we have few selections, unless we start buying frozen food items, which seems to be an unnecessary, college-type last resort. I suppose you could argue that there are an infinite variety of pasta dishes and an infinite variety of egg-related meals and an infinite variety of salads. This is true. But now that pasta, eggs, and salads are all I can have, I don't want them. I want a nice big pot of soup that requires a blender, huge pot, several pans, measuring cups, lots of kitchen utensils, and obscure ingredients I don't know the Spanish names for to prepare.

Perhaps my resistance to just cooking more eggs is actually a hint to myself that it's time to turn my learn-Spanish plans into action. And also to go back to Ikea. And to figure out this oven.