Usually called the doctor. Or the caretaker.

I acquired foodstuffs, and prepared a nutritious and tasty dinner at home!

I made penne with tomato cream sauce that had mushrooms and garlic and sun dried tomatoes in it, and had it with a lovely salad with the rest of the mushrooms (these raw) and some blue cheese.

Recipe-ish thing:

This calls for: a large saucepan, a small saucepan, a serving spoon, a fork, a sharp knife, a cutting board, a small bowl for reserving, a plate for serving, and a stove.

3 handfuls dried penne
8ish small button mushrooms
1 sun dried tomato in oil
Olive oil
Tomato paste in a tube
Water from tap
Heavy cream (about 1/4 cup?)
Salt, various spices
Mixed greens or other salad mix
Blue cheese (about an ounce)

It serves one.

In the large saucepan, boil sufficient water for the penne. Add penne and cook as one does.

While the water is boiling, stem and slice the mushrooms (I discarded the stems as they seemed rather fibrous), dice the sun-dried tomato, and chop the garlic.

Splash olive oil into a hot saucepan and sautee most of the mushrooms with whatever seasoning you prefer.

While this is going on and the water is boiling, put a good amount of salad, the reserved fresh mushrooms, and the blue cheese on your plate. Salt and pepper the greens and drizzle with olive oil. Eat while making the tomato cream sauce.

When the mushrooms are done, set them aside, put a bit more olive oil in the pan, and add the garlic and sun-dried tomato. Also salt, pepper, etc. Frizzle till you sense yumminess. Add to this about a tablespoon of tomato paste from a tube, about two tablespoons of water from the tap, and stir. When the tomato paste has thinned, drizzle in about three tablespoons of heavy cream; stir. Add more cream as needed.

Cook until saucelike and penne is done. Drain penne. Combine penne, sauce, and mushrooms on plate, which now has enough room because you've eaten most of the salad.

Quickly wash the pans, the cutting board, the knife, the bowl you reserved the mushrooms in, and the serving spoon. Retire to your bedroom with a delicious dinner and a very excited small dog.

For next time (and there will definitely be a next time), I think I'm going to try adding a little oregano or rosemary (or both), and just a tiny bit of freshly grated asiago or parmesan--or fontina! Not that I can probably get fontina here in the The Land of Ridiculously Expensive Cheese. I'm still refining the flavour of the sauce. It's easily the equal of anything I've bought commercially in a jar, although the Italian place down the street from my house in Kansas has a tomato cream sauce that makes me want to put down a tarp and roll around in it deliriously, so that's kind of what I'm going for.

I also bought my own butter, so I can stop poaching my roommate's and feeling bad about it, some cream cheese because it was on sale, and 3 boxes of a generic mac and cheese that's actually quite good as well as considerably cheaper than Kraft (hush, they were on sale, and they make an okay dinner with a salad if you aren't feeling inspired). Oh, and some yogurt as I ran out last week. I am a yogurt snob. Here I eat Astro Balkan-style. And I bought Perrier because I've got to stop drinking Coke, but I like something a little more flavourful than the horrid tap water in my apartment, which tastes like the inside of pipes. I also got a bottle of balsamic vinegar, as I finally see the end of my Costco Rosenborg cheese approaching. All told I spent about $35CDN, but a lot of it is stuff that is very stapley and will last, and it's all good stuff. Takeout too often is a false economy, even when there's just one of you and you can't cook very well for one yet.