Meat Loaf and other incidents...

Our house officially became our home when I made meatloaf on Sunday. This may seem silly, but I have never actually cooked a meal in my life, and until I got married, I had absolutely no intention of ever doing so. But after our food gift cards ran out, and we began to notice the toll eating out was taking on our tiny budget, I began to look back with more fondness than ever on my own mother's mouth watering, home cooked meals. Now meat loaf is nothing extravagant but compared with the sad history I have of cooking, it was a grand achievement. Basically, this is how it went down: I put the simple ingredients into the bowl, and instead of letting my hands get dirty like a proper husband would, Josh mixed the meat with his own hands. (There is something about raw, red meat that makes me gag when I touch it.) A bit crispy around the edges, but over all, my first cooking experience did not turn out too badly.
My next trial at cooking came last night. I had this grand vision of the noodle salad my mom makes when we went to Lin's at six p.m. and bought about ten different vegetables, but by the time nine-forty rolled around, both Josh and I were ready to eat the mess regardless of how it tasted. Our troubles began when I discovered that we had no cutting board; rather than slice up our landlord's counter tops, I found a cereal box and began using that. When it got soggy, we moved on to the plastic lid of an old can. It took eons to peel and cut the veggies while Josh slaved over uncooperative bacon. Later, when I went to drain the water from the noodles, I found we had no sieve thing. Using my hands to prevent the noodles from going down the garbage disposal did not work so well. Half of them ended up in the sink/disposal anyway. We were both ravaged at this point and decided to scoop the noodles out of the disposal and eat them despite the slimy texture.
Note to self: boxed foods are acceptable for the newly wed.