"Iron" Chefs? ... maybe plastic

SCENE: A Mountain View living room, Sunday afternoon. Chris, Mike P, and myself are lounging on a rainy day since we couldn't go to our usual basketball game (although we found out the next day that it wasn't raining at the court and there was a game going on - drats!)

DISCLAIMER: I'm making up most of the following dialogue, but you get the gist...

MIKE: Guys, we have to figure out something to do. I can't watch TV anymore.
BOB: What, you're not enchanted by whether or not that guy can get past Kevin Greene for a touchdown on Pros vs. Joes?
CHRIS: Well, we could go bowling, or rent a movie...
B: Actually, we need to go grocery shopping. I'm running low on vegetables.
M: We... could try cooking something...
[ALL laugh]
C: [wiping tears of mirth from eyes] Where's that cookbook that I bought a year ago but never opened?
[CHRIS finds the cookbook, blows an inch of dust off the cover and creaks it open]

After browsing through recipes (originally wanting to flip randomly to a page and cooking whatever was on the page), we settled on a meal of rotini pasta with spinach and ricotta cheese, southwestern potato salad (with bacon and green chiles), and added on sirloin steak and garlic bread. Picking up Hanlin on the way to Safeway, we purchased all the ingredients, including stuff we'd never bought before, like something called "cumin", and various items that the cookbook called "measuring cups":



We got to work cleaning, chopping, and seasoning. I was basically in charge of the meat:





About two hours after we got back from the market, we put the final touches on each dish:

Pasta with spinach and ricotta cheese:



Southwestern potato salad (red potatoes, bacon, green chiles, parsley, various spices):




Steak (seasoned simply with salt/pepper and pan fried rare, then cut into strips since we don't have any steak knives):




The full meal (added on some sauteed mushrooms to eat with the steak, and since we thought, might as well use the mushrooms to soak up the rest of the meat juice):



Chris has some more preparation pics here, as well as our panel of judges.

Everything tasted pretty good. Gave me a greater appreciation for homemakers who have to cook for their entire families every single day. The four of us took 2 hours to cook dinner... being able to do everything by oneself is simply amazing.