The first entirely non-instant meal I cooked in Oxford

So I've been here in Oxford for close to three weeks now. The city is absolutely beautiful, the work load is ridiculously heavy, but this post isn't about either topic.

For the past two year in NY, I've not really cooked since I had a meal plan package that was provided for with my financial aid. But alas, here, no more free meals, which meant that either I could eat out daily (incidentally, prices here are not out of this world - they're expensive definitely, but no more than in NY, I think. But the difference is that American portions are gigantic, so you can either stuff yourself or tar-pau for the next day. Here, it's back to regular portions. :( ), or I could attempt to save money by cooking.

So I've been doing the whole cooking thing with regularity thus far, with a caveat. Everything I had cooked began with something instant - it was always instant noodles, instant Maggi porridge (which travelled the distance with me), or pasta with instant sauce. To be fair, I'd add lots of fresh veg to those so they were sorta healthy meals. But yesterday, I finally cooked a meal entirely from scratch! I cooked rice (without a rice cooker!), boiled bak choy (damn expensive. 1.83 pounds for TWO large stalks. lol) and fried some chicken breast (method: some olive oil, throw in different herbs shit like oregano, paprika, mixed herbs, ground black pepper, soy sauce, and just fry. lol).

Result:
Voila rice with chicken (I don't know what to describe the style/flavour, lol), bak choy with oyster sauce and fresh tomatoes.

Ok, so the rice was a bit soggy (again - without rice cooker!) and the chicken could be more tender (decided to err on the side of let's not get bird flu or some shit by undercooking it). But I'm proud of it! yay~

Oh, and I cooked extra rice and saved it for the next day where I made fried rice! Apparently, you have to use overnight rice cause it's drier or something. I fried it with tomatoes, sausages and egg. 'Twas edible, if I may say so!

Hopefully, there'll be future editions of Sterling's culinary adventures in Oxford! (Sneak preview: I did bring over chicken rice paste, nasi briyani paste from SG...)