Day two

Tuesday, May 6^th

This was my second day of the project.  I started my day at 8:30 AM at the Hannafords Market in New London.  I had made a grocery list the nigh before, so I wouldn’t have to waist time thinking of I needed.  I grabbed a cart and jumped to it, searching for my ingredients to make burritos.  I had only been that Hannafords a couple times before, so it took a while to myself familiar with the store, I was there for about an hour.  I started with the vegetables.  I needed green leaf lettuce, a couple Spanish yellow onions, a couple jalapenos, a tomatoes, and cilantro.  I found everything easily, but there was no sing on cilantro.  I bought some dried cilantro instead because I couldn’t find anything else, but fresh herbs really make difference.  The moved along to meats, I was looking for a lean cut that would be easy to grill, so picked four pounds of sirloin.  This turned out to a lot of meat.  Then came the rest of the ingredients, I got a couple cans of black beans, some sour cream, a chipolte rub for steaks, a great corn salsa that they had made fresh, rice, cheese, but the important was missing…they didn’t have any giant tortillas, which a little important when it comes to making a burrito.  I must have looked up and down every row about three times before I called it quits and checker out.  On my drive back to proctor I was on a mission to find burrito wraps.  The only possibility I could think of was the Blue Canoe, but unfortunately the let me down as well.  I thought I was doomed, I mean a tortilla-less burrito would be a little messy.  A had one more idea.  I remembered that Jake’s Market has the tortillas because that’s what they make their wraps out of.  When I asked the girls at the deli if there was any way could just buy some wraps, they gave me a funny look, but then said, “how many?”  This was great, I had all of my ingredients and I was ready to start cooking. At this time it was about 10:30 AM and I made my way up to Ben’s apartment to put all my groceries away, to find that he was still asleep.  I tried to work quietly not to wake the gentle giant, but there something about pounding steak with a meat tenderizer that you just cant do quietly.  Little to say, Ben woke up.  After I tenderized and season the steaks it was about 11:00 AM.  I went to work on the guacamole, mashing the avocados and a chopped tomato, chopped onion, and minced jalapenos.  After that was done I put Ben to work, he was in charge of cooking the rice.  I chopped the lettuce and grated the cheese, and when I was about to warm up the beans I noted that didn’t have a can opener.  Not a problem, I ran over to dinning hall opened my cans of beans, ran back and by the time the rice was done.  It was 12:30 PM and had everything ready to go in a big assembly line with cheese, rice, the black beans, lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and the guacamole.  The only thing that needed to be done was grill the meat.  I started out grilling alone, but as I was done it felt a class had taken a field trip over the MLS to eat all my steak.  When I was finished, it was time to DO WORK.  I made the burritos and they payoff was delicious.  As Ben, Tyler Swartfager, and I sat on the third floor of MSL devouring these burritos we, it was like we had died and gone to Chipolte heaven.  The experience didn’t last the long, as there was many dished that needed to be cleaned before I had to leave for my game.  Luckily I cleaned the last at plate at 2:35 PM as was off to play some lax.  Later tonight my parents took me out dinner and after went to a cooking supply store at the Tilton outlets, to pick up some things that I still needed.  Fifteen minutes later and a can opener, dish rack, spice rack, two mixing bowls, and a spatula later we were finished, and was spent for the day.