Thanks for the good stuff.
I always had a problem with US-centric recipes because they rely on a much greater food availability and much higher buying power than I can see or afford to have. In the US, it might be very cheap to buy stuff I can't even find here. Maybe Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, the two biggest Russian cities, have something like what the recipes ask of me, but here doesn't. I have to figure out how to thrive from what an American might consider scarcity. It's a good challenge.
Any ideas how to make chicken taste something? Chicken breasts seem to be among the most popular dishes one serves themselves to gain energy - due to its protein content, I presume - but they have no taste whatsoever.
Do you have a regular stove-top and oven. If you don't I would recommend a table top grill press, and a rice cooker. You can cook hard boiled eggs in a rice cooker.
Hmm, chicken. Well there are lots of things you can make marinades out of. The main rule with marinades is to not add oil. Oil does not mix in with the fat of the meat. For marinades you want to use acidic things. Vinegar, or different citrus juices work well. You also want to add to the umami taste, by adding something, like Worcestershire, soy, or fish sauce. Some marinades have a lot of sugar that caramelizes like barbecue sauce.
It is hard to change the flavor if you just season it as you are cooking. Just go to the spice section, and try to figure out what you like. Lemon pepper chicken is pretty easy.
Thyme lemon chicken is good, you could use a white cooking wine and lemon juice to soak it in for a few hours.
You could use some tomato paste, orange juice, and molasses to make a barbecue sauce. You could let it sit in the fridge with some white vinegar and garlic.
http://www.alwaysorderdessert.com/2011/04/fiery-asian-chicken-cutlets.html
That one is pretty fancy, but would be worth finding the ingredients.
There are a hundred recipes to make anything, look at a few and pick ones that sound like you can find all the ingredients.
Diving head-first into the world of cooking seems terrifying. I love good food and I enjoy cooking if it's something interesting, and so I'm afraid to fail at it, especially now that I'm stretching for cash and don't have enough to waste even on a bitter lemonade. If you could, I could use some guidance or at least a few advices on what not to do.