College style cooking

It's a little embarrassing that I am well past (well not that far past) my college years, but I am still cooking like a college student. By this, I don't mean I am cooking ramen every day or reheating TV dinners, but I just don't have a lot of specialty cookware and sometimes I need to improvise.

And by specialty cookware, I mean basic cookware. Or bakeware. Like a rolling pin. For your viewing pleasure, here is the "rolling pin" I used to make my egg tarts for Chinese New Year:

Yes, that is a liquor bottle (99 bananas to be exact) covered in plastic wrap. It wasn't perfect by far, but it got the job done.

Oh, and my "steamer" prior to Chinese New Year was this:

Allow me to explain this state-of-the-art steamer. That is a big pot with a little upside down bowl, on top of which I place a slightly bigger bowl, whose base fits on top of that little bowl. In that slightly bigger bowl, I place whatever I want to steam. Sounds foolproof, doesn't it? Except that the biggest bowl that will fit in this "steamer" is 5" in diameter, essentially only fitting in 1 serving of vegetables to steam.

Since I wanted to steam a fish and a turnip cake for Chinese New Year, I decided to cave and buy a real steamer. It was a beautiful, 3 tiered stainless steel beauty from my local H Mart. The one problem?

The dishes I wanted to steam were the right diameter, but just a tad too tall for the height of each tier. So I was forced, once again, to rig the steamer to fit a taller dish by turning the top tier upside down and putting the lid on the "bottom" of the top tier.

Apparently I am doomed to always turn things upside down when I steam.

Anybody else have any, er, "creative" cooking methods?