Mulligatawny Stew - So Goddamn Good

Winter is coming, so I'm in soup mode. I want to learn how to make every (warm) soup. This "amazeballs" (my friend Kat said so) oddball is from the Cook's Illustrated "best 30-minute recipes" book. That said, I think it took a bit more than 30 minutes.

(I get annoyed by internet recipes that require me to scroll through 45 million cutesy photos before I can get to the actual information, so you get none of that. Just make this soup and put it in your belly.)

Ingredients:

6 C low-sodium chicken broth (I used Better Than Boullion)

1/2 C shredded unsweetened coconut

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I used more like 1.5)

salt and ground black pepper

1 T vegetable oil (I used old drippings from some chicken...they'd also been seasoned with thyme and some other things, so not an entirely neutral flavor)

1 onion, minced

1 T grated fresh ginger

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 T curry powder

2 carrots, grated

1 very ripe banana, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces (I actually did a banana and a plantain, because the banana I bought wasn't "very ripe" and the plantains were.)

3/4 C plain yogurt

2 T minced fresh cilantro

Method:

1. Bring broth and coconut just to boil, covered, in large saucepan and set aside.

2. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil in large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add chicken and cook until lightly browned on both sides, about 5 minutes. Transfer chicken to plate.

3. Add onion and 2/3 t salt to fat left in Dutch oven. Cook over medium-high heat until lightly browned, 3-5 minutes. Stir in ginger, garlic and curry powder, cook until fragrant (about 1 min).

4. Turn heat to low and stir in hot broth mixture, scraping up any browned bits. Add carrots, banana, and browned chicken. Cook, covered, until chicken is cooked through and no longer pink in center--about 10 minutes. (I found this to take longer)

5. Remove chicken from pot. Increase heat to medium-high and cook until carrots are tender, about 5 minutes.

6. While soup is simmering, shred chicken into bite-sized pieces. Puree soup in batches in blender until smooth. Return pureed soup to pot, stir in chicken, and return to brief simmer to heat through. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dollop yogurt over individual bowls of soup, sprinkle with cilantro, and serve.

Love song to my CSA, part I

I'm not really a foodie, because I don't really care about intermingling flavors perfectly to complement each other. My philosophy is to put stuff that I like together and hope for the best.

Today's enormous salad is a good example of that. Contents:

• Snap peas
• Carrot slices
• Grape tomatoes
• Sliced beets
• Cilantro
• Beet greens
• Swiss chard
  
• Romaine lettuce
• Spinach
• Button mushrooms
• Cucumbers
• Topped with garlic cheddar and Thai peanut dressing

This is also how I dress myself, some days.

Things I can change at any time but won't get around to until 2011

I think one reason so many people do New Year's resolutions is because they're too busy to effect change in their lives in November & December. So all of that resolve piles up until the holiday season is finished and you fall with relief into the new pattern you've been plotting for months and wish to really, actually enact in the hope of making it permanent.

Like, I want to get back into going to yoga regularly for mental and physical health, but all of my good after-work times are filled with Christmas shopping and dealing with my job and my not-jobs and seeing friends who are dipping into town from far-off places for the holidays. I am left cycling through lazy sun salutations for 20 minutes before bed. Paying someone to tell me which poses to do for how long is a good investment, even only once a week. I leave ready to take on the whole world.

Mostly I can't blame the holidays for lapses, though.

Like, I also want to start eating breakfast again, instead of junk food over my keyboard at work, and wake up earlier after fewer alarm clock reminders and really, seriously, I mean it, regularly take the bus to and from work, even if it means walking many blocks or driving to the transfer point.

And I want to respond to those little e-mails people send me for nice reasons that I let languish because I'm too busy at the moment and never get back to. And be better a friend in general.

And as always, I want to write more, better, usefully.

Despite miracle crust, this pie was better for throwing at things than eating.

Carrie says, "It's worse when vegan desserts fail. It's like being told you are not allowed to have desserts at all."

yes

Crockpots are magical creatures. Take heap of browning apple slices, handful of water, plenty of cinnamon, and one long, amnesiac day later you come home to a nice surprise. Better than the housewife with the martini. Hi honey, would you like a quiet bowl of September before bed? Yes.

---

I have been reading the end of Ulysses repeatedly this week, Molly Bloom's cascade of "yes" et cetera. Aloud. This is difficult because there is no punctuation, and sometimes the stream-of-consciousness diverts midsentence. But a rhythm emerges slowly from the mess and the "yes" pulls you through it to the end. Yes, I should own this book, yes I will Yes.

---

Last night I dreamed about a plane crash. I think there were many loops, because at the end I knew it was going to happen, and I looked out my window in time to see the whole nose tilting down. Somehow I survived and there was no falling or dream dying to wake me up. I woke up thinking more about Lost than today's anniversary, though. And I think it was fed by a friend telling me about an airplane dream. That plane landed safely on State Street. I don't like planes much lately because they require a specific destination. I hate choosing and I hate sitting on my ass in a cold tin can.

tasty easy food for lazy people

Oh hey, I guess this stuff is vegan, too. What the hell, I'm not vegan.

Cheap-ass curry for the lazy slob:

1 can red curry paste
1 can coconut milk
1 onion, chopped
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 sweet potato, peeled and diced

peel and dice sweet potato. boil until tender, rinse and drain.
saute onions
add curry paste, coconut milk, saute until boil.
add sweet potato, add chickpeas.

serve hot over rice or beer bread.

makes 5-7 servings.

takes maybe 30 minutes, but most of the time you're just stirring. tastes awesome.

Whole wheat beer bread:

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose white flour
1 Tablespoon white sugar
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
14 ounces any kind of beer

mix dry ingredients. add beer. stir until mixed thoroughly. (should be sticky).
pour into greased loaf pan. bake an hour-ish at 375 degrees. serve covered in cheap-ass curry for the lazy slob, or maybe just some butter and good jam.

misc

Bought a new hat today. Going to wear it all the time. Feel kind of emo-slash-French-slash-country-housewife. Also, after new people have started following both my long-idle Twitter and less-idle Tumblr accounts in recent weeks, really have to make some hard choices about what parts of the Internet I am actually using and whether I am just doing so because they seem like big ballroom dance parties that I don't want to miss out on even though I actually cannot ballroom dance.

The beets cooked up delicious. My tomato plants are in a race to produce all their tomatoes before they succumb to a strange yellow leaf disease. So far, it's looking like I will have to learn to make fried green tomatoes and then chortle about the literary connection. Like that time I bought plums and kept talking up how sweet and cold they were. What an asshole of an in-joke.

(hat plus cat)

First beet crop, tiny but beautiful

artichoke heart attack

My dad taught me how to eat artichokes. It was our special ritual, because no one else in the family really cared for them. He'd come home with two, I'd practically squeal, and then the slow patient process of waiting for them to steam. The meal where the two of us were the last left at the table because it took us so long to pull each leaf, dip in melted butter, scrape with our teeth. Or, if there were leftovers, cold with mayonnaise.

I had one tonight, the first one I've ever cooked and eaten on my own. The process was awkward, I boiled it in my only saucepan, a pot too small to submerge it entirely. Flipped it every ten minutes until it seemed done. Stood in my table-less kitchen, at the counter, with the sun setting out the window and half a glass of white wine, my dish of melted butter (which I bought special for the artichoke, I don't use butter for anything else), my bowl for the chewed-up leaves. It's a greedy process, meditative, repetitive. Pluck, dip, scrape. Pluck, drip, scrape. Sip your wine. Your face gets a little buttery, there's no grace to it, you become a beast. Fibers catch in your teeth. Eventually the leaves pare down from thorny finger-prickling shells to gauzy little petals. Airy things. It's like plucking a bird's wing, from pinion to down. I like to read when I'm eating at home, I like to multitask, but an artichoke is too all-consuming. It's a food that demands your eyes and brain.

I saved the heart for tomorrow. Too many riches for just one night.

tired of poetry yet? revisit this blog in May.

* Someone with an e-zine wants to write a mini-review of six sentences I wrote for another e-zine. Tickled pink with the loveliness of her e-mail. I can't decide if I like the attention, or the flattery, or the sense of having created something and tossed it into a pond and caused a tiny ripple. THUNK.

* Write-a-poem-a-day and ongoing dialogue with other writers (Mahaney calls us "Sweatshoppe") is helping me a lot with, if not being more creative, then channeling it in the ways I find useful and satisfying. And being excited about writing. But after April I kind of want to retreat back to ignoring what other people might think for a while.

* Here is an easy way to make rice more interesting without spending time on it:

Cook rice (I like brown)
Add soy sauce (depending on salt preferences)
Add sunflower seeds (depending on crunch, protein preferences)
Serve hot or cold.

I call it brown brown rice.

The library burns on page sixty, as it burns in all the newspapers of the world

Titles plundered from library:

Yale Younger Poets Anthology
Meditations on the Insatiable Soul - Robert Bly
Two-Headed Poems - Margaret Atwood
One Stick Song - Sherman Alexie
Breath - Philip Levine
The Colossus - Sylvia Plath
April Galleons - John Ashbery
The Far Field - Theodore Roethke
Sonnets to Orpheus - Reiner Maria Rilke

Sprouting in pre-garden dirtpots:

Beets
Sunflowers
Garlic starters (gift from a friend)
Basil
Cilantro
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Lettuce

Sundry:

"During (Pres. James Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau)'s trial, one horrifying but effective stunt by the prosecution involved passing around Garfield's spine, which had been removed during the autopsy. Seeing the president's vertebrae being pawed by the jury made the ladies present cry." - Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation

Poetry misc

I have a couple poems that will be appearing in Actual Publications soon, one any day now. In the meantime, here is another thing I have written recently (hi, antelopenvelope) and proof that the Greeks will never quite leave me.

artichoke heart attack 1.31.10

Hippomenes,

we are out of golden apples, boy, Herakles took the last batch and we saw no point in making more. times are hard, boy, materials are dear, the gold is better spent on toothpicks and letter openers. no one wants an apple that you cannot eat.

so to win a fast huntswoman, there are a few things you may do for under $10. braid her hair. whip her dogs. feed her to the giraffe at the zoo (suggested donation $4). gum will sticky up the track, but your jaws will ache from chewing it.

another thought. have you ever had an artichoke? related to the thistle. it will sting sharp through her sandles, and such a queer-looking flower! she may chase it anyway, though it is just green. $4 or 5 for $15. a real bargain. (discount miracles not guaranteed successful) but you can steam for an hour and dip in butter and scrape apart each leaf.

& some women react favorably to being compared to choke-smothered hearts.

cheers, and let us know how it goes. will make a great story for the web site if you succeed. vegetables unite worthy suitor and king's daughter in failing economy. take lots of pictures!

all the best,
the Hesperides

A room of tatami mats and sore knees, a table crammed with fried pork and tofu and horse meat (the kind of thing a person has to try if she is only 85% vegetarian and which is, admittedly, delicious) and super chocolate brownies, four Japanese conversationalists, two American teachers, two gawk-eyed tourists, lots of laughter, rain on a tin roof. Robin and I teach the Japanese "party foul" and "jail bait," after they tell us Hal has already taught them "cougar," and "sugar mama." 24 hours in the country, and she still has not knocked anything over. I have knocked over wineglasses (party foul), and several small old people who just bow and say the Japanese or Korean equivalent of "no problem." At least I think this is what they said. I have a photo of me next to a woman who is way shorter than me. I am big and klutzy and I keep forgetting that it's rude to yawn.

If you slice many onions into half-circles and then sautee them in olive oil or butter until they turn translucent, then add a whole ton of soy sauce and sautee on lower-than-high heat until they are the tenderest, saltiest onions you have ever tasted, and perhaps serve over fresh rice with some green peas, well. I can't imagine many things that are better than that.

Shameless hippie moment

If you are a person with medium to long straight hair, there is a very simple way you can cut it youself and ensure the length is even-ish but not boring, and doesn't look like a home hack job.

This isn't a how-to blog, so Google it yourself already. The point is, I am pretty miserly about certain things, and I would rather spend my money on a live concert or visiting friends in other countries or donations to earthquake victims, rather than on having someone else cut my hair, or on eating interesting food for every single meal, or on cable television. So I do what I can to do without them.

& every time I cut my own hair or make a really awesome loaf of bread that will, when combined with some peanutbutter, provide 6-8 nearly free breakfasts - every time I do something like that, not only does saving money feel good, but I feel a little bit like I'm holding something essential and precious away from the strange and - yessometimesIthink - dehumanizing world of commerce. Like, this is one more thing that I don't have to worry about if Society As We Understand It collapses tomorrow.

21st century skills

Someone actually wrote step-by-step instructions for freezing peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches.

To save you having to read about that woman's kids, or how you should place the two pieces of bread together after spreading the fixings, I'll point out the most important part - put a thin layer of peanutbutter on the jelly side before you add jelly.

I already fucked up that part by not reading instructions, so I guess I'm not qualified to make sandwiches anymore, but now you know.

Today I discovered that homemade beer bread is the poor/lazy man's way to make a yeast-like bread with less than 5 minutes of stirring fewer than 6 ingredients, plus 45 minutes of baking. And it tastes amazing.

I used some leftover Knot Stock from this one time when I got really excited about Furthermore Beer, but while I could taste the beer, I couldn't really detect that "lovingly microbrewed with real cracked pepper" flavor. There may be future experiments next time I have beer around the house to see if it matters what you use.

How to make friends in a small town, tip #123115432. Buy weird groceries. Be prepared to explain them to the checker. Don't get flustered when the bagboy chimes in. Offer restaurant suggestions for those looking to sample quality uses of your weird groceries.

Example oddities include quinoa, pumpkin seeds, canned sardines, pickled beets, palak paneer.