Learning to Cook

I feel that travelling is really improving my culinary abilities. I mean, its one thing to cook in the kitchen you're used to, with the ingredients you're used to, and quite another to improvise when the brands are totally different and you're working with crappy student pots and pans instead of your nice set of non-stick cookware.

I have just made red curry for the second time in Spain. In the U.K., for whatever reason, it was much easier. All of the ingredients were conveniently canned and grouped together in even relatively small supermarkets, and the recipe required very minor alterations. Here, it's been different.

It took me about a week to find all of the ingredients. I snagged a jar of curry paste in Valencia, and coconut milk was easy to find. I found Jasmine rice, albeit a small and overpriced package, at Pamplona's high end grocery store. I never planned on finding palm sugar, as the ordinary stuff works very nearly as well.

I actually thought bamboo shoots and nam pla (fish sauce) would be pretty easy to find. Surprise! No one had even heard of bamboo shoots, even after I found the Spanish translation of the name. Fish sauce was perhaps more maddening because I felt so CLOSE to finding it - the high end grocery store had three different kinds of sushi rice vinegar, but no fish sauce (!?), while one of the little asian run shops in town had, I kid you not, more than six kinds of soy sauce, but no fish sauce. On a trip to San Sebastian, I continued popping into these little asian markets, until in one of them I finally found what I sought - an enormous bottle of nam pla! I was so excited - so excited I ran up the stairs when I got home, tripped, fell, and smashed the bottle against the stairs. That was lovely. Great smell, fun to clean up, not embarrassing at all.

After this incident, however, Ana asked her daughter where I should go to find the stuff in Pamplona, and I asked Jorge. Amazingly, both of them came up with the same answer - and it was only about three blocks from my flat! I went there, and, sure enough, they had big bottles of nam pla, and enormous cans of bamboo shoots. They also had red curry paste (for when/if I run out), and big bags of jasmine rice. Basically, I was all set.

When I started cooking, however, I ran into a few surprises. The coconut milk was extremely seperated - all thick and caked up at the top of the can, and basically water on the bottom. The bamboo shoots looked like no bamboo shoots I'd ever seen, lovingly sliced in American cans. I also realized I didn't really know how to cook rice, sans-rice cooker.

The end result was okay, but definitely not the best. I very nearly burned everything on the non-non-stick pans and on the excessively hot stove-tops, the curry was a bit too watery and spicy, the rice wasn't exactly perfect, and while we did an okay job cutting up the bamboo shoots, some of the pieces were a bit big, tough, or oddly shaped.

Today I gave myself the afternoon to try again.

I started with the rice. I rinsed it like they say you should but I ordinarily don't bother to. I measured the water carefully and didn't put too much, since jasmine rice is supposed to be sort of dry and steamed rather than boiled. I added a tiny sliver of butter, just because it can only help when you're uncertain. I heated the pot to a boil, then lowered the temperature and covered. I didn't even peek (much) - after about 20 minutes I opened it quickly and tasted to see if it was cooked - it was close, so I turned off the heat and let it sit covered and warm until I finished the curry. I don't know which steps made the difference, but the end-result is awesome, some of the best rice I've ever made.

I didn't burn the curry this time (much). It helped that I had non-stick pans here in my apartment, but the stove still got hotter on 1 than mine does at 8, so I spent a lot of the cooking process removing the pan from the heat to let it cool down before I could even take off the lid to stir (coconut milk likes to jump and splatter, messy and painful). The chicken I bought this time was processed into 8 lovely, thin fillets without any nasty fatty gristly bits (and it still wasn't much more expensive than back home). I gave myself more time with the bamboo shoots and found a way to cut them that was both more efficient and worked better in the recipe.

The flavour was still a bit off - same problem, too watery, too spicy. I wondered if it could have something to do with the paste I was using, but after a minute I think I figured it out. The coconut milk comes super seperated, and I've been frying the curry paste in the top part, meaning there is precious little coconut cream being added to the sauteed meat and vegetables during part II of the cooking process. I figure there are a few possible solutions to this problem, such as buying just coconut cream (a bit fatty, possibly harder to find), using half the cream during part I, and half during part II (more labor intensive, will make it harder to separate oils), or using one entire can of coconut milk, and only taking the cream from the second can (a bit wasteful, but not much since what's left is basically just water). Anyway, I'm pretty happy that I may have solved the riddle, and I'll be experimenting to try and do even better next time. Meanwhile, I added a bit of yoghurt, since that's what I had on hand. It helped. It also added a certain something funky, since yoghurt isn't supposed to be anywhere near Thai food, but hey, it did in a pinch.

Tomato Delight

Yesterday I ate the best tomato of my life. Gianfranco got it from a coworker, who got it out of his garden. It was lying on a plate of good olive oil and maybe something else too. I put a few slices on krisprolls, over a layer of camembert, and the result blew my mind. It was more than salty, more than tangy... it defied such two dimensional words even as it fulfilled them. Likewise I can't tell you what it was 'like'. It was 'like' nothing else, it was a tomato, but better than any other tomato I've ever eaten.

But I can say this: This was the tomato that they talk about. This was the tomato that inspired Neruda's Oda al Tomate.

"Debemos, por desgracia,
asesinarlo:
se hunde
el cuchillo
en su pulpa viviente,
es una roja
víscera,
un sol
fresco,
profundo,
inagotable...

...y sobre
la mesa, en la cintura
del verano,
el tomate,
astro de tierra,
estrella
repetida
y fecunda,
nos muestra
sus circunvoluciones,
sus canales,
la insigne plenitud
y la abundancia
sin hueso,
sin coraza,
sin escamas ni espinas,
nos entrega
el regalo
de su color fogoso
y la totalidad de su frescura."

Culinary Adventures in Spain

Spanish food is yum. Paella, Croquettes, and Allioli are everywhere, even in the supermarkets. In my house there is a pan kept in the oven for deep-frying things, like frozen croquettes. It is awesome but dangerous for my health... :)

Some Asian foods are surprisingly easy to find and others are more elusive. Looking in the right places, which seem to be the big gourmet grocery store, El Corte Ingles, and in the small Alimentos which are often Asian owned and therefore carry a few ethnic products, I can find every kind of noodle imaginable, dozens of types of soy sauce and ramen, etc... but I haven't been able to find fish sauce or curry paste (I did snag a jar in Barcelona, that with proper use may last me until winter) or bamboo shoots. For fish sauce I can substitute soy sauce, or maybe oyster sauce. But I don't know about bamboo shoots. It's not just a seasoning, so I feel bad having Allan ship them to me. I may try to stock up if I take a trip to a nearby, larger city.

I'm somehow addicted to yogurt now, but packaging it with little candies etc isn't as common here as it was in the U.K. - almost all of them are marketed towards kids, so it's a bit embarrassing. But oh well. :P Other supermarket staples of mine in Spain so far are spreadable Camembert cheese and Nutella on krisprolls. Major yum.

I already have a favourite block for food here in Pamplona, just west of the Plaza Castillo. There is a restaurant there called Don Lluis which I ate at last night - an incredible meal, and for 12 euros, whereas similar menus in the area were at least twice that price. I had seafood paella and Navarran trout (fresh, cooked to perfection, covered in salty ham), and Allan got some sort of pasta, and then tender pieces of bull meat cooked in onions etc. For dessert there was this unbelievable flan, made there at the restaurant. It was all food from the region of Navarra, if not Pamplona itself, and was just incredibly appropriate, especially after watching The Sun Also Rises... Allan: I'm glad we're both eating tables. ^^

Almost next door is an ice cream shop called Larramendi. It's so good, reasonably priced, and they even sell you big tubs for you to take home! Very tempting. Allan ate three scoops of Dulce de Leche, and I got a scoop of Chocolate con Trozos and a scoop of Chocolate Blanco con Trozos.

Scotland Summary

I'm at Allan's house now and will be for the weekend. We'll catch up on some much needed sleep and maybe take a trip or two out, like to New Lanark or Hadrian's Wall, but for the most part I'm starting to look ahead to Spain. Scotland has been awesome. I was expecting a lot from the country but it has exceeded all expectations. The highlights have probably been Edinburgh (seeing Allan's haunts, the, lovely castle, etc...), climbing Ben Nevis (the U.K.s highest mountain), Loch Ness (the good, the bad, the pathetically touristy), and our brief but spectacular taste of the Hebrides Islands (Allan, Lucia and I had an afternoon on a beach of white sands and turquoise waters, and all to ourselves!) As far as the company goes, I love both Allan and Lucia dearly, and we had a lot of fun, but I'm not sure I thought through the ramifications of my plan to get them to hook up clearly. In fact I'm not sure I even expected it to actually work. It did and I'm happy for both of them but of course there were a few lonely times and a few awkward times but all ameliorated by a bunch of drunken Slovakians on one night and a certain Slovenian on two others.

We didn't complete our walk in the end. We'd planned to go from Ft. William to Inverness across the Great Glen Way, crossing Scotland from sea to sea and not even at its absolute narrowest point! In the end we were a bit cocky. I still think it wasn't so much the raw distance as the fact that we did our trial run in dry weather, on flat ground, and with half the weight. Really smart, and to make matters worse the day before the walk was the day we climbed Britain's highest mountain, and you're not supposed to do anything the day after. While we had unbelievably nice weather for most of the days of the trip, it rained every day we were walking, and after several days of trudging through pouring rain and the like, Allan was in lots of pain, I had caught some sort of sickness from Lucia, and Lucia was both sick and in pain, though possibly to less extremes, so we ended up taking the bus on two days. Still, we completed more than half the walk and learned a lot for next time. We should have been in better shape, we should have built in a rest day (especially considering Ben Nevis), and there were also things outside of our control, like pretty bad weather even for Scotland and illness. Whatever sickness Lucia brought with her from Chile was some nasty stuff - she is only now recovering after a month of sore throat, dripping nose, and cough, whereas I had the same symptoms more severely and acutely (already feeling fine again), and now Allan seems to have caught the same thing.

Is it rainy here? A few days in I would have told you it was all rubbish. We had lovely sunshine on the islands and the weather while climbing Ben Nevis was also fine. Yes it rained when we were in Glasgow but somehow rain bothers me less in urban environments. Then we started walking and it rained the WHOLE TIME - and then we finished and the weather in Inverness was absolutely glorious again. But what's really freaky about the rain here isn't the frequency (it rains far more in Costa Rica, for example), or the intensity (when it does rain in St. Louis in the summer, you better be inside unless you want to be blown into the Mississippi or struck by lightening, it's somewhat less here), but more of the combination between the two and other factors as well. It does rain frequently, I'd say at least once every other day, and unlike in, say, Costa Rica its still quite heavy and unpredictable, and cold or at least a bit bracing.



What I dislike about Scotland:

The wet, because towels and clothes never dry but always seem sort of damp and cold.

The way hot and cold spouts are separated and the hot water gets as hot enough to make tea - sometimes that can be handy yeah but usually you just have to pick between burning your skin off or freezing - it would be so easy to combine the spouts but no, why would anyone ever need warm or even lukewarm water when they could have boiling or icy?

The unpredictability - I mean rain is fine, but if you wear your raincoat it probably won't rain and carry it around all day, and if you don't, it's guaranteed to rain regardless of the forecast and regardless of how blue and clear the sky seems when you go out.

That there are random areas that according to Allan are rough, and I believe him of course for like Glasgow which has a reputation, but I mean he'll even say it of these little towns which look so sleepy and sweet. Makes me a bit sad. :( Why do these places have to be so gritty and real when they look so much like a fairy tale?



What I like about Scotland:

The wet, because it feels lovely and is good for my skin.

The food, the food, the food. I love the meat pies with their delicious flaky tender pastry and mix of vegetables and meat and spices inside. :D :D :D The candy is tasty, like Crunchie with its honeycomb centre, and the Galaxy and Cadbury chocolate. And there are berries by the side of the road, like in Finland and Norway, and very nearly as tasty. They have Magnum Ice Cream which is always a bonus. Blood Pudding really isn't bad after all, Potato Scones are quite nice, the availability of Indian food is always pleasant even when it doesn't seem to fit, and here's the big one -

Haggis: it's awesome.

The evil pine tree forests (in spite of everything), and the native deciduous forests with their dappled sunlight.

The moss and the lichen and the rocks (never get old somehow).

The Gaelic. It's more real than I expected, (but, to be fair, I was being pessimistic.) I've heard several people speak it and up north the signs are written in Gaelic first, English second.

Scots, too, and the myriad of different accents, are also somehow more real than I expected. Part of this I think is just the normal growing up in America you think everything else is hopelessly quaint and exotic, grow up and get disillusioned and then get surprised again to discover some things are real.

The Islands - they're as lovely as anything Caribbean or Mediterranean, different of course. I expected the desolation and the wildness and they are as advertised, but the deep blue of the waters and white sands caught me by surprise.

The Mountains. If you know me at all this comes as absolutely no surprise, but many of the are bigger than expected and all of them lovely. I expected them to be more like the Appalachians in a sense with more tree cover but I love them the way they are, more naked and windswept and almost like the Faroes. There are so many waterfalls snaking down everywhere like liquid silver and there are even some valleys by the sea that could rival the average Norwegian fjord.

The way the power outlets have little individual on-off switches.

Inverness. Perhaps the lovely weather made me a bit bias, but I thought the city was so nice with the river running through and the funny bridge and all the churches and the castle. :)

Loch Ness - its super touristy but even that's a bit fun once in a while, all the Nessie madness is so ridiculous it becomes fun again. And Urquhart Castle is lovely, and I had fun taking a swim in the Loch itself.

Ben Nevis - what a great mountain, what a lovely day spent climbing it. It's a bit of a challenge but really beautiful at every stage. Breathtaking in both senses of the word. :P

Edinburgh - So much culture for such a small city, plus its just so lovely and historic, even taking out, say, the brilliant castle and Arthur's Seat, the little mountain. Most of the city is actually a World Heritage Site. If I could afford to study abroad in an English speaking country, it would be in Edinburgh for sure.

The castles. I know it's super duper stereotypical but they're everywhere and it's just so cool. Allan actually has one like a fifteen minute walk from his house, a little one and not very old but still beautiful and ruined, all trees and vines twisting around the stonework and birds living in the upper stories. ^^

Spring Festivities

It's a lovely time to be alive and on campus and not such a lovely time to be bogged down in papers. Today I neglected to bring my camera with me and I was kicking myself all day.

First I passed "Captain America" with his American Flag pants and bandana, his t-shirt with an American flag logo, and the American flag poking out of his army-camouflage backpack. I saw his bike not far away - it's one of those short 'trick bikes' or whatever, all American-flag style too, with flags attached to the basket and the seat. Closest we have to a national costume, folks, look close - I hope it takes it's rightful place next to the Bunad, Kimono, Ledehosen, Sari, and Kilt soon! :)

There was also a little carnival going on at Lowry Mall, the same one I passed through when I toured Mizzou, either through luck or lack thereof (not sure how fair it is to have something like that going on for your first impression of a school!). I had my pockets full of cash from my camping-deposit refund, so I bought a number of honey sticks, (planning to send some of them to Liisa and Rinna... maybe Uni too if he likes), and two deep fried Oreos. At 2 for a dollar I thought it was worth the experience. They were kind of what you'd expect - a little moist cookie wrapped in carnival dough and abused. Strangely, although it was supposed to be sort of a Farmer's Market, there was no produce to be had - only some beef, pork, lots of honey, jam, baked goods from the Amish, (one of the girls had a mustache... I know I shouldn't laugh but it was hilarious), and potted herbs. No basil though.

On the quad there was a little bitty book sale from the Art History department. Very random selection of books. I picked up On a Pale Horse because someone recommended it to me a while ago (I'm thinking Jorge?) and it was a whole dollar.

I finished my profile for Journalism just in time, I think it was fine too even though it was way over the word limit. "Katfish Katy" proved to have a far more interesting life than I had imagined, and I'm not terrible at people writing so I was prepared and ready to work with much less. Our group project is also going well, I feel that for once I haven't helped out that much, haven't taken much of a leadership role, but then I often do in group projects and I am awfully swamped right now. Still, I keep offering my help and my two partners don't seem very bothered. The teacher says we're actually ahead of the other groups which I think reflects more poorly on them than it does well on us, but still. So, with Journalism taken care of, most of my stress right now is on Spanish. I have to whip up about 5 pages of analysis on La Casa de Bernarda Alba tonight. It's for a rough draft, but still.

I wish I could go outside and enjoy the cool breeze. :D And apparently there was an event today where you could climb the Alpine Tower for free. Ju called and invited me but regretfully I had class. ;_; Too bad, I've been meaning to get up there. One of these days/years...

Lovely Day

43 degrees Fahrenheit, beautiful blue sky and bright sun, sitting on the warm mulch by a tree just outside of Strickland hall. It's very comfortable with a three-quarter length shirt on. If everyday could be like today, I'd be a very happy girl...

I ordered MooKure, Southern Thai Curry, from Ju. It was quite spicy, as the lowest it can be made is an 8/10 on the Thai scale. But I loved it, and the rice and fried egg helped take it down to a reasonable heat index.

It looked a bit like this, but with less liquid:


Ju is an amazing cook. I think I'm going to go into Thai withdrawal once she leaves... ;_;

Khao Mun Kai

Today for lunch I got Khao Mun Kai, also known as Hainanese Chicken Rice, from my friend Ju. Ju is an amazing cook and I really enjoyed the dish - especially the oily rice. ^^ Of course, after eating something good I can't stop thinking about food... :S It's kind of a problem. Right now I'm not even hungry but all the food in my room looks delicious.

Springtime! :D

Today I had my first final (for a 1 credit natural disasters course, which I thought was going quite well until I got to the last page and realized it was weighted way too heavily on severe weather... and just weather... than it needed to be). It's a beautiful day, warm (40 degrees), brilliantly sunny with a lovely blue sky, and the squirrels are going nuts on the Quad. So, with an hour to kill before News and two-fifty in my pocket, I went down to Yogoluv to celebrate what I decided was the first day of Spring.

The tart dispenser was broken. :( But there were new flavours since the weekend - white chocolate macademia and cheesecake. So I got a bit of chocolate, a bit of cheesecake, a bit of macadamia nut, and a bit of raspberry, with mochi and chocolate chips on top. When I say a bit, I mean it - I needed to come in well under 3 dollars when they weighed it. The final price? Exactly $2.50. I know, how brilliant am I?

I walked back across the Quad eating the yogurt and crunching the snow under my feet. ^^

Tampopo

Ramen and Sex and Gansters. If I had to use five words to describe the movie Tampopo, those would be my choices. Appropriate, I think, for a movie that begins with two truckers reading a rediculous book called Zen and the Art of Noodle Eating and ends with a slow zoom of a Japanese woman (previously unseen) breastfeeding her baby. The main plot is that a 30 somethings widow, named Tampopo (or Dandelion) owns a crappy ramen restaurant and wants to improve. To this end she employs the help of the two truckers in the opening scene, the culinary master of a group of gourmet hobos, a rich man's private chef (who is donated to her cause because she saved the rich man from choking), and her admirer, who happens to be an interior designer of sorts. Sounds simple enough, but this group treats ramen making like an olympic sport, pushing Tampopo through drills in speed, flavour, accuracy, strength, texture, and more. The main plot feels, somehow, like an American Western, complete with tough guys, slow-smiling females, and ramen-tasting scenes with all the intensity of the final shootout. But the main plot only composes roughly half of the movie - the rest is random vignettes. Some of these return to the same gangster, who is obsessed with food, sex, death, and combining the three, whether it's by relatively standard food play with his mistress, or passing an unbroken egg yolk between their mouths, slow kiss by slow kiss, or eating a fresh oyster out of the hand of a young girl, or talking about 'yam sausage' in his last minutes of life. Others are even more random - an etiquette class for young women which emphasizes that the Japanese slurping of noodles is taboo in the west - or a business dinner where a quiet and low-level young man embarrasses his colleagues and superiors with his encyclopedic knowledge of French cuisine. It's a very strange movie.

Convenience Store Onigiri... Victory At Last!

In Japan you can walk into any konbini (convenience store) and fine yummy, fresh tasting onigiri. You can find these rice balls with salmon and umeboshi (sour plum) fillings everywhere, and usually some random kinds as well, maybe regional, maybe special of the day - I've gotten Korean cabbage onigiri, little necked clam onigiri, shrimp in some sort of tomato sauce onigiri... you get the idea.

That's something I miss here in the states, especially lately. I've been craving onigiri like crazy, see, and because of my on-campus job I have a pretty hefty stipend to spend at the convenience stores on campus. There are two of them, in case you're wondering - the big one is further away and has a pretty good selection of random stuff, while the one near where I live has just the 'bare necessities' like shampoo, tissues, and bottled water, as well as a few convenience food items.

There is cereal, ez-mac, microwaveable soup, a bit of ramen, chips, lots of candy, and, for some reason, a pretty good selection of microwaveable rice, including Annie Chun's Sushi Wraps. Now, all of these items are overpriced normally and even more so at this market, but money is no object! An exaggeration, yes, but true in spirit. The microwaveable sticky white rice in these Sushi kits always comes out sticky, with a surprisingly good consistency. And, they come with a little seaweed packet too. Calling these sushi kits is a joke, but they actually don't work bad for quick onigiri.

But plain onigiri, or even onigiri with lemon, which I like, get old after a while. I started cruising for fillings I could find at the convenience store. I read that canned tuna, mixed with teriyaki sauce and salt, was pretty good, so I bought one of their 'tuna kits'. (they're big on kits, I guess - I only wanted the tuna packet, but don't worry, I used the crackers with some soup later.) I mixed the fish up with the teriyaki sauce pretty well, but I didn't like the end result. It tasted too much like... well, canned tuna.

Today I went to the convenience store again and found little egg and sausage bowls to be microwaved. I decided to give these a try... and I found that about a teaspoon of egg and one of the little bitty chunks of sausage works pretty darn good for a nontraditional filling! It's probably greasy enough that it would be gross if you took it on a picnic, but who knows? Anyway, it was quite yummy to eat fresh in my dorm room.

Convenience Store Onigiri
(That Aren't Shaped Like Proper Onigiri, but Could Be!)
w/ Sausage and Egg

Step One: Go to the convenience store and buy "Annie Chun's Sushi Wraps" and "Microwave Egg and Sausage Bowl"

Step Two: Microwave the rice by following package instructions. Then microwave the egg and sausage bowl.

Step Three: Sprinkle a tiny bit of water and salt on a big, sturdy plastic bag. Spoon some rice onto the plastic bag as shown:

Step Four: Add a little bit of topping... remember that you're going to have to roll this up, so don't put too much. These two little chunks of sausage were pushing it - normally I just put one.

Step Five: Wrap the rice around the filling, first by sort of doubling the plastic bag over horizontally, then by just squeezing and forming a good, solid shape. Don't let the filling come out by applying too much pressure in one direction. You want the shape to be very three dimensional because of this.

I realize that my shape is totally not right for Onigiri. Also, my method is sort of a gaijin (foreigner), amateur method. I'm really not very concerned - the taste is the same really and this is the fastest and least painful method I've discovered.

Step Six: Unwrap the rice ball from the bag. It should hold together well and be a dense and solid bit of yumminess.

Step Seven: Right before eating, (otherwise the seaweed gets soggy :( ), you can take some seaweed and wrap around the rice ball or cylinder or triangle or whatever shape you have. With shorter, rounder shapes, the seaweed tends to go o the bottom almost just as a place to put your fingers. But, it's tasty too. :D Alternatively with larger pieces of seaweed you can wrap up most of the ball if you want.

Of course, you can substitute any of the convenience store ingredients with better ingredients from a real store if you can/want. You will probably save money, though surprisingly this doesn't taste bad. I usually use my own rice, and seaweed if I can get it, but I have to admit that it's convenient not to cook the sausage myself... :P The main point of using all convenience store food was to see if I could do it.

India on Platter Reviews

When Zahra and I went to Taj Emporium the other day I saw a bunch of new Micro-curries, from Kohinoor, called India on a Platter. Of course I was excited by all the new Micro-curry options! I bought five of them, for some reason all including paneer (Indian cottage cheese - NOTHING like the American version). Here were my impressions:

General: From looking at the packages, I quickly found that the India on a Platter dishes, while usually not super unhealthy, especially for convenience food, were generally not as healthy as the SWAD microcurries I've come to love. It's ironic, because the boxes are covered in propaganda about how healthy they are. However, the relatively high fat contents I found may also have something to do with picking all paneer varieties. Cheese adds fat. I also found it amusing that the packages stress somewhat odd English translations MORE than the original names of the dishes. Finally, the line is apparently quite new, only about 6 months old.

1.) Paneer Makhani - Creamy Cottage Cheese. I ate this one first because I love the dish Chicken Makhani at the local Indian restaurant. I was really disappointed in the micro-curry. It was thin, watery, had only a few chunks of sort of tough paneer, and just didn't taste very good. I was barely able to finish it (but then, I don't finish things if they're truly gross) and certainly won't be buying it again. In fact, for a brief moment I felt I had made a mistake by buying 5 of these right off the bat. Coincidentally, Paneer Makhani is also the least healthy of the five I bought. Rating: Not Good

2.) Mutter Paneer - Splendid Cheese Peas. Since I thought Paneer Makhani was so thin, I went for this one next. It was the only one of the five to have anything except paneer in it, since it also has a great deal of peas. When I first started eating it the strong pea taste throughout caught me by surprise and took me a moment to fully recognize. Overall, I thought this was a great micro-curry. The sauce was thick and flavorful and there were lots of peas and paneer both, with the paneer nice and tender. This was the healthiest of the five I bought, no doubt because of all the peas, and it was also in the end my favourite. Rating: Great

3.) Paneer Tikka Masala - Smoked Indian Cottage Cheese. This one had a sort of barbecue flavour to it... probably all the onion flavour. I'm normally not a fan of barbecue, but it really worked. The gravy was maybe a little bit thin, even though on the box it describes the gravy as 'thick'... but I would definitely buy this one again. Rating: Good

4.) Paneer Butter Masala - Spicy Creamy Cottage Cheese. I'm starting to believe that everything these packages say is crap - this one wasn't spicy at all. (Shahi Paneer was actually spicier). Just one was just okay, nothing super memorable but not bad. Rating: Okay

5.) Shahi Paneer - Royal Cottage Cheese. This one was for some reason the spiciest of the bunch. I liked it well enough.... it was somewhere between Paneer Tikka Masala and Paneer Butter Masala. Rating: Good

India on Platter so far: The results were good enough that I'll be back for more, lots more in the case of the Mutter Paneer. I want to try the rest of the micro curries in this brand as well. Just stay away from Paneer Makhani, if you want my advice! ;)

Navratan Korma

I tried another SWAD microcurry today. It was Navratan Korma, and I think it is my favourite yet. The official description is: Mixed Vegetable in Cashew Sauce with Pineapple. When you heat it, the finished product doesn't quite look like what's shown on the cover. It is more liquid and a darker colour. However, it is delicious. It is heavy on cauliflower, but I never enjoyed cauliflower so much. The pineapple, which I think exists only to flavour the dish, adds a certain welcome sweetness.

The dish tastes so rich that I assumed it would be less healthy than the other two SWAD microcurries I've written about. When am I going to learn? It is actually the healthiest yet! One serving contains 6.3% of your daily fat intake, and 7.9% of your total sodium. Amazing for microwaveable yumminess!

Dhingri Mutter and Bhindi Masala

I tried two new SWAD micro-curries today: Dhingri Mutter and Bhindi Masala. First I ate Dhingri Mutter, and I was thinking about it all day, so I decided to make another microcurry for dinner. The only one of my selection that Zahra hadn't tried before was Bhindi Masala, so that's what I ended up making.

The SWAD Dhingri Mutter was amazing. I think it may be my favourite microcurry yet, of any brand. The official description is: Mushroom and Peas in Onion, Tomato and Cream Sauce. It has huge plump mushrooms and peas. It's very full and you almost forget that it's completely vegetarian. It had some spice but not enough to overcome the basic flavour. I will definitely be buying it in bulk next time I make it down to the middle eastern store.

I start my review of SWAD Bhindi Masala by saying that I actually do like it. So consider how good the flavour must be that I can actually tolerate it in the face of the many complaints I have about it. The official description is: Okra in Exotic Mild Curry Sauce. First off, mild? Really? It is the spiciest micro curry I have had so far. It wasn't so spicy that it wasn't worth eating, but it was spicy enough that I enjoyed eating it cold better than eating it hot, because the rice was less painful. So yeah, sort of spicy. The texture wasn't very appealing either - it was very slimy. I'm not sure what else I expected from packaged okra, but yeah, I wouldn't be able to tolerate eating it without rice. The worst, though, was that the Bhindi Masala had a quite bitter aftertaste. But the primary taste was somehow good enough to make up for the rest. I probably won't buy it again, but only because the other micro curries are so good.

When I compared the two packages I found some interesting things. Firsly, the picture on the front of Dhingri Mutter looks exactly like what's in the package. The cover picture of Bhindi Masala frankly looks nothing like what's in the package, though I can't say I blame them. (The contents are brown and slimy). In fact, I can't say that the picture on the front could even be a dressed-up version of what's in the box, using some toppings and other ingredients. It's a stretch to even imagine it as a restaurant version of the same dish. But ah well.

Also, since I loved the Dhingri Mutter so much, and since it lists cream in it's description, I assumed right off the bat that it would be higher in fat and other no-no's than Bhindi Masala. I was surprised to find that the opposite is true. The Bhindi Masala provides 25.8% of your daily fat - not bad for convenience food, but much higher than Dhingri Mutter's 13% of daily fat! The serving sizes are the same. (Also, the sodium, at 10.6% and 13.9% respectively, is much lower than most convenience foods such as ramen or canned soup). The seemingly surprising fat descrepency is explained by the ingredient lists: Bhindi Masala lists vegetable oil as it's third ingredient, in Dhingri Mutter the fat comes after the mushrooms, green peas, and onions that make up an overwhelming percentage of it's volume.

The Quiet Before the Storm

Classes start Monday. My God, that's tomorrow! I've been here for so long already that it's hard for me to believe that classes haven't started yet, but on the same token I'm getting used to life here without them. And that's dangerous - especially this weekend, when we're not completely swamped with reslife stuff and being tempted by freetime. That said, today I have to lead the first community meeting for our floor, and finish my syllabus and lesson plan for tomorrow. I also need to do a little bit of housekeeping and figure out where all my classes are, send a schedule to my mother, etc. And I haven't completely wasted the weekend. I cleaned my room pretty nicely, to the point where other than a bit of evil chaos under my bed, things look nice, and I can find everything, and it's actually relaxing to walk in. And I got to meet Zahra, which was lovely. :) I really hope she has a good experience here.:D

And finally I did a bit of grocery shopping, buying Nutella, seaweed, and a few of my favourite snacks from Japan from Chong's Market downtown. I bought Pepero (which is almost Pocky), Choco Boy Mushrooms (which are almost Mushroom Valley Mushrooms), and Korean Shrimp Flavoured Cracker (which are/is almost Japanese Shrimp Flavoured Cracker). So far I've only eaten the Pepero, which I remember happily eating all through last year. It tastes hard, dry. The chocolate is thin. Just - not quite as good. XD But happily I can get real Japanese Pocky at Wal Mart for only 2-3 times the price I paid in Japan. So it's all good. Mushrooms and Shrimp Crackers are more elusive, however, so I hope the knock off brands pull through. :) I wanted to buy Naan and Furikake as well, but I'm really quite thoroughly out of money until September, so I'll wait. :) And thank God for my meal plan.

Post Number 1000

I've reached post number 1000, And I'm going to use it to share two recipes that I have prepared recently. The first one is a super easy stir fry thing I made up myself. The second one I got from some old copy from a recipe book, but I changed it around some.

Easy Teriyaki Stir Fry

Teriyaki Sauce, 1 Small Head of Broccoli, 2 Chicken Breasts, 2-3 Cups Cooked Rice,
1 Egg, Light Cooking Oil, Salt and Pepper to Taste

Heat oil in a skillet, add chicken cut widthwise into pieces. Cut broccoli into florets and add to skillet, add cooked rice, a little more oil, and the egg. Stir quickly so that the egg chunks are very small (ideally, more of a coating on the rice). Add teriyaki sauce, salt, and pepper to taste.


Cinnamon Butter Chicken

6 Tablespoons Butter, 2 Tablespoons Oil, 2 Onions, 3-4 Chicken Breasts, Salt to Taste
3/4 Cup Dry Vermouth, 1-2 Teaspoons Tomato Paste, 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Melt the butter and oil in a large skillet. Cut the onions to whatever size you like - I left mine in fairly large chunks. Put the onions into the butter and cook slowly until very soft. Add the chicken and brown on all sides. Remove the chicken and set it aside. Stir in the vermouth, tomato paste, cinnamon, and salt. Return the chicken to the pan and cook, covered and on low heat, for about 30 minutes.

Update on My New Floridian Life

We moved out of the hotel and into the new home. Dad returned from Paris. The house is full of our furniture and the number of boxes obstructing our passage is quickly diminishing. The music and several T.V.s are up and running, and the large black dachshunds next door have discovered Tidbit and vice versa, so it's goodbye to the quiet we had before!

The dock is very different from the one we have at Lake of the Ozarks - it's on piles, instead of floating, so it doesn't go up and down with the tides, and doesn't rock in the wake of boats or dolphins. When the tide is low it's several feet under the dock, and reveals a mass of white-grey-green barnacle/shellfish-stuff encrusting the wooden pilings. I need to catch up on my vocabulary to describe such things - I've just spent too much of my life far from the sea. I am nearly as surprised as Tidbit by the salty taste of the water.

Yesterday we worked. I pulled the tape off of so many boxes that the tips of my fingers ached and felt carpet burned. I also set up the home computer and everything, and it's all running very well now! The house begins to feel a bit like a home. Our furniture is all here and some rooms, such as the Master Bedroom, are even respectably nice. Both bathrooms and the kitchen, however, are still miserable - probably will be until we make some fundamental changes to the house. But ah well. The big piles of book boxes from my room and the office are gone, as are most of the random boxes in the family/dining room and my parents' closet.

Last night while we were trying to set up the home gym, the weight machine fell over on me. It only fell about forty five degrees, and while it hurt, I knew right away I wasn't seriously injured. Took a while to convince my parents of that, though, and they ran over and started patting me everywhere and asking what hurt. I was more worried about my laptop, which was also involved in the accident - it has a good scratch in the screen, almost penetrating. But it doesn't affect how it works at all, so I'm grateful for that.

Immediately following this incident Teddy and Maxine arrived. They are, or Teddy is, if you want to be specific, our only blood relatives in Florida. Teddy is my grandmother's brother, and Maxine is his wife. We visited them in Florida once growing up, and of course we've seen them at numerous family functions across the States (okay, so overwhelmingly in Missouri), so they are a slice of home, family, normality, if those can be associated.

They are very Floridian. Maxine is from Tennessee and speaks and cooks with a decidedly southern style. I volunteered to help her cook for Thanksgiving, as we'll be spending this Thanksgiving with them, and I've heard she makes cornbread stuffing and sometimes deep-fries the turkey. Teddy has such a strong something accent that he can be difficult to understand at times. He is bald and almost a caricature of himself, but very nice, underneath the bravado ;), and a 'hoot', as my mom puts it. He goes freshwater fishing on a fast motorboat in gator infested, inland waters.

We went out with them to a restaurant in John's Pass called Gators. I had this massive appetite, I dunno where from. I helped with the peel and eat shrimp and gator appetizers, and then ate every bite of my blackened Mahi Mahi with yellow rice, and then got a dessert - Key Lime Pie - to split with my sister. It was all good, especially the Key Lime Pie. What's very strange is that I never, ever order dessert - I'm usually so full that I bring half my entree home and still feel abused. And afterward I was contented, but not so full as I usually am - I could have helped out with another few desserts, or another round of appetizers, had there been more to come!

The sunset was unbearably lovely. Pictures later, I'm planning to post a few from the move.

My 'room' consists of a bookshelf filled with books, two crates with clothes, one crate of debris, one crate labeled sentimental, an alarm clock, and an air bed, all in the home gym. It's cozy. No, really. Well, there's nowhere to sit down on, or anything to eat. (/tolkienfandom) Tidbit and I slept there last night and it worked out pretty well. This house is wired really poorly, and all the light switches and knobs are on the outsides of the rooms they belong to, meaning that I have to decide whether I want my light on or off /before/ I go into my room and shut the door. Luckily my closet has it's own light, and a pretty nice one, which I have been reading by.

Today I woke up when Tidbit wanted to go outside. It was about half an hour earlier than I would have liked. She went out and hunted for geckos and I got out Liebe Total and read about five pages, underlining, but not looking up, the words I didn't know. I can never decide whether it is better to read, ignoring or figuring out from context the words I don't know, or go through making a notice of them, maybe looking them up if I have the computer handy, and that's it, or to go through and study every new word. It's hard to say, so I sort of play it by ear each day. Liebe Total is pretty easy, and from the subject matter I think it's written for teenagers, which would explain that. German prose, such as in a newspaper, can be very difficult - making it one of the few languages that I'm almost as confident listening in as reading it! But Liebe Total (actually, Immer Cool Bleiben, the first novel of two in the book) is very reasonable.

Then we did a bit more work, and then I went to the grocery store, Winn Dixie. At first I worried because they didn't seem to have anything I sought. Organic 1% milk, for example. I found the ordinary milk, a small enough section, and beside it saw several organic varieties. There were three kinds each of organic whole, and skim milk, and two kinds of organic 2%, and one kind of organic 1% chocolate milk! Finally I asked someone and it turns out they keep it in a different area of the store. ?? Similar thing happened with the feta cheese, all the flavoured and low fat kinds are at one end, and the ordinary varieties at the other.

I've been attempting to cook with the new kitchen and sometimes it has me pining for my 'kitchen' in the dorm. The drawers don't pull out well, the stove and oven are old and hardly trustworthy, we have no microwave, etc... but we brought the knives and pans, etc, from home, and they are quite nice. :D I can cut through onion and garlic like butter! Right now the smell of Greek chicken and jasmine rice are permeating the room.

My main complaint here is the sun. It takes me down. I was sensitive enough to the heat in St. Louis, but I dunno... here it's a drier heat, which most people prefer, but not me, for some reason. A wet heat exhausts, sure, and may even feel hotter in the mouth and nose, but this dry heat makes my skin burn and itch. Or maybe it's that the sun's rays are so much stronger closer to the equator? It's thoroughly unpleasant and I can't even describe it in a way that does it justice. I realize suddenly that before this I never really went to Florida in summer, usually in Winter, and found it balmy enough then! I'm just not built to survive this climate, or this latitude, or somethign!