Choo Choo Goes the Spice Train!

Way back in January I bought a truly excellent international curries cookbook from a book shop in Kokura, but only had the opportunity to make some of the simplest recipes in it on account of the scarcity and sky-high cost of premium Indian/S.E. Asian spices. Not so here in Cali, thankfully! I just now whipped up a delicious Sri Lanka-style curry that I'm about to serve over brown rice (not really the traditional rice to serve curry with, if you go that route) and best of all is how simple it was to prepare. A little coriander here, some turmeric there, enough coconut milk to make an elephant empty its bowels (it's a natural laxative--ask me about the Hawaiian luau and coconut jello story sometime) and you've got a damn tasty, nigh restaurant-grade curry.

One thing I didn't know about curries that this book enlightened me on is that the British sort of invented the idea of "curry and rice". Traditionally, many curries are treated as a soup and eaten as such or they're like thick stews and dry-ish veggie pan fries that get eaten with bread--like chapati and naan--or hands. In many ways the British did to curry and rice what we Americans did to chow mein, namely that they stone cold invented the modern dish and labeled it an exotic foreign delicacy.

And just because we consume industrial-sized quantities of the stuff, I also fashioned up some simple hummus from as scratch as I'm liable to get anytime in the near future. I mean, I didn't grind the tahini out or grow the garbanzos or anything, but in a perfect world filled with plentiful garden space and free kitchen implements I would.

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I'm reaching a high level of exasperation with the cat who, in honor of the town bicycle cat from Kusu we used to feed, we've dubbed "Strumpet". She's adorable on the surface, but deep down I think she's got a few shoots of catnip lodged in the grey matter. I am terrified to touch her without knowing the secret ingredient that makes her swipe. I was adjusting a pillow on the couch tonight after having a seat and she had a go at me for that. We have to kick her out when we go to bed just to make sure she doesn't use our cottage as a toilet, but she'll come back minutes later to the rooftop window feet from our head and meow loudly. Such a tactless moocher of a cat...

Strumpet, Class A Moocher

--Matt