Friday, April 3, 2009

Cooking

Okay, I'm sorry again I haven't written anything. In the gap, I've done some more vegetable gardening, resurrected some seemingly dead plants, went to the Kanapaha Spring Festival with Sally, went to the Spring Arts Festival with Robin, and took photos of none of it. Sometimes I just want to experience my life instead of blogging about it.

To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about blogging. Unlike many people in my approximate age group, there are actually many things about my life that I like to be private. Plus, I just don't know how many things I do are that interesting to other people. Don't get me wrong -- I'm an avid blog reader and consider myself to be an extremely curious (you might call me nosy) person. But I'm not always sure I want to be on the other end of that spotlight.

But every week or two I feel ok about blogging. Sometimes I enjoy the exercise of examining my daily life. Or whatever.

Anyway:

In the summer I do not like to cook, and consequently end up eating a lot of salad. This is probably mostly because I live without A/C and the heat diminishes my appetite. So in the past few weeks I've been milking the tolerable temperatures for all they're worth. Here are recipes for two tasty meals I recently made.

Red Coconut Curry
Source: Self

Notes
I doubt coconut milk is real low-fat (sarcasm), but it sure is delicious and coconut is supposed to be some kind of miracle food, so who cares? Live it up. This dish takes about 20 min. tops and is delectable. You can also add potatoes or corn or anything else you feel like.

Ingredients
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 lb-ish collard greens, rinsed and chopped
2 carrots, diced
1/2 lb-ish tempeh*, cubed
Red curry paste, to taste
1 can coconut milk
Salt to taste
Some rice (basmati or jasmine)

Procedure
Heat up some coconut/olive/whatever oil in a pan over medium heat. Throw in the tempeh and saute it until it's brown. Then add the collards, red pepper, and carrots. Cook for five or so minutes. The greens will start turning bright green. Add salt.


Turn heat down a little bit and add coconut milk and curry. I used more than a tablespoon of curry, because I like some heat.



Stir till blended, then let it warm up slowly. Serve over rice.

*We Gainesvillans are lucky enough to have a local tempeh maker, Jose, who sells his tempeh in frozen cubes that have been marinated in soy sauce and stuff but you can use regular tempeh plain and cubed, or marinate it yourself.

I have to run but will write more about cooking and maybe other stuff later this weekend.

2 comments:

Bangchik and Kakdah said...

Delicious ..... cheers! ~ bangchik

Jen said...

Good point.

I have to admit there have been times when, in the midst of some experience, I've caught myself plotting out how to blog about it. And in doing so, surely I missed part of the experience.

It's the same with photos - sometimes you just have to see something for yourself, not through the lens of "prepping" it for public consumption.