Beef and Beet curry:

2# beef, cut into large cubes- sear in salt

2 large onions and 2 carrots, diced.  Sauté, add spices: toast coriander, cumin, and anise, purée with garlic and ginger.   Garam Masala, clove, cayenne, turmeric, cinnamon, salt and pepper.  Deglaze with wine.

2 large beets, small dice, 1 fennel bulb, chicken stock to cover (ok preferably beef, but that’s what I got in the house.  Made from leftover chicken bones).

Boil then simmer 2 hours.

Taste.

Eat with mashed cauliflower, for a Palo version.

WHY DON’T WE TAX OIL THE SAME WAY WE TAX CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL?

THAT TAX SHOULD GO FOR EDUCATION. USING CIG AND ALCOHOL MONEY FOR THE CHICDREN IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

OIL IS CHEAP NOW, BUT IT SHOULDN’T BE. KEEP IT EXPENSIVE NO MATTER THE MARKET DEMAND.

IF THE PRICE FALLS, GIVE IT TO HELP THE FUTURE.

For a giant batch, enough for the household and your mother:

Boiled chicken and stock:

2 organic chickens, cut into 8 piece

2 large onion

3 large carrots

4 stalks of celery

2 stalk lemongrass, smashed and chopped

Bay leaf, salt, pepper

Bring to a simmer, cook 45 min.  Shred chicken

Curry:

Onion and Sweet Potato, small diced

Stir fry with massaman curry paste, granted galangal (or ginger), 1 head garlic, cumin seeds, coriander, cardamom, Chinese 5 spice, turmeric

Degrade with white wine

Add tamarind paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, cashew butter

Coconut milk, more smashed lemon grass, stock from the boiled chicken, salt and pepper

When potatoes are soft, add diced bell pepper and diced tomato

Finish with pulled meat and fresh chopped cilantro and lime juice

I’ve been sleeping for days.  Basically the whole week.  If there is time to lay lie, time to sleep, spend the morning in bed, tucked in early to read, reclined on the sofa eyeballs deep in a book, wander in dreamland, trying to meet the sandman.  That’s me.  Sleeping beauty.  Snoring silently to the rhythm of dreams, I find adventure in the skies, in the seas, in the whirlwind of fantasy.  My dreaming life has always been vivid, way more exciting then the mere day to day adventures, way more fun, and I am way more in control.  There’s that serenity to all the action and possibility of harm, and sense of unity with all the rapid changes and wild twists the dreamtale takes; underneath the crazy characters, I am the mastermind steering the ship in the right direction.  Usually.  Usually the nighttime adventures are rad, but there are always those strange, weird, almost foreboding dreams that fuck up your whole day, like your shadow is a shade darker.  Its haunting.  But those are a rare bread.  I get so lost in the dream world that I want to neglect the one in which I am actually awake, the one where I can write and don’t forget my phone number, or have inexplicably heavy legs.  I get so caught up in that ultimate fantasy, that not even the promise of breakfast is enough to snap me out of ever changing land into this stable world.  Alas, today I have broken the sleeping spell.  I felt the thin glass of dreary constraint slip off.  It shattered, leaving me free to think and imagine and sense the tactic world once again.  I had to sleep enough to wake up from the constant sleep I was in.  The answer to the sleepy numbness that you get lulled into after the day to day routine is simply more sleep.  Sleep until you dream the prince charming, dream until hopeful.

Tonight was inspired by a book that I failed to return to the library ( I guess by now its a permanent item in my collection) called “Alone in the kitchen with an eggplant.” Not that there are any actual eggplants in my kitchen – I do not wish to upset one ‘Katherine the wife.’  However, on a completely separate point, she regularly keeps poison fruit in the house at most times, and even talks on about how delicious apples are and how she couldn’t live without them.  Anyway, the book is about cooking for one person, themselves or yourself, and how people approach this scenario.  It might be a complete breakdown of all adult maturity and one eats uncooked ramen, chucks of cheddar cheese, and potato chips dipped in krab dip, or frozen pizza with a side of blue box mac, or a complete avoidance of the need to refuel and go straight for cereal and yogurt, or those select special few that decide that they deserve a meal more well prepared and personal then that normal reserved for a love ones birthday.  I, of course, belong to this last category of species, and really had to talk myself out of buying diver scallops for dinner.  I just lost my god damn job, and it takes my complete will power to not spend $40 on dinner for one.  Blue box mac is so much cheaper.

So compensation, and compromise, and we arise at a menu that can please both myself and more importantly, my myself again.  I went to the grocery store that has discount vegetables, and that is where this culinary journey begins. The discount rack at Edgewater produce.  The bounty that was discovered there!  I opted with turnips and red bell peppers, then picked up the regularly price beets with stems attached, mushrooms, arugula, parsley, that’s it,  Off to the jewel for ocean perch, that’s it.  Homeward, on the battlefield complied the dinner one for one (items not mentioned above where located in the pantry):  arugula salad with roasted beets, hazelnuts, goat cheese, balsamic; roasted turnip purée with rosemary served with brown butter perch, topped with beet stems and greens, mushrooms and onions.  For dessert, dark chocolate.

Epic fail: no picture

Epic win: everything else.

This is a sporadic update about the journey out of the monocratic life of a line cook, and into a career field where the pay in more than minimum, a land where you can sit down while you eat, where do don’t get treated like a child.  Sometimes goals are best left to the basics.

This is a way to explore the many sides of my charming and strange self, to highlight the many sides of cooking and eating, and to chase down that unifying dream of happiness, being content with the constant hunt.