What I eat, apparently

At some point in the not too distant past, this little bugger sauntered into my life:

A mystery of a vegetable, indeed. I let it sit a few days, just to see if a yellow Pacman squash would wander in and try to eat it. When that didn’t happen, I figured that it was inevitably up to me to eat it. I’ve never seen, much less cooked with one of these things before (’white squash’ is it’s appropriate name, apparently), so I did the most reasonable thing I could think of: make red curry.

It’s appropriate, I figure. Not only do I get to gain the points from eating this ghost squash, but I also get the points from all of the little pellets (of rice) the curry gets eaten with as well. I also dumped in carrot, green pepper, gluten, and the appropriate seasonings.

For some strange reason, whenever I took a bite of the gluten, the green pepper and carrot would also turn white, and start edging away from me on the plate. I was swift, though, and gobbled them up fast. Rumor has it that they’ll be faster in the next curry dish, though.

So I got this chicken, see. And I’ve been fantasizing about things involving coconut milk for awhile, now. And I had all this basil that was just rarin’ to get gnawed upon. So it follows that, despite all my best intentions, a chicken curry would be made.

And I think I figured it out - I gotta start using a wok more. The vegetables were in much better moods then they would otherwise typically be. Also, I used a teeny 5.5 oz can of coconut milk, rather then the behemoth can I usually use. Apparently ingredients get cranky when they spend too much time swimming around in unnecessarily thick fluids. Aside from that and a bit of curry, I used pretty much exactly the same seasonings used in the green papaya salad - insanity!

This may have been the best curry I’ve ever made, in fact. Here is a picture high in contrast and low on detail!

Actually, I’m still not sure what makes something a curry, and what doesn’t. Does something become curry simply by adding curry powder or paste to it? Even if it’s not a lot? I just don’t know!

So this was technically supposed to be soup. I, however, am a non-believer. I was baffled that the recipe actually expected me to fit several quarts of water into a large saucepan. Apparently it’s definition of ‘large’ does not mesh well with mine. This baby took 2 hours to cook (compared to the recipe’s paltry 45 minutes) due to me constantly having to add more water, but not too much so as to keep the saucepan from peeing all over the place.

Witness for yourself the vast and mighty acres of beanage:

There was enough for several days, as well as a chunk which is now napping in my freezer. It worked out well, I dumped in curry powder because the already dumped in cumin was begging for it, despite the recipe not calling for it. I also made the fabulous decision of eating this with barley rather then rice, meaning my mouth was filled with thousands of teeny tiny lumps and balls! It was an adventure in texture.