...and they lived happily ever after. Smith & Lady: poets, artists, photographers & adventurers.
Our relationship was forged to the soundtrack of Yoko Ono's magic,
frenetic, love-laden song, "Walking On Thin Ice." ( play song )
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Precedent kathy’s economic stimulus package – a prescription for today & possibly the future (albeit with tweaking and optimization):
1. If you happen to be near a flower shop, I hear the bees are expecting food next year and so buy a flower, think of a bee, and if you are wealthy, buy flowers for your entire house. I hear they are going to flower forever and ever.
2. I hear the bees have been heard of as ‘unhealthy’ in an outdated narrative, but I’ve recently heard an update on this information: there are some 15 or so new species of bees. I hope they are very good, sturdy, happy little pollinators and that they somehow magically know how to find their ways back to the hives. I anticipate that we shall eat fruit, good fruit, from now until the foreseeable future. I COMMAND IT SO. And the fruit will be wildly and widely available for maws of mass consumption, and will be very healthy and beneficial for the maws of mass consumption.
So, I command you to start eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day (if you have the money for it and if it is available in your region. I hear most regions do have enough food. I would like to assume so. If not, I COMMAND IT SO.)
Of the grocery stores, et cetera: I really don’t understand how a couple of red peppers can really equal the life of a chicken. How can this situation be changed so that healthy food is subsidized? GOVERNMENT: I COMMAND YOU TO START SUBSIDIZING HEALTHY FOOD FOR PEOPLE.
3. Cellphones used to have a ‘bad’ reputation. I hear that they are now in collaboration with our needs, and nature’s needs. Thank you, cellphones! We love you!
4. I hear more and more Republicans are finding that they really were right, after all, that they are decent human beings who put their mouths where their money is in terms of helping the poor with churches, in stimulating the economy ethically so that people can buy more locally-made, hand-made goods – this is my vision for the near future. This is my economic stimulus plan.
5. The rich people will dine on the most succulent, juicy, well-marbled grass-fed beef, served to them by wonderfully paid and happy craftspeople who work with food.
6. McDonald’s and its ilk will start serving healthy, inexpensive, wonderfully-tasting food, and will pay its workers very well, a living wage that will meet and exceed its collaborators expectations, 32 hours per week with full benefits and pension plans in reparation for the history of the business’s exploitation of its workers and environment. In turn, the workers will become very faithful advocates of McDonald’s (and its ilk). And their high wages and high health will help stimulate the local economies.
So, on some days, a person of moderate wealth might find that he/she would like to eat at McDonald’s or its ilk, and other days, at an expensive smoothie bar or expensive restaurant or vegetarian restaurant (I hear they are becoming quite popular.)
7. Artists: Did you know that anyone can become an artist? Sure, some of us are misunderstood, but–get this–in a civilized society with lots of cash flow, the rich people buy lots of art. They buy personalized items for lots of money, and so do we. We are rich people! Did you know that? All of us are rich.
We might not have the actual cash money in our bank accounts right this second–but I hear it’s coming! Has to do with that hand-crafted, ethically-produced stimulation thing. Yowzers.
8. Poets: Why are you giving away God’s words for free? You are so good. Buy each others books. I command thee. I command more people to start appreciating poetry–people who might not necessarily write poetry, but suddenly find that, wow, what a goldmine of nuance and love and reverence for life there is in those darned poets! BORDERS BOOK STORE: I command you to buy books from local poets in consultation with the people who know best–like Suzanne from Macs.
INDEPENDENT BOOK STORES: You are lovers of hand-crafted zines, recycled and reowned books, fine coffee environments, tee, pastries, plants, atmosphere, music, fine wine, et cetera. IN MY ECONOMIC STIMULUS PLAN FOR YOU, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT LOSING BUSINESS, ONLY GAINING IT!
9. Back to the bees. I hear monoculture crops weren’t such a good idea. I’m glad they’re realizing now that they need to employ beekeepers for the local areas, and that most of the year (maybe?) the bees need to eat organic, varied, wonderful, varieties of food. Perhaps a patch of this food with a local beekeeper could be employed in every area that needs one? And that the use of pesticides is suddenly found to not be necessary, or that somehow, it is in coordination with the health needs of pollinating insects? Seems like local beekeepers would be a good jobs program to me.
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I imagine that this plan will require some tweaking, but it sounds like a good start and good vision to me. What do you all think?
Maybe Heaven is supposed to be this Planet. This is the butterfly that’s going to carry me home, and this is the trash I’m going to pick up later, I hope.
Original post down below. I am strongly feeling that the staples on my roof seem to think I was wrong & I tend to agree with them.
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As a person with a BSEE,a background in neural nets and search engine optimization, I belive (believe) I am receiving scientific messages which could be interpreted as holy messages (for me they are one and the same.)
I am not entirely certain, but I think I heard on the radio that J (Lebron James) is Jesus. (I do believe, I think.) Hard to tell. Will try to be truthful in what I’m picking up.
Now, off to good faith work. Seems like a harsh think (thing) for a prophet, but I must do my work for my loved ones.
Yuyu taught me how to make Himalayan Lentil Curry. I’ve made several batches since he’s left, and here’s my current rendition of it:
1 bag lentils, soaked overnight
6-8 onions, diced
1 head garlic, diced
2 ” ginger, minced
6-12 chopped tomatoes or mebbe a 15-oz can chopped tomatoes – about 6 cups of tomatoes, I’m guessing
1-2 T turmeric
2-4 T chani dal masala (this is a very hot spice mix)
2 T garam masala *
2 T mustard seeds *
2 T cumin seeds *
3 T coriander seeds
1 t cardamom seeds *
8 cloves *
2 chilies, chopped, with seeds *
1-3 C vegetable oil
1-2 sticks butter
1 can coconut milk
1-2 limes, juice of *
1/2 C goat cheese *
* Items marked with asterisk are not necessary
Roast cumin & mustard seeds in pan 1-2 minutes, until they start to turn aromatic. Roast coriander separately. Grind coriander (can smash with hammer in plastic baggie, or coffee grinder). Or you can use the coriander whole, but ground seems better for texture, especially if there is a lot of it.
The timing seems to work if I chop and cook at the same time. By the time I’m done chopping one ingredient, the mixture is ready for me to incorporate it in.
Chop up the onions. Then start heating 1-3 C oil in big heavy-bottomed pot on medium. While oil is heating, start chopping the garlic. Put seeds in oil for a few minutes. Then add onion and garlic to the oil. Add a little bit of salt (1/2 t?) Fry until onion fairly translucent and aromatic, then set to real low flame.You can spend this time dicing the ginger. Then add ginger, chiles, turmeric, chani dal masala and garam masala. Stir. Put on low heat. Start chopping tomatoes. When halfway through chopping tomatoes, add what you’ve chopped to the oil, set the flame a little higher to like a medium flame, then chop the rest, and then add the rest. Cook down about two minutes, then add lentils and cloves and enough water to cover mixture. Mix well. Bring to a boil, then let simmer on low for about an hour to an hour and a half, covered, stirring every ten minutes or so.
Near the end, add the coconut milk, lime juice, goat cheese and butter, mix in until melted and well incorporated. Smash cardamom seeds and sprinkle on. Add salt to taste. You could set it to simmer for a while until it seems ‘right’.
The end result should be a very fatty, delicious, aromatic, tomato-y stew, somewhat reminiscent of sloppy joe flavor – more dense liquid than lentil.
Serving sizes are very small, about 1/3 C. It’s a very rich food, full of delicious fat. I eat it with pita or rice. I figure there are about 25 servings per pot, at about 50 cents/serving. It’s full of antioxidants and fiber and satisfies your hunger for a good 6 hours.
Lady K
Somewhere in the middle of yesterday I stepped in dog poo in my parents’ yard, a real big patty that got both shoes. It was like, a veritable cow patty pile of poo. I was so afraid Yuyu would see them and get grossed out. I’d heard about people from India having a kind of real distaste for anything to do with shoes because of dirt, and especially people of his heritage (Brahmans). I set the shoes aside to clean discretely before we left, and promptly forgot about them.
In the hustle bustle of activity before dinner, my grandmother prepared a pumpkin cream cheese dish to schmear on graham crackers. My aunt was to bring pumpkin pie. As my grandmother stirred the schmear, she became fearful of having crossed some sphere of territory of my aunt’s, that the schmear was too dessert-like and also in competition with the flavor of the pumpkin pie.
Yuyu and I had made kheer for dessert as well. Kheer is called ‘the food of the gods.’ It is holy because it has so much cow milk; cows represent Mother Earth. Kheer takes a labor of love to prepare. It’s like a pudding made of rice, milk, nuts and raisins. I stirred the kheer constantly for an hour as it simmered.
So, I was fearful that I’d set my aunt’s dish up for competition, it having been discussed that there are spheres of territory at this Thanksgiving dinner. But everyone took it in stride, a heap of kheer side by side with pumpkin pie.
As my mom chomped away on some bite of dessert, she bit down onto a hard object. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, and pulled something out of her mouth. A penny!
“I don’t know where it came from, the pudding or the pie,” Mom said.
“Well, it couldn’t have been our pudding,” I said.
“It couldn’t have been my pie,” said my aunt.
My mom put the penny in her mouth again. “Pie crust,” she said.
“No, it couldn’t have been the pie,” asserted my aunt.
“You are lucky,” Yuyu said. “Copper is very lucky in my country. You are going to be rich.”
“Penny from Heaven,” I said.
After dessert, we had to leave. I realized then I’d forgotten about the shoes. There was no way to deal with them gracefully other than to borrow my Mom’s shoes and put mine in a plastic bag to ‘isolate’ the contamination. I tucked the bag into a corner of my car trunk.
We drove to the end of my parents’ street. Smith and Yuyu said at once, ‘I smell dog shit.’ So I had to tell them about the bag in the trunk. But the smell was really strong, so it was decided that everyone would get out of the car and check their shoes. Yuyu was fine. The shoes I borrowed from my Mom were fine. But now Smith had stepped in shit. I wonder if it was the same pile.
“I wish I had stepped in the shit,” Yuyu said. “In India, it is considered lucky. It means you are going to get rich.”
Yesterday we had a party. It was an opportune time as we have Yuyutsu here and we’ve finally straightened our place. I decided to make a chicken curry because I wanted Yuyu to try it. When we were in London I fell in love with chicken curry, and started to learn how to make it. The following ‘recipe’ is based on my experience with making chicken curry about 50 times. The recipe has kind of evolved over time with trial and error.
Yuyu made a wonderful lentil dal–a himalayan curry–and I’m going to try to pin down his ingredients and blog it as well. It was so fun. Yuyu and I were cooking side by side in the kitchen, my shoebox of asian spices open on the counter.
CHICKEN CURRY – THAI/INDIAN HYBRID
2 T mustard seeds
1 T cumin seeds
1 T coriander seeds
1/4 C olive oil
1 T butter
4 medium onions, chopped into 1″ cubes
1/2 bulb garlic, peeled, diced
Heat olive oil in large heavy-bottomed pan. Olive oil isn’t technically ‘asian’ but I think it works well. Add mustard, cumin and coriander seeds and butter. Monitor the seeds and flame to make sure they don’t burn. When the mustard seeds start to pop in the oil (maybe a minute or two after being added), add the onion and garlic. Cook until the onion starts to turn translucent. Stir frequently so the garlic doesn’t burn.
Meanwhile, put these ingredients in a blender:
1/4 to 1/2 C masman curry paste – IMPORTANT *
1″ piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped roughly
2 large chilies, with seeds — or more if you can tolerate it!
4 large tomatoes, chopped roughly into wedges
1/2 to 1 C roasted cashews
2 to 3 T good pungent curry powder
more garlic if desired (good for health!)
Pulse and puree the paste, ginger, chilies, cashews, tomatoes and curry powder. You might find it necessary to add a little bit of water to make the ingredients more ‘blendable’ by the blender. You could add more chilies if you can tolerate hot curries. The chilies have a kind of synergy with the ginger and spices and really bring out the flavor, kind of like an Indian ‘menthol’ effect.
Add the fried onion mixture to the tomato mixture in the blender and pulse until fairly paste-like. Don’t worry if it is a bit lumpy or if the seeds haven’t broken down. They will break down more when the paste is cooked. Pour the paste back into the heavy pan. Add another quarter cup olive oil and mix together. Cook on a low flame for about a half hour, scraping the bottom of the pan occasionally. You might find it necessary to add more water if the mixture gets too dry. The mixture should be kind of like a lumpy gravy consistency, pulpy. You want it too cook down a little, so don’t cover the pan. It will make a mess, occasionally plopping bits of orange goo onto your stovetop and walls. This is normal.
After cooking for about a half hour, you can add a half stick of butter (if desired) and a can of coconut milk. Blend in until the butter is melted. It’s not necessary, but the butter is a nice kind of fat to add, good comforting taste. And really enhances the flavor of the spices and I highly recommend it. I don’t skimp on fat in this recipe. Fat is VERY important for flavor and satiety. Many Indian recipes call for ghee (clarified butter) but I find it’s not necessary.
Sample the mixture to see if it is salty enough. The masman curry paste has a lot of salt, so it should be sufficient, but you could add more to make the ingredients ‘zing.’ Sometimes a little sugar brings out more flavor, although I didn’t use sugar last time.
At this point you have a good gravy base for a curry. You could do variations on this using chicken or beef or lamb or just vegetables if you are vegetarian. I think it’s best with chicken and potatoes or chicken and yams or chicken and carrots. I add about 2 pounds of chicken diced into 1″ cubes – a mixture of thigh and breast meat is great.
Last time I made this I used chicken and potatoes. Two pounds of chicken, and about 3 C potatos chopped into 1″ pieces. I added the chicken and potatoes to the gravy in the pot and cooked for about 45 minutes to an hour on a low flame, scraping the bottom of the pan occasionally. I did not lid the pan because the gravy tends to break down more and become more liquidy, and you want a kind of thick gravy at the end, so I let the steam escape. Keep a glass of water nearby to add to the mixture in case it cooks down too much. I kept cooking it until the potatoes were tender and the gravy was cooked down to a nice thickness.
You could dice a half cup of fresh cilantro and add it to the gravy at the end if you like.
Serve with fresh roti or warm pita bread or basmati rice.
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* Masman curry paste – you can find this at an asian grocer. You could try to make it from scratch, but it requires a lot of ingredients, and it’s best if you grind them fresh. The curry paste includes things like chile, ginger, lime peel, etc. You could try a different curry paste here if you like, but the masman is my favorite.
