starchy side dish

Well the "Festival Rice" started out pretty sadly. Me and my mad ninja produce identifying skillz came up horribly short.

Isabel had earlier proclaimed the mango the "world's largest lima bean", waving it around and chasing her brothers with it. *sigh*
The fruit had progressed from hard and green (thus the clincher in my ID- decison..plus the sticker said "mango" to green and waaay over ripe. I easily remembered how much Zoli liked mango when he was a toothless slop slurper. This was some drippy fruit. Truly this mango was mush--peeling it the way the recipe said just did not happen. What did indeed happen was that I sort sqwoozed it with both hands and it mushed into the bowl. I briefly wondered if maybe I should make some sort of moisturizer of this mess. My hands were covered in pulpy goo. The giant seed plopping like a slimy cuttle bone of doom. The mass of the fruit went from what I had estimated at 1-2 cups of shredded tangy to a glop of orange-ish mush. Hmmm time to start re thinking this side dish. Well, as there was NO texture to the this puddle I diced up two apricots. And a carrot At this point I realized I had deviated so far from the original recipe (which called for grated green mango and NO apricots or carrot) that I was going to be creating an entirely separate thing. That's cool. Walk the path my Padawan.

Loosely basing my actions on the original fruity spicy rice theme I went with about two cups of cooked jasmine rice, one pulverized over ripe mango which gave us a nice yellowy saffron color (I was having fantasies about driving to Mistress Kay's house and begging some saffron-- she has a damn ziplock bag full)--so then skipping the ghee entirely I went to the spice drawer, white pepper, cumin and sweet curry. The original; recipe called for peanuts and chiles--I went with almonds and garlic.

They loved it. Matt and Pete just kept the bowl between them and the childwen even ate the first servings. It was pretty spicy for Iz but she liked the almonds. All in all a satisfactory outcome.

delivery ad-veg-ture

ITEM 1--
My new produce box came today I got the MEDIUM BOX. I am still chuckling at several things including their concept of local--apparently Texas and California are local?? But darling reader, the biggest giggle for me is what do they expect me to do with ONE leek and ONE Sweet potato? The medium size box is supposed to be for a family of four. One pint of cherry tomatoes? Obviously these people haven't seen my DH near cherry tomatoes. Don't worry if you are afraid the fam is gonna have to subsist on four apricots (LOCAL???--whatever) this box is mostly a challenge to myself to try new things and force myself to think beyond Chicken tenders and romaine lettuce. So for tomorrow I found a blog that has this tasty sounding recipe on it... "Festival Rice" wish me luck while I check out a stranger's blog.

ITEM 2--
Which technically should have been first as it is chronologically previous to the produce box. Today (FauxMonday) is Tuesday, thus the Calder's dude arrived this morning. But lo and behold it is a new Calder's dude!! His name is Stan as in "Stan the Man" and happily for me he realized that we really didn't want 21 half gallons of skim milk. I got to meet him (only wearing the shortie kimono I threw on to drink my coffee in) and we checked that the rest of the order was right and shook hands--whew... Not even my boys could handle the typos of 21 half gallons of milk--THAT is a LOT of milk! Just two thanks!

Hair

That would be Brookie on the far right with the little shoulder shrug. I am so proud.