Journal Entry

:: Crummy Yummies ::

As of today, Lisa and I have been married seven months. Seven cheers!

Desperate for vegetables, as I sometimes get, I decided to make a something involving lots of veggies for dinner tonight. We only had probably-weeks-old scallions and some carrots, so I had to do some shopping first. If left to my own devices, I tend to make food that involves throwing a lot of ingredients together. Very little restraint do I show. Cooking is something I come by naturally; both my parents are competent cooks—my dad loves it, and infected me with his cooking mania. I tend follow his overall approach, which involves not measuring things too carefully, improvising a lot, and just generally enjoying the process. My dad likes to follow recipes, but also make them up, but when he does make up a recipe, he very rarely (if ever) writes it down. He used to like to tease us when we'd ask him what he was making, telling us "just eat it, it's good". My mom, who pretty much always uses recipes, would tell us we were having "fish eyes and glue" if she was doing the cooking and we asked.

Anyway, we both liked tonight's results, so I'm defying the manly Chellman tradition. I'm writing this down. Any mistakes are due to my not measuring anything when I made it. All lengths of time are made up as I write this. All ingredients are real, quantities may or may not be real. If you decide to make it, let me know how it turns out. If you think it's so good that you have to publish it in your Mammoth Collection Of Magnificent Recipes, please spell my name correctly.

Joe's Curry Delight

Ingredients

• One sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• One red potato, peeled and cubed
• One small onion, diced
• Four old scallions (old age optional), diced
• Three old carrots (old age definitely mandatory), sliced diagonally
• One red bell pepper, diced
• As much garlic as you can stand (in my case, 3 cups minced)
• One 12oz can of chick peas (or garbanzo beans, if that's all you have)
• One small head of broccoli (I was kidding about the carrots having to be old... you know that, right?)
• One cup cut corn (I used frozen)
• One tablespoon powdered vegetable broth
• Olive oil (yes, I know the beans and peas are the same thing, and yes, I was kidding about the garlic. I used four cups.)
• Sherry (2 or 3 tablespoons)
• Your choice of spices. In my case: curry powder (this happened to be from Trader Joe's, for better or worse), lemon pepper (one of my favorites), cumin/coriander, dried cilantro, salt

Procedure

In a large pot, boil maybe three or four cups of water, as much as it takes to cover the potatoes. Once the water is boiling, add the potatoes. Boil until tender, but not totally obliterated.

In a medium saucepan, heat, at medium heat, 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and scallions. Saute for two minutes or so. Add the carrots, saute another two or three minutes. Add peppers, some garlic and some sherry, saute another minute or two. Stir this mixture a few times a minute as you go so nothing burns.

If you start the potatoes, then do the other vegetables, they'll be done around the same time. At least, they were for me.

When the potatoes are done, save one cup of that funky potato juice, drain the rest. Add a tablespoon or two of olive oil back to the pot, turn on the heat to medium, and cook the potatoes for a few minutes more.

Add the powdered vegetable broth to the potato juice, stir until combined. Because the water is really hot, this is easy. Add to the potatoes, followed by the sauted vegetable mix and some more garlic. Cook it all for a minute or two.

Stir in the chick peas, followed by the broccoli. Add your spices of choice. Cook for one minute, then add the corn. At this point your mixture should be like a very thick stew, with large bubbles burping up. Turn the heat off, cover and let stand for five minutes. This lets the broccoli steam to perfection, or maybe just pretty goodtion.

Serve with a smile, preferably to a loved one.