SUBZI, ROTI AND GOOD COMPANY

I love making a dinner.  A couple of days ago, as the day progressed, the dinner guest list grew from two to ten.  My fave thing!!  And Indian food was the request...another of my fave things.

So first thing day before yesterday I spent a most pleasurable two hours in the morning perusing Indian food recipes.  There is no way I actually follow the recipes, but I get fantastic ideas.  Two meat and two vegetarian dishes were needed.  

First I made the menu list (its amazing how I can never remember what I am making), then I made the shopping list and then I headed to the store.  Due to the fact that Kamloops has a fairly large East Indian community, Superstore offers pretty much everything (except balti, can't find that anywhere).

Off to Superstore where I found pretty much everything.  I never seem to go to that store though without some kind of unpleasant encounter, screaming kid, fighting partners, old deaf men in tan pants with suspicious underwear outlines blocking the aisle, cranky rude menopausal women, and this time a nasty horrible cashier.  He was incredibly rude to the woman ahead of me.  And he was incredibly rude to me.

I like to cut cashiers a break usually.  You never know what is going on in their life...obviously something to be that nasty.  But there is a line and yesterday he crossed it.  He was black as the ace of spades and accented...so probably pretty new here.  He was tossing my groceries around and being pretty aggressive.  When he yanked up my bag of yams the bag broke and yams spilled everywhere. Instead of bagging them with a new bag, he just shoved and threw the potatoes down the belt.  I yelled, 'Hey!!  You broke the bag!  They need a new bag.'  'I don't have produce bags.' he answered,without looking at me and continued to ring in and toss groceries down after the spuds.  I almost said something to him, but I restrained myself.

  But when I was leaving the store I popped over to the customer service counter and reported him.  It will be interesting to see if he is there when I go back. Probably will be...thats one of the reasons we call this store Stupidstore.

Yesterday morning as soon as I was awake I was itching to get into the kitchen.  One of the items on the menu was curried chicken, not the traditional dish that Cookie's mom taught me to make, but the sweet delicious fave curried chicken recipe that Kathy and Mom invented.  I had to text Kathy for tips!

I was going to originally buy chicken thighs, skin on, but traditionally Mom and Kathy would cut up a whole chicken and use that.  So I bought a bag of three chicken fryers.  I got everything ready, cutting board, sharpened knife, bowl of flour and masala for throwing the parts into.  Now, I am going to toot my own horn here.  I can cut a chicken up into its proper parts, including deboning the breast, really really fast.  I have had years of practice.  Back in the day you couldn't buy chicken parts, it was always whole chickens.  I decided to time myself.  And guess what?  I can dissect a chicken, properly, mind you with a really good very sharp heavy knife in 48 seconds!  Deboning the breast took the longest.  I dissected all three and made that delicious crazy sweet curried chicken.  It is so damned good!

One little note:  my sister is a pre dinner picker and it really really bugs me.  This little tug o war between us goes way way back.  She's the one that, when the turkey comes out of the oven, there she is picking at the skin and the pope/parson's nose (our favourite part of the whole bird).  I would yell at her and chase her out of the kitchen. Well, with this in mind, I put the backs, skin, and pope's nose (tail) and all in a separate pan.  And when she came over I showed her that pan,which I had already raided, but saved her a couple of pope's noses, for picking.  And we both stood there for a few minutes poking around those chicken parts, eating.  Our very own picking pan!

I also made curried ground beef with yams, broccoli and cauliflower and mushroom subzi, carrot/pea/potato subzi and rice and roti.  I can't make roti.  So I bought really fresh whole wheat flour tortillas.  I heated them one by one in a frying pan and they puffed right up then I buttered them and stacked them and wrapped them just like Mamma Sidhu and Cookie do.  

Marisa, Peter, Levi, Emily, Our Em, Kathy Kerry, Craig, Jo, Ainsley, Elena (Craig's awesome cousin), Monte and myself, all for dinner.  We dished up in the kitchen and trundled downstairs to the family room and spread out on the couch, chairs and floor.  It was cooler down there too and Ainsley's toys are down there.  Later we all sat out on the deck and watched the falling stars.  A perfect end to a perfect day.