Just Playin' Around

Getting Back On Track: Squash Curry

fry a diced spanish onion in a bit of olive oil
Add one tbsp curry, 1/2 tbsp cumin
Add one can Patak's Balta curry sauce (8% sodium, I checked, yes I am cheating a bit here by doing a canned curry, but I had to jump back into cooking somewhere)
Add one diced Kambucha squash (crazy looking japanese squash, arrived in my food box a few weeks back)
Add three or four leaves of Swiss Chard
Cook 25 minutes or so on low heat and serve over rice.

Not half bad really, very filling. Len and I have both fallen off the wagon a bit this week on portion sizes, so back at that aspect tomorrow. We're also both looking forward to getting back to getting some exercise tomorrow now that we're feeling better.
On the menu for this week:
Salad Green with fried wild mushrooms and a poached egg on top
Swiss Chard, Tofu, Avocado and Cucumber Dragon Bowl
Somethin' with yams cause there's too darn many in this house... thoughts anyone?

The big girl bed

Here's the promised pic of Adara's new bedroom and sheets. Len worked all last Saturday to pull of this transformation as the whole room had to be dissasembled including a massive bookshelf. Adara got to choose her own sheets and as you can see, the Dora and Diego sheets have been very popular. Adara spent much of an afternoon with the sheets wrapped around her wandering around the house. So far, so good. In seven days, she managed to wiggle her way back into our bed only once.


As to the food project, due to everyone being sick, we've fallen right off the wagon. I got strep throat last week, Len got a cold on monday, tuesday and wednesday when I was thankfully well; and then my strep throat returned on friday. I'm suffering pretty good this time as the antibiotic is pretty much attacking my whole body and filling me with aches and pains and body issues. I'm very much ready for this to be done!

Small Town, Big City

Sometimes Toronto is like a small town. I'm home sick with a really ugly case of strep throat today. I've had to go out several times though to the doctors and pharmacy.
This morning while at the Doctor, I was answering work emails on my blackberry. A guy beside me leaned over and started asking a bunch of questions about it, so we talked for about 5 minutes.
At the corner store, I was purchasing a pathetic gossip magazine to entertain my poor fevered brain. The headline was "Sandra fights back". The asian new owner of the store was trying to sound out the headline but was having trouble. He asked me for help wiht his pronunciation. So I found myself in the corner store repetitively saying Sandra fights back. Which led to a very confusing discussion of what it meant. "Cheated" as in "cheated on his wife" doesn't translate at all well to the very literal chinese.
On the way home a guy was walking towards me in the rain with two bikes, one on each side of him. He crossed below me on the sidewalk, on the left hand side of the walk for him, nearest the street. He stopped to tell me that he'd done so because it was chivalrous and made it so I wouldn't be splashed by the water on the street. I thanked him.
All of these encounters are things that I would have said don't happen in Toronto when I moved here fifteen years ago. But they do happen all of the time. Toronto is like a small town, except that you don't know anyone. Strange, huh?

Kapow Shirt

Adara has a favourite shirt. It's royal blue with colourful cartoon bubble words like "smash, kapow, bam" on it. She wants to wear it every day and hands it to me every night requesting that I wash it for tomorrow. It's vaguely infuriating but also very nostalgic. Do you remember your favourite item of clothing and your passionate devotion to wearing it every day? I had a light pink and brown calico dress that i was convinced made me look like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Then there was the red spring jacket with all of the very Michael Jackson zippers and pockets. And the purple figure skating dress that I wanted wear everywhere all of the time.
What was your obsessive clothing item?