Small Bowl #13

 

It's been too long since I made a curry, so of course, when I made one, I made two! To continue in my using-the-freezer part of my using what I have quest, I wanted to finish off a bag of okra, so I used that in this recipe for a hearty okra chickpea curry from Gentle Plate. But because I'm me and therefore need all the veggies all the time, I also made an easy carrot curry (recipe from Savory Spin). And, of course, that necessitated some steamed basmati rice!

An earlier version of vegan me would have been perfectly happy to eat the carrot curry and rice and call it a day, and it was tempting; this carrot curry is amazing and also incredibly easy to make. I'll definitely be making it again. But these days I try to balance things out a little more, so I needed the chickpeas.

The chickpea okra curry was also delicious, but wasn't as exciting to me as the carrots. It probably would have been with fresh okra, of course. I love fresh okra and there's nothing like it. But we're focused on my freezer here, and I count this meal a success.

Narrowing my using-the-stuff energy to one area of my kitchen, meanwhile, really has made it less overwhelming. Plus, clearing out the freezer will make more room for me to freeze things I make with the other stuff around here.

Balancing my food anxieties alongside my financial and political anxieties, while trying not to keep enough food around for a small army, is not easy. I don't know if I'm doing the "right thing" a lot of the time. The basmati rice is from India; they're subject to tariffs of upwards of 36% in July if I understand the "policy" correctly, and 10% now. So do I question myself using things like basmati rice? Sure. But I'm getting through one meal at a time, and I'm doing my very best not to lose my mind.

No matter what happens, curries are pretty cheap, though. So here's to us, trying to survive the ravings of madmen becoming law.