My Yellow Feast

The last couple of weeks have been stressful and hectic. So, as a treat to myself, I decided to take time to cook some Indian food -- instead of, oh, cleaning the house or doing laundry.

Here's what I made:

Turmeric Rice

Murgh Tari (chicken curry)

Alu Tari (potato curry)

If I had made these dishes before, perhaps I would have been wise enough to vary the menu to allow for another color of food.

Tonight, on day two of the leftover chicken and rice, to jazz things up a bit I added zucchini and tomatoes (the last ones from my garden) with fresh ginger, ground coriander, garam masala, and, of course, turmeric:

My zucchini/tomato concoction

I think my favorite of the new recipes was the potato curry. I added extra lemon juice to give it some more zip. While it was the most exotic-looking dish, the chicken was OK but not fantastic. The rice was adequate, but I'll probably never make it again. I think plain basmati rice would have been better with the various dishes, and the turmeric rice wasn't really special enough for the extra trouble.

Considering the amount of money that went into the ingredients and the time it took to prepare it, and the rather mediocre results, I would have been better off going to an Indian restaurant. Ah, but that's just it: the local restaurant is closed, and oh how I miss it!

Oh yeah, isn't it kind of weird to be getting zucchini from the garden in October? In August, the middle part of my zucchini plant shriveled up. I nearly pulled the whole thing out of the ground, but the four little branches out from the middle section looked OK, so I left them. They've been bearing zucchini ever since. It's not the most prolific zucchini plant in the world, but it's definitely long-lived.