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* Food Interlude *

If I cook for other people, I generally find a recipe to follow, which I usually will tweak and make substitutions on, but if I cook for myself, which is the majority of the time, I just make it up as I go along.

So today for lunch I started off feeling like carrots. So I filled a shallow pot with rough chopped carrots, about ½ inch slices. I salted the water a little bit. While the carrots boiled I thought what to do next. I cooked the carrots to about almost done, but removed them while they still had a little crunch.

I grabbed a chicken breast and sliced it into bite size pieces. Which I placed in a bowl. Then I poured in about ½ a cup of milk. Then I added a few turns of black pepper, paprika, turmeric, madras curry powder and some chili flakes. I let the stuff sit there; making a paste around the chicken pieces, I threw in a little flour to absorb any liquid that remained.

Then I drained about 90 percent of the water from my carrots and left them sitting on the counter

Next I grabbed some fennel seeds and toasted them. Fennel and carrots always go well together in my opinion. (I think they are vegetable cousins) You toast the seeds to push the flavor. The seeds toast very quickly.

Next up I threw in with the seeds a rough chopped white onion, added a little vegetable oil, touch of brown sugar, salt, and a large pinch of Garam Masala.

I let the onions get halfway caramelized and then removed them from the pan. I tossed them in the pan with the carrots.

I poured a little bit of vegetable oil in the pan, and tossed on my chicken pieces.

Next I decided to just mix it all together, so on top of the chicken I poured over the carrots and onions.

I tasted it, thought it was a tad spicy. So I added about half cup of orange juice to sweeten it all up a bit, and a little salt and pepper it needed. Also looking at it, I added about two saffron threads, so I could push the color of the onions from white to yellow subtly. I let it cook till the liquid evaporated and all the flavors condensed.

Then I plated it and garnished it with some scallions and red onions to add some crunchy texture.

Then I ate it. while i read the book i'm currently reading, The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. Van Vogt. (i felt like some nice Sci-fi after just finishing The Fountainhead)

As I cooked I listened to a great piece of music, a symphony from 1958 composed by akio yashiro.

I like sundays a lot.

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