Thursday's quick curry

Until today, most of this week’s meals have been of the x-on-toast variety: beans, cheese, sardines, more beans. I branched out and tried out a different type of sardine (my usual is the sort in tomato sauce): picante. This was mainly because there were none in tomato sauce in the cupboard. Picante turns out to be oil with a 2 whole chillies. It was a good job that Matt, my husband, didn’t try these – they made my nose run so I dread to think what they would have done to his delicate taste buds.

The x-on-toast meals were a result of there not being anything much else at home: yesterday’s “big shop” was well overdue. Mostly this involved me doing the shopping while Matt was on the phone. I replenished the oily fish supplies, reverting to form with the tomato sauced type and also got a good selection of fresh food. We shopped after our dancing class. This has the benefit of the shop being quite empty and there usually being quite a few reductions but the drawback of being hungry whilst shopping (the cha cha cha is particularly energy consuming). So, unchecked by Matt (we usually put the brakes on each other’s retail impulses), I was unable to resist the super-reduced bakery products. I saw the super-reduced stickers but didn’t really think about what I would do with a packet of sesame seed bagels, 6 finger rolls, 6 granary rolls (I am at least partially prepared for barbeque season now) and a full-sized loaf of sliced bread when I got them home.

The other drawback of the late evening visit to the supermarket is the lack of checkout staff – necessitating the use of the self-checkout. These were initially a source of great amusement to me and reminded me of my days working in a large stationery shop. They’re still fine if you just want a few simple (i.e. not age restricted or security tagged) items but for a trolley load of stuff they are not optimal. My usual supermarket bagging system is ruined. Anyway, last night I let Matt deal with the self-checkout on his own while I then talked on the phone.

As well as all the refined carbohydrate I had picked up sufficient provisions to make a curry tonight. This actually only required only the addition of an onion and some mushrooms to a few things we already had but psychologically the restocking of the fridge restored my cooking motivation. Usually I like to cook curry very slowly but today we wanted to swim before dinner and I thought better than to leave the gas on while we were out.

After a quick fuel up on half a bagel with my favourite yeast extract we headed out to the pool.

The pool seemed rather busy so I asked the lifeguard if all of the lanes were for general public lengths. Despite being a lovely new facility they have yet to devise a system of indicating where I should swim at any particular time that I turn up. I was told that none of the lanes were for the public as it was “The University”. I think he must have noticed a disappointed look on my face as he then said that it would be ok to swim in one of the lanes. Clearly my physique did not give away the elite swimmer that I am becoming (haha!) as he suggested that I go in the lane with all the people doing breast-stroke with their heads out of the water. I explained my training and that I would be going fast (haha!) and was redirected to the “fast of the fast lanes” (haha!). Whilst I was preparing to enter the water (positioning of goggles) the lifeguard commented that I must be an open water swimmer (haha!), I’m not sure if that might relate to my physique too – maybe I looked well insulated! I started off going quite fast and was keeping pace with the “fastest of the fast” but reverted to my usual pace as they emptied out of the pool. Eventually I had the lane to myself. This struck me as the perfect opportunity to practice my tumble turns. Believe it or not the tumble turn has been recommended to me by a doctor as a good exercise for my back. Usually they aren’t possible because either there are too many people hanging around at the end of the lane and I can’t judge my tumbling that accurately to avoid them, or there are swimmers behind me and I worry about getting disorientated during my tumbling and crashing into them (or them into me). Allegedly the tumble turn is supposed to be an efficient way of getting from one length to the next but I think that I’m missing this benefit by coming to a standstill before executing it. It is a very non-automatic motion and it’s never until I’m upside down that my brain realises that it’s going to have to twist my body to get out of it.

I had a sesame seed (from the pre-swim half-bagel) stuck in my teeth for most of my swim which distracted me from my length counting.

We got home at 9pm after a reasonable swim (it was cut short because some club people turned up to use the section of the pool I was in and I was insufficiently motivated to move to another part once my rhythm had been interrupted). This was already too late to be eating but I had been thinking about curry all day and if it wasn’t this then it would be another x-on-toast. I was very hungry so filled the immediate gap with a mini cheese in red wax which one of Matt’s friends had left behind at the weekend.

The curry is a tried and tested one first created by Matt and replicated on many occasions since; sometimes by him but tonight by me since time was of the essence and speed chopping does not feature on Matt’s CV. The curry consists of local curry powder, chilli (not too much), onion, garlic, sweet potato, mushrooms, chickpeas, tinned tomatoes, a bit of stock and some coconut milk.

While this was all brewing up I had to deal with yesterday’s bread. Matt managed to rearrange the freezer to make space for the rolls. This required the removal of some soup which will have to be eaten this weekend and some pistachio ice-cream which would not last so long. There was still a full sized loaf of sliced bread. I decided that the best thing would be to turn it into bread crumbs. I intended to package this in 200g and 100g bags which would fit into small spaces in the freezer. I was 30g short for my final 100g bag. I suppose that is accounted for by all the crumbs that Fred, my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier, helpfully cleared up.

The curry was delicious, despite the quick cook. Matt had his with naan bread (also removed from the freezer to make way for the new things). I had mine with lime pickle to spice it up a bit. We both had mango chutney. Desert was the pistachio ice-cream with some unnecessary spray cream. Now I’m thinking of things to do with 770g of bread crumbs. All I can think of at the moment is Christmas pudding.