Mmm. . . Chocolate

Today was still a headache day. I went to sleep last night with a headache, I woke up with a headache. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I still had the headache. I hate headaches. I hate pain. I did pretty much nothing today except watched movies on the dvd player that arrived two days ago.

I cooked beef a little differently today. I marinated it in my usual mish mash of stuff:

Beef with Tomatoes and Onions

1/4 cup coconut toddy vinegar

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 1/2 teaspoons curry

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon pepper

1 tablespoon red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons chili ketchup - mix together and add

beef - then marinate for a day or two. Then toss it in an appropriate cooking vessel and cook on low heat for a couple of hours, then add

1 tomato - and cook until the tomato breaks up and becomes a part of the sauce, then add:

4 onion shoots, chopped

and cook just until onion shoots are bright green.

Served with Vegetable Curry and Pink Rice.

The chili ketchup - I mentioned previously about a week ago when we bought it. Now that I’ve opened it up and tasted it, I can tell you what it’s like. It’s a lot like tomato ketchup - and thick, very very thick - and yes, it’s like North American chili powder was added. Sort of. Honestly, I’ve never tasted ketchup like this before. Does it exist in North America? I have no idea. For all I know, it does. Whatever. Anyway, I like it.

Fahim comes home from work at 2 for lunch. He tells me later that he’s not going back this afternoon. We have lunch, and Fahim’s comments on the beef - "good". The only responses I get over food are "good" and "okay." Fine. I’ll take "good". I’d prefer a bit better feedback, but on the other hand, if it means he’ll never complain about my cooking, that’s fine, too.

The owner’s repair people are supposed to come over at three to look at our electricity situation - it’s all very confusing. Two meters in our downstairs neighbor’s kitchen, but these aren’t the ones the meter reader reads - those are outside - and they don’t all agree. What it all boils down to is that, of the meters that are inside, one has only their stuff, the other has our stuff plus their kitchen - so we have no way of breaking down who has used how much. The inside meters were supposed to be set up so that they completely divided up upstairs from down. In theory, these guys are supposed to fix this. In reality, Fahim and I have serious doubts. Our kitchen cupboards still haven’t been fixed and these guys were supposed to come over and finish it over a month ago. Oh heck, let’s be honest - it was all supposed to be done before we moved in.

Because I’m still feeling terrible - I took a shower this morning and then put on a clean pair of pyjamas and didn’t bother wearing real clothes all day - Fahim goes grocery shopping without me. He’s not feeling terrific, but he’s definitely feeling better. At the grocery store, the manager, a very pregnant female, comments to him about how he’s there without his wife. We’re too conspicuous.

Fahim buys chocolate and muscat. When he and I go grocery shopping together, we don’t buy treats - or at least, not often. Or maybe we do, but I ignore ice cream cuz I have a chocolate fixation. But I have noticed that, when he goes shopping by himself, he almost always buys treats. I think I need to send him grocery shopping by himself more often.

I took a picture so you can see for yourself what it looks like. tn_20030930002.jpg" /> It’s also a kind of yellow-orange-brown kind of color. It still tastes good and strangely addicting. Please note the ingerdients for Fruit MUSCAT, which are as follows: Flour, Sugar, Ghee, Pure Coconut Oil, Cashew Nut, Dates, Plumes, Permited Colour and Essence.

First of all, I have no idea what an ingerdient is. Is that like an insurgence? And plumes - what the heck are fancy feathers designed for eighteenth century muskateer hats doing in my MUSCAT? Oh wait, that’s probably why it’s called MUSCAT, only it’s misspelled from the original MUSKAT. I get it. And Permited Colour. Is that colour that’s passed through a Miter Saw? Or has Mites? I don’t get it. I really don’t. . .

Sigh.

And if you don’t believe me, honestly, just look at the picture for yourself. It’s all there in living color.

Fahim stops off at the chicken stall after Food City. We didn’t see the chicken stall before or we would have checked it out. I don’t know if the guy was on vacation or what, but Fahim didn’t notice him before, either. Today, he’s open, and Fahim stops there. It ends up that the chicken guy says to Fahim, "Hey, don’t you go to the same mosque as me?" I’m sure it was probably in Sinhalese, but that’s the general idea. And yes, we’re too conspicuous.

But the good news is that it means the chicken is halal, which is why we haven’t bought any from the grocery store. Fahim has told me that, even though chicken or beef in the grocery stores will be labelled halal, it’s possible that it isn’t. He kept meaning to ask people at the mosque which brands were halal, but he kept forgetting. But now that we have a chicken stall, it doesn’t matter.

Fahim gets two chickens and the guy offers to butcher it for us. Here, that means that he removes all the skin (hallelujah!), takes the gizzards and whatnot out of the body cavity (although we still get them), and then chops things up, but not like I would in North America.

In Canada, when I buy chicken, I usually bought whole chicken and then I butchered it, removing the skin and then sectioning by cutting through a joint, then removing the breasts from the bone but saving the bone for soup. Here, yes, he chops it through the joints, so we still get recognizable drumsticks and wings, but the breast is chopped through the bone lengthwise, and then widthwise three times, bones intact. Back is chopped in half, bones intact. Uh, okay. Sure.

We portion it up, putting the bony stuff into two bags for two soup days and the gizzards into another bag. Fahim likes gizzards, I don’t, so I have no idea what he thinks is gonna happen with that bag.

Finished reading The Winds of Darkover and started reading The Bloody Sun, still by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This is, however, the last book by Bradley that Fahim has here. Next I’ll have to start on another author and hope I like his/her writing. Probably be Gordon Dickinson, or whatever his name is.

We watch Smallville tonight. TV scheduling isn’t the same here as it is in North America. Are you surprised?

Smallville starts at 8:15pm and goes until 9:30. There are that many commercial breaks. Qwitcherbellyakin, ya Norte Americanos.

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