last night i blended a curry paste to pour over rice noodles with these ingredients: kaffir lime leaves, curry leaves, chili-garlic sauce, garlic paste, fresh garlic, ginger paste, fresh ginger, tender lemongrass stem (remove the outer husk), ground coriander seed, cayenne pepper, garam masala, rice vinegar, turbinado sugar (just a spot), sea salt, shallots, thick coconut milk. i diluted it with some water and marinated the tofu pieces (which had been frozen and thawed, to burst the cell walls and make it more absorbent) for about an hour. i fried the tofu, sauteed it with mustard greens, and mixed the remaining curry with the cooked rice noodles.

we had mango with coconut sticky rice for dessert. if you want to fix some for about four people (or one tonio), you just soak 1 and a half cups of thai sweet rice overnight. heat a cup and a half of coconut milk and dissolve 1/4 cup brown sugar (or palm sugar, if you can find it), 1/2 teaspoon salt. drain the rice and put it in a bamboo steamer sitting in a wok of boiling water for 25 minutes (when i had neither a bamboo steamer nor a wok, i used a cheesecloth in a metal mesh colander inside an ordinary pot. you just have to be careful that the bottom of the rice doesn’t touch the water). i usually wrap the rice in a cheesecloth to keep it from sticking to my bamboo steamer, but then you have to eat the sticky rice that attaches to the cheesecloth. oh, attachment! let the steamed rice soak up the coconut milk mixture in a bowl for 20min or so. i cubed the mangoes and poured mango pulp over them, and just spooned this over the mounds of sticky rice. hedonistically, we drizzled sweetened condensed milk over the top.

it would have tasted better if this were mango season. better yet, if we had mangoes from india. yashna told me that mangoes from india are coming to the US soon. sigh. this means we will have our beloved devgadh alfonso and gujarati kesar mangoes here in the us (at like $6 a pop) but it will mean that india’s mango market will jet the best of the season here, and leave the sub par mangoes for the people of the subcontinent. here is a quote from a feb. 8 2007 boston globe article about patel brothers, the largest indian supermarket chain in the US: 

Swetal Patel , who serves as company spokesman and works on its distribution side, said he’s excited about the prospect of selling Indian mangoes. When President Bush visited India last year, he signed two pacts — one on nuclear technology and the other lifting US import restrictions on mangoes. It’s clear which was a bigger deal to Patel.

“It’s like a nuclear bomb exploding in your mouth,” Patel said of the mangoes, which he hopes to stock by October. “There’s no comparison for an Indian mango. You cut one on the table and the whole kitchen starts to smell” of it.

wow. nuclear technology and mangoes, the worst and the best this world has to offer, all in one easy signature.

woke up heartbrokenbomesicksore, through earlymorningsleepyfog mom called, told me about my friends jagmeet and peter visiting our house in chapel hill yesterday. she talked about missing me, and the lump in my throat was too much to speak. met with susan and elandria at the library to begin planning the twenty-somethings and young-thirties programming for the fall. spent the day desultory, got some things done, left most undone.

and then i had three important, potentially transformative conversations. felt somewhat better then.

went with elandria to a house party for the appalachian community fund with speaker kevin jennings, founder of GLSEN, the gay lesbian straight education network. he wrote mama’s boy, preacher’s son: a memoir of growing up, coming out, and changing america about his relationship with his mom, who grew up appalachian poor. i saw conrad honicker there, one of the rad seeds of fire teens, and one of my heroes! suzanne and renee were there. some highlander staff- tonio, roberto, pam. tonight, tonio and i watched the movie fargo. it was great, so now tonio and i are speaking to each other in charming midwest accents.