Day 23

Leftover watercress, duck, and brown rice for lunch.  For dinner I made the Mangalorean Pork Curry in the Holiday issue of Lucky Peach.  If you don't have the mag, this recipe from The Tiffin Box looks similar.  The supermarket near our place didn't have tamarind and in this weather an ingredient safari was not happening so I subbed the juice of three Key limes and about a teaspoon of sugar.  Since I didn't follow the recipe exactly I'm not going to pass judgment on it but if I make it again I'll make sure to use the tamarind; I think it would have given it a little extra depth of flavor.

To accompany we had brown rice and cauliflower "pilaf".  I whizzed up some chopped cauliflower in the food processor until the pieces were roughly couscous sized, then sauteed it with caramelized onions, a few dashes of curry powder, and a handful of golden raisins.  Forgot salt which would have improved the results.

I was startled when I started to open a package of brown rice we had sitting around and noticed it was enriched.  It didn't list iodine as one of the added vitamins but I got a pack of non-enriched rice anyway.  Possibly overkill but it's not like we'll be sorry we have some extra rice on hand when the LID is over.

Day 8

Breakfast: Coffee, almond milk.  Used the almond:water ratio from this recipe and added about twice as much sugar as I thought necessary, at least a tablespoon, and a teensy bit of salt.  Much better than the hazelnut-almond milk, either because I added more sugar or because the hazelnut skins made it bitter.  Oatmeal, hazelnut-almond meal, grapefruit.

Lunch: Eggplant and chickpeas with tomato from Claudia Roden's Arabesque, basmati rice, this pork and squash soup.

Dinner: Fried some string beans in a wok until blistered, put aside.  Fried some ground pork with fennel, chili, garlic, and salt until crumbled and browned (actually closer to blackened, whoops!).  Brown rice.  Marshmallow.

Day 4

Breakfast: Oatmeal, jam, apple, peanut butter.

Snack: Black tea, raw almonds, unsalted rice cake.

Lunch: Green curry made by husband from the Pok Pok cookbook with peppers, string beans, Thai eggplant, and chicken minus fish sauce.  Brown jasmine rice.

Dinner: Stuffed eggplant from Martha Stewart Living.  Nixed currants, used pork instead of lamb.  This dish has been a favorite since the glorious day the issue showed up in the mail and the fact that I can still eat it was a much needed morale boost.

Dessert: Toasted marshmallows.