Guest Post-Jo "The Tried and True"

guest post by Jo Pavlov

Each week when I get my Tree & Twig basket, I am often stumped as to what to do with some of the things.  I go back to the tried and the true everytime, and occasionally I branch out and put something extra in, to see if it works.

Today's sauté included my old standbys: kale, chick peas and tomatoes (ooh, these little guys pack a punch this week!  YUM!!  Flavourful!) but I also cut up some green onion and the yellow beans.  Yes, the beans that don't usually even make it in my front door, because I gobble them up raw in the car ride home.  I have a friend staying with me this week, and she's learning how to drive, so she was driving back from Linda's in the beast (a gigantic Dodge Durango, don't ask) and I was talking her through backing out the driveway, so the beans wound up in the back seat and on the back burner.  Quite literally.

So today I sautéd everything up andI put a liberally helping of lemon juice on at the end, and served it up on a bed of rice.  It was quite possibly the best one yet!  I often use spinach, but kale is just as good, if not better, if it came from Linda's garden.

Christine just remarked earnestly, "That was really really good, especially considering there were no embellishments on it."  Salt, pepper, lemon and a bit of red curry powder, which is flavourless, really.  That's it, that's all.  The food's natural flavours shine through.

Did I ever tell you the story about how I wound up with a taste for red curry?  A number of years ago, afriend of mine named Adrienne finished up a tour with the Canadian military in Afghanastan, and was offered a flight anywhere in the world as a 'palette cleanser'.  She picked Tanzania and decided to climb Mount Kilamanjaro.  Afterwards, she went to the island of Zanzibar, and got me a nice gift of mixed spices from a market stall in town.  I was obsessed with the red curry, but could not find it anywhere.  Not online, not at local markets, not even in Toronto.

This year, Christine decided to go to Tanzania too.  I mentioned the red curry to her, and she told me she'd get me some.  Adrienne, she and I had a three-way email that was hilarious -- Adrienne described the market to her, and remembered the stall!  Christine took notes and was off on vacation.

She brought me back two large bags.

I now divide my friends into two categories:  those who fly to Tanzania to get me red curry and those who don't.  It's a pretty elite group.  :)

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