Crispy Catfish Curry

This recipe appears in the Make It From Scratch carnival at the carnival's homepage. If you came from the carnival, welcome!

This Vietnamese dish is really delicious. My grocery store sells catfish "nuggets" and that's what I use instead of fillets. This is based on an Emeril Lagasse recipe with some changes by me!

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons Essence seasoning mix (recipe below)
1 1/2 pounds catfish fillets
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup chopped yellow or red bell pepper
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 to 3 tablespoons Red Curry Paste, or to taste
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cups shrimp or chicken stock
1 cup canned, drained bamboo shoot strips (garbanzo beans also work really well)
Big bag of spinach, roughly torn
Salt 1/2 cup julienned fresh Thai basil, if unavailable use Italian basil
Steamed Jasmine Rice

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.

In a shallow bowl, combine the flour and 1/2 teaspoon Essence. Season the fish on both sides with the remaining teaspoon Essence.

In a large, heavy skillet, heat 1/2 cup of the vegetable oil to 360 degrees F.

Dredge 2 of the fillets in the flour, coating evenly and shake to remove excess flour. Fry the fillets until golden brown, about 4 minutes on each side. Remove with a slotted spatula and drain on paper towels. Repeat with the remaining fish. Keep the fish warm in the oven while preparing the curry.

To prepare the curry heat the remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the bell peppers and cook, stirring, until soft, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add garbanzo beans if using. Add the curry paste and soy sauce and stir to combine. Add spinach, sauté until just wilted. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the bamboo shoots and stir to combine. Add the fried fish and cook until fish is heated through, about 1 minute. Season, to taste, with salt.

Remove from the heat. Stir in the basil and serve with jasmine rice.

Emeril's Essence

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Thoroughly combine all ingredients and store in an airtight jar.

Re-Evaluating the "Truths" About Ourselves

“Know thyself” is one of those maxims in which I believe. I think it’s useful and helpful and a good way to go through life. Sometimes though, we forget that we are changeable creatures and that those “truths” may be more liquid than we think. In the same way we need to periodically re-evaluate our possessions in order to determine which ones are still important to us, it’s not a bad idea to re-evaluate the truths we hold about ourselves. I recently took a little solo trip to Port Aransas, Texas, which forced me to do just that.

I don’t travel well by myself. I’ve been saying that for years and accept it as one of the truths of who I am. I accept that it’s foolish for me to spend money on hotel rooms and events that I will need to attend by myself because I accept that it’s difficult, if not impossible for me to venture forth on my own. Not the traveling, mind you, but once arrived, going out to explore and enjoy my destination on my own. I just don’t do it.

As I said in a previous post, I visited Beeville, Texas, recently to attend the gallery opening of a friend of mine. I didn’t have a clear idea in my mind of exactly where Beeville was located and was surprised to pass a sign saying that Corpus Christi was 63 miles away. All I could think of was that I could be on the beach in an hour. I was overwhelmed by the urge to just keep driving. I attended the opening and, making my excuses for ditching the post-opening plans, got back in my car and headed south.

The whole adventure was completely unlike me because, “I don’t travel well by myself”. I don’t spend money on hotels which I know I won’t be able to leave. It is what it is and I accept it and yet here I was, on an adventure by myself. I ended up in a hotel in Port Aransas on the Texas gulf coast. Still dressed up from the gallery opening I went out to the Pelican Club and had a wonderful dinner all by myself, something else I don’t do. And you know what? I didn’t fidget or pull out my iPhone twenty thousand times or wish I’d brought something to read. I didn’t feel awkward or out of place. I enjoyed the moment, the dinner and a nice glass of wine and was happy to be there.

Sunday morning I got up, drove over to the beach and spent two or three hours walking in the surf, one of my favorite activities. After enjoying that moment, I got back in my car, visited a couple of small potteries in Port Aransas and then drove over to Corpus Christi and visited the Aquarium. I walked along the little man-made Corpus Christi beach and stopped for an oyster po’ boy and a beer at one of those patios-on-the-beach type restaurants.

I drove back to Port Aransas, spent the night, got up the next morning and drove the 9 ½ hours back home. While I drove I thought about my little adventure, how much fun it had been and how freeing it was to discover that, in fact, I do travel well by myself! I thought about the reason I have always believed I don’t do the solo travel thing.

Twenty years ago I went down to the Turks and Caicos to do a little diving. The hotel in which I was staying was a U-shaped affair with one of those Caribbean-style bars in the middle. I was in my mid-twenties at the time and, after arriving at my bar-side room in the late afternoon, was literally unable to emerge and venture through that crowded bar. I ended up eating airplane peanuts for dinner. I was able to go out the next morning and meet the dive boat and do all the arranged activities but I was unable to face any unstructured solo time. I was disappointed with myself but accepted that as part of who I am.

For twenty years I neither re-evaluated nor tested my belief that I don’t travel well by myself. I never stopped and questioned that an unfortunate experience I had in my twenties might not define who I am, or at least how I travel, in my forties. Ridiculous, right? How often do we make assumptions about ourselves and then never look back and double-check their validity? How crippling some of those assumptions can be. I know I’m going to start re-examining all my personal truths. How about you? Do you have any long held beliefs about yourself that you might need to re-evaluate?

As for me, I’m going to start planning some trips!

Chickens are Here!

My chickens are here! They are cute as can be and I am wasting countless moments watching them. They actually came last week. I got a call from the post office in El Paso on Tuesday morning advising me that they were there. I told them I was 200 miles away and wondered why they didn’t put them on the truck to my town. They said there was a sticker on the box that said to call immediately. I suggested that notice was for my local post office, not the dispatch center. We finally agreed that they would put the chicks on the truck the next day. Knowing I would be busy and basically stuck at home when they got here I rushed off to run my errands.

I was at the lumberyard buying lumber for my coop, a portable run and some raised beds when I got a call from my local post office, advising me that the chicks had arrived! Evidently there was a later truck from El Paso and my chicks were on it. I unloaded my lumber, dropped off the borrowed truck and raced to the post office to pick up my chicks. They are so cute! In case you don’t know, chicks are shipped via U.S. Mail the day they are born. Newborn chicks ingest the yolk from their eggs and can live for three days or so without any additional food and water. Most hatcheries require that you order at least 25 chicks. I ordered mine from My Pet Chicken, who allows you to order as few as three chicks, depending upon where you live. My ten little babies were shipped in this box. The white thing is a heat pack and the green stuff is a sort of food.





I ordered 3 standard-sized chickens – two Silver Spangled Hamburgs and one Red sex link – so called because their color is genetically linked to their gender. Chickens are difficult to sex and so sex link chickens make that job easier. I also got seven bantam breeds, which are a sort of miniature chicken. I ordered 2 Golden Sebrights, 2 black-tailed, white Japanese and 3 buff Brahmas. I paid extra to have them all be female. Hatcheries generally guarantee 90% accuracy on their sexing. Hens do not need a rooster in order to lay eggs, they only need a rooster in order to lay fertilized eggs. I live in town and don’t really want a crowing rooster in my backyard so I’ve got my fingers crossed! If I do end up with a rooster I’ll have to re-home him.



(Buff Brahma bantam (ltop) and Golden Sebright (bottom). Brahma's are as yet unnamed. Sebrights are named Renee and Natalie after the twin daughters of a friend of mine who share the chicken's birthday. They're so honored!)


(Silver Spangled Hamburg (top) and Red sex link (bottom). Hamburgs are named Paisley and Polka Dot and the sex link is cleverly named Red.)


(Black-tailed White Japanese bantams. Mine are named Peep and Whitey. White chickens start off as yellow chicks. Peep is my tiniest chick and looks like the mashmallow candy and Whitey is, well, currently whiter than Peep.)

All ten chicks seemed healthy and happy upon arrival. Unfortunately, after a few days one of the Brahmas developed an issue with her legs that left her unable to walk. After 60 hours of hand feeding and watering her I realized she was never going to get better and was forced to cull her. That was difficult but is part-and-parcel of raising poultry, or any sort of livestock.

You have to keep the chickens in a brooder setup for the first few weeks. In my case, the brooder consists of an appliance box, laid on its side with the top cut off, bottom covered with small animal litter and then puppy pads to aid in keeping the brooder clean. A feeder, waterer, heat lamp and a branch complete the setup. I change the pads twice a day, plus giving them fresh food and water. My brooder is in my sitting room and, after a week, there is no smell and they’ve been no trouble.

Although I had high hopes of the dog becoming Chicken Pug, Defender of the Flock, so far chicken appears to be the operative word in that title. He is scared of the little peepers and will have nothing to do with them! Perhaps they will eventually reach an accord.

Tuesday I took them outside for an hour and they had a great time picking at the grass, scratching and just generally checking out the big world from the safety of a small chicken wire “play pen”.


(Peep and Paisley face off!)

So far so good on my chicken adventure!

Two Quick Trips!

If you are a regular reader you know I recently had a couple of great weekends back-to-back. The first weekend I set off to Austin to my first ever face-to-face meeting with a fellow blogger. It was great fun and I’m so glad it happened! I had a gallery opening in Beeville, Texas, to attend and, being basically in the vicinity, I jumped on the chance to meet Allison Allen from WomenBloom. When I contacted her she readily agreed to meet me for dinner. That invitation morphed, over several e-mails, into an invitation to stay the night in her beautiful home in Austin, and I quickly agreed!

Allison advised me to either hit Austin by 3:30pm or not until after 6:00pm or I’d be stuck in huge traffic. I knocked on her door about 4:00pm and we immediately hit it off! We talked and talked, almost non-stop. We got all the world’s problems solved (you’re welcome world!) and then headed down to South Congress, one of Austin’s funky neighborhoods, to poke in vintage clothing stores, eat, drink and talk some more. We ended up eating at the Congress Street Café, which was delicious.

After dinner we headed back to Allison’s house, walked her dog, talked some more and then went to bed. I didn’t have to be in Beeville until 2:00pm, which afforded us the time to have a nice, leisurely morning. It was a fabulous visit and I hope Allison takes me up on my invitation to come to West Texas as soon as possible!

After bidding Allison a fond farewell I headed south to the Beeville Art Museum for the gallery opening of my friend and very talented artist, Barbel Helmert. The museum was beautiful and her work was wonderfully displayed. Six cases of swine flu in Beeville kept a lot of the locals at home but fifty or so people came from San Antonio and six or seven of us made the long journey from my town. It was lovely and I was so glad I made the trip.

The plan, at the end of the opening, was for me to go to San Antonio with Barbel and another friend, spend the night and then head home on Sunday. As I was heading to Beeville I passed a sign that showed Corpus Christi was 63 miles away. I had no idea the coast was so close and it really called to me! After the opening I made my excuses, got in my car and headed for the beach! I got a room in Port Aransas and spent a wonderful day Sunday walking on the beach, being reflective and getting recharged! I had a little self-discovery, which I’m going to write about later. I made the 9 ½ hour trip home on Monday where I had two days before heading to my niece’s graduation in Denton.

I got up Thursday morning and headed out for the eight hour drive to the Big D, where I spent the night before picking up my mom at the airport on Friday morning. Mom and I spent a lovely afternoon at the Dallas Arboretum, which I highly recommend to anyone who is going to be in the Dallas area. It was beautiful! We had lunch in the Arboretum café, which was nothing special but was convenient, and then spent several hours wandering around, marveling at all the beautiful garden areas. Evidently the Arboretum is a popular place to take bridal pictures and there were brides everywhere!! I’ll bet we saw a dozen at least!

After the Arboretum we headed to Denton where we met my brother, his family and the graduation girl for dinner. Saturday morning we gathered at the University of North Texas field house to watch my special niece walk across the stage and receive her diploma. She is the first one of her generation to graduate. Another one will finish in August and then, hopefully, my son next May! It was a nice ceremony followed by lunch at a little Mexican restaurant. My niece had us all over for a bratwurst cook-off at her apartment on Saturday evening. Sunday morning I headed home. Two back-to-back 1,000+ mile traveling weekends. When I got home I was TIRED!

Tuesday the chickens came and I’ve been dealing with that ever since. But that’s for another post!

Individual Chocolate Orange Cheesecakes

Happy Mother's Day! Are you having a get together and looking for an easy but eye-catching desert? Try these little cuties!

Makes 12 individual cakes

Active Time:35 min
Start to Finish:45 min

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for greasing muffin cups
12 chocolate wafers such as Nabisco Famous (1/2 cup)
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
4 oz cream cheese, softened
Rounded 1/4 teaspoon finely grated fresh orange zest
1/2 cup well-chilled heavy cream

Special equipment:
a nonstick mini-muffin pan with 12 (1/8-cup) muffin cups

Garnish:
bittersweet chocolate shavings (made with a vegetable peeler)

• Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350° F. Butter muffin cups.
• Grind wafers to a fine powder in a food processor.
• Mix together wafer crumbs, 2 tablespoons butter, and 2 tablespoons brown sugar in a bowl with a rubber spatula until combined well. Divide crumbs amongst the muffin cups, then firmly press onto bottom and a little up side of each cup with your fingertips or with bottom of an 1/8-cup measure by twisting measure.
• Bake 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack and cool in muffin pan 10 minutes. Gently rotate crusts with your fingertips to loosen and turn out onto rack.
  
• Beat together cream cheese, zest, and remaining brown sugar (3 tablespoons plus 1/3 teaspoon ) with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until fluffy.
• Beat cream in another bowl with cleaned beaters until it just holds stiff peaks.
• Stir about one third of whipped cream into cream cheese mixture to lighten, then gently fold in remaining whipped cream until just combined
• Mound filling into crusts with a spoon (or pipe filling into crusts with a pastry bag), garnish with bittersweet chocolate shavings and chill until ready to serve.

Easy, delicious and beautiful! What more could you ask for?!

I'm driving home from my fun weekend in Central Texas today. What about you? What are your Mother's Day plans?

Fun Weekend Ahead!

(Beeville Art Museum, Texas)

I’m heading to Central Texas this morning to attend the opening of the work of San Antonio artist Barbel Helmert at the Beeville Art Museum, which will be held tomorrow afternoon. Barbel moved to my town a year or so ago and has become a good friend of mine. I’m looking forward to attending her opening and then kicking up my heels with her in San Antonio on Saturday night. Before that though, I’m very excited to be spending tonight in Austin with WomenBloom founder, Allison Allen! I contacted Allison, whom I’ve never met in person but who I consider to be a good friend, to let her know I’d be in the area. I was hoping to get together for dinner or at least a cocktail. She very generously offered to host me. She’s really neat and I can’t wait to meet her! This will be the first time I’ve had a face-to-face meet with a blogging friend and I know it’s going to be lots of fun! In fact, the whole weekend will be about meeting new people, my favorite thing.

I think the beauty and benefit of this Internet age is the ability to interact with all sorts of interesting people absent geographical boundaries. I’d been reading Allison’s fantastic blog for awhile. When I climbed on the Twitter bandwagon I started following her and one day saw a Tweet that she was staying in a beautiful B&B that just so happened to be about 25 miles up the road from where I live. I Tweeted her back, asking what she was doing out here and letting her know that she was in “my” country. She was out here having a special weekend with her special someone and, after the “what a coincidence” Tweets we had no further contact during that weekend. After she went home we stayed in touch and discovered we had some things in common and that she is very familiar with this area. We’ve e-mailed back and forth and “chatted” on each other’s blog comments ever since. Now for the payoff – I get to meet her!

Hopefully this will be the first of many opportunities to meet more of the great people I’ve come to appreciate since I started blogging. If you’re a blogger, have you had the pleasure of meeting any of your blogging friends? How did it go?

The Chickens Are Coming!

(Golden Sebright bantam, pic from MyPetChicken.com)

I ordered my first ever baby chicks today! They should be here sometime during the week of 18 May. I can’t wait! I’ve wanted to have chickens most of my life and finally decided to take the plunge and just do it! Unlike most hatcheries, My Pet Chicken will allow you to order a very few chicks at a time, the more rural your area, the more you have to order. I ordered ten chicks, the minimum for my location. They allow you to mix and match and I ended up with five different varieties. I ordered two different standard-sized varieties and 3 bantam varieties. That’s more chickens than I really wanted but with mortality rates and any surprise roosters that will need to be re-homed, I’ll probably end up with a smaller flock. If I do end up with all ten, that will be alright too!

When I was in elementary school I had a good friend who lived on some acreage in the woods along the Manassas River in Virginia. I used to love to go stay at her house over the weekend. They always had the most diverse menagerie of animals out there. Lots of fowl; I remember geese, chickens, quail and pheasants, plus they had a pig and a goat and lots of dogs and cats. I loved it! My friend had the chickens. They were all different strange varieties and would free-range. We’d have to gather them up in the evening and lock them in their coop. I know my love of chickens grew from those experiences.

I spent twenty years living on an acre of land outside the city limits and always wanted to have chickens out there, which would have been perfect. Unfortunately my then husband thought chickens were nasty and wouldn’t go for it. My ex-boyfriend lives on 55 acres in upstate New York and I figured I’d have chickens up there. After we broke up I decided I was done waiting for someone else to make the chicken thing work out! One of my goals for 2009 is to have some chickens and now I’m on my way!

I live in town so I’m just having hens, no roosters. Actually, I’m not sure I’d have roosters anyway as I’m not all that crazy about the crowing myself! I’ve been browsing around the Garden Girl website and checking out her plans for a chicken tractor (a movable chicken run) that fits on top of a raised bed. You stick your chickens in there and they scratch and poop and generally help your soil a bit and then you move them over to the next raised bed. The Garden Girl has twelve identical raised beds and keeps the chickens on each bed for one month before moving them along to the next bed. I’m thinking more like four beds with the chickens on each bed for three months at a time.

Once the babies get here they will go in a brooder box for about a month before they are ready for the yard. I’m picturing them free-ranging in the backyard during most days and going into the chicken tractor at night. Now if I can just get the pug to love them and be transformed into Chicken Pug – Defender of the Flock! Can’t you just picture it?!

Do you have chickens? Any advice for me?

Want vs. Need; or Opportunism?

(I wish this was my kitchen!)

After a week of unexpected disasters (are they ever expected?) I woke up today to find my refrigerator on the fritz. Luckily I’m way overdue for a trip to the grocery store so there wasn’t much in there. I have a spare fridge out in my shop and was able to move all my food out there so I didn’t lose much. I turned it off and am going to let it finish thawing and then clean it and turn it back on. If that doesn’t miraculously fix it, I’m going to have to buy a new one. It came with the house and has some age on it so, although the timing could have been better, I’m not too unhappy.

Last week a friend of mine had both her indoor refrigerator/freezer and her extra upright freezer go out within a couple of days of each other. We live about 70 miles from the nearest place to buy appliances and, having nothing better to do, I accompanied her on a trip over there. While she was obsessing over refrigerators I wandered around checking out the ranges. I would love to have a new range. I don’t need one. The one I have, which also came with my house, works fine.

Cooking is one of my passions and I do a lot of it. I have a very tiny kitchen and my microwave takes up a lot of space. I’d really like to get a new microwave that would install over the range and also act as an exhaust fan. While I was wandering around the store I found both a great range and a microwave that would fill the bill nicely. I’ve spent the last week plotting and planning and lusting after them. I finally decided that, as a want instead of a need, I would let them go.

Fast forward two weeks and now I have to go back over to that store and get a new fridge. They charge $150 to make a delivery, regardless of how many appliances they bring. I find myself thinking about that range and microwave again. I’m not fooling myself, they’re a want, no question about it. Still, if I have to go up there and if I have to pay that $150 delivery fee and assuming the range I have is every bit as aged as the fridge; should I go ahead and get the new range? I don’t know, but I’m sure thinking about it!

Obviously a big question is whether or not I can afford it. The answer is yes and no. I can certainly afford it but it will also take a fair chunk out of my savings. If my circumstances don’t change, and I have no expectation that they will, I can put the funds back in a couple of months. Alternatively if things do change, I’ll be sorely missing that money. All the news about the economy has got me as worried as everyone else and is making me hesitant to spend money I don’t absolutely need to spend.

I read an article in The Washington Post recently about just exactly this sort of thing. People who have a stable job and plenty of money in the bank are hesitant to make any major purchases because of the news of the economy. This thinking creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in that even if the soft economy is having no real effect on an individual, he or she is still hesitant to spend, which in turn keeps the economy soft. Obviously I’m over simplifying things in a big way but I realized I’m a poster child for this phenomenon.

Although it’s hugely inconvenient to have to go out to my shop every time I need something from the fridge, I don’t need to rush into anything. I’m going to give it some thought and try to make a sensible decision about my appliance acquisition. The appliance store only delivers on Saturdays and I’ll be out of town the next two so I’ve got some time to think about it. In the meantime, I’m enjoying imagining the possibilities of a new range!