It started with me picking up some ripe looking mangoes for really cheap. They were only tentatively sweet and positively tart around the seed. Seeing that they were quite useless as fruit, I put a couple of them into the pressure cooker along with some celery that was lying around the fridge, added an over-sized pinch of turmeric and dash of salt and let it steam. I had no idea where this was heading when I left for work.
Upon returning in the evening, I found myself craving for something devilishly spicy - must have been wearying of my bland everyday fare. The celery, mango and turmeric combination had turned into a bright yellow, pulpy mass - quite a promising candidate for gravy. My thoughts turned to a tray of mixed seafood that I was going to make a paella with and the red Thai curry paste bought a few weeks ago. Soon the seafood was sautéed with curry paste, grated coconut and then cooked in the gravy. In the middle of my clockwork existence, this was a total surprise of a dinner and a very satisfying one at that.
How a bunch of unrelated ingredients found their way together to make a meal was much like the way random and apparently unconnected incidents and people come into my life to fulfill a purpose that is much larger than any one of them. If I had the wisdom to understand how they played together, I would be able to orchestrate a beautiful life for myself. Unfortunately my talent for finding plausible connections and improvizing is limited only to cooking.
I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
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