Beef Curry

Yes, I know it's cliche to take pictures of the sky all the time. But if you only knew how many times I sat in the backseat of my parents' car, wishing I could somehow make a dress those colors. I'm in awe of anyone who can convincingly paint light. And since my particular art skills will always fall under the crafty, not classical, I forgive myself. Lately my mind set has been vacillating between unthinking bland zombie dark insideness, and unthinking zombie happy outside lightness.

In case you didn't get the memo from one of your friends*, on Wednesday Popeye's Chicken had a special. 8 pieces for 4.99. Here is the resulting chaos. It was certainly an interesting way to celebrate Earth Day; chicken slaughtering and car idling. Speaking of zombies....

Those cars are not parked. That's the drive thru line.


Last night I went over Jays for Thai night, which has increasingly become a monthly thing. Instead of just me and Jay, we ended up with me and Jay and Kelly and Debra and Andrew and Lori and her son. You know, 7. Lucky for me, curry is the ultimate family style dinner. Saying curry and family in the same sentence is redundant.


I was not a big fan of the green curry dish I made a while ago, so I was a little scared about how this would turn out. Jay made coconut fried rice, which was SO good, it was practically dessert. And I'm pretty happy about how this turned out. I think I might make it a bit spicier if I was certain of my diners. But I'm getting the picture that anytime you combine coconut milk, sugar, garlic and fish sauce, it's going to be pretty fantastic. It kinda makes me feel like a kindergartner since most of Asia has known this since they were 2. But it's a happy kind of ignorance.

After dinner, we played Apples to Apples, and I got way too competitive with a very precocious 13 yr old. Wine and word games make me in it to win it people. Also, if anybody is ever interested in putting some money down....

Oh, and it's official, my phone is more ghetto than Kelly's. My monochrome screen put me over the top.

Beef Curry

note: I'm giving you the exact proportions I used, and you can see how much that made. So feel free to cut this in half. If you don't have a friend that rocks at making rice, serve it with jasmine rice. Buy yourself a rice maker. You know, half the world has one of those.

- 2 lbs lean beef cut into either chunks or strips

- 2 red bell peppers, chopped

- 1 pd sliced mushrooms

- 1/2 cup chopped basil

- 1 can coconut milk

- 2 tbsp fish sauce

- 2 tbsp red curry paste

- 2 tbsp brown sugar

- 2 tbsp minced garlic

- vegetable oil

In a wok, brown the beef in batches (fun!) using the vegetable oil and garlic, on high heat. Once cooked, but not overcooked, remove from heat.

Throw in the peppers and mushrooms. I sprinkled them with chili oil. Cook until softened.

Add the milk, sugar, paste, fish sauce, and basil. Stir to mix. Stir again just to be sure those chunks of curry paste don't end up in someones mouthful.

Then add the beef again and allow the dish to get warmed up before serving. Voila.

*No one who is your real friend would ever tell you about this.