Making some fresh roasted Sri Lankan curry powder this morning — local store Carnivore Oak Park wanted some more cookbooks and curry powder, so I’ll be dropping a few jars off later today.
Making Some More Curry Powder For Carnivore
Assembling Flash Sale Orders
Slept very weirdly last night, just waking up over and over. I feel okay right now, but moving slowly, and I suspect I’ll crash at some point today. Oh well!
I still managed to assemble the flash sale orders this morning. Next steps are packaging them up, adding ice packs to the ones with confections, asking Stephanie to make up paid shipping labels (she needs dimensions and weight for that), and then running them over to the post office.
Just a Little Pickling
The color change is fun. 
Avocado Ice Cream with Chili, Salt, and Lime
I followed this recipe (https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/avocado-ice-cream-recipe/) — but added 2 t. lime juice, 1/2 t. flake salt, and 1/4 t. cayenne. I really like the result, but I suspect a lot of people may be suspicious of avocado ice cream in general, and perhaps even more so with my additions! So, y’know, try at your own risk. If you don’t like it, more for me.
Served below with some tropical tinned fruit, which worked well! The recipe says you can use coconut milk instead of cream, which would make it vegan, but I didn’t try that, so can’t vouch for the results.
This Venezuelan Roast Chicken Is Really Delicious
The addition of a mojo (fragrant garlic & herb vinegar & lime sauce) as a final step takes it over the top.
Pollo A La Brasa Venezolano recipe here: https://mommyshomecooking.com/easy-venezuelan-roasted…/
Cooking for the Refugees Again
It’s funny how it really does help me motivate if there’s a new recipe for me to try; I guess that’s part of the ADHD thing. I am super-motivated by novelty. (It’s a good thing Kevin is willing to just make the black beans and rice for me every time, so I don’t have to trudge through that.)
The new dish this time was Venezuelan roast chicken, which I really like. I’m learning the flavors — not heavy on heat, it seems like, but lots of vinegar, lime, onion and garlic, oregano, cumin, parsley or cilantro. And they use green peppers a lot, which I don’t generally cook with (unless I’m making stuffed green peppers, which I do on occasion.)
Lots of the cooking technique is the same as what I’d normally cook, but the flavor profile is just different enough to make it interesting to me.
Pollo A La Brasa Venezolano recipe here: https://mommyshomecooking.com/easy-venezuelan-roasted…/
Step 1 for this dish was to chop up stuff, mix it, pulverize it in a food processor to make a marinade for chicken. The only tricky bit was multiplying the recipe by 6 (there are currently about 55 refugees at the station) — I had a moment when I wasn’t sure I had a big enough bowl. But it turned out I did have one giant metal bowl.
We’ve been cooking one meal about once a week for a month or so now, and I think we can mostly keep doing that through the fall. I’m hoping they can resettle these groups and get them into shelters before winter hits — if I were going to be cooking for them long-term, I imagine I’d invest in more restaurant-size cookware.
I just don’t see how it’s going to be feasible to have them still just waiting in front of the police station once Chicago gets into the really bad weather. As it is, I think they’re going to need more than one flimsy pop-up tent pretty soon. 
(Again, locals, if you’d like to join the meal train, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with the organizer.)
When You Have Good Curry On Hand
Gods, I love when I have a good curry on hand — makes my life so much better. Made Sri Lankan black pork curry this weekend, intensely flavored with vinegar and black pepper, and have been happily eating it paired with red cabbage sambol and a mix of red and white rice (red rice has a lower glycemic index than white, and I like the taste of the blend).
It uses quite a bit of black pepper, so I usually keep some ground (using the coffee grinder that I use as a spice grinder) on hand for this. I was out, so I ground up another batch. I love the Penzey’s Tellicherry black peppercorns flavor.
Recipes:
https://serendibkitchen.com/2021/11/06/black-pork-curry/
https://serendibkitchen.com/…/sri-lankan-red-cabbage…/
Sunday Evening Snacks
Sunday evening, Kavi and I were studying together — I was prepping my syllabi, and she was doing homework. Kevin brought us study snacks. Not visible but also on that cutting board, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto.
Perico
I didn’t have a lot of time to cook for the refugees this weekend, so only one experimental new recipe — we’d signed up for breakfast, so I made Venezuelan scrambled eggs, known as perico, cooked with onion, pepper and tomato. Very similar to scrambled eggs I’d make for myself and the family.
It was interesting making it in such large quantities, though. I felt like I was cracking eggs for a ridiculously long time.
Tastes Like It’s Good for You
Spent a little time this weekend making elderberry syrup, which is supposed to be a tonic for colds and such. It’s a little bitter until you sweeten it with honey, but it does taste like it’s good for you.
One tip I found said to freeze the berries before trying to remove them from the stems, and that definitely made it much easier to pop them off without making a big mess. Last pic is elderberry syrup and elderflower syrup. Would be amusing to serve paired ice cream scoops made with those.
