happy halloween!

crazy weather

i can't believe that it's almost november and we have had to turn the air conditioning back on for the past 2 days. this time last week if not for my stubbornness we would have had the heat on.

weekend project

this is what we spent the majority of our saturday (and will spend a majority of our sunday) doing.




insulating the crawl space.

it was hard work and it sucked royally. but i'm really proud of us for doing it. we're about 1/3 of the way through. we could've pushed on further today but we decided not to kill ourselves since there was no way we were going to finish today. so we'll pick back up tomorrow where we left off today. hrumph.

more pictures from the fair

i've uploaded a few more pictures from the fair. check out the flickr set here.

saturday project

this is what we spent our saturday doing. on the one hand i'm very proud of having done this.* though, it took WAY too long to do so i'm frustrated at the various frustrations that we had during the project. but that's pretty much how all home improvement projects go in our house. so, par for the course.



*however, now that i see how relatively not difficult it was to install, it's silly that i was so anxious about it.

hello from the south carolina fair

is it bad to eat a pizza, a big bowl of french fries, and an elephant ear for dinner?

great recipe- cashew nut curry

just made this last night and it was amazing. made a few adjustments: don't have a big enough mortal and pestle so i put it in the food processor instead. i also didn't have fennel powder, so i pounded some fennel seed and used that instead. and i didn't have curry leaves so i used a few pinches of curry powder as substitute. i topped with sliced green onions and served with jasmine rice.

cashew nut curry

200 gm raw cashews
1 medium onion, sliced
2-3 pips garlic
1/2 inch ginger, sliced
1 T coriander powder
1/2 T cumin powder
1/4 T fennel powder
a pinch or two of tumeric powder
7-8 curry leaves


some black pepper, crushed
salt

1/4 cup thick coconut milk
2-3 T cooking oil


Pound the onions, garlic and ginger in a pestle and mortar till quite fine.


Heat oil in a pan and saute the pounded ingredients until fragrant. Add the powdered spices and a little water, about 2 tablespoons, and saute until the mixture turns a little darker and the oil seperates from the paste.


Throw in the cashews and stir to mix it into the spices. Add the coconut milk and bring to a simmer and let it simmer for about 20 to 25 minutes. Add salt in between. While doing so add some water or stock if the mixture seems to dry. There should be some sauce but not gravy. It a dry sort of curry.


Sprinkle some crushed black pepper if you so desire. Serve with white rice.


Note ~ You may add some sliced green chillies just at the end of the cooking and sprinkle some fried onions over the top just before serving.

i found the recipe here which was a link from tastespotting.