How to Cook Vegetable Green Curry, Wacky Mommy-style

1) Decide to cook dinner. That’ll be a shocker. (I have lost all mojo for cooking.) (Lost.) (As in, gone.)

Wacky Girl, apprehensive: “You’re cooking?”

Wacky Girl, screaming to her brother: “Wanna play Candyland?”

Wacky Boy: “I’m hungry.”

You can see it in his eyes: Candyland? Food? Food? Candyland? He eyes the jar of green curry paste, can of coconut milk and jar of raw rice with more than a little suspicion. Grabs a leftover sandwich and eats it. Chases it with a bowlful of Lucky Charms.

Screams to his sister: “Ready!”

2) Cook brown rice (three cups rice, six cups water, heat to boil uncovered; let boil for a minute or two. Cover; reduce heat to simmer; let cook 50 minutes).

3) Watch another episode of “Friday Night Lights” while rice is cooking. Damn, this show is so good. It is so good that I cannot stop talking about it. I like it as much as the Sopranos, better than Six Feet Under, way more than Entourage. Friday Night Lights kicks Entourage’s wussy little behind. Go, Panthers! (You have to watch this show, I mean it. Yes, it’s about a lot more than “just” football.)

4) Remember dinner. Investigate fridge. Cauliflower, broc, cilantro, lettuce, all bad. Bad, bad, moldy bad. Too lazy to walk to compost. Leave everything in plastic bags; toss whole lot out the back door into the yard, somewhere in the vicinity of the compost bin.

5) Celery? Somewhat salvageable. Carrots? Fine. Half an onion? Yeah, that will work. More onion? Check bin. Find five or six potatoes that have sprouted foot-long tentacles. Remember that Martha just said something on her show about… vodka? No. (Although her Bloody Mary recipe is superb.)

(Celery and carrot sticks always make me think of Martha’s Bloody Marys.) (Also garlic-stuffed green olives remind me of Martha.) Martha sez: Do not store onions and potatoes together. Something about the gases from one make the other go bad. Dammit, well it’s a little late now, isn’t it, Martha? Frozen peas and corn. I put them into a bowl to defrost. Heat oil in wok.

6) Slice carrots (I’ve already peeled and washed) into matchstick-sized pieces. Matchstick is too tiny, too much. Almost matchstick will do. Oil is ready. Carrots into the wok. Onion, diced, in wok. Celery, chopped, into wok.

7) Open green curry paste. Lid does not pop. No satisfying little “click.” Inside, the top layer of the paste is a dark greenish-brown. Not moldy-dark-green. Green-paste-curry-green, but kind of funky. I scoop it off. Underneath, it looks like curry. What the hell do I do here? The last three, four jars of curry I’ve gotten, same thing. No pop (is jar properly sealed? Isn’t it supposed to pop? Will we die from this? Botulism? What the hell.) I do not care. I am determined to make dinner.

8) Cube tofu, add to wok. Add (still partially frozen) peas and carrots to wok.

9) Whisk together a few spoonfuls of green curry paste and the can of coconut milk. Add to vegetables.

10) Hockey God gets home, smells the curry, spies the wok. “You cooked?” He’s happy. He’s sick of cooking. We’ve either eaten dinner out or he has cooked for the last… I have no idea. Two months? Two weeks? Two years? Could be any of these answers. The point is: I cooked.

11) We ladle curry over the rice. I’ve forgotten the following: salt, pepper, chiles. We adjust for flavor. Our daughter, who has won handily at Candyland, eats a bowl of brown rice with butter. She sez the curry smells “yummy” but refuses to eat it. Good, good. If we die from botulism, at least the children will live. Curry is fantastic. We do not die. Well, yet, anyway. I may cook again, someday, just wait and see.