Had a slightly frantic hour this evening because I’d promised to make and drop-off dinner for 16-20 for a non-profit thing, and I meant to start cooking at 3, but was in the groove on writing and lost track of time, so it was almost 4 by the time I started, and I was supposed to drop it off at 5:15, and all the chicken was frozen so I set it thawing in the microwave and made the veg. poriyal (yams and cauliflower, new combo, good), then checked, chicken still mostly frozen, set it to thawing some more, put the rice on (mixed red rice and basmati with butter, cashews, and sultanas), then sautéed some onions with cinnamon and cumin seed and mustard seed, etc. for the chicken and let those keep cooking on low, then made the kale sambol (kale, onion, coconut, lime juice, chopped tomatoes, salt, sugar; I was a little short on lime juice, but it was okay), and finally the chicken was thawed enough, so with twenty-five minutes to go, there was some speed chopping and frying and sautéing and covering with a lid to make sure it was definitely cooked through (because worse than being late would be serving people undercooked chicken!!!), and dumping in a can of coconut milk and somehow it all got done in time and packed up and I added some naan and samosas and a few bags of leftover Halloween chocolates from the freezer because I had completely failed to provide dessert, gah —
— and THEN I couldn’t find my damn keys for ten minutes, so I was late after all, and panicking a bit because I had originally planned to make lentils too, and just ran out of time and WHAT IF THERE WASN’T ENOUGH FOOD???
I dropped it all off full of apologies and told the staffers that they should just order more food if they needed to and I would pay for it. But they assured me that it would be plenty, and even were kind enough to drop a note just now to reassure me that there had been plenty; enough that their clients could even pack up some leftovers. So okay then.
NOTE TO SELF: USE A CLOCK, DAMMIT.
#cookingdoesnothavetobeaspeedsport
#serendibkitchen