I was initially…

I was initially pretty frustrated that due to lots of wet weather and the floors not drying per schedule, we had to move our move (it sounds ridiculous every time I say that) to Wednesday. But truth be told, it's perhaps for the best.

It was going to be a mad scramble to get everything packed before today, and Kev and I are both sick -- I have strep, yay -- and it was such a relief to just collapse last night. Today, we mostly took it easy, with a bit of cleaning and packing. I've packed just two boxes, but I've done four loads of laundry, and cooked rice and beef curry and cauliflower curry for dinner. A proper balanced meal for a change, instead of feeding the kids mac-and-cheese with cut-up chicken hot dogs and scrounging something even less appealing for ourselves. It was a gorgeous day today, and I spent a while sitting on the front porch reading while the kids played with chalk and dirt and sticks in the front yard. Nice!

And of course, this means that more things will be done at the house before we arrive. I think this means that we'll be able to get the plumber back out, get the perimeter countertops in, and have everything plumbed except for the two clawfoot tubs (which need to be scraped and painted first). If I'm right, it'll be much nicer to move into a house with four working toilets instead of one. If Anand were old enough to use a toilet, we could all go to the bathroom at the same time! Mostly, I think it will be much easier to live in a house with a kitchen sink. We do still have to figure out our washing machine situation, though -- have to remind Kev when he gets home that that needs to get decided ASAP.

Kev's taken Kavi to a birthday party now -- normally, I would do that sort of thing, but see strep above. I started antibiotics last night, so I'm still contagious right now. Anand stayed home too, and has mostly been a good boy, aside from his tendency to unpack everything I pack and unclean everything I clean. Sigh.

I've even had time for a bit of experimental cooking. Friday morning I took half an hour to make cucumber sandwiches for the last day of my colonialism/post-colonialism class. It just felt appropriate -- funny and British, especially since we'd spent a while talking about a passage in Samarasan's Evening is the Whole Day where she contrasts limp and unappealing cucumber sandwiches with tempting nasi lemak. Hopefully my cucumber sandwiches were better than that! :-) I brought in some cold tea (green and black) as well as cookies, and some of the students brought Munchkins, so we even had cake. The tea, I admit, wasn't really right without being hot, with milk and sugar, but that really would have been beyond me. I'm kind of impressed I managed the cucumber sandwiches, to be honest.

So anyway, the point of all this is that I had a loaf's worth of white bread crusts left over. Really nice crusts, from a Whole Foods loaf, that I was loathe to throw out. And we have no ducks here. I fed some to the kids, but then this morning, I had a brainwave. I chopped up a tomato and cooked it with a little leftover cooked chicken, chili powder, curry powder, lime juice, salt, and milk. Made a nice, liquidy curry out of that, and then chopped the bread and added it. Stirred for a few minutes, then turned off the heat and let it sit. Oh, my god. Panzanella curry! It was an incredibly delicious lunch, and even though I'd only planned to eat half of it and leave the rest for Kevin, I couldn't stop eating it. I ate it all. (Probably just as well, as it was a little too spicy, and while Kev can eat hot with the best of him, when he's sick, he generally wants blander food. Not me. I want lots of spice to cut through the cold.)

Anyway, I don't have a recipe as such, but when you have some stale bread lying around, crusts or otherwise, you might try chopping it up and adding it to a curry. GOOD!

Update: Here are the floors from tonight. Drying, but still wet! Good thing we didn't try to move in today. By Wed, it should be fine.