Stress Cooking

Are you a stress eater?  I am.  I’m a stress cooker, too.  (I am a crazy stress cleaner, but that’s another post for another day).

I’m down.  I’m allowed, I know.  You are, too.  I don’t need a cheerleader or anything.  I’m fine with accepting how I feel right now.  I’m sure tomorrow I’ll feel better.  In the meantime, I’m stress cooking to make myself feel better.

Here is how I’m consoling myself tonight.

Vegetable Curry with Rice

  • A few carrots, sliced thin
  • Shiitake mushrooms
  • Two bell peppers, sliced thin
  • One yellow onion, sliced thin
  • Garlic
  • Ginger
  • 2 cans coconut milk
  • Curry powder
  • Curry paste
  • White pepper
  • Salt
  • Turmeric

Now before you go off with the “what the hell, I have none of these ingredients,” you can use whatever vegetables you have (I’d steer clear of celery or tomatoes here).  All you REALLY need is coconut milk, curry powder or paste, and salt.  

  

Slice up your veggies, ginger, garlic, and some salt and get them in a hot pot with some olive oil.  Cook them for a bit until they seem to soften.   

 

Add the mushrooms, spices (probably a teaspoon of each except the curry powder, which I used probably two teaspoons of). 

Add the coconut milk and a heaping spoonful of curry paste.  The curry powder will give you the curry flavor and the paste gives it heat.  I was a bit nervous, the curry paste had been in our fridge for a long time, but it’s probably so full of salt and preservatives that it doesn’t matter.  I live on the edge so I used it.

   

I let this simmer, halfway covered, for about 30 min while I made some rice.*  While the rice cooked I made a little cucumber salad with chili oil, rice wine vinegar, and toasted sesame seeds.  The recipe is my lazy version of one I read in Bon Appetit magazine this month.

   
Here is the finished product.

  Feeling a little bit better as I write.  Going to try and be present this weekend and enjoy the time away from work.  Even if I’m still down tomorrow, at least I’ll have some good leftovers.

*totally lying, I didn’t make the rice, my husband did.  I can cook pretty much anything EXCEPT rice.