Blushing Pomegranate Chicken

Step 1: Give your mother-in-law a pomegranate tree for Christmas.

Step 2: Wait a few years because it takes awhile for the tree to start producing.

Step 3: (VERY important, do not skip this step!) Move to the same city as mother-in-law.

Step 4: Gratefully accept pound after pound after pound of pomegranates. (Most of the time she had already peeled them for us, too.)

Step 5: After you've had your fill of eating pomegranates on your cereal, your salad, your ice cream, juiced, or just plain, try this recipe, because even though you aren't getting tired of them, it is fun to try them in new ways.

I like the combination of sweet and savory, but no one else was very excited about it. I prefer my own roasted sweet potatoes instead of this kind, but still good.

Now that pomegranate season is over, I'll have to wait until next year...

Turkey Curry

My mother spent a few years living in Japan, once in high school and once in college. Although it has been a long time, she has always been somewhat obsessed (I mean that in a nice way). She still speaks Japanese, decorated her living room in Japanese block prints and sculptures, has shoji screens as her window coverings, plays the koto (although come to think of it I haven't heard her play in many years), cooks Japanese food, keeps in touch with her host families and friends in Japan, and always manages to have some local Japanese friends at any given time. In fact, growing up it was part of our family tradition to have a handful of Japanese people at our Thanksgiving dinners. Usually they were families from Japan living here that my mom somehow met and befriended, and since they didn't have any of their own Thanksgiving traditions they would spend the day with us. And usually bring a dish to share. The first time I tasted sushi (and real sushi, not the rolled kind you can get anywhere) was at Thanksgiving.



When I was in high school, my school started offering a Japanese class. Being a teenager, I thought ho-hum. My mom was of course excited, and offered to send me on a trip to Japan if I took the class. Still, I thought ho-hum. Now I think WHAT AN IDIOT!!! but unfortunately there is no going back. One of the things I regret from my teenage years. Don't worry, there aren't too many and that was the most interesting one.



So, that was a tangent, but it gives you some context for why I consider Japanese curry a comfort food even though I'm a white girl married to a Mexican. I grew up eating several Japanese dishes, but I only learned how to make a few, and this is the only one I still make. I always make it after Thanksgiving because it is great with turkey, although you can also use chicken. (Actually, today I made it a little too thin, so I used the leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving, too, to thicken it up a little bit.) It is one of those meals that sticks to your ribs.

As always the measurements are approximate.

1 T butter
1 onion, sliced
4 carrots, sliced
5 potatoes, peeled and diced
2-3 cups turkey, cooked and diced
1 box curry sauce mix (the one I get--actually I stole it from my mom's pantry--is called S&B Golden Curry Sauce Mix, medium hot), broken into pieces
rice (get an asian sticky kind to be authentic, short-grain or jasmine)

In a large saucepan, melt butter. Saute onion for a few minutes, add carrot. Saute for a few more minutes, add water (enough to cover once all the ingredients are added). Add potatoes, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until everything is tender. Add turkey and sauce mix, simmer and stir for about 5 minutes. If there are still visible chunks of the sauce mix, just keep stirring, it will dissolve. Serve over rice.

7yo looked at it and said, "This looks familiar, do I like it?" YES. And whaddaya know I was right. 5yo and 2yo just ate rice.