Step 1: Prepare ingredients: coconut milk (1 can), whatever veggies you like, lime, curry paste (whatever kind you like), chili paste, and mince ginger and garlic. Sorry, I don't cook with meat here at home so if you want meat in your curry, cook it after step 2.
Step 2: Fry the garlic paste in oil (about 2 or 3 good tablespoons of curry paste for 1 can of coconut milk) along with the garlic and ginger for about 2 or 3 minutes on med-hi heat. Most people skip this step and just dissolve curry paste into coconut milk but it is NOT the same. Frying brings out the flavor in the peppers and ginger, so don't skip this step! Watch for oil splattering
Step 3: Do not dump the whole can of coconut milk in at once. Put about half a cup in, and stir it into the curry paste until it is even. Then slowly keep adding coconut milk until the whole can is used. Add about 1/2 can worth of water
Step 4: Throw the veggies in, add 1 tablespoon of sugar (I don't like my curry sweet, but if you do, add another tablespoon), and the juice of one lime. Cook about 15 mins on a gentle simmer until veggies are tender but not mushy. Don't cover the pot - your greens will lose color
Okay now for the more interesting stuff ... so Ian and I don't have a car here in Seattle. As part of moving here, we decided to adopt a lifestyle that involves walking and public transit use - I actually end up walking almost everywhere, even down to the waterfront which is only about 20 mins or so. However, once in a while having a car is useful ... so we became members of a carshare program known as ZipCar. You have a card with an electronic chip in it which locks/unlocks the car during your reservation. These cars are all over the city in various lots or on the street, and you can reserve anything from a mini cooper to a pickup truck. We got a small Subaru hatch to pick up driftwood from Discovery Park. Ian is going to build himself a desk from the driftwood (for more Discovery Park hiking pictures, see my old post). Here's a look at that adventure:
Cruise ships passing by
Driftwood with the lighthouse in the background
It hasn't been totally nailed together and sanded down yet, but here's a preliminary idea
Unfinished, but looks nice already ... like something in a southwestern furniture shop haha! That seat is a huge log that Ian somehow managed to pull from the sand (it's ridiculously heavy).
Anyhow, now we have a couple more pieces as well that we are going to use to make planters for the garden. For now, we're going to sand down the wood to make it smoother and then put everything together
Finally ... since we reserved the car for 24hrs (we're picking up my mom & dad at the airport and dropping them off at their cruise terminal for their Alaska cruise), we decided to head over to the Ballard Locks - a uniquely engineered system of ship locks and salmon ladders. When the shipping canal from Lake Washington to the Puget Sound was built, the salmon migration pattern was disrupted. Engineers created a series of 10 or 11 salmon "ladders" to re-create the streams that the salmon must swim up in order to get to their spawning grounds. Since the water levels are different between the Pacific Ocean/Puget Sound and the freshwater Lake Washington and rivers flowing into it, these jumps help the salmon to make the elevation change.
Boats being raised in the locks to get to the higher water levels of Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and Lake Washington from the lower water levels of the Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean
Drawbridge used by cargo trains is lifted to allow boats into the locks
Like I mentioned, salmon climb up the ladders to spawn in the rivers, then the young smolt flow back out into the saltwater oceans to feed and grow up
The "slides" described in the previous picture, allowing young salmon (smolt) to flow back out to the ocean once born
Here at the salmon ladders at Ballard Locks in Seattle. After the finger pointing in the middle of the video, you can see a salmon try to swim up the clear waterfall in the bottom right corner of the video, fall down, and then successfully climb to the next level just before the video ends. Look carefully in the red box that pops up - you'll see a black-colored fish try to jump, fall, and then finally make it up.
Maybe you can identify the salmon in the next video with this guide:
Lots of different salmon in this area .... there's also one called Yukon River salmon which swims 3000 miles (instead of the "normal" 1000 or 2000 miles) and it is the most expensive salmon around here ... $33 per pound. It's SUPER fatty, rich, and delicious (so I hear)
The "underwater" view of the salmon ladders system at Ballard Locks. The video above shows the part of the ladders system that requires the salmon to swim up the waterfalls ... this part requires salmon to swim through holes in the wall where the strong current flows through. Sometimes the fish, if unprepared, get thrown upwards or to the side by the current:
I guess I can add a quick garden update. With all the sunshine going on, things seem to be sprouting and growing well...
I found it! My favorite Japanese herb called "shiso" (this specific green kind called "ao jiso"). You may know it as the "decoration" on the sushi/sashimi platter, but this peppery, minty herb is inseparable from cold somen noodles for lunch ... at least to me. I had seeds from Hawaii, but they didn't sprout so I was incredibly happy to find this guy! He's new to the garden but growing an astounding amount of new leaves every day
Lettuce is really starting to take off now since I thinned out all the weaker ones and left 4 or 5 seedlings. Starting to see some "true leaves"
You can tell chives are getting much thicker and stronger :-)
Tomato plants have now both passed the highest support ring! Both are over 3 feet tall now ... when I first got them about a month ago they were 1 foot tall. I see more than 30 flower buds - hopefully this means each one will set fruit and I'll have plenty of tomatoes!
And with that, we woke up early this morning to pick my parents up at the airport, grab a bite of smoked salmon chowder and new england clam chowder, and sent them off on a wonderful 7-day Alaskan cruise! They'll be back next weekend in town for 2 days :-) We'll be taking them to the salmon locks for sure ... lucky for them, they're in the area during migration season. Then, maybe to Steelhead Diner to eat some of the best seafood in Seattle ... so who's paying? :-P
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