A Day Not As Wasted As It Could Have Been

[howeird]

Went to sleep about 2 am, woke up a couple of times before 7:30, then slept till 9:30. Spook crawled over me then jumped off the bed, a hint she wanted treats. Breakfast was begun by biting the head off a Lind hollow dark chocolate bunny. I shot up extra "rapid" insulin for that, and because I had forgotten to take my bedtime meds, including the "regular" insulin and my Hgl was 240.

My main plan for the day was to make Kao Mook Gai, and at least get the spice mixture done

Kao Mok Gai Spice Blend
• 1 ½ tsp coriander seeds  
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 1½-inch cinnamon stick
• 4 pc cloves
• 6 black peppercorns
• 10 white peppercorns
• 1 pod white or green cardamom
• ½ tsp turmeric powder
• ⅛ tsp ground nutmeg

before meeting Janice for coffee. But I got distracted by Dreamwidth's counterintuitive settings for seeing friends' posts in my reading pane. And there were a lot of comments to make on Facebook. Over there I am annoyed that people who are otherwise rational choose to demonize a politician, hating everything he/she/it does or says. And almost as annoying is doing the opposite to a politician/public figure who does something they liked.

Today's case in point is a meme showing that Trump visited golf courses a lot early in his term, while Obama, Bush II and Clinton did not. The numbers are true, but the other three didn't own golf courses. Bush II was famous for the number of vacation days he took prior to 9/11. Obama's vacations to Hawaii were vastly more expensive. Clinton took 174 vacation days during his time in office, including his family's four-day vacation to the Caribbean in 1997 during which he played golf. And he preferred to play at other things.

Plan A was delayed again when I went OCD and built a spreadsheet to list all the ingredients needed for Kao Mok Gai and calculating double, triple and quadruple amounts, because I wanted to make 4x as much of the spice mix and 2 servings of the marinated chicken:

Marinated Chicken
• 2 cilantro roots or 6-8 cilantro stems
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 large head shallots
• 7-8 slices ginger
• 1 recipe kao mok gai spice blend
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• ⅓ cup plain yogurt (or use whole milk with 1 Tbsp lime juice)
• 3-4 pc dark meat chicken, bone-in, skin-on (I usually serve 1 piece of thigh or 2 pieces of drumsticks per person)


That was a good thing, I was able to make a quadruple dose of the spice mix before 3 pm

Plan A included getting a manicure at Capri Nail Spa, my old haunt, in Mountain View at around 3. I arrived there at 3:15, but it was closed for some obscure cult ceremony. Too much hassle to drive all the way back home, when coffee date was about a mile away, so I went to Starbucks, which was a zoo. Three separate Asian groups had stripped most of the chairs from the long tables and piled them around the two small tables in the back and a couple of tiny tables in the front. I found a chair to move to one of the abandoned tables and parked there. That was about 3:30. By the time Janice arrived at 5, the place was almost empty, and I had snagged one of the small tables for us 15 minutes before.

Not a lot of news, except the price of a mud bath in Calistoga has become too high to justify.

Home, OCD set in, and I made a double batch of the marinade. It needed both the food processor and blender, because my mortar is too small, and there was a bit of waste because I couldn't find my regular or small spatulas, the big one I did find couldn't get into the nooks and crannies in the blender. And I made another 4x batch of the spice mix, this time roasting the spices per the recipe. The kitchen smells amazing.

While dinner was microwaving, I found snap closures for all the spices, except for the ones which needed to be in ziplock bags. Put those all away. Put the spice mix in a storage tub in the freezer and the marinade paste in a larger tub in the fridge. I had planned on marinating the chicken overnight, but decided the packets of dark meat I'd defrosted wouldn't work as well as the leg&thigh parts still in the freezer. Those need to defrost overnight.

And I also need more shallots and probably more rice. And while I can use chicken bullion, it's very salty so I also need salt-free chicken stock:

The rest
• 2 large heads shallots (for fried shallots, see note)
• Canola oil, as needed
• 1 cup jasmine rice, uncooked, rinsed until water runs clear, drained well (see note)
• 1 scant cup unsalted chicken stock
• A pinch saffron


Dinner was Boston Market beef & noodles with the second cream puff for dessert.

Delivered in the morning was another distraction, the blood glucose meter which has bluetooth and pairs with the cell phone app. The app also connects online with the readings from the plug-in meter.

Delivered before coffee time was some USB-C stuff. Chargers with C-to-C cables and a car charger with a built in C cable and a slot for an A connector. The new Huawei phone has a C connector.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Check email - I may need to drive over to the big building for my next assignment, and parking is a mess after 9:30.
Stop in at Grocery Outlet for the missing ingredients
Marinate the chicken
Maybe go to BASFA after traffic has died down.
 

Comments

[figmo]

I eagerly await the completed chicken recipe, including cooking directions.

It all sounds yummy, and I want to try it!

[howeird]

Thanks. The recipe and a video are here: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/kao-mok-gai/

This was my favorite dish in Southern Thailand, but it was hard to find because to do it right it has to be made in a large batch, and sold before it dried out. For the few places which sold it, this was their only product. Frankly, this recipe does not look right to me, I remember the spice mix and the ingredients for the marinade all being added to the rice, and the chicken picked up the flavor by being cooked in the rice like paella.