Curry Favored

This week's recipe made its grand debut amidst the enchantments of live poetry and folksy blues music. Envision, if you will, a picnic dinner of panzanella, curry, and fresh fruit in a glorious garden, surrounded by beautiful friends and inspiration for the ear and mind. Although words do little to describe the splendidness of the evening, perhaps this gives you just the briefest glimpse into what we experienced. My haiku above does little to capture the true magic of the night, but I thought that a touch of poetry was the best way to illustrate the mingling of art, food, and verse. I have no doubt that the poets and musicians who performed that evening would describe the night with much more clarity, creativity, and charm. A poet, I am not. A lover of good food, however, I am.

When I tasted the curried chicken salad that Mandi brought as her contribution to our picnic dinner, I knew that it was blog-worthy indeed. I agreed to whip up my own bowlful later in the week, so that it could be our featured recipe. However, one thing I found through the process of eating Mandi's "Poetry Night Salad" and my own "Later in the Week Salad" is that curry powders are not all created equal. Now, I could attribute the extreme deliciousness of Mandi's salad to the spellbinding quality of that evening. But I think, instead, that her pantry is home to a curry powder that is slightly superior to my own. In all fairness, my salad was not bad. It simply wasn't as good as the one that graced our picnic blanket at the poetry festival. And, I was hoping to relive a taste of that marvelous evening, even if only in the form of a chicken salad.

So, let this be a lesson to you... Choose your curry wisely (I must defer to Mandi the task of revealing the brand of curry powder in her possession), support live poetry, and substitute a table with a picnic blanket from time to time. Life becomes a little more magical when you do.