We were planning to make roasted cauliflower for the Hacklab open house dinner, but the cauliflowers were CAD 4.50+ each. Instead, we made vegan Japanese curry (roux recipe), which has become one of my favourite recipes. It's a great way to cook carrots, potatoes, green beans, daikon, bell peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, peas, and other vegetables you might have.

At home, I made another huge pot of Japanese curry, but with chicken instead of tofu, and with a non-vegan roux recipe. We tried it with udon instead of rice. Udon gives it a chewier texture and it works well too. I also made quickly-pickled cucumber-daikon-carrot salad, which balanced the taste nicely. Not counting the rice, I think the cost per portion worked out to be around $1. (Wow!)

J- loves Japanese food, so it's great to be able to make things at home. Next time, I think I'll try making udon from flour, water, and salt. It doesn't require a pasta roller, just patience. On the other hand, frozen udon is around CAD 4 for a pack of five and it takes one minute to cook, so there's something to be said for that.

While I occasionally play with the idea of going on a cooking vacation so that I can try local markets and learn from cooking classes, there's so much that I haven't yet explored here. There are all these ingredients I haven't yet looked up and tried. (Thank goodness for such a diverse city!) Maybe someday I might even try out cooking lessons or private instruction.

For now, I'm focusing on cooking with more vegetables. I liked the balance of meat to vegetables in that curry we made – about three chicken thighs of meat in one of our biggest pots. It would be great to increase vegetable volume and variety. Looking forward to exploring the rest of the produce section.

I also want to remember to cook different things. I have an Org Mode file with recipes, but I haven't set up scheduled reminders or Org habits for them yet. In the meantime, I've put these index cards on our fridge door to remind me when I'm planning groceries: