Celebration of Lights

With the power back on, we're back to the task of celebrating. The hard-working linemen got us back on the grid just as the sun was going down. There was great jubilation all around--as you can imagine. But we decided that we still wanted to share our suppers, so the neighbors, whose freezer had barely anything in it, cooked up the thawed spaghetti sauce (being British, they call it ragú sauce, which is of course a brand name here).

I threw together a pot of my vegetable curry. Brown onions in oil and butter, add curry paste and garam masala, throw in chunks of firm tofu, garbanzo beans and simmer. Ten minutes before serving, I place broccoli on top to steam. Basmati rice is in the rice cooker with a generous pinch of saffron to give it a beautiful color and flavor.

For dessert, I needed to use up milk, so I made chocolate soup: 1 cup of milk to 3 oz. good quality semi-sweet chocolate and 1 T of Dutch process cocoa powder. Heat milk, add chocolate & cocoa, stir it to melt, then pour into serving dishes. I've got a set of little espresso cups from IKEA that I use. We had German Christmas cookies, satsumas and comice pears to dunk in the chocolate. We didn't sing, but we did enjoy!