coconut

Raise a glass to freedom

| poppypeach

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The first few days of the school holidays and yes it has been exciting! No, actually it felt like a very long week, but I had something to look forward to after completing 2 more subjects in my Teaching course I had a goal of seeing Hamilton – An American Musical in San Francisco. As it happened my good friend and her daughter was seeing it on the same day, so we met for lunch before the show. We were all very excited to see Hamilton at last, after listening to the soundtrack many times!!

To pass the time this week – the kids enjoyed cat encounters at their swimming class in the Los Altos Hills.

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I experimented with coconut milk and rockmelon to make this delicious lassi. Another fave food item I found this week was Coconut Manna my neighbour made me buy it to taste it, and it is divine, I made raw brownie bites as a treat! I need to catalogue this as it was too easy to make and way cheaper than buying chocolate as an after dinner treat.

And finally Saturday came around, and I was preparing for my adventure on Thursday as there were little things to organise like making sure I had the ticket!! So it turned out I was sitting alone in the Loge section of the theatre at seat C26, and it was incredible, it was hard to know when you spend so much on a ticket to the show and hope that the seats are good. This turned out perfect, and with my binoculars, I got an excellent view of the whole cast.  The funny thing was in all the seats in the theatre I bought a seat sitting behind friends from Mountain View who had bought their tickets in December – all 6 of them! Now that is a small world :D, and there they are in front of me in the bottom image.

Funnily enough, I actually enjoy going to the theatre but spending the $ and finding a show I love is rare – rare enough that in all the 10 years I have lived in the Bay Area I have not been to one show in San Francisco. I have been to smaller productions here locally but not a Broadway show, and I was blown away by how spectacular it was! Now I really get the amount of cash spent on tickets for shows like this as they are incredible. I really enjoyed the soundtrack, and I realised if I don’t go to see this show in San Francisco when will be the time to see it? I am not going to New York anytime soon, and that show was totally sold out anyway! So I managed to find a seat between some friendly folks and really enjoyed my first Broadway show experience here in San Francisco! The pictures say it all, I was very excited!!

After the show, I met up for a final farewell to my friends before the summer, and we take off to Australia – it was so cool for my friend’s daughter to get a signed autograph and picture of Ryan Alvarado who played Hamilton at our matinee performance!

Sunday was the ice cream social at our park, and the neighbours came out in force getting their free ice cream on a windy, sunny day! I met my lovely friend / ceramic teacher Susan who did the face painting for the kiddos, and her work is beautiful, and all the kids were super happy, I especially loved the huge unicorn on my neighbours face.

 

52 week project – Sri Lankan cookbook – Coconut sambal

| poppypeach
Today I am attempting a Coconut Sambol which I plan to have with Cauliflower Fritters. We shall see how it all turns out…

I will post a pic or two when I take them…

1. Soak Desiccated Coconut in Cow’s milk for a while (1/2 pkt or more if you like).

2.  In blender mix in 1 diced onion, 2 green chillies & 1 large tomato.

3. When done add chilli powder (1 1/2 teaspoons or less according to your taste), 2 tablespoons vinegar, cracked pepper (as you desire) & Maldive Fish (2 tablespoons powdered which has been done in a blender).

Add all this to the Desiccated Coconut which has been soaked (as above).

4. Lastly add the lot back into the blender and mix well and when spoon it into what you require. The rest into plastic containers & you can freeze this!!

Ingredients for the coconut sambol

Coconut Sambal – Veggie Style

1/2 cup coconut soaked in 1 tablespoon milk
1/2 diced onion
1 tomato
1 spring onion (instead of green chilli – I was serving this to my kids)
1/2 lemon
Chilli Powder to taste
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast (as a salty substitute for Maldive Fish)
1tablespoon white wine vinegar
Pepper
Sea Salt

Soak the coconut while you prepare the other ingredients then mix gently together in a bowl and serve with rice and a vegetable dish. Add more chilli if you wish.

Coconut Sambal – vegetarian style

So the outcome was close but not as tasty as I remember it – of course due to the lack of chilli! Still if I tried the Maldive Fish yes it would be the same but I eat fish though I will have to research the sustainability of the Maldive Fish for cooking. It was a cooling substitute with the papadums and my friends special recipe sack of a vegetarian pulav was a perfect addition.

The Recipe Sack – Vegetable Pulav was super easy and very flavourful

Coconut Sambal, Cauliflower Fritters, Vegetable Pulav & Papadums

With the addition of the rice, papadums and cauliflower fritters (recipe link above) to the meal we enjoyed it and felt very content after such a feast. The cauliflower fritters took ages to cook as they were fried with a flour, egg batter (I do  not eat fried foods often at all!) – it really needed extra spice like chilli and some warmer flavours like cumin, coriander, ginger and garlic to add a depth of flavour. This was a whole head of cauliflower so it looks like it is Indian food for dinner again tonight. Add some tomato base flavour and chickpeas to the cauliflower and some Lemon Rice, perfect!