Oh, the luscious decadence of preparing my own meals…hot diggity. This was simple and cost-effective, and it’s great to eat a meal at home. It’s funny how it switches like that: you’ll be so tired of cooking or doing whatever menial chore gets your particular goat, and then you travel and hosts of excellent restaurants present themselves, and all you want to do is just slice some onions in your own kitchen. Well, I do anyway.

You’ll need:

Splash canola oil
1 shallot, half of it in fine dice, the other half left peeled and whole
2 cloves garlic, one finely sliced, the other one left peeled and whole
A thumb-knuckle sized chunk of ginger, peeled and whole
1 stalk celery, julienned on an angle
Half a red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1 package extra-firm tofu, cut into cubes
1 bunch cilantro with the bottom ends of the stems cut off
Couple of sprigs of Thai basil [Italian basil will work in a pinch]
3 tsp green curry paste [I found a rad one in the local grocery today: it says J-Lek with some unintelligible Thai characters afterwards. Good luck and Godspeed.]
1 can coconut milk
1 package frozen peas [ideally organic]
OPTIONAL: pea shoots, chopped in inch-long pieces
Splash rice vinegar

TO GARNISH: Chopped unsalted peanuts and lime wedges

[I recommend that you cook some whole grain of some sort to go along with this; we had brown rice. Some rice noodles would be awesome.]

Cut off the cilantro stems. Put them in the blender with the coconut milk, 2 tsp of green curry paste, basil, whole shallot, whole garlic, whole ginger, and about half a cup of water. Blend thoroughly, and sit tight.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat the canola oil on medium-high heat. Add one tsp of green curry paste and stir. Add tofu, veggies, shallot and garlic. Stir to heat and saute, stirring well, for just a couple of minutes. Add peas, stir, and heat thoroughly [another couple of minutes], then cover with the blended sauce. Heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add pea shoots if using, and rice vinegar to taste. Depending on your curry paste you may wish to salt a little more at this point; the paste I got was wicked salty, so I got off the hook in that respect. I also threw in some chopped cilantro at this point because I’m a cilantro junkie who can never be satiated. Simmer for another 5 or 10 minutes and then let rest off of the heat.

Ladle curry over grains or noodles and garnish with some sliced fresh basil, chopped cilantro leaves, a wedge of lime, and some chopped peanuts.

All the best nerdy shows like House MD and Heroes are on on Monday so it’s good to have a steaming hot bowl of awesome to sit down with.

Welcome to the new digs!  Pretty great, huh?  We’re still all in progress with our chakras hanging open and little bits and bytes scattered here and there; if something doesn’t work let me know in comments and I’ll, uh, tell somebody who’s smart enough to fix it.

Yup, that's what it looks like all right

I got to reminiscing yesterday with a friend who is currently pursuing his post-secondary education, and of course his education is a technocratic junta full of Google Books and little remote-control PowerPoint presentations.  I realized that my career has nicely bracketed the digital and and the analog; when I went to school, [harrumph!] you had to actually show up for class in meatspace.  I don’t think I had a Hotmail address until I went to Banff in ‘99.  You kids get off my lawn!

In the meantime I’ve witnessed various sorts of resistance and recalcitrance to the digital juggernaut, some of which I’ve been a part of.  For example, I have always had a completely groundless aversion to MySpace.  No reason, can’t explain it, just don’t like it.  Some people had a hard time with the camera-phone thing.  Shoot, not that long ago it was considered kind of classless to talk on your cellphone in company.  Plus ça change; nobody would even HAVE company any more if it wasn’t for cellphones.  There are always these little pockets of humanity, particularly in the yoga world, who proudly claim to be the last stand against {choose your weapon}:  television, cellphones, digital wristwatches, the Internet, Twitter, those newfangled automobiles, audiobooks, microwave ovens, mp3 players, text messaging, indoor plumbing, DVDs, bittorrenting, automatic dishwashers, &c. &c.   To which I say:  Good luck with that, and let me know how it works out for you.

If there is a medium more suited to the yogic lifestyle than the Internet, I haven’t found it [at least until my prana is raised to such a level that I can communicate telepathically with my students and community].  Consider:  You can now begin a home practice instructed by the best and brightest via podcast.  As a teacher, you can travel all over and still remain available for your students’ questions.  The promotional aspect, while it can sometimes seem like the most tawdry face of the Tubes especially when you get pop-ups and similar nonsense, is a great boon.  It has, for better or worse, democratized [word?] the most esoteric teachings.

Apart from those specifics there is something inherently tantric about the Internet.  I mean, here we are weaving a community out of nothing but pure intention, made manifest through 1s and 0s.  Through the abstraction of words and pictures, concrete connections and friendships are formed and maintained.  I’m not suggesting it’s the only way to form these connections but, for me, I wouldn’t have the life that I do without the sloppy, nutty, bizarre bazaar of the Internet.

So that’ll be the kickoff thought for this new Great Orangeness.  Many thanks to Oliver for his help, vision and ability to find and destroy purple.