even chickens reject 😦

Last night was not what we would call a culinary success. Since becoming vegetarian I am trying out new and interesting dishes that can sit alongside the non-vego fare preferred by my partner. To be honest, he does most of the cooking and most of the time I am happy for just the veg that previously I would have seen as the accompaniment.

But last night, with the last of the eggplants harvested from the aquaponics system (for me), and some left-over steak from the freezer (for him) I decided a creative curry night was in order. Despite shelves overstuffed with cookbooks, I Googled (as you do) to peruse the options for eggplant + curry. I found quite a few but went with the one I would make from scratch—the one that did not rely on a store-bought paste or powder. I landed on this one (http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/9653/chickpea+and+eggplant+curry), made a decision to swap out the chick peas for our cache of frozen par-cooked soya beans and off I went. For my potato-loving man, what better than a Massaman curry, and so decided to follow this recipe (http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/29621/beef+massaman+curry).

The smell from the kitchen was AMAZING—what with all that onion and garlic and ginger, plus the slightly more exotic aromas of sautéed turmeric and garam masala. But as I got to the point where both dishes were pretty much done and just reducing, I tasted the vego one and it was, in one word, revolting. Sigh.

Sadly it was not within my abilities to save the dish and decided that although I hate waste, at least I could feed it to the chickens. Um, no. This morning I took down some left-over rice which the girls devoured but their collective reaction to the curry was a bit like how I side-step dog poo on the street.

I guess all is not lost as the whole thing ended up in the compost heap—and the nutrients will be returned to the soil. Our household policy is to avoid ANYTHING organic going into the garbage bin—to end up as landfill and be rendered ultimately as methane.

Having recently watched the Wartime episode of ‘The Supersizers Go …’ (you can find Part 1 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOE0VP0EZ0M) I keep thinking about waste. We have probably all heard that on average one fifth of the groceries we bring home ends up in the bin, but what would we do, if as recounted in Supersizers, we could be gaoled for wasting food?