tokuon

Not exactly keema curry, but something that resembled it. I peeled a carrot first with each stroke leaving a slice of the orange skin to float gently onto the top of my hand. I half sliced, half chopped the carrot so that each piece was thicker than a slice but not quite big enough to be a chunk. Next came the one Japanese eggplant, and I couldn’t help noticing how once you cooked it, the insides come to resemble the outsides…at least they strive to, turning not purple but a dull, unappetizing greenish-brownish-muckish something. I rubbed off and peeled off the outer layer of an oninon, cut off the ends and chopped into four pieces; I sliced three sticks of asparagas (is there a plural and do you call them sticks or stalks?) diagonally to expose the innards for all their white glory. I cut up four mini-potatoes into four pieces each, and placed the whole lot onto a longish yellow plate.

No wait, I didn’t put them all on the plate at once, but each in turn.

I peeled and sliced a clove of garlic and began to fry it in olive oil, then came the onions and carrots, but the asparagas(es?) were feeling a little left out so in they went too, then the eggplant pieces and finally the sausages. Oh yeah, there were sausages–not so big, more stunted than fat. The potatoes went straight into the pot of boiling water. No, I did not peel them first, they were the type that you cook with the skin. Boiled in their skin they were, har har.

Fry the veggies and stunted sausages, and into the pot! Then came the hamburger. I couldn’t believe how much fat came soothing out of the hamburger as I fried it too. The meat seemed to be wallowing in its own juices as it turned from pink to brown. And then in it went with the rest, fat and meat and heart-stopping goodness. I stood there stirring the concoction wondering about  a girl I had known in elementary school. Today was her birthday, if I wasn’t mistaken.

In goes the goo, the instant curry galog that turns notsoclear water into brownish muck. I stir some more. Who did I know now whose birthday was today? There was someone most likely. I stopped stirring and went to the shoe closet where I kept my old schedulers. Now I use internet birthday reminders. Or at least I intend to use internet birthday reminders, but they are just as troublesome as transferring birthdates from one scheduler to the next.

They aren’t there, not in my shoe closet, they aren’t on my bookshelf. Have I thrown them away? Into the trash can, to go to the dump, to be incinerated and lost forever? I lose things so easily.