Curry and Community

Life is crazy and, sometimes, cooking becomes tedious. So, late last summer, a few of my close friends began to talk solutions or, at the very least, relief. A meeting was called, a plan was made and a cooking schedule arrived in our e-mail. I use the passive voice because I wasn't part of the arrangements - Luisa was our family's representative. Luisa is a woman of few words and when I asked about the meeting she said, "It was good! I'm excited!" So, the process remains quite mysterious. Basically, there are six families involved. Our family will cook twice per month and we will get nine meals which is a darn good deal. I have faith that the cooking collective will work because this same group of people (more or less) organized a home improvement co-op before we all had kids and then created a cooperative day care once the kids came along.  Seriously...the only reason we don't get ourselves one of those compounds you hear about on the news is a healthy fear of The Government and an irrational belief that we would all have to start dressing like Ma Ingalls. So, yesteday, Luisa made curried chicken and rice for 16 and curried tofu and rice for 4. Today, a representative from each of the other families came to our house with their empty containers and left with food. I documented the process with a little help from Miguel who took pictures while I served today. You can check out the set of photos here. Tomorrow, I will take my empty containers to a friend's house and I will come home with Thai chicken soup. We'll get another meal on Thursday. Sounds good, doesn't it?