Kitchen Frenzy

After an unsuccessful run in with some thawed porgy last night - Did I overcook it, or was it already too tough to use at all? - I got the urge to start over and make something edible. So on the way home my thoughts turned to baking a cake. That, and I had ingredients for five other dishes waiting for me in my pantry and fridge. So I walked to Giant - if I'm going to make a cake I'm gonna force myself to work for it, bitches! After buying some cake mix - on sale - and some powdered sugar, I made my way back home. Before I knew it, bam! I had spent over two hours just cooking stuff (I had Marketplace and The World on and hardly heard either because of all that blending and hand mixing). Some highlights:

• Yellow butter cake with actual butter
• Julie Sahni's microwave vindaloo sauce, which requires 1/2 c of tomato purée. I usually use tomato paste which gives it a very dense tomato flavor. Tonight I threw in the blender some tomatoes that I got last night from my sister's father-in-law. It gave me a less dense tomato flavor, which I thought was a plus.
• Did I mention that I iced the cake with Domino's vanilla buttercream frosting with cinnamon in it?
• Another Julie Sahni Moghul Microwave favorite: paneer. I used to make it by boiling milk on the stovetop, but I always scorched the milk. I don't scorch it so easily in the microwave.

I ended up taking frozen peas and frozen chicken meat and mixing it with some vindaloo sauce, with some sweet iced green tea (sugar free), Pepsi One and a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale ("a full-bodied brown ale brewed with real pumpkin, brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon & nutmeg" as the label says). After that, I had some cake. The paneer? I'm saving that for later. Too bad about that damn porgy.

Why am I bothering to tell y'all this? I don't know. After that marathon cooking session it just seemed like it deserved some sort of testimonial. That's all. Plus I'm always up for a reason to mention Julie Sahni's underrated Indian microwave cookbook.