Curry with "meatless" balls

In this episode, Grumpy Old Liv grinds up meatballs and makes good old spaghetti. Which is an incredibly hard word to spell as a child, but I digress.

I'm pretty excited this week, because I succeeded in making the best meal I've attempted so far! Now I don't like to brag....but I've been telling everyone who will listen about it. Am I the kind of person who likes to brag now? Hmmm

I love food from the Asian continent, so I decided to make crab meatballs with Thai peanut sauce. I love Italian food, too, but marinara sometimes hurt my wimpy stomach. I know, I'm a baby.

I've never made meatballs, but turns out with a handy dandy food processor, it's not that hard.

I ground up imitation crab, bread crumbs (panko), parsley, cilantro, egg and some spices. Spices not really necessary when you're sauteeing them in sauce, says the amateur chef.

The sauce, since I found a curry packet, was also easy. Maybe I'm cheating, but the sauce packets rule. I think as long as I'm cooking a meat substitute, I'm learning how to cook. But you're not judging me, right?

I put some oil, half the curry sauce, a thing of coconut milk and 2 tbs peanut butter to make an AMAZING, and not too spicy, sauce. Remember the sensitive stomach.

Lastly, I cooked some of those veggie noodles I found in the grocery store.

What's great about this recipe?

I believe coconut milk is vegan. So, non-dairy

The crunchy peanut butter left some real peanuts in the sauce so it looked legit as hell.

I chose my spicy level.

My noodles were veggies!

Season 2 is off to a great start as the love of my life becomes a zombie hitman. Oh Major.

This episode also has my most favorite Ravi line "People don't get to kill each other willy-nilly".

And the entrance of my actual favorite character...but he won't live up to that until season 3.

Here's a story that's sort of inspired by old people clashing with the next generation.

---

Tell me how this isn't rape.

Mija, you're not supposed to know that word.

Well I do. And I think this is wrong.

She had been hushed at this point. When she saw that light flash in her grandmother's eyes, she got quiet.

Her grandmother lit the incense. She held out her hand. Elena released a single hair into her grandmother's hand.

"Just one?"

"Mami, next time you can walk into my classroom and take as many hairs as you want. But I only took one."

"This better work."

When boys at this age had a crush, they pulled the girl's hair, or pushed her into mud, or off of the play structure. Christina was the prettiest girl in school and she had already had three concussions. If boys kept liking her, she might end up dead, thought Elena. The dark irony of that statement far from her grasp.

When girls her age had a crush, she thought, my grandma asked them to steal a lock of his hair. Her grandmother. The only reason she had friends at all.

Her grandma would light incense and candles, hang sage and crystals in all the right places, and ask for a lock of his hair. And the girls ate it up. They had control for the first time in their early middle school lives. And control meant a lot when their bodies, emotions and hormones were so lacking in it.

So Elena had friends and her grandmother had an audience.

Then there was him. With a chocolatey-gaze and wiry tufts of hair. She had taken to comparing her eye candy to food and he was chocolate mousse. But Elena was smart. She would take up football. She would spend all of recess with his friends, until they introduced her to him. Her grandmother didn't seem to understand this long con.

"You're not supposed to play football with him, you're supposed to swing your hips at him."

"I don't have hips."

"You need to work on your posture."

She didn't know how to describe to her grandmother that she didn't want him to like her without knowing her. She didn't quite understand that herself.

So now she was handing his hair to her grandmother, and she was closing her eyes and swinging crystals. Maybe if she focused only 80% she could thwart the spell and end this madness. But she couldn't break her grandmother's heart. She could feel the power swell as the air burned in the room. An unnatural heat. She felt her body relax and though she knew it wasn't really doing this---she felt it float into the air. She concentrated, felt the bubble of electricity surround them as her grandmother prayed. The air sizzled and with a ZAP, she fell backward into the carpet.

Elena opened her eyes. Looked up at the smoke surrounding her grandmother's face before the light was extinguished from the room.

Tomorrow, Mija, he'll notice you.

Elena woke in a cold sweat. This was becoming common after spending time at grandma's. Maybe, she thought, when I go to school everything will be normal.

Before that morning, Elena had thought the most romantic thing a boy could do was look her directly in the eyes, brush her waist with his hand and ask "Do you wanna make-out?"

She had imagined the sensation of hot lips and a hand on her cheek, like in the movies, and she had wanted it badly. But now she was faced with something altogether different.

He had lured her away from school. Something she had never done before, but found she quite liked. He had taken her to a park---the one Elena's family used to feed the ducks at---and they had found the place empty. They laid in the grass and watched the ducks and the intimacy of their lives. She had never noticed until he sat there with her, what full lives the ducks lived. They watched a father walk out on his family and then watched the mother duck hunt him down and force him to do his share of the child-rearing. He narrated everything with the expertise of Steve Irwin and painted her world in wonder. She felt like she supposed someone waking out of a ten-year-coma might feel. The sun pierced through the clouds on a brand new world; everything glistened with that new plastic shine---she half-expected to see tags on the trees waiting to be ripped off.

And when he finally touched her (just a brush against her arm), it was like every molecule in her body began to dance. The tingle spread through her arm and then all throughout her skin.

But when he lead her to an alcove in the play structure and looked deep into her eyes, he didn't ask her to make-out. He saw her.

She had heard about a chest full of butterflies, but this was....this was like slowly getting pumped full of helium, warm, floating helium. Like her heart might escape her body and explode...or that she might just float away from him and hang out on the clouds. The spring air around her felt cold against the heat of her cheek.

They still didn't kiss. He told her about his dreams. Not his goals or ambitions, but the visions that electrified his brain when he was fast asleep. Elena never cared much for ambition, but the nonsense of people's subconscious, she was dying to understand. This feeling...(was it love?)...was like having a backstage pass to a person. She got to know what he was like when no one else was around. What happened when he fell asleep, how he felt about...things...everything. She was captivated. She found herself listening---an odd sensation---she wasn't lost in her own thoughts and world. She was right here.

Her words bubbled up....usually they exploded from her mouth in a never-ending, impossible-to-fix-dripping-faucet. But, now, he was listening. Something she realized no ever did. She was always talking. And people were never listening. And now she wanted to say so little...but he put his hand in hers, and the words came more easily.

The helium lifted her to the clouds and they spun together, hand-in-hand. Their words creating a bubble around them, securing them away from the rest of the world.

And when they did kiss...it was gentle. Fingers floating through her hair, lightly touching her neck. It wasn't hot and wet, like the movies. It felt somehow like a cloud. Or maybe that was her imagination getting to her. Right now, she was the only thing that existed to him. Her mouth, her eyes, her skin. She took a deep breath, committed the feelings and sensations to memory, because part of her knew the unavoidable truth.

None of this was real. And it would end.

And then she fell to the hard pavement with a whack, the air left her body. No more clouds, no more warmth. Everything was cold, in the way that feels slightly wet and uncomfortable. And all of her bones hurt.

The spell wore off. It could have been forever, but Elena had seen her friends' fate. The never-ending obsession, every moment taken over by overwhelming feelings. The unwanted penetration of someone's mind. Perfection ruined by excess. So she jinxed it. And now everything was gone.