Recent culinary efforts: notes & comments

[starlady]

Today I was originally going to post a pre-drafted post that is way too upbeat for my current mood, but I can talk about cooking without feeling totally inappropriate at least.

• On Tuesday I made this pumpkin, chickpea and spinach curry recipe by skud. I just had another serving of it for lunch, and it's so tasty, seriously, and nicely spicy. Rather than be left with an awkward half of a large butternut squash I simply used an entire small-ish squash, with delicious results. Though, I would in future consider adding another small can of tomatoes, simply because I like tomatoes and there aren't as many of them in the curry as I could wish. Some notes: when leaving the curry to boil, you should make sure to add enough water to cover all of the squash chunks. Also, I guesstimated "a sachet" of tomato paste to be roughly equivalent to 1 Tbsp + a squeeze for luck. 
• Last week I made this Thai red curry mac 'n' cheese by Aarti Sequeira of Aarti Party. It was also delicious! I wound up using 3/4 cheddar and 1/4 Monterey Jack because I bought one bag cheddar and one bag cheddar Jack, with no ill-effects. I also suspect that you could use 4 cups whole milk and one cup non-fat milk without any real ill effects on the final product, in lieu of what I did this time around which was 4 cups whole milk, 1 cup non-fat milk and ~2 Tbsp butter (butter + non-fat milk being an acceptable substitute for whole milk).
• I really want to make this cardamom and triple ginger pumpkin bread by kindkit. I did recently make my tried and true pumpkin bread recipe from Betty Crocker, which is extra delicious if you use fresh spices and lightly plump up the raisins in a little bit of water over low heat (what is the name for this technique again? not blanching, but that's all I can think of) before adding them to the batter.