Guests, Not Stress

The phone caller went right to the point: “Hi, can you help me? We’ve got five college students arriving to help in our ministry for a week. They’ll be here in two days, and the family that was going to host them had an emergency and had to leave town. Do you have room? And we were going to have a dinner and games night for them—can you host that too?”

Um, sure?

Actually, having the guys stay here would be no trouble at all. We have a guest room plenty of floor space. College students can sleep on the floor, right? The dinner and games night would be a bit more work, but I figured that feeding five extra mouths was doable.

Five students, two of us. No problem.

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Whole Egg Masala (Ande ki Kari)

Looking for something to do with all those hard cooked eggs? Tired of deviled eggs and egg salad sandwiches. Here’s a way to use them for dinner, and no one will complain.

I often make chicken masala, one of my favorite Indian dishes, but you can use other protein sources instead. This recipe uses eggs, but you could substitute tofu for a vegan dish. The recipe was adapted from Classic Indian Cooking, by Julie Sahni. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients. Most of them are spices, and combine quickly. The tedious part is browning the onions. It’s vital to arrive at the point where they’re very soft but not burned.

I like to serve it with a vegetable dish such as muttar paneer (peas and fresh cheese), veggie korma, or cauliflower and green onions with turmeric and black mustard seeds. Add a raita (cucumbers in yogurt) and brown basmati rice or chapatis for a complete meal. Then invite me over, please!

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