>>>>The one vegetable I truly can't stand, however prepared, is beets.
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>>>Having been raised on canned beets, I never ate them until a few years ago. Then I was exposed to fresh beets. Now they're a staple around here--I add them to soups and stews, I saute them with carrots and a little honey, I use them in stir-fries and curries, etc., etc.
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>>>We've been in a CSA for several years now, and it has really expanded what we eat in the way of vegetables and actually changed the way I cook.
>>>
>>>Tamar
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>>CSA?
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>Community-supported agriculture. In our case, it's a cooperative of farms. Each week from May to November, we pick our share of whatever got ripe that week. It's introduced us to lots of foods we'd never tried, and forced us to learn to cook things we'd never used before.
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>>I will agree with your comments on fresh beets -- I will now eat them as readily as staples <g>. Some dietary traumas are life long. Feel free to add slimy cottage cheese to that list.
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><g> I feel that way about tofu. The first time I ever heard of it (I was maybe 11), my ear parsed it as "toad food." I've never really overcome that.
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>>You make curry? I am pleasantly surprised. I love curry, the fierier the better. My favorite place ever was a Thai place near a consulting client. It was one of those six booth, four table storefront places where you really do get the native stuff. For American tastes they asked you how hot you wanted it. My standard response was "Burn me but don't kill me." The owner/waitress/cashier had her standard response to my standard response: "OK, next time I kill you." Laughs all around. Even the scaled down version for white men made my face red and brought tears out. I have tried to replicate it at home, coming tantalizing close but never quite getting there.
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>What I make probably wouldn't be recognized as curry by folks from the part of the world where curries are an everyday cuisine, but I frequently throw together chicken, vegetables, fruit, curry powder and something to hold it all together. For example, one night last week, we had curried chicken with butternut squash, kale, apples, and onion (maybe a couple of other things--I don't remember) with maple syrup as the finishing ingredient. I keep the curry mild because I don't do hot well.
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>Tamar

One of my favorite dishes is chicken curry made in Germany. I have no idea what is different about the sauce, except that is very mild, but I absolutely love it.