The Conch Girl Project at Fort Collins

Recipe for Sofia B’s Kitchen:
“Curry” Chicken Meatball “Noodles”

• A kitchen right next to the backyard. A grasshopper was there in your company the whole afternoon. 
• You were left alone. There is a kitty, Chile, inside a room. They complained a little bit. 
• Groceries in stock are big and repeated. Big packages of bacon, big jars of different soy sauce, multiple boxes of salad leaves. Multiple chicken thighs in the freezer, and one defrosted in the fridge. They know what they like. 
• Same kind, same brands of condiments, with small differences. They must have bought them all at once, in fear of lacking something when in need. 
• There are meal prepped items in the fridge: cooked chicken thighs individually packed in small glass containers. Maybe they are trying to save time and be healthy. 
• Different kinds of cooking aid machines, and their manuals kept in a drawer. Many of the manuals are for the food processor. There is also a cooking book just for the food processor. 
• There is a full binder with collected recipes in one of the drawers. On the fridge are lists and tables regulating house chores and meal plans. There was another board on the fridge listing movies and TV shows. At least one person in this household has “J” in their MBTI. 
• Though the kitchen presents all these attempts to be organized, you found some expired items and discarded them. 
• Traces of the owner’s connections to London. 
• Traces of Fort Collins––the mascot of Colorado State University is a ram, so the image of ram prevails in Fort Collins. Even the trash disposal and recycle service in Fort Collins is called “Ram Waste System,” so you can see lots of trash cans printed with “RAM” just walking around Fort Collins. And guess where New Belgium’s headquarters is. Did the pride for the local community influence this choice of purchase? Or is it just from a local friend?

• You become curious about the food processor. You grew up in a kitchen using one cleaver and one big round 10-centimeter-high wood chopping board for everything. Yet western kitchens tend to have different machines for each specific need. You remember feeling paralyzed from all this overloading information the first time seeing an US kitchen at a friend’s family house. You only learned about what a food processor is a month ago, trying to follow a US recipe to make pie crust. Since this food processor has a non-negligible existence in this kitchen, you thought, why not try to use it?
• You give a good read of the food processor manual and recipe, then plan to make meatballs from the chicken thighs. But when you try to use the processor, it just won't start. 
• It’s ok. You pull out the ground chicken from the freezer––meatball plan is back on. 
• There are packages of “Thai curry with coconut flavor” in the pantry. So mysterious––it doesn't specify which kind of curry. 
• You pull out a box of angel’s hair. It’s your favorite. But you realized that, meatballs with angel’s hair is exactly what Sofia has in that black takeaway box in the fridge. So you changed it to the whole wheat, thicker spaghetti. 
• In the process of simmering, you notice the overhead kitchen vent. That’s rare in the US! It’s doing a rather good job, too. Its light is bright, and fan strong.
• The result is a blended mixture of meat and culture symbols. Spaghetti with meatballs is Italian American, but you learned the meatball making from Chinese dishes, and load the sauce more watery than a spaghetti would need–like a bowl of soup noodles. The curry smells obscurely Thai, but heavily herbal. It’s the food processor mentality: blending, slicing, and mixing. 
• Before you go, you write down what you made on the meal plan board on the fridge, and date it for today.