Simple Turkey or Chicken Vindaloo

It is exam times at home and so like many parents, my husband and I are more stressed than my son who actually has the exams.  We constantly have to remind him to study, to be less distracted with the dog and conversations going around him.  Luckily the television and computer are locked for now, so less distraction on that side.  Does it help?  No.  He then distracts himself trying to figure out the child lock code on the television, bribing his sister into giving him the password of the computer and arguing with us on why we think he would not be able to study if Facebook or Youtube was open on his screen.  He claims he can multi-task – we disagree that he can.

But in all of this, I can see we are killing the creativity of this 13-year old boy.  He keeps thinking of alternatives to fuel for cars and comes up with some new ideas every couple of months.  Some days back, while studying for his industrial sciences, he came up with another idea which he thought should work.  We did not want to completely “kill” his creative thinking so agreed to let him make a model after his exams and only if his results were good.  A long shot now considering the fact that I think he did not study as much as he could thus spoiling all his chances of what I think a good result is and hence not letting him make the model he could have otherwise made.  Time will tell - a little over a week before the results are out.

I know I would be going too far were I to say we actually stopped “the next great thing for humanity” from happening.  But on the other hand, it could be that many of us as parents are indeed doing that – killing the creativity of our children because they have to focus and do well in the present educational system and thus maybe preventing "the next great thing for humanity" from happening.  I wonder sometimes if we would ever have the wonderful poems of William Wordsworth had his mother been like me and killed his creativity and asked him to focus on history and trigonometry and not waste his time on writing poems!

Preparation Time: 25 minutes

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 kilo boneless chicken or turkey, cut into medium pieces

2 large red onions, chopped fine

4 large tomatoes, chopped

1 teaspoon ginger-garlic paste

2 teaspoon red chilli powder

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1 cup boiling water

2 tablespoon sunflower oil

Salt to taste

Method:

1. Heat oil in a skillet and when hot, sauté onions for 3 minutes.  
2. Add the ginger-garlic paste and sauté for 1 minute more.  
3. Add the chilli and mustard powders and tomatoes and fry well for 10 minutes.  
4. Add the turkey or chicken along with the salt.  
5. Add the water and cook till done.  Serve with bread, rotis or rice.