Curry Eggplant Stewp

It was a great throw together meal. I've been feeling a little under the weather today. On top of that I've had to run around like crazy from bank to bank trying to get things organized for our upcoming house purchase. Of course, today is the day that the kids decide to push their limits with me. Or maybe my tolerance is low so I put my foot down. They had a playground session and a cherry shopping trip taken away for poor behaviour.
Anyways. Home again at 6 p.m. Dinner is on my mind. Whenever I feel sick, there are two kinds of food I crave - hot spicy broth and fish jook aka congee aka rice porridge. Well, I had already thrown some frozen chicken bones, onion scraps and rice into my Thermos pot in the morning before I left. So jook was ready to go. But none of my healthy family members would be satisfied with a bowl of soupy jook. So hot spicy broth it was.
I recently acquired a Costco membership so in my fridge was a giganto bag of eggplant and another one of red peppers. Scrounging around brought out a can of whole mushrooms and another of chicken broth. So I sauteed half an onion with some ginger slices. Then threw in some sliced eggplants - the asian long skinny kinds. I had an inspiration for spicy fried eggplant which worked great since I couldn't make the soup spicy on account of the kidlets. I scooped about 2 eggplants worth out of the soup pot and started frying it in a fry pan til they were browned and crispish-chewy. I drizzled shoyu and chili garlic sauce on them and they were delicious. The perfect heat adding condiment for this stewp.
Back to the stewp: eggplant was sauteeing with ginger and onion. I rough chopped 2 red peppers and sauteed them for a couple of minutes. Then I added a can of whole mushrooms, the chicken broth and some water. I tried to figure out seasonings and decided to go with some cumin and mild curry powder. The garam marsala was set aside along with the 30,000 btu cayenne powder as they are not kid-friendly. When the pot boiling briskly, I added a few handfuls of quinoa. I wanted to control this as I wanted to keep a soup consistency and not go all the way into stew consistency. Then when the quinoa was nearly done, I stirred in a cubed breast of chicken. Last time I cooked a chicken breast in this wet heat way I way overcooked it. So this time I was super cautious. As soon as the soup was back to barely a simmer I turned the heat to low and left it for 10 minutes. Then I fished out the biggest cube I could find and cut it open to test it. It was done. So I turned off the heat and put the lid on. Metta and the kiddies weren't in from playing in the street (sound terrible don't it? ) so I headed into the bedroom (by the stream, ahhh) to geek out a little on the computer.
Ten minutes later, little Nunu came in asking if dinner was ready. I told her it was and she ran out to get her Daddy and her sister. Then a minute later I heard her calling "You're taking a loooong time to get my dinner, Mommy." I came out to find her in her high chair waiting for me to serve her. She's only 2! Of course she didn't like the soup and I created a meal just for her with some rice noodles, broccoli, and just the soup broth. She wouldn't eat any of the veggies or the chicken. Booboo loved everything but the eggplant and mushrooms. I added some broccoli to her bowl too. Can't wait to reheat some tomorrow...